Tanking...a touchy subject!!

Crackerjack · 10-05-2003, 05:32 PM

ok lets 1st get the definition on tanking, IMO here it is.

Tanking: Failure to put your best players on the field for each game in order to secure the highest draft pick possible.

IN the CJBL we have a rule that says

Quote:

Appendment #1 1973 season: All teams must try to field winning teams, anything less then putting your best players on the field will be investigated and subject to a warning. If caught again your team will drop 10 spots in the ammy draft order for your #1 ammy pick.

Our league started from the 1970 season and this rule was implemented because of an owner (no longer with the CJBL) who possibly was tanking. Since that rule was implemented I have not had any problems, everyone has done a good job of trying to field a winner.

Now its the 1982 season and I have quite a few owners banging the drums again against an owner who may be tanking.
The accustations are due to haveing 2 stud players (Boggs and Mattingly) in AAA. They are better than whats at the MLB but also not 100% developed. Its a fine line and it now has me (commish) in an awkward spot. If it was my team the 2 prospects (drafted in 1981) would be playing by now. Other owners are more cautious and would wait till the timing was perfect. How do other leagues handle this? It was brought up on our message boards by one owner to implement a winning percentage plan. If an owner is has a .400% or worse season they are fired. It all seems very perplexing.

What does your league do?

How to police this?

What is tanking in your league?

Opinions or thoughts needed!!

Our league discussion on the matter.
http://aimoo.com/forum/postview.cfm?...readID=1067950

scotto313 · 10-05-2003, 05:47 PM

What about trading a player that can help your team now? I see both as a way of sacrificing the present for the future. I know one is a bit more blatant than the other but both serve the same purpose.

jaxmagicman · 10-05-2003, 07:00 PM

As an online player if there was a rule that under .400 would get you fired. I would not join your league. Every owner runs his team the same way. Is he playing players that are better than them in the majors. Do the players up there have high salaries. Does the coach want to waste one of the 300k years by bringing them up too early. It is a touch subject and I think as a commish you should study the sitiuation yourself. If the player is starting two Career minor leaguers with 1 star at every position than something is wrong. If the player is fielding a decent team than maybe he has his future to look forward to. Not everyone can win the title every year. And letting his players develope fully might be a way of him trying to win the title.

GameVet · 10-05-2003, 07:03 PM

Ugghhhh...... hate to see tanking..... I think we all have seen it and know when you see it.

I have no problem with trading major league talent for spects. You have to do it to rebuild.

As for bring up players to the major league level, I feel its up to each owner to do what they feel is best for their team. I would keep Mattingly and Boggs in AAA until I thought they were ready.

Its tough, when you have a few owners complaining about how they think someone should run their club..... but its their team and as long that they stay involved in the league.... (export... hehehe) I would leave it alone.

jaxmagicman · 10-05-2003, 07:10 PM

I think the definition of tanking would be something like this:

RF- 5 Stars 50 Hrs on the year.
Back-up RF- 37 year old 1 Star 1 career homerun and .081 BA.

If the back-up gets put into the starting lineup near the end of the season with the coaches team 2 games over the last place team. It clearly isn't to give someone a chance, he is doing that to lose games. Other than extreme cases like that. It might be hard to tell.

UKSubs · 10-05-2003, 07:28 PM

I think Jaxmagicman hits the point better than anyone in the entire thread on the message thread that the first point links to.

Cincinnati most likely isn't going to win this season. So, why should he waste a year of cheap contracts of Mattingly and Boggs just to finish three or four spots up. Is this playing the best players you can? Of course not. Is this tanking? Maybe, but it's very doubtful you would want to call what he is doing tanking.

If you force Cincinnati to promote Boggs and Mattingly or be accused of tanking, in essence you prevent your owners from making choices about minor leaguers. Owners of bad teams will be forced to bring up their best prospects sooner than they might want to. Something good teams won't have to worry about. The bad teams will get less value from their good prospects than the good teams who are more likely to have a better option.

As for tanking in general, I think you should avoid hiding your veteran players in the minors when you are in contention for a bad pick, but you can't police it much beyond that. The more rules you put in place to force owners to do things, the less control the owners have. And there is a sizable group of owners who like control to make decisions that may not be the best for today, but may be very good decisions for tomorrow.

