Draft Strategy---Ethical?

['94 EXPOS]

I have built my current team (expansion Expos of course) in to a contender. We just won the World Series in the team's 10th year. Against all my of prior values and tendencies I have put myself in a financial pickle for the current season. This came about via a comedic and sentimental series of contract extensions.


As it stands, I have next to no money available for the coming draft and International free agent signing period.


So......in order to save what little scraps of my budget I have left to try and keep the 40 man afloat for this season I came up with the idea of tanking my current draft year.


My plan involves selecting players in the first three rounds with no intention of actually signing them. I will then get the additional picks the following year when I am back on more stable financial ground.


The problem I am wrestling with: game cheat vs what would happen in real life? Is my plan realistic?


Please feel free to provide feedback!


Also, one of my picks in the first 3 is a supplemental.....are these picks protected if not signed?

[BIG17EASY]

In real life, the commissioner's office would certainly have something to say about this.

[Assos]

It is not sabotage, there are owners in real life that have strict payment policies in the draft. Stick to your guns and play it your way. I do not see how tanking a draft would hurt you in the short run, in the long run it will push you further away from winning, but if you need to stock up the cash, do it!

[toxicavenger74]

I see no issue with this. It does not put you at an advantage. It frees up the players to be drafted by teams who could benefit from their skill.

[Bluenoser]

Originally Posted by toxicavenger74

I see no issue with this. It does not put you at an advantage. It frees up the players to be drafted by teams who could benefit from their skill.

I don't have an issue with it either, but it doesn't necessarily free up the players to be drafted by other teams.

If he doesn't sign them, they back into next years draft. A draft in which he will have extra picks.

[aderosa32]

Originally Posted by Bluenoser

I don't have an issue with it either, but it doesn't necessarily free up the players to be drafted by other teams.

If he doesn't sign them, they back into next years draft. A draft in which he will have extra picks.

Agree with this, it basically gives a sort of protection to those players and makes it possible to be re-drafted by the team the next season with more draft picks.

But I do not see this as an issue. I have had a similar situation, but I lost top 3 because I did not meet their demands.

[NoOne]

Originally Posted by Bluenoser

I don't have an issue with it either, but it doesn't necessarily free up the players to be drafted by other teams.

If he doesn't sign them, they back into next years draft. A draft in which he will have extra picks.

i believe the idea they are touching on is that because he picked bad players, there are additional worthy picks available.

----------------------

op:

it's not ethical, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't do it.

most likely in RL, their is some ambigious wording somewhere in the official rules that would allow the commissioner to come down hard on a team that would blatantly try this on a massive scale. regardless, i'm sure it's been an employed stratagy at some point for a team regarding a pick or 2 in any given year.

i'd just sell off a couple high-priced, low-performance type players (for literally anything), and take my lumps from poor financial planning quickly, rather than waiting over the course of many years -- suffer through one horribly financially constricting year and then back to business as usual.

other places to look would be costly depth players in your minors... be willing to struggle with some lesser talent in case of injuries. no reason to be paying 3million for 5-6 players in your minors that play very little.

if you go the draft route, make sure to turn amatuer scouting down to Zero and put that money back into the general budget that particular year. reducing your international scouting is a good idea too, since it is very inconsistent at providing anything in only 1 year.

[Matt Arnold]

I would say it's fine, but I would recommend going with "impossible" to sign players, to not prevent a legitimate rookie from missing a year (the impossible guys won't tend to sign anyways)

[RonCo]

The question of ethics has to do with the intent you go into it with. The players union supports the draft for various reasons, but I think if a team openly entered into a real draft saying "we're going to take three guys we absolutely have no intention of signing, and purposefully make them sit on the sidelines for an entire year without getting paid" you would find lots of interesting legal wrangling between the commissioners office and the player's union.

The practice in question does not break a rule, and in a computer game it makes "no difference," but as a real life exercise it is clearly on shady grounds as far as personal ethics goes.

