Not proposing this yet, but wanted to start discussing some kind of mid-season trading. My inclination is to give it a shot to see how it works out, but limit it the first couple of years to minimize unforeseen bizarrity and stress on the commissioner, the statistician, and all of the members.
I'm not married to any of these suggestions, but thought I would toss them out to begin discussion:
1) Two-week break after series 8. First week trade reporting. Second week for generating and circulating rosters.
2) Each GM is required to maintain roster at sufficient levels throughout the trading period--this would presently prohibit any team from making a trade that would leave it without sufficient available GS and whatever else the rules will require for roster management at beginning of season.
3) Can't trade picks in upcoming IOD until offseason.
4) Maximum number of trades/players traded per team= 2?/4?
5) Anyone who is demonstrably better than junk you've been playing has to be at least at an 80% usage of PA or IP to be eligible for trade. This would not preclude trading September call-ups, an everyday player who has been reasonably platooned, a pitcher who has been reasonably used in a crowded bullpen, or player who simply wasn't the best option. This would prevent a team from benching someone who is very good but has limited PA or IP, just because it is doing poorly early on. For example, Petty went 1-13 in first two road series after going into the season with slight, but not totally unreasonable, hopes for a wild-card. The temptation to sit Tony Clark and Larry Walker from that point on to maximize mid-season trade return would have prevented sleep.
6) Acquiring team has to assume contract status/seniority for next offseason.
7) Any player with B5 seniority or better automatically goes FA. If the player has a long term contract, he goes into a separate FA auction before the C auction. The player can only be signed to a contract that 1) honors existing long term contract and 2) provides a signing bonus. Therefore, the bidding will represent signing bonus only and acquiring team will have to also pay salary as required under the contract. If no bids, the team that traded for the player in the midseason must honor the contract.
See? It's simple.
Hypothetically, if this was going on this year, Petty would be marketing Tony Clark, Shawn Chacon and Javier Valentin, and looking for future SS help and bats to cover the PA for DH. Buda would be looking to get a better SP or closer for the playoffs.
OK, it's not simple, but those are the sort of things I thought should be included to prevent possible abuse, with the exception of #7, which is a weird wrinkle just for the hell of it. One of those player association things.
I am in favor of in-season trading. I have seen it work in the other league I'm in. There actually are not that many trades that take place. Once the season starts it is sometimes difficult to make the ip's and pa's work out. But some trades do occur. I think one option to consider that would help with meeting ip and pa requirements would be to expand rosters to 35 each major/minor. This puts more players in play, and spends some of the money that has built up. As part of that I would recommend that unlimited players be reduced to one pitcher and one position player per team. This would force teams to spend money on fielding better teams instead of throwing 5 unlimited guys out there.
The way the game can easily update files and with Excel, changing rosters is not that difficult to do. If Tom T feels it is a problem time wise I'm sure others in the league could help with updating. An updated league roster on excel could easily be distributed league wise for updating.
Anyway, I support some form of Don's proposal. I think we need to simplify it though, not complicate it. How about if on a B5 or higher the receiving team has to put the player on a multi-year contract or he becomes FA next year. Player A has a B6 is traded to Buda. Buda either signs him to B6 1X? or he becomes a FA at the end of the season. Other than that I wouldn't put too many restrictions on it. If people are gonna abuse the rules they are gonna abuse them. Then the commisioner needs to address that with that individual.
not saying I'm for or against but I have a few reservations.
1) we can't get Dennis/JR etal to make a deal in a 4 month off season. Do you think anyone , besides Don, could accomplish this miracle in 1 week in august? Also this is a vacation period when many may be out of town and unable to talk deals.
2) 35 man rosters- 30 mlb teams X 24 man rosters = 720 cards + part time players and callups. 28 ARBA teams X 35 cards= 980 carded players. I'm not sure how many players strat makes available each season.
3) perceived collusion- we all have gms with whom we have a friendship with outside of the league. So I give you this year's FL South with Aus/Dav/Hdt all within 3 games of each other. Hdt and Aus will play hm/hm in series 13. So Tom S gives Hdt a key deal with some great cards that give Hdt the edge. You think Gary/Dennis would scream? Or Eri puts Buda over the top. Or Mon gives Pbg what it needs KC/Was fill up Aus etc. I'm concerned that teams like Eri would become a secondary roster for teams like Bud.
I'm open minded to the concept but I think we should consider the negatives of in season trading
1. If in season trading occurs through the end of July series, then vacations shouldn't matter. If you are in a pennant race, need to make a trade and are on vacation, use the cell phone. Also, if you know certain gm's take 3 months to decide on a trade, start negotiating in April or avoid them.