So, in this situation, I would want to let the Reds keep Boggs and Mattingly in the minors. However, it seems the problem in the thread doesn't have as much to do with the Reds keeping their players in the minors, but rather past issues involving some of your owners and the incredible lack of tact (to be nice) that the Reds owner used in answering this question.

TopShelf · 10-05-2003, 08:08 PM

i think you can honestly tell when a player is about to tank. IF his plan was not to restructure from say, after the all star break, or at the start of the season, why does he feel the need to bench players later? you do not wake up on September 15th and say, man i need to let my bench play. I mean you can also tell by the owners mood. He will start to act different, by not wanting to improve his team, or almost say YAY when he loses. But it also hurts him in he long run, eventually he will get tired of sucking, cause if u tank, your team blows to begin with

Cooleyvol · 10-05-2003, 08:17 PM

I'll agree with UKSubs here.

If these guys were vets, then yes, he's tanking.

But you can't force a guy to bring prospects up who are not fully developed just b/c his major leaguers that would be replaced are worse than the prospects.

I say let the guy season his players until they're ready. In this case, he's not tanking--he's developing minor leaguers.

rem · 10-05-2003, 08:19 PM

Real MLB teams shut pitchers down near the end of the season all the time.

scotto313 · 10-05-2003, 09:36 PM

What if you trade all your best players for prospects before the deadline? Is that not tanking to a lesser degree?

scotto313 · 10-05-2003, 09:37 PM

I think this subject is "a slippery slope". As was mentioned in the title.

Aussie Mark · 10-05-2003, 10:06 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Cooleyvol
I'll agree with UKSubs here.

If these guys were vets, then yes, he's tanking.

But you can't force a guy to bring prospects up who are not fully developed just b/c his major leaguers that would be replaced are worse than the prospects.

I say let the guy season his players until they're ready. In this case, he's not tanking--he's developing minor leaguers.

The owner we're talking about here is the very same owner who was booted from your UBL league last season for doing exactly the same thing (remember Jimmy Foxx?) :-)

Mattingly:

Batting Hits Doubles Triples Homeruns Walks Strikeouts
Overall 7 8 2 6 6 8
vs. LHP 6 7 1 6 5 8
vs. RHP 7 8 2 7 6 8
Talent Good Brilliant Fair Good Average Brilliant

Boggs:

Batting Hits Doubles Triples Homeruns Walks Strikeouts
Overall 7 6 4 3 8 9
vs. LHP 8 6 4 3 7 9
vs. RHP 7 6 4 3 8 9
Talent Brilliant Good Average Poor Brilliant Brilliant

The rest of the roster:

http://home.centurytel.net/crackerja.../team20rr.html

This team has been "rebuilding" for the past 3 seasons, after winning the division 4 years ago, yet the team's record has got WORSE in each of those 3 seasons, which is a sign that "rebuilding" is not taking place.

Cowboys3356 · 10-05-2003, 10:14 PM

I think the guy shoud be able to keep those players in the minors for the rest of the season. Bringing them up would be a bad move because it would cost him one of his "cheap" seasons. As long as OOTP as the current player salary system in place you have to go with it.

UKSubs · 10-05-2003, 10:26 PM

I had taken the time to look at the players before posting.

While both Boggs and Mattingly could play at the major league level, they are still very young. If the definition of tanking is a failure to put your best players on the field for each game in order to secure the highest draft pick possible (according to Crackerjack) then it doesn't appear here that the standard was met. There are still two very good reasons not to put Boggs and Mattingly on the Major League roster.

First, they are 20 and 19 respectively. There are a lot of owners who feel that OOTP unfairly penalizes young players who are promoted too soon. If you force teams to bring up players whenever they are better than their teammates at their position, you put not just the Reds in a situation, but open a Pandora's Box of other situations where someone can force a team to promote a youngster when it wouldn't be in the franchise's best interest by making a post like this on the message board.

Second, it isn't economically adventageous for the Reds to promote Mattingly and Boggs. If the Reds don't believe that they are a legitimate contender for the NL Central this season, the best thing for the team would be to not promote their top two prospects. They lose a cheap year of their careers early to get to .450 and lose the chance to win a few years from now because they had to spend money on Mattingly and Boggs or lose them to free agency sooner.

