In concept, I think most would consider tanking to be distasteful. But what exactly defines tanking? And at what point should something be done about it?

I'd like to get some opinions on 4 hypothetical scenarios. I'm most concerned with progressives, but I suppose a couple of these could apply to any league. For each scenario, please vote:

A - I see no problem with doing this
B - It's a little shady, but not bad enough to make a big deal over
C - This is wrong and hurts the integrity of the game. We have to do ______ to prevent/punish this. (Please give suggestions)

Scenario #1: I have some fatigue problems on my team. I strategically choose several games over the course of the season to rest all my starters at once, knowing there's a good ch will lose most if not all of those games.

Scenario #2: My team clinched the playoffs with 10 games remaining. I rest all my starters so they will be completely rested for the postseason. I don't care one bit if I win any of my remaining regular season games.

Scenario #3: My team is not going to contend this season. I strategically try to win JUST enough games to meet the win floor of our league so I can get the #1 pick in next season's draft.

Scenario #4: Due to some veterans on my team retiring and a couple trades for draft picks, my team is going to be awful next season. Knowing this, I make no attempt to draft enough PA or IP for next season. I give little or no effort into managing my team and will probably lose 150 games - most of them by 20+ runs. But it's my team, and I am building for 3-4 years down the road.

There are probably other scenarios to discuss, but I think these are some of the most common. I have my opinions, but I'd like to hear from a few other people before expressing them.

1: A
2: A

I have absolutely no issue with either of these.

3 and 4 get into gray areas...3 is certainly rampant in most if not all leagues that use a reverse-order-of-finish draft.  I think it's extremely difficult to police, and even harder to prove.  Best way to deal with it is (in my opinion) not to try to assess penalties, but to adopt a different draft order methodology.  There are good ones out there: just4me's "expected wins" formula; gonoles777's formula that includes current salary, keeper salary, and wins; and in the NWP we use a complete random draft ordering.

Scenario #1: A - I don't like it, but it's needed sometimes.  Some guys make a career out of doing this in open leagues.

Scenario #2: A - Normal operating procedure for a majority of owners.

Scenario #3:  B - I don't like it, but it's damn near impossible to stop.  I actually did this one season in my first progressive league, and wasn't happy with myself for doing that.  NOTE:  This reflects to managing your team to lose.  I have no problem at all trading away all my good players and managing those that remain to win as many as they can.  I do this all the time, play great for 5-6 seasons, as players age you dump them all, rebuild for 2-3 years with top 5 picks, then start all over again. 

Scenario #4: Never seen this.  Must occur only in single season leagues.  I don't like it, but I could see myself doing that, as I target certain future seasons for my team, and might miss IP or PA mins in a season leading up to that.  If that's the case, oh well. 

I understand this issue/problem is played out in one way or another across multiple leagues. My take:

1. A
2. A
3. C - In both of the progressives I play in now (one I run and the other I run the draft formula portion) and all of the others I have been a part of at some point, there has always been a draft formula and other measure that prevent tanking. In fact, I wouldn't play in a league without something that curbs this practice as I just can't stand it. I've played under just4me's formula and it worked pretty well and certainly made you want to win as many games as possible. I've played under a salary-based formula in swtbc's league and it was effective. My formula shown below uses "Adjusted Wins" based on salary and performance and has been well received in both progressive's it's been running in (15 seasons in the OSP with a dissenter here or there and 5 seasons in my Page-A-Day progressive with no complaints). It rewards winning while hurting the true tanking you're talking about in Scenario 3, all while ensuring teams with lower salaries still get some help in the draft. I can smail anyone with more details if needed.

Draft Position is based on adjusted wins.

Adjusted wins = The average of Actual wins & EW +/- standard deviation from expected wins (+ if below; - if above)

Expected wins = 81*(team salary/league average salary)

4. C - I would say a cap floor or PA/IP floor with big draft position penalties would be my way to stop this from killing your league. If the owner does it repeatedly, I'd consider booting him as the commish. There is no reason to ever lose 150 games, or have a team give up 3,000+ runs in a season. I'd make it known to the league up front that this will not be tolerated with the penalry of putting that owner on probation for doing it once, and booting them for doing it again.