2. Strat makes cards for every player that pitched 1 inning or had 1 at bat. Filling the rosters is definetly not a problem.
3. Yes there is the possibility of collusion with in-season trading. Collusion to a certain extent already takes place in the off season. One way to avoid it would be to get commisioner approval or have a trade court of 3 people with the trade having to pass 2-1 to be approved. I am not in favor of avoiding doing some good for the league out of fear poeple will cheat.
An excellent thread and thanks to Don for bringing it up now so we all have time to think about it.
Some initial thoughts:
- I'm not worried about the technical aspects of carrying something like this out. I'm sure Strat can be made to deal with it, and I can find the time to make whatever roster adjustments are necessary.
- I *am* worried about people inadvertantly screwing up their rosters and not ending up with enough Starts or PA at a position. The proposal that rosters must still work after each trade effectively means that trades will either be totally at the margins or will all be contingent ("ok, we have a deal, subject to me finding another 12 starts somewhere")
- I would be avidly against adding any extra complexity (eg #7 above), at least for the first year
- As an avid trade-monger in the offseason, I worry about increasing my stress level too much during the season itself, but that's really my own problem
- Aside from the issue of in-season trades, I would support a limitation on the number of unlimited guys on a roster. It would definitely have to be more than 1 in my opinion - what if two of your top prospects got 100 PA and hit under .200? But something that would stop situations like a current FL team (let's call them the "Lecko Gizards") from starting 7 unlimited guys every day would probably be a good thing
I was thinking about the 35 man roster and the prospect/sept call up/"a" situation.
I think a way to do it would be to eliminate the 50ab/25ip limit. Make the rule apply to any player who received less than 100 or 50 ab's or less than 20 or 25 ip be eligible to be a "a". They would initially recieve an "e" contract. Then latter in the year if you need the pa's or ip's you can activate them, making them a B1 and then being able to use them. If you don't need their pa's or ip's then they stay an "e". It allows teams to have a cushion of stats to fall back on if they need the extra's. Also helps cover deficiencies in the case of a trade. Encourages teams to use the extra 5 ML slots with those types of guys. Forces teams to reserve the money to be able to pay to activate. For instance with FTW this year, Willingham would have been a "a" with an e contract. In September I could choose to activate, making him a B1 and utilizing his 17 ab's to cover any shortage at catcher or outfield. Teams who are short of ab/ip would be required to activate players to avoid overusage. Makes teams face the decision of starting a players B contract a year earlier.
Anyway, this just a rough idea not a detailed proposal at this point. Back when we used the cards the 50/25 limits were imposed on eligible players. There also were not "cards" for players with 17 at bats. But now with the computer any guy with an ab or ip can be in the game. If a team has guys with 10ip that can help avoid overusage why not let them activate them at the cost of a B1 contract. Or we can make a new contract level for them since they aren't playing the whole year. Anyway there are definite possibilities.
Yeah, the spectre of collusion may be a concern, but I wish you guys would look at the last 3 years of trades. In the 2003-04 off season, Erie and Buda swapped Glaus (319 ab and injured) for Guillen (Erie getting the healthy player). Since then, our trades have been role players, relief pitchers, unlimited idiots and assorted crap, and I wasn't the guy who made off with Pedro and Schmidt. My dealings with JR (and it takes me a LONG time to get even a relief pitcher out of him) prove to me that best buds still put their own team's best interest first, even if they decide to trade present value for the team's future good. I haven't looked at the last 3 years of Was/KC, Aus/Ely, or Mon/Pbg deals to see if there is any blatant one sidedness, but I suspect their dealings have been similar.
To respond to the Gizzard in chief, I would say that I have used (and abused, some would say) the system of using unlimited players in lieu of making massive expenditures to get marginally more useful junk to fill a roster, and I have no problem with anyone else using the practice, for anyone who does it assumes the rather significant risk that none of the futures that are being acquired will ever turn out to be anything that's any good. (Case in point, in 2002-03, I traded JR Glaus and Thome for 3 BBA top 20 minor leaguers and Sardinha. Now only Bonderman appears to have much ML ability. And you guys want to accuse me of getting fat from JR. Ha!) My only objection is to people deliberately keeping their best players on the bench.
Forcing "down" teams to spend lots of money fighting over free agents who hit .210 isn't a very good idea to me.
Just for clarity, I really was busting only on the decrepit state of my own team and the 15 or so unlimited guys I am throwing out there on both sides of the ball.
Now, I don't think I've done the slightest thing "wrong" in that I'm conserving money and roster spots in doing so and the rules clearly permit it, but I would have not the slightest problem in legislating that practice out of existance.
