Please send them in ASAP. We'll vote on any proposals early in 2024. So far the only proposal I've received relates to C Bidding by owners of multiple teams:
If an owner owns multiple teams, such owner may not bid on a C player on such owners other team.
If an owner owns multiple teams, such owner may only make a bid on a C player on such owners other team only if the bid reaches $500K and such owner may not make a bid greater than $750K on said player.
I know we addressed the C auction issue a couple of years ago...
I am inclined to support these proposals (I assume these are presented as alternative proposals) because I think owners with multiple teams have an advantage in the C auction.
While I am not suggesting that there have been shenanigans in the past, this does create a situation where the fairness and integrity of some bids could reasonably be questioned.
I would like to hear thoughts (particularly from the author of the proposal) to flesh out whether the changes we put in place a few years ago seem to be helping or do not go far enough.
For what it's worth I personally would not support the first one (I think the changes we implemented previously solve the main issue in my mind) and would be fine with the second one if the band was increased. Not sure I would support only allowing bids between 500 and 750, and frankly not sure we need an upper limit at all. But only allowing bids to start at 400 or whatever seems fine to me.
As I consider this, I remain concerned that we only solved half the problem.
We addressed the situation where an owner with two teams had a greater incentive to put a marginal player in the C auction because his other team could always provide an initial bid.
But consider this scenario:
Owner A owns two teams. Owner B owns one team.
Owner A and Owner B are the last two bidders for a good player that is owned by Owner A's other team. Owner A and Owner B do not have the same incentives. As the bids go up, Owner B just pays more money for the player, which is bad for Owner B. But Owner A, while paying more money for the bidding team (which is bad for that team), also gains a benefit for his second team from the higher bids.
To be clear: there is no suggestion that Owner A is acting with an improper motive or is intentionally engaging in "puffing" -- a recognized fraudulent bidding practice. But the presence of different incentives for Owner A and Owner B distorts the market and results in a price higher than would occur between two completely disinterested owners.
I suppose we could tweak the incentives if folks are reluctant to have a complete ban on bidding by multiple-owner teams; this proposal would cap the amount a team could receive for bids over $500 in the C auction if an owner bids on a player owned by his other team --
Option (3): If the Owner of the C Player declines to match, he receives (i) if the winning bid is $250K or less, an amount equal to such winning bid, or (ii) if the winning bid is greater than $250K, a refund of the 125K C contract salary + 50% of the winning bid. However, if the team with the winning bid has the same owner as the original team of the player, the amount received will not exceed $375K.
Brief note about the timing of the original proposal: Both options were sent to Tom and Eric by me on the same day I took over Rishi (in addition having owned Mudville already).
Before this year, ARBA had a "sheriff" that was able to police the C auction independently and step in if they wanted to take a high value player away from a two-team owner. That sheriff was Mudville. While they did not step in last year, Mudville had the budget to easily knock anyone out of the bidding on a certain player any time with little impact to Mudville's bottom line. However, this year, Rishi is now owned by the same owner as Mudville.
This poses a perhaps a currently-unforeseen problem to the league as Mudville is the richest team by far. By acquiring Rishi, the owner of Mudville could sometimes act contrary to logical behavior to aid Rishi (not saying they would). For example, Rishi currently has 3 full-time SS players. If one was eligible for the C auction (which none are this year), Mudville could simply out bid everyone without any real competition. Mudville could act similar to how the Yankees and other rich teams in MLB act and grossly overbid for the player as well. This would allow excess funds to essentially pass from Mudville to Rishi and all the actions are currently legal within the rules as written. Overall, Mudville would sustain likely no impact to their inter-season savings account and Rishi would see a boost in theirs.
I proposed the option to set bounds as a way for the league to do the following:
Prevent a team from intentionally overbidding to help another team owned by the same owner (through a low upper bound).
Prevent a team from bidding on minor-impact players to help another team owned by the same owner (through a high lower bound).
Honestly, I would support the complete ban of bidding on players of teams owned by the same owner. However, while I proposed it, I think that is a losing proposal at this point.
Regardless, I do think we should restrict this somehow. I am flexible with the value of the bounds if that proposal is pursued, but I do want it to be a fairly narrow range and have a high hurdle to clear for the lower bound.
This is not the first time in the history of ARBA we have had "two team" owners with large cash disparities between their two teams (maybe not to this extreme), and I don't remember it ever being an issue. Do we truly believe we have owners that would grossly overbid just to move money around, especially given that we play for nothing more than bragging rights?
If anything the worry should be the owner knows they have so much money on one team that they can outbid everyone else, so they place all of their great players on c from their poor team so their rich team can outbid everyone thus consolidating the stars on both teams on to one super team.
So let's look a little closer at Phillip's hypothetical scenario, if one of his teams was putting an everyday SS into the C auction and his other team needs an everyday SS.
Under current rules, some people are raising the speculative possibility that Phillip's dual agenda could lead to different bidding and a different outcome than what you'd have if all 26 teams were being managed truly independently. Fair enough.
But under the proposed rules, Phillip's second team is at a disadvantage- its not speculative, its 100% positively a disadvantage. There aren't many everyday SS available in a typical auction and he's not allowed to bid on, or is significantly restricted from bidding on, one of them. Which also means someone else may now be getting that player cheaper than he would have if all 26 teams were being managed independently.