Anti-tanking rules only really work in the case where the players are established regulars and they are sent to AAA in favor of a clearly worse player late in the year. Other situations present reasons to keep a good player off the roster because the team may not get the most benefit from the career of the player. And in a good league, you need to develop a strategy to maximize the amount of talent you have. And keeping a young, but talented and potentially ready player in the minor leagues for one more year of seasoning and contract avoidance should be a valid strategy in any league using financials.

Regardless, I feel bad for Crackerjack. He has to make the toughest decision of all for a commissioner. One where he knows that no answer will make anyone happy.

sixfour210 · 10-05-2003, 10:41 PM

Usually, owners in MLB review their teams before the season starts and sets certain expectations for where they think the team should finish. If a team that is expected to win 100 games ends up winning 60 in an online league, then that's tanking.

Setting a bar of .400 makes no sense to me and if very unfair. Sometimes teams can't help but finish under .400 and still be considered "productive". It also holds true that someone who finishes around .500 could be considered "unproductive" and should be let go.

Quite simply, you can tell if someone is tanking or not by the teams expectations during the year. If you think the expectations you have for the team were met then there is no need for alarm.

Not bringing up two minor league players is not going to have a big impact on any expectations. Usually, teams don't set expectations with minor leaguers anyway.

Now, if a manager completely sells away its team when they are still in contention, that's tanking.

satchel · 10-05-2003, 10:52 PM

General guidelines aren’t as good as looking at each situation closely and considering everything.

In a system with a conservative development philosophy, any draftee might spend at least one full year at all three minor league levels.

sporr · 10-06-2003, 10:45 AM

I wouldn't classify the above situation as tanking. In my mind, it's only tanking if you are sitting players who are already at the major league level and starting players that are obviously worse. Prospect usage shouldn't factor in since everyone has their own idea of how best to develop them. As a commissioner, I would never force an owner to bring up a player still making a minor league contract.

spleen1015 · 10-06-2003, 10:58 AM

Were the ratings for these 2 guys this high when they were drafted?

If they were and they are better than what is at the major league level, then they should have been playing in the majors as soon as they were drafted. End of story.

Development or not, those 2 guys are every day major league players in any league.

In historical leagues, the guys who are going to amount to anything are going to be major league level talent when they are drafted. It's the way they import.

Is this situation tanking? I say it's a fine line and I think you could say it is or it isn't. I think this GM is trying to get low draft picks year after year until he has 5-10 guys ready to blow it up at the major league level and his team will dominate for 10 seasons.

VegasRobb · 10-06-2003, 12:51 PM

I can't imagine asking an owner to burn a year towards FA just to "look" respectable.

Also, it's asking alot for 19 and 20 year olds to be productive in the majors.

In a league I just joined, the CDL, I'm in a little bit of a similiar situation. When I took over the Expos they doing bad enough to "win" the #2 Overall Pick. After reshuffling lineups, rotations and depth charts (almost every lineup regular was tired), they posted an 8-6 sim, very much placing the status of the #2 pick in danger. But, I did not (and will not) promote any promising rookies from the minors because I do need to look towards the future as well.

I can think of a few leagues I'm in where trying to compete with bad teams has cost me better positions in the draft:

* In the NABA, my mistaken belief that there was a wild card lead me to flog a very bad team to a winning record. That Atlanta Generals team is probably the best managing job I've ever done. A team full of Alex Coras, Cesar Izturis' and Tom Goodwins.

* In the Baseball Maelstrom league, both of the expansion teams the Tokyo Giants (my team) and Homestead Grays had better than expected seasons and did not pick 1 and 2 in the following season's ammy draft. Believe me that was an accomplishment for the Giants. Shawn Estes was closing games with a 6.94 ERA and 1.89WHIP ... and yes he was the best I had.

But I believe I owe it to the Commish's that brought me in to do my best to field the best team I think I can while being sensible.

satchel · 10-06-2003, 01:40 PM

Losing is shameful. I win as many games as possible, draft position be damned.

