Do they work?  Do they make a league more competitive?
I know they work to rid a league of tankers, but do they also get rid of good owners in a down cycle or who are having a run of bad luck?(injuries, bad draft classes,etc.

no

Yes - they also make the world more realistic.  Teams should never be an injury away from winning fewer than 55 games.

A bad draft class is no excuse for failing to meet a MWR.  You've got at least 3-4 seasons before a draft class could potentially impact a ML roster.

Yes, they work.  Good owner or not, if you're averaging 100 losses over a couple of seasons(or can't win 1/3 of your games in any given season), you're not being competitive.   If you're not being competitive, you shouldn't be in a world that wants to be competitive.

What you'll find, from owners who hate MWR, is that they want to win 50, 50, 52, 58, 61 while budgeting 23m in payroll.   Which means they can transfer 50m(to make 45m) to prospect.  They get one big IFA, one mid-range IFA and a top 3 pick for 3-5 seasons.   Then they'll have a 10 season run with those players OR trade one-two per season to another bottom feeder for a top pick to keep their payroll low.   It works.

Finally, when a team builds themselves in that manner, you're likely to have a tough time filling your world because they're cranking out 110 win seasons with a 50m payroll.   That's one of the first things I look at to determine what sort of world I'm considering.    If there's a low payroll/high win team, I want to know how they got there.   Too often it's n00b abuse or tank/transfer. 

OK, took a peek at your chat.   Yes, owners do put more resources into their BL team under the MWR.   MG had been 82/83m in payroll.   The MWR was put in during S16.   We had hit a low of 81m in average payroll and some light tanking in S15.  Payroll immediately went to 84m and bounced between 88-89m for the next 4 seasons.  Followed by 85, 84, 87.    More noticably, those "decent" FA that used to be out of the league at 30 get signed now.  Rather than bring up 2-3 327k scrubs, owners are signing that 1.1m FA to put on their bench as free agency completes.   That's between 96m and 256m overall into BL teams.

They work imperfectly.  Take a look at the Wichita team in Cooperstown; second-best record in AL, $32M payroll.  They'll be as close to a tank-to-dynasty team as you can get in a world that has no n00bs (and therefore no n00b abuse in trades).  A talented owner can still "tank" to a bunch of 72-90 seasons, get a bunch of 3-7 draft picks and top internationals, and create a dynasty.  But you have to be good at it, plus a bunch of 3-7 picks aren't as good as a bunch of #1 picks, so the dynastic team is going to go 107-55 for 10 seasons (worse than that in Cooperstown due to owner quality) rather than 117-45. 

With that caveat understood, having an MWR is way, way better than not having one.

I thought we discussed Wichita in the WC of Coop.  Previous owner was removed due to MWR.  Should have been a really solid base to build on when the new guy took over.    That's going to happen.  However, the owner that benefits from several bad seasons isn't going to be the owner that had the bad seasons.   Sort of takes the incentive out of having four 95 loss seasons.

That said, a 65 win team can get a #1 pick in a MWR world.   I still think there is late season jockeying for a higher pick.  But it's a dangerous game to play in MG/Coop.    55/70/70/85 keeps you in.    But 85 isn't a gimme because everyone else is playing for the MWR too.

No, MWR does not work.   Here is why:

