Tanking...a touchy subject!!

[sixfour210]

Originally posted by JAttractive
That's the thing.. these guys don't need anymore time. They could be allstars right now. They are almost fully developed allstars.

Well I was generally speaking of computer generated rookies and not historical leagues.

[Jason]

I spoke with one of the game developers and he didn't believe there was any boost in the game when you bring up a heralded rookie like Boggs or Mattingly in this situation. In real life, it would, because people would pay to see the wonder kids.

So in OOTP, there's no real gain to bringing up the rookies if your team is not going to be a contender. All this owner would do is burn a year of their $300,000 salary to perhaps win 10 more games.

However, after looking at this guy's roster, he had the talent to make a run at the start of this season. A few pitchers might not be performing up to par right now but all teams have slumps.

Initially I thought perhaps this was a situation of the richest owners just wanting to rush good players on other teams to free agency (I've seen that happen) but it's obvious this owner either A) is trying to not put the best team on the field or B) has no clue what the heck he's doing.

[UKSubs]

Originally posted by Jestre
I will bet Jax and all the other tanking apologists that when this team is ready to make its move and brings up Boggs and Mattingly it will also bring up other younger players that are in the 19-22 year range. In other words I bet this team will wait until all the pieces are in place in the minors and bring them all up together and be a power. He is basically just hiding talent til he has enough stocked up by inflating his draft position.... Boggs and Mattingly should be in the majors with those ratings, and possibly/probably be allstars... You can make all the excuses you want, its tanking.

Well, of course the young players are more likely to be promoted then, since the team will have a better chance at winning. The reason being that there is that exchange a year of low salary on a lesser player because the player is better than what is available and the likelihood of winning and making it to the playoffs.

I think that the issue for commissioners isn't the morality of the specific situation here, but rather creating a bad precedent that others can follow or worse, can't follow. If the commissioner dictates that having Boggs and Mattingly in the minors, despite their age, because they are better the players on the current major league roster is tanking, where is the line drawn? Does every quality rookie need to be promoted, would a good team have to promote a youngster of this caliber if they had an equal or even slightly worse regular, can teams effectively prepare when to promote talent en masse to jump start?

As a commissioner, I wouldn't want to have to say to an owner, "Look, I know it's your team, but Boggs and Mattingly have to be starting, because I think that you otherwise aren't giving 100% to your team." It sets bad precedent and creates hard feelings. I think what is lost here is that as a commissioner, every action you take beyond the ordinary with a team, is something that all of your other owners know about and live with.

How do you promote these two players and say, this is just a one time thing with Owner X? You really can't, because the situation happened and everyone knows about. You've alienated owner X, who will quit at being told what to do and the rest of your owners will have doubt in their minds that their freedom to enjoy their teams in the way they choose is imperiled by a heavyhanded commissioner. Something to think about.

[spleen1015]

Originally posted by sixfour210
Anybody familiar with David Clyde of the 1973 Texas Rangers. For those of you who don't know, this is the ultimate story of a #1 pick gone wrong.

The Rangers brought this high school phenom in at the age of 18 without playing in the minors as a publicity stunt basically. Drew a ton of fans but ruined this guy's career.

You can read about him here.

Maybe it will convince more folks to let the young guys have all the time they need in the minors.

So what. We're talking about the OOTP world, not the real world.

Fact of the matter is, these guys, 19 years old or not, had the talent when they were drafted to play on the major league roster. They should be on the major league roster. They're not going to improve that much.

Bottom line. This guy is holding his major league ready players in the minors to improve his draft position to get more guys like these only to promote 5-10 guys to the majors in one season and dominate for 10 seasons.

No matter how you look at it, the guy is cheating the system.

He is tanking!

[Skipaway]

Originally posted by JAttractive
First of all it is NOT always cheaper this way. If you can bring up a guy at a very young age he may not even be fully developed when the 5 years are up so you CAN sign him for less on a long term deal overall. These guys are 19-20 so yes, that may apply to them.

Secondly these guys are almost *fully* developed. They will put up seasons that are going to be VERY close to what they will at full development so what difference does it make when you start the clock? The extra rating points they will get will not make or break your bank anyway. It will likely mean the difference of a million or two per year... which is probably close to what he is playing the bums he has on the ML roster right now anyway.

By the way... those are not always the peak years either.

Of course there is nothing that's always the best, but I believe my strategy is the safest. I use it in solo leagues too.
First of all, assuming we never re-sign players, since all of them would be overpriced comparing to pre-free agent players, to force a player to stay in the minors longer is denying his service for other teams. Changing a 5 years for me, 15 years for others career to 5 years for me, 10 years for others. In the later case, you'd also get a much better chance of enjoying the best 5 years.

Another problem with younger potential FA is, it's much much harder for them to accept deals longer than 3 years. With a 25-year-old call up, you can easily lock up a player before age 35 with only one contract extention instead of two.

What's the downside of this? the productions before 25. Good thing is, those production might not have helped you, but it sure would not help anyone else. I have no idea if you can to define this strategy as tanking, but sure it's a good one. If you don't like it, the best way against it would be a rule V draft.