10-05-2003, 07:00 PM	#3
jaxmagicman Hall Of Famer Join Date: Jun 2003 Location: Retired defloration-maker living in Myrtle Beach, SC Posts: 7,801	As an online player if there was a rule that under .400 would get you fired. I would not join your league. Every owner runs his team the same way. Is he playing players that are better than them in the majors. Do the players up there have high salaries. Does the coach want to waste one of the 300k years by bringing them up too early. It is a touch subject and I think as a commish you should study the sitiuation yourself. If the player is starting two Career minor leaguers with 1 star at every position than something is wrong. If the player is fielding a decent team than maybe he has his future to look forward to. Not everyone can win the title every year. And letting his players develope fully might be a way of him trying to win the title. __________________ See ID Major League Baseball trademarks and copyrights are used with permission of MLB Advanced Media, L.P. Minor League Baseball trademarks and copyrights are used with the permission of Minor League Baseball. All rights reserved.

10-05-2003, 07:03 PM	#4
GameVet Minors (Rookie Ball) Join Date: Apr 2003 Location: California Posts: 42	Ugghhhh...... hate to see tanking..... I think we all have seen it and know when you see it. I have no problem with trading major league talent for spects. You have to do it to rebuild. As for bring up players to the major league level, I feel its up to each owner to do what they feel is best for their team. I would keep Mattingly and Boggs in AAA until I thought they were ready. Its tough, when you have a few owners complaining about how they think someone should run their club..... but its their team and as long that they stay involved in the league.... (export... hehehe) I would leave it alone. __________________ Alltime favorite team 71-75 Oakland A's IABL Oakland 2003 Division and 2004 AL Champions PBL Minnesota 2003 and 2004 Division Champions NABA Oakland 2003 World Series Champions

10-05-2003, 07:10 PM	#5
jaxmagicman Hall Of Famer Join Date: Jun 2003 Location: Retired defloration-maker living in Myrtle Beach, SC Posts: 7,801	I think the definition of tanking would be something like this: RF- 5 Stars 50 Hrs on the year. Back-up RF- 37 year old 1 Star 1 career homerun and .081 BA. If the back-up gets put into the starting lineup near the end of the season with the coaches team 2 games over the last place team. It clearly isn't to give someone a chance, he is doing that to lose games. Other than extreme cases like that. It might be hard to tell. __________________ See ID Major League Baseball trademarks and copyrights are used with permission of MLB Advanced Media, L.P. Minor League Baseball trademarks and copyrights are used with the permission of Minor League Baseball. All rights reserved.

10-05-2003, 07:28 PM	#6
UKSubs Minors (Triple A) Join Date: Dec 2001 Posts: 272	I think Jaxmagicman hits the point better than anyone in the entire thread on the message thread that the first point links to. Cincinnati most likely isn't going to win this season. So, why should he waste a year of cheap contracts of Mattingly and Boggs just to finish three or four spots up. Is this playing the best players you can? Of course not. Is this tanking? Maybe, but it's very doubtful you would want to call what he is doing tanking. If you force Cincinnati to promote Boggs and Mattingly or be accused of tanking, in essence you prevent your owners from making choices about minor leaguers. Owners of bad teams will be forced to bring up their best prospects sooner than they might want to. Something good teams won't have to worry about. The bad teams will get less value from their good prospects than the good teams who are more likely to have a better option. As for tanking in general, I think you should avoid hiding your veteran players in the minors when you are in contention for a bad pick, but you can't police it much beyond that. The more rules you put in place to force owners to do things, the less control the owners have. And there is a sizable group of owners who like control to make decisions that may not be the best for today, but may be very good decisions for tomorrow. So, in this situation, I would want to let the Reds keep Boggs and Mattingly in the minors. However, it seems the problem in the thread doesn't have as much to do with the Reds keeping their players in the minors, but rather past issues involving some of your owners and the incredible lack of tact (to be nice) that the Reds owner used in answering this question. __________________ Counter Culture Baseball Commissioner/Houston Astros RANZBA Adelaide Crows