1. Wins.  Wins can flucutuate year to year based on luck (good and bad).  If your rebuilding, and a MWR is to average 60 wins a season, and you have a season in which you win 55 games, but your expected win % suggests you should've won 62 (this can be common) you get booted.  No consideration to whether or not you managed your team the right way and just had bad luck.  A tanking team has clear signs that they were purposely trying to lose (i.e. using rookie level pitchers, playing peopel way out of position, using 0% pitchers, etc.).
2. Not all rebuilds are created equal.  They just aren't.  Draft classes, IFA classes vary in talent each year.  If during your rebuild you encounter a couple of poor classes that elongates your rebuilding.  If your using a progressive MWR, it is making the assumptions all rebuids are created equal and it is dictating the wins totals (which again can fluctuate on luck) for a rebuild.  Its ludicrous.
3. It makes rebuilds last longer.  How is that?  Cause teams are more focused on meeting an MWR rather than doing what is right by their team.  Their is no difference between winning 65 and 60 games.  Their just isn't.  It makes little sense for a rebuilding team to spend say 7M on 32 yr old free agent, when it can invest that money in IFA's.  And because of #4 listed below if they fall in the middle of the pack, they will continually be missing out on the top players.
4. There is no player development.  Zero.  What I mean is there is no depth in the draft of IFA market.  You can rarely get a star in typical draft classes past the first half of the draft.  Sometimes you can't outside of the top 10.  In real life you can find stars in later rounds in the draft, or cheap IFA's.  Sometimes, players develop that you don't expect.  This happens quite a lot in MLB, where the top players in the game aren't always top draft picks.  This does not happen in HBD.  Probability of a top pick or IFA making an impact is darn near close to 100%.  But because of that there are a lmited number of them (which makes sense).  The only way to acquire these players are drafting low or investing in IFA's.  The only way to rebuild is by spending a few seasons notching a couple of these players
5. It may remove dedicated owners who were subject to some bad luck.  The creator of this thread, Reino, who is an MWR supporter.  Was booted from a league after 21 seasons for failing to meet the MWR requirement.  In his last season he lost 6 more games than his pythag record suggested, meaning he sufferred from bad luck.  After being kicked out of the league for 1 season, he was brough back in the following season.  What?  How does this make sense?  If the purpose of the MWR is remove "bad" owners or "tankers" then how can removing a dedicated owner of 21 seasons be good for the league?  And if, by MWR standards, it was deemed he was a "bad" owner, how is letting him back in the league make sense?  It doesn't make sense.
6. When looking at evidence it doesn't work in practice.  I shared this with a league I am in, the Commisioner was proposing an MWR, and essentially stated how well it worked in a league he was.  So I looked at his league and compared it to the one that was "so bad off" that an MWR is needed.  What did I find.  SImply put, there was little to no variance between top teams records, middle team records, and bottom team records.  In fact I found that the division races were closer in the league without the MWR. 

I am not totally against MWRs perse.  I am against progressive MWRs, cause any rule that assumes all rebuilds are created equal and standardizes a time frame for rebuilding, just misses the point.  And I am against hard MWRs, were there is no review or consideration to whether or not the owner was acting in good faith.  I believe a soft MWR, with a small comittee of veteran owners (3 or 5) review teams that fall under the MWR to see if they had any clear evidence of tanking.  The league should define what type of evidence identifies tanking, and then the committe votes on it.

1.  Don't build 60 win teams when you have a MWR.
2.  IFA and draft classes shouldn't affect your current situation for 3-4 seasons.
3.  Rebuilds don't have to take 5 seasons.   I can show you plenty of examples.
4.  Not sure I see your point unless it's "I have to draft in the top 5 and sign 28m IFA."    Which is just another way to say "I have to tank in order to rebuild."  Which is untrue.
5.  If an owner can't win 55/125/195/280 over the course of 4 seasons(which equates to losing an average of 92+ games over 4 seasons), he's not keeping up.   He may need a change of scenery because he's not getting it done.
6.  There is a variance.   The number of wins/losses are the same in every world.   However, the same team can't stay at the bottom forever.   That's the variance.

If an owner can't compete at league standards, he needs to find another league with lesser standards and/or competition. 

Posted by MikeT23 on 3/12/2012 9:33:00 AM (view original):
What you'll find, from owners who hate MWR, is that they want to win 50, 50, 52, 58, 61 while budgeting 23m in payroll.   Which means they can transfer 50m(to make 45m) to prospect.  They get one big IFA, one mid-range IFA and a top 3 pick for 3-5 seasons.   Then they'll have a 10 season run with those players OR trade one-two per season to another bottom feeder for a top pick to keep their payroll low.   It works.

BTW, yanks, this fits you like a glove.    I noticed the loudest voice was yours after I peeked at the WC.

Yanks-- I used to feel as you feel, for the same reasons.  The problem is that it's just way too easy to rebuild without an MWR; anyone can do that, so it becomes the dominant strategy in the game.  No game should have a clearly dominant strategy.

Mike-- I was wrong to concede that discussion to you on that count; kcden's been in Wichita for 7 seasons now.  He has exactly 2 players drafted or signed by njohnson78 on his ML roster (although one of them is a stud).  But he's also not going to win 110 games this season or any time soon, and that's partly due to the MWR (and partly due to the quality of the Coop competition). 

Also, the "committee" to review turns it into a popularity contest.   Additionally, no one knows what anyone's intent is with hard MWR or a committee to review.