[Skipaway]

Originally posted by JAttractive
First of all it is NOT always cheaper this way. If you can bring up a guy at a very young age he may not even be fully developed when the 5 years are up so you CAN sign him for less on a long term deal overall. These guys are 19-20 so yes, that may apply to them.

I did not explain enough why this is cheaper: if you bring up player A at age 25, his age 25~30 would be covered by arbitration. If you bring him up at age 20, you'd have to pay BIG for those 25~30 ages since it's after free agency. The price diffrence is often more than 10 times more for the total 5 years. What you get is of course the age 20~25 years.

Moneywise, that's not really that good an idea.

An sample:

Age Winshares (1) (2)
20 15 300k
21 16 300k
22 17 3000k
23 18 5000k
24 19 7000k
25 20 10000k 300k
26 21 10000k 300k
27 22 10000k 4000k
28 21 10000k 6000k
29 20 10000k 8000k

In the first case, the player was brought up at age 20, and signed an 10mil/year deal. In the second one, the player was brought up at age 25.

In the first case, it's 65600k for 188 win shares. In the second, it's 18600k for 104 win shares!!! That's why I said you don't really understand the salary game!

[Jestre]

Gee and I thought the point of online leagues was to compete for championships with other owners on a level playing field, not to come up with a way to use salarys and free agency to justify hiding players that should be starting on the major league roster so you can cheat others of amateur picks they deserve. I find it amazing the lengths some will go to to find ways to get around playing fairly and like a gentleman.... course cheating is a massive epidemic in this society, so much that many consider it acceptable.....

[Skipaway]

Originally posted by Jestre
Gee and I thought the point of online leagues was to compete for championships with other owners on a level playing field, not to come up with a way to use salarys and free agency to justify hiding players that should be starting on the major league roster so you can cheat others of amateur picks they deserve. I find it amazing the lengths some will go to to find ways to get around playing fairly and like a gentleman.... course cheating is a massive epidemic in this society, so much that many consider it acceptable.....

Hmmm, as I said in my first post in this thread, I was just offering a tip for powerplaying. I cared nothing about the tanking speculations. And my point is about how to get the most value out of least money. Nothing about the draft or so.

I am just disturbed by people saying there is NO REASON not to call up a pair of young prospects. Tell me which part of my post got anything to do with not being a gentleman? or cheating?

[Skipaway]

There is a very easy way to see if this guy think the same as I do. Just as somebody said, check if he treated EVERY prospect the way I described.

Another way to totally prevent this is force everyone only to promote guys at a fixed age. If not promoted, a player must be released.

[Hoover36]

I have too many counter-points to alot of the posts in this thread to spout them all off here. But, why is everyone so worried about Cincy not playing Boggs and Mattingly in the majors, but no one is getting on Toronto for leaving Gwynn and Starwberry doen on the farm? Of the top 30 prospects in that league, only 3 are in the majors. The majority are all sitting in AAA. If you are going to force Boggs and Mattingly to the bigs, then the rest of the top 30 should be forced up as well. Just my .02

[gpm22]

Mattingly and Boggs aren't going to develop much more in the minors. Their ratings are pretty much in their talent zones. In real life, young players as ready as they are right now are brought up. Mark Prior is probably a good comparison to both players. Mattingly and Boggs are too good to be in the minors. They are more than ready. This does look like an attempt to keep from winning more games than currently on pace to win.

[LivnLegend]

Originally posted by Hoover36
I have too many counter-points to alot of the posts in this thread to spout them all off here. But, why is everyone so worried about Cincy not playing Boggs and Mattingly in the majors, but no one is getting on Toronto for leaving Gwynn and Starwberry doen on the farm? Of the top 30 prospects in that league, only 3 are in the majors. The majority are all sitting in AAA. If you are going to force Boggs and Mattingly to the bigs, then the rest of the top 30 should be forced up as well. Just my .02

Straw and Gwynn would be the two best players on that Toronto team!

I am not really familiar with how the Crackerjack league works but I am stunned over how many 5 star and 4.5 minor leaguers are in the league! Holy cow, I have never seen so many 19-22 year olds with major league ready ratings! Since all my leagues use fictional rookies each season for the amateur draft, maybe I just don't know how importing real players works but the ratings talent of the minor leaguers in that league is overwhelming! How do so many young players have such high ratings? Are they edited before the draft?

[UKSubs]

Originally posted by Jestre
Gee and I thought the point of online leagues was to compete for championships with other owners on a level playing field, not to come up with a way to use salarys and free agency to justify hiding players that should be starting on the major league roster so you can cheat others of amateur picks they deserve. I find it amazing the lengths some will go to to find ways to get around playing fairly and like a gentleman.... course cheating is a massive epidemic in this society, so much that many consider it acceptable.....

That's a rather harsh way of putting it. I would say by your definition any rebuilding is cheating, snice you could have done better in the current season by keeping any veteran of value and won more games, thereby cheating someone out of a draft spot they deserve out of their talent. There are many ways to win a championship in an OOTP league and stockpiling young talent is one of those ways.