10-05-2003, 08:08 PM	#7
TopShelf Minors (Double A) Join Date: Jul 2003 Location: B.C Canada Posts: 110	i think you can honestly tell when a player is about to tank. IF his plan was not to restructure from say, after the all star break, or at the start of the season, why does he feel the need to bench players later? you do not wake up on September 15th and say, man i need to let my bench play. I mean you can also tell by the owners mood. He will start to act different, by not wanting to improve his team, or almost say YAY when he loses. But it also hurts him in he long run, eventually he will get tired of sucking, cause if u tank, your team blows to begin with __________________ http://www.aaronsmart.com/]-(Founder)- "Don’t water the pavement. Position your sprinkler so water lands on the lawn not on pavement"

10-05-2003, 05:47 PM	#2
scotto313 All Star Starter Join Date: Apr 2003 Location: Cleveland, Ohio Posts: 1,220	What about trading a player that can help your team now? I see both as a way of sacrificing the present for the future. I know one is a bit more blatant than the other but both serve the same purpose.

10-05-2003, 08:17 PM	#8
Cooleyvol Hall Of Famer Join Date: Dec 2001 Location: Union City, TN Posts: 6,383	I'll agree with UKSubs here. If these guys were vets, then yes, he's tanking. But you can't force a guy to bring prospects up who are not fully developed just b/c his major leaguers that would be replaced are worse than the prospects. I say let the guy season his players until they're ready. In this case, he's not tanking--he's developing minor leaguers.

10-05-2003, 08:19 PM	#9
rem Hall Of Famer Join Date: Jul 2003 Location: College Park, Md. Posts: 5,024	Real MLB teams shut pitchers down near the end of the season all the time. __________________ OTBA: Washington Filibusters CLBR: Minnesota Twins 2005 Winner of LL's Pick the Loser Contest! - 15-0

10-05-2003, 09:36 PM	#10
scotto313 All Star Starter Join Date: Apr 2003 Location: Cleveland, Ohio Posts: 1,220	What if you trade all your best players for prospects before the deadline? Is that not tanking to a lesser degree?

10-05-2003, 09:37 PM	#11
scotto313 All Star Starter Join Date: Apr 2003 Location: Cleveland, Ohio Posts: 1,220	I think this subject is "a slippery slope". As was mentioned in the title.

10-05-2003, 10:14 PM	#13
Cowboys3356 All Star Starter Join Date: Sep 2003 Posts: 1,571	I think the guy shoud be able to keep those players in the minors for the rest of the season. Bringing them up would be a bad move because it would cost him one of his "cheap" seasons. As long as OOTP as the current player salary system in place you have to go with it.

10-05-2003, 10:26 PM	#14
UKSubs Minors (Triple A) Join Date: Dec 2001 Posts: 272	I had taken the time to look at the players before posting. While both Boggs and Mattingly could play at the major league level, they are still very young. If the definition of tanking is a failure to put your best players on the field for each game in order to secure the highest draft pick possible (according to Crackerjack) then it doesn't appear here that the standard was met. There are still two very good reasons not to put Boggs and Mattingly on the Major League roster. First, they are 20 and 19 respectively. There are a lot of owners who feel that OOTP unfairly penalizes young players who are promoted too soon. If you force teams to bring up players whenever they are better than their teammates at their position, you put not just the Reds in a situation, but open a Pandora's Box of other situations where someone can force a team to promote a youngster when it wouldn't be in the franchise's best interest by making a post like this on the message board. Second, it isn't economically adventageous for the Reds to promote Mattingly and Boggs. If the Reds don't believe that they are a legitimate contender for the NL Central this season, the best thing for the team would be to not promote their top two prospects. They lose a cheap year of their careers early to get to .450 and lose the chance to win a few years from now because they had to spend money on Mattingly and Boggs or lose them to free agency sooner. Anti-tanking rules only really work in the case where the players are established regulars and they are sent to AAA in favor of a clearly worse player late in the year. Other situations present reasons to keep a good player off the roster because the team may not get the most benefit from the career of the player. And in a good league, you need to develop a strategy to maximize the amount of talent you have. And keeping a young, but talented and potentially ready player in the minor leagues for one more year of seasoning and contract avoidance should be a valid strategy in any league using financials. Regardless, I feel bad for Crackerjack. He has to make the toughest decision of all for a commissioner. One where he knows that no answer will make anyone happy. __________________ Counter Culture Baseball Commissioner/Houston Astros RANZBA Adelaide Crows