Of course, then I might not have stumbled on Marcus Thames, who I will gleefully flip along with his 1.000+ OPS for valuable prizes next season. :)
Can I jump in here for a minute in regard to unlimited player usage?
1. By not allowing unlimited unlimited players you do force teams to spend some cash on marginal players instead of getting by with 40k FA contracts. It spends down the money, and improves the overall quality of the team, even marginally.
2. I think the league is a better league when the overall quality of teams is better. Winning and losing records will move away from the extremes. It may not be a significant impact overall. But what if Surprise was forced to play 14 games vs a team with a .400 win pct as opposed to a team with a .221 win pct. Then they go 10-4, maybe 9-5 instead of 14-0. Multiply that by a couple of teams and the competition for playoffs is closer. I guess in my opinion that anything that moves us more toward parity is good for the league.
3. I don't think anyone is "wrong" doing it 2006 SFE's way, because it is playing within the rules. Heck I've done it with Houston more than once. But if we can restructure our rules to improve overall competitveness then as league we should take a serious look at it.
unlimited players- I have no problem limiting the number of "unlimited" players on a team. Could we make gms designate which players are unlimited. example gdp has several pitching prospects getting their first time in the bigs. they may end up with eras above 6.00. would gdp be forced to trade/cut m prior/a sanchez/c hamels/j lestor/a reyes/b mccarthy just because they have eras above 6? or could gdp designate that only prior is unlimited and gdp has to live with the normal ip/ab/starts restrictions for the other players despite qualifying for unlimited status?
Don I was not trying to single eri/bud out. I didn't even look to see who had been making what deals with who. My only point is that in season trading could spawn some real hard feelings if say gdp moved good cards to hou for prospects that aced sfe out of a playoff spot. I am definitely not accusing anyone of cheating!!
roster expansion- I think I am definitely against it. It was proposed last year and defeated and I still think that it would only allow the better gms to stockpile more talent. Also if all the cards are on ARBA rosters, then we wont have any quality FA players to bid on the next season and that is the biggest drain on money. If we want to limit money, then all we have to do is discontinue giving gms 50% back on C players that they have no intention of keeping on their rosters. expanded rosters will further dry up the available talent pool to be bid on/drafted the next season. Those are two of my favorite days each year. I would hope that we don't take that away by not having as much talent available to choose from because all the talent is owned. I know it's a lot of fun drafting and watching players develop but 60 players is plenty for each team. IMHO
As it stands now we can have 35 players, five of which are "a". The only change in regard to this would be:
1. Adding 5 to the minor league roster so minor league slots aren't taken up by the little "a's".
2. Eliminating the ab/ip limit as to who is eligible to play. So if one of your stud pitchers only gets 15ip, then he can be activated in Sept if you choose, if for instance you need the ip's to avoid overusage.
Neither of these outcomes would affect the fa pool. Unless I'm way off base, I think guys would utilize some of their prospects in the 5 "a" slots to act as Sept call ups, as opposed to crappy veteran types. But hey I may be wrong.
Major League teams utilize upward of 35+ players to make it through a season and we are being limited to less than that, unless we want to give up 5 of our minor league slots. I think it makes a lot of sense and helps teams meet the usage limits without skewing the team records and player stats by fielding teams with 5 unlimited <.200 avg player types.
As an aside, as if you can't tell I'm ecstatic about an actual discourse taking place on our message board.
Keith, I didn't think you were accusing anyone of cheating. I just wanted to invite people to scrutinize past transactions between close friends or relatives before worrying too much about there being much in the way of deals that have no justification other than to give someone the pennant.
I suspect that all playoff contenders will be shopping everywhere during May and June to find that one or two July bargain they need, and I suspect the best offer will get the prizes in trades.
I am not in favor of roster expansion. I rarely carry more than 30 cards as is and have lots of PA and IP to spare when I do.
I proposed this in part to try to create more opportunities for teams in the second division to cash in guys nearing the end of their value, though it may be tough to move such players. I do kind of wonder if anyone in a playoff fight would be interested in acquiring the likes of Clark, Valentin, or Walker, knowing they get one good 1/3 of a season and that's it. We might actually see a lot of future oriented trading instead. If we had a trading period now, I might be flooded with offers for Johjima or McCann. I don't think we'll know until we try it.
The other thing it might do is generate a little more interest. Tom has commented on the lack of discussion on the board.
i guess I think of little "a" players as minor leaguers who happened to reach carded status by getting a call up for a short time. I think expanding the rosters is a bad idea because it allows gms to protect 65-70 players. 60 roster spots is plenty in my opinion.