The situation here might be a bit extreme, but certainly within the range of defensible. Is it ideally what you want to see from a team? No. But it seems to be a rational and sound strategy to maximize the time you get from each of your players in your attempts to win. Forcing youngsters into the majors when the commissioner thinks they are ready relieves the owners of a good deal of their incentive to play in a league and responsibility for running a team. Shouldn't owners have a good deal of latitude to make bad decisions?

Finally, I want to say that Hoover36 nailed it right on the head. Other teams have similar prospects in the minors, like Toronto with Tony Gwynn. If you say, Cincinnati, you must promote Mattingly and Boggs, then Toronto has to promote Gwynn because otherwise you have two different sets of rules for two different owners. While it isn't the best behavior, I don't think call it cheating and blaming the relaxed morality of soceity for condoning behavior consistant with winning without trying to win 70 games every year solves the problem any better. Sometimes, you just have to let your owners play it out even when you disagree with how they are getting from point A to point B.

[spleen1015]

Sounds like the whole league is tankers!

[UKSubs]

From just looking at the league, there is definitely some editing of the rookies. For example, Wade Boggs is only 19, but he imports at a much older age than that historically, because he made a late debut.

But I think all historical leagues have to do some editing of their rookies. Otherwise you end up with a weird mix of guys who were never anything in real life being very good and guys who were very good in real life being rather poor. The cups of coffee in players careers tends to mess with the importing of historical players in my view, leaving unedited historical leagues, very fictional to a lot of people.

[Crackerjack]

All rookies are edited by the commish with input from the entire league.

[CDL Commish]

Originally posted by UKSubs
From just looking at the league, there is definitely some editing of the rookies. For example, Wade Boggs is only 19, but he imports at a much older age than that historically, because he made a late debut.

But I think all historical leagues have to do some editing of their rookies. Otherwise you end up with a weird mix of guys who were never anything in real life being very good and guys who were very good in real life being rather poor. The cups of coffee in players careers tends to mess with the importing of historical players in my view, leaving unedited historical leagues, very fictional to a lot of people.

[SHAMELESS PLUG]
This coming from the expert in editing rookies, imo. Brian spends 5 to 7 hours per season editing the rookies to ensure the cup of coffee players end up being just that. I would be surprised to find many or any other leagues that go to the extent that he does and wish to publicly thank him for just another reason why the CDL rocks!!! [/SHAMELESS PLUG]

[JAttractive]

Originally posted by Skipaway

In the first case, it's 65600k for 188 win shares. In the second, it's 18600k for 104 win shares!!! That's why I said you don't really understand the salary game!

But I do understand, that's the thing.

Ok you show some fictional sample that seems to prove your point... big deal. You are of course ignoring all kinds of other factors and beyond that... it's just one example and it's fictional to boot. How about the money generated by the wins that player adds putting fans in the seats (and of course those fan rating points will be there next year to add more money again and so on)? Where does that factor in?

Or how about the fact you are ignoring the salary of the player that is playing in his position? Hey someone has to be paid to play there.

Or how about the fact that these guys are almost fully developed and their win shares shouldn't fluctuate all that much from now to their peak?

Or how about the fact that neither guy will be asking for huge contract extensions because the game doesn't usually ask near as much for guys like these compared to brilliant homerun hitters?

Or how about the fact that sometimes when a guy goes through his 5 years before he his fully developed (ie. under 26 years old) you can get him to sign contracts significantly below what they will ask in a year or two.

Ex. In a solo league I ran a test of bringing a guy up at 20 vs. 21 who looked to be a star and could pitch decently well right now. When I brought him up at 20 I was able to sign him for 5 years, 7 million a season for a total of 35 million at age 25. When I brought him up at 21 however I had to pay him 10.1 million over 5 years for a total of 50.5 million at age 26. So by bringing him up a year early I was saving 15 million and had his services for an extra year to boot.

Trust me... I fully understand the salary situation and I know what point you are driving at. There are admittedly times your way will save you money but their are just as many times you basically lose nothing overall or even lose money in the long run. Don't think I entirely disregard your method and I take it on a case by case basis.... in this particular case I don't agree.

[Hammer755]

Originally posted by CDL Commish
[SHAMELESS PLUG]
This coming from the expert in editing rookies, imo. Brian spends 5 to 7 hours per season editing the rookies to ensure the cup of coffee players end up being just that. I would be surprised to find many or any other leagues that go to the extent that he does and wish to publicly thank him for just another reason why the CDL rocks!!! [/SHAMELESS PLUG]

I think I know of one at least.

Boys of Summer - Iatric spends a lot of time getting the rookies just right, beginning with the league's inception in 1904 up until present day 1922 as we exit the deadball era and say hello to the live ball. Not only that, Ankit Desai, creator of Ankit's Revised Lahman Database, is an owner in the league.

[Aussie Mark]

Originally posted by LivnLegend
I am not really familiar with how the Crackerjack league works but I am stunned over how many 5 star and 4.5 minor leaguers are in the league! Holy cow, I have never seen so many 19-22 year olds with major league ready ratings!

Crackerjack rookie ratings are edited to ensure that rookies who were good players in real life have ratings that make them major league ready. Otherwise, 2, 3 or 4 years of these real players' careers are lost in the minors while they develop.