10-05-2003, 10:41 PM	#15
sixfour210 All Star Starter Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: Virginia Posts: 1,227	Usually, owners in MLB review their teams before the season starts and sets certain expectations for where they think the team should finish. If a team that is expected to win 100 games ends up winning 60 in an online league, then that's tanking. Setting a bar of .400 makes no sense to me and if very unfair. Sometimes teams can't help but finish under .400 and still be considered "productive". It also holds true that someone who finishes around .500 could be considered "unproductive" and should be let go. Quite simply, you can tell if someone is tanking or not by the teams expectations during the year. If you think the expectations you have for the team were met then there is no need for alarm. Not bringing up two minor league players is not going to have a big impact on any expectations. Usually, teams don't set expectations with minor leaguers anyway. Now, if a manager completely sells away its team when they are still in contention, that's tanking. __________________

10-05-2003, 10:52 PM	#16
satchel Hall Of Famer Join Date: Apr 2002 Location: Ft Smith Ark. USA Posts: 2,681	General guidelines aren’t as good as looking at each situation closely and considering everything. In a system with a conservative development philosophy, any draftee might spend at least one full year at all three minor league levels. __________________ JL Commish NPBL Rhode Island Reds ’33 ’34 ’35 TCBA San Francisco Railbornes ’74 ’76 ’77 ’78 FL New Orleans Black Sox ’56 ’57 ’58 ’59

10-06-2003, 10:45 AM	#17
sporr Global Moderator Join Date: Dec 2001 Location: Muscatine, IA Posts: 8,277	I wouldn't classify the above situation as tanking. In my mind, it's only tanking if you are sitting players who are already at the major league level and starting players that are obviously worse. Prospect usage shouldn't factor in since everyone has their own idea of how best to develop them. As a commissioner, I would never force an owner to bring up a player still making a minor league contract.

10-06-2003, 10:58 AM	#18
spleen1015 Hall Of Famer Join Date: Jan 2002 Posts: 6,008	Were the ratings for these 2 guys this high when they were drafted? If they were and they are better than what is at the major league level, then they should have been playing in the majors as soon as they were drafted. End of story. Development or not, those 2 guys are every day major league players in any league. In historical leagues, the guys who are going to amount to anything are going to be major league level talent when they are drafted. It's the way they import. Is this situation tanking? I say it's a fine line and I think you could say it is or it isn't. I think this GM is trying to get low draft picks year after year until he has 5-10 guys ready to blow it up at the major league level and his team will dominate for 10 seasons.

10-06-2003, 12:51 PM	#19
VegasRobb Minors (Rookie Ball) Join Date: Feb 2003 Location: Las Vegas, Nv Posts: 29	I can't imagine asking an owner to burn a year towards FA just to "look" respectable. Also, it's asking alot for 19 and 20 year olds to be productive in the majors. In a league I just joined, the CDL, I'm in a little bit of a similiar situation. When I took over the Expos they doing bad enough to "win" the #2 Overall Pick. After reshuffling lineups, rotations and depth charts (almost every lineup regular was tired), they posted an 8-6 sim, very much placing the status of the #2 pick in danger. But, I did not (and will not) promote any promising rookies from the minors because I do need to look towards the future as well. I can think of a few leagues I'm in where trying to compete with bad teams has cost me better positions in the draft: * In the NABA, my mistaken belief that there was a wild card lead me to flog a very bad team to a winning record. That Atlanta Generals team is probably the best managing job I've ever done. A team full of Alex Coras, Cesar Izturis' and Tom Goodwins. * In the Baseball Maelstrom league, both of the expansion teams the Tokyo Giants (my team) and Homestead Grays had better than expected seasons and did not pick 1 and 2 in the following season's ammy draft. Believe me that was an accomplishment for the Giants. Shawn Estes was closing games with a 6.94 ERA and 1.89WHIP ... and yes he was the best I had. But I believe I owe it to the Commish's that brought me in to do my best to field the best team I think I can while being sensible.

10-06-2003, 01:40 PM	#20
satchel Hall Of Famer Join Date: Apr 2002 Location: Ft Smith Ark. USA Posts: 2,681	pride Losing is shameful. I win as many games as possible, draft position be damned.