That said, I understand the notion of trading away players to rebuild through the draft. I think this is a great way to rebuild a team quickly. So long as you are trying to win games with what you have left, and actively managing, then I can understand. But when I see a team with a salary within 10% of a division leader on an L15 for no good reason as we get late in the season, then I think that person is gaming the draft system and not playing in good faith standards for the league.

A
A
B
B

Personally, I have an issue with #1 if the owner is purposely drafting short on PA and IP and then strategically losing key games to save on fatigue. I know I was one of the biggest promoters of this strategy, but it was more to demonstrate the flaws in the current fatigue model than to exploit it. 

I have no problem with #2, once a playoff is clinched do what you need to do to make your team playoff ready. We don't have expanded rosters to utilize to rest our starters and get our rotations set up, so this is the best we have in comparison.

I abhor the practice referred to in #3, but it is something you also see in real life. In reading the transaction analysis of the Cubs recent trades on baseball prospectus it was referenced several times that one of the big motivations for trading away Dempster, Maholm, Soto, etc... Was to try to lose enough to get the #1 pick away from the Astros. I don't like it in RL anymore than I do in the sim. Which is why I generally try to play in leagues that use a formula for draft position. Aside from mine, frazzman also has a good one. I've run into a couple others, but they all seemed flawed or easily gameable and created a new type of tanking (I'll admit, I've not seen gonoles777's but it seems similar to some of the others ir encountered). There are some leagues where a formula is impractical, and I generally prefer a high win floor (.400 W%) or a first to worst (minus playoff teams) type of draft for those exceptions.

As for #4, I have removed owners from my league before for this (twice) but have also had some bad teams (but not for his exact reason, they had enough PA & IP, they just sucked) and have taken over teams left in horrible shape that took me a good 4-5 seasons just to get them to a respectable level of PA & IP (4,500 & 1,000, respectively).

 

1. A -- It happens. Also, in a progressive, your backups aren't 200K incompetents necessarily... I've won games while resting players plenty of times.
2. A -- You're in, you're in. Enjoy. Also... ^see above.
3. C -- Ugh. Yeah, just... ugh. There's a reason the only progressive I'm in uses j4m formula... I don't want to deal with this.
4. B -- It's not like properly managing a team and trying to maximize what wins you can is *that* time-consuming... also... this seems a bit like 3 but under different circumstances...

Wow...a lot of response very quickly! I thought there might be some people passionate about this issue!

A
A
B
C

I agree with everyone else so far - #1 and #2 are both parts of strategies that give your team the best chance to win. No problem.

#3 Annoys me, but it's hard to blame someone for using the rules of the theme for their advantage. I think I might start doing like others have mentioned and start looking at alternate methods for determining draft order.

#4 might not be the worst thing ever, but it bugs the heck outa me. It's one thing to have a bad team, but to have fatigued pitchers all season and make no attempt to field enough IP to keep from pitchers getting ridiculously fatigued...well, that is no fun to play against. It throws off the competitive balance in the divisions, fatigues opposing players, and distorts statistics. Maybe a IP or PA floor is needed in more leagues with severe penalties for not meeting the minimum.

We are adopting a new system in annakourn's 1885-? Progressive to discourage both draft-strategy seasonal tanking and in-season tanking for improved draft position.

The 8 playoff teams will take picks 17-24 according to win percentage. The rest will go into a lottery weighted according to their win percentage, similar to the NBA.

This way no one can be sure of landing the first one or two picks, but the worst teams still have the best odds of getting high picks.

The draft is straight style -- not snaked.

A
A
A
B


I will clarify.  I have seen too many instances of someone tanking multiple seasons to build up a juggernaut for a single season and then quit the league, leaving the league with a disaster franchise for the future years that is difficult to find a replacement owner for.  This is wrong.