[Bluenoser]

Originally Posted by NoOne

i believe the idea they are touching on is that because he picked bad players, there are additional worthy picks available.

Did he pick bad players?

[RonCo]

A more interesting and ethical way to do this in real life (which I have no idea how it would work out per the rules), would be for a team to expend their top picks on charity picks -- kids with cancer or longtime fans or whatever, not sign them, and then expect to get the supplementals.

Would the rules support that?

Perhaps you could do this in OOTP by creating a set of five (or whatever) "0" rated players that the AI would hopefully clearly ignore.

[Questdog]

Surely in real life their must be some sort of qualifying offer to the players required in order to recoup the picks in the next draft for unsigned players.

[ihatenames]

I don't know if it's ethical but you don't really gain an advantage by doing it. The only one's who lose out are the players who miss out on the year. If your game conscience can live with that I would say go for it.

[RonCo]

Originally Posted by ihatenames

I don't know if it's ethical but you don't really gain an advantage by doing it. The only one's who lose out are the players who miss out on the year. If your game conscience can live with that I would say go for it.

Depending on who you draft in this process, you could gain an advantage by taking "good" prospects off the market for other teams for a year. Small influence, but an influence nontheless.

[Lukas Berger]

Originally Posted by Questdog

Surely in real life their must be some sort of qualifying offer to the players required in order to recoup the picks in the next draft for unsigned players.

Indeed there is. A team has to offer a minimum of 40% of the slot amount to the player in order to receive a comp pick in case the player doesn't sign.

So the injured players/charity picks idea some other have suggested wouldn't fly at all. They'd snatch that up.

Matt's suggestion of "unsignable" guys is the most realistic option possible especially in regard to not totally screwing over a player who actually wants to sign with an MLB team.

[rpriske]

I had thought it to be extremely unethical, as it would really screw over the players you drafted... but then I saw Matt's post.

GREAT solution. Draft only players marked as 'impossible' signs. Then they are keeping themselves out of baseball for a year, not you.

['94 EXPOS]

Thanks for the responses, I enjoyed reading them!

While I do suspect that my strategy idea has been employed to a lesser extent by real MLB teams I ultimately felt it strayed too much from the 'real life' feel I get from OOTP. I went ahead with my draft and signed most of my picks (slot only)...I will have to wiggle and jiggle the rest of this season!

My choice to not employ the strategy wasn't from not wanting to try something out of the box or different but my final belief is that if I employed this strategy in real life that it would have been obviously noted by MLB, other teams and the player's association.....ultimately this strategy would have had some sort of repercussions and the consequences- good, bad or indifferent- are not something that OOTP cannot envision or create (not a knock on OOTP)

[Bluenoser]

Originally Posted by '94 EXPOS

Thanks for the responses, I enjoyed reading them!

While I do suspect that my strategy idea has been employed to a lesser extent by real MLB teams I ultimately felt it strayed too much from the 'real life' feel I get from OOTP. I went ahead with my draft and signed most of my picks (slot only)...I will have to wiggle and jiggle the rest of this season!

My choice to not employ the strategy wasn't from not wanting to try something out of the box or different but my final belief is that if I employed this strategy in real life that it would have been obviously noted by MLB, other teams and the player's association.....ultimately this strategy would have had some sort of repercussions and the consequences- good, bad or indifferent- are not something that OOTP cannot envision or create (not a knock on OOTP)

Good choice.

The thing I would consider too is, irl other teams could employ this tactic too, so in essence, it's a level playing field.

In OOTP, I don't think the AI is programmed to think like that, and therefore it's probably an unfair advantage for the human GM.

[jpeters1734]

Interesting idea. I wonder how many real life gms do this on a lesser scale during a weak year when there's a strong year coming up.

[Questdog]

Originally Posted by jpeters1734

Interesting idea. I wonder how many real life gms do this on a lesser scale during a weak year when there's a strong year coming up.

I would say zero....