Posted by joshkvt on 7/2/2010 12:44:00 AM (view original):
Posted by Jtpsops on 7/1/2010 1:33:00 PM (view original):
I'm a noob to HBD myself, but for all the guys that go around vetoing every uneven trade to enforce the world's "competitive balance"...I would argue having an itchy trigger finger and vetoing everything in sight destroys the world's integrity even more.
I appreciate guys looking out for me and making sure I don't do anything stupid, but I'd like to be able to make mistakes and learn from them. I won't always have someone looking over my shoulder, so I want to learn what constitutes good and bad trades.
From my perspective, when I'm considering a trade, I ask a handful of the vet owners in the league what they think. If they all tell me it's crap, and I still feel the need to make it for whatever reason, then so be it.
I can appreciate the competitive balance argument to an extent, but I don't need someone basically saying to me, "you're too stupid to recognize what a bad trade this is, so I'm not letting you make it!"
It's fine for an owner to learn from mistakes. But while doing that, someone who might be ripping you off builds a stronger team and takes a potential playoff spot from an owner who wasn't willing to do the same. If taking advantage of new players becomes a contest to see which veteran can do the best job of it, the world will suffer. When the world becomes split between haves and used-to-haves, unsuspecting newer owners take on a hopeless situation and become frustrated, and may never join other worlds. Large-scale, it's bad for HBD for leagues to be damaged by lopsided deals. Small-scale, it's bad for scrupulous owners who will try to help a new player to be screwed out of playoff spots because of their integrity.
Second things first: "it's bad for scrupulous owners who will try to help a new player to be screwed out of playoff spots because of their integrity."
If a new owner gets ripped off in a trade, and that new owner is worth anything, they'll learn something from the experience and become a better owner. One of the big things they'll learn is to recognize traderape when it shows up in their inbox, and to stop trading entirely with the owners trying to rape them.
Traderape sacrifices long-term benefits -- the ability to make trades with the other owners in your league after you've developed a rep as a serial rapist -- for short-term gain. In a league with a high degree of owner turnover and a constant influx of n00bs (i.e. 'tard leagues) that could be a winning strategy. In any half-decent world, though, it's a net loser in the long run. Those scrupulous owners you claim are so hard done by will come out ahead.
Now the other half of the argument: "it's bad for HBD for leagues to be damaged by lopsided deals."
It's worse for HBD not to have a constant stream of quality new owners coming into the game. Kneecapping new owners by not letting them figure things out for themselves stops n00bs from developing into solid HBD citizens, and results in a revolving door of n00b owners that you will feel compelled to babysit out of a sense of smug entitlement, and veto their trades too.
The fact that these crap arguments are being trotted out to justify vetoing a trade where the two main players involved won't pitch more than about 160 innings in a season
combined is just the icing on the cake. A good set-up guy for a sixth starter... yeah, there's a trade that's going to wreck a league. Forget a veto, I'm surprised Congress didn't intervene.
You want to "save the league" when a trade like this gets made? Send a sitemail to the guy you think got raped and tell him, in detail, how much more you would have offered for the player(s) he gave up. If he's worth a damn as an owner he'll figure out pretty quickly how he screwed up. Vetoing just tells the guy you think he's an idiot, and does exactly nothing to improve the long-term health of the league.