I would say:

A
A
B
B

While #4 is annoying, sometimes it happens.  As long as it doesn't happen often and as long as the owner doesn't bail.  I would also look at the type of league.  For example, in leagues that utilize J4M's formula - a team that does that would, in effect, be trashing the team with no hopes of rebuilding.  If that is the case, I would look closely and make sure the owner is aware.  

I know sometimes, owners think a team is setup and then 40 games in realize their lineup/rotation never got set, and everyone is already in the red.  So I think it fully depends on the situation.  

1. A
2.A
3. A
4. A/B
I will say this I am doing a combination of 3 and 4 right now and dont have a problem with it. though I took over a team that gave me little choice in the matter  its in frazzman 1930 league im 19 -125 where the draft formula is above  and I knew if my salary was low enough making the abs and ip mins of course I would guarantee the first pick  since there is no win floor so I dumped off a decent player for a pick and building for 2 to 3 yrs away but is there another option I dont think so  but with that said I did take over this team but I perasonally would never have a team for years and then be this bad and there should be min put in place so most teams shouldnt get this bad. I would say the the best way to discourage tanking is for your next season salary keepers to be the factor in making up the draft order this only works when you have a specific number of keepers though

I agree with contrarian23 and uncleal in their positions on all 4. 

Posted by eman7400 on 8/2/2012 6:52:00 PM (view original):
1. A
2.A
3. A
4. A/B
I will say this I am doing a combination of 3 and 4 right now and dont have a problem with it. though I took over a team that gave me little choice in the matter  its in frazzman 1930 league im 19 -125 where the draft formula is above  and I knew if my salary was low enough making the abs and ip mins of course I would guarantee the first pick  since there is no win floor so I dumped off a decent player for a pick and building for 2 to 3 yrs away but is there another option I dont think so  but with that said I did take over this team but I perasonally would never have a team for years and then be this bad and there should be min put in place so most teams shouldnt get this bad. I would say the the best way to discourage tanking is for your next season salary keepers to be the factor in making up the draft order this only works when you have a specific number of keepers though

I can vouch for you taking over that team in the OSP...it was terribly bad. To be honest, that team NEEDS the #1 overall pick, and I'm glad that it has worked out formula-wise to help you out. I tried to set it up as an anti-tanking formula (really to hammer better teams that just intentionally lose) and not dramatically punish truly bad teams that need the help.

1. A
2. A
3. B
4. C

Number 3 is the one I want to address specifically.  I haven't played in a whole lot of different progs, so I can't speak to the effectiveness of the various anti-tanking formulas.  I joined contrarian23's No Whining prog largely because, other than the playoff teams who pick last, the draft is random.  Tanking does nothing... although trading good players for extra chances in the lottery is a feasible strategy. 

Contrarian23's league aside, my other regular prog has a 40 win floor and a randomized first 4 picks amongst the worst qualifying teams.  My team has been going through a rebuilding phase recently and I have had no qualms about fielding the worst team possible.  That said, it's always a "real team"... I don't play games with extremely fatigued players (below 90's)... I don't play players out of position... I don't set my settings for terrible performance... I don't drop good players down to AAA.   But I do trade players who will have good, but worthless (to me) seasons for crappy players (and picks or prospects).  I field the Royals... the best worst real team possible.  Since I have no chance in the first place, why should I ensure that I will always be mediocre, or worse?

To my chagrin, despite having had the lowest payroll in the league for the last couple of season, I've never failed perfectly enough to get one of the bottom 4 draft positions (although one year I didn't make the minimum wins).  I suspect perhaps that other owners have no qualms about fielding the a "fake team"... perhaps not going as far as option #4 (which would probably land you out of the top 4 picks), but doing things like playing guys out of position until then need to win some games, and then putting them back into position.  I think that kind of strategy, the combo 3/4, is kinda shady.

eastvanmungo, your concept of fielding a "real team" is kinda the way I look at it. Having a bad team is one thing, having 800IP and no real catcher is another. I don't think it's fair to the other teams in the league to not put some effort into being competitive. A bad "real team" might lose 110 games, but not 150.