I'll repeat that I can only vote on what I see.    In this specific deal, two relatively inexperienced owners(with varying levels of success) are making a trade.   One is getting a run-of-the-mill P and the other is getting 5m in hopes of signing his first round pick.   Is the pitcher a 1st round pick-type?  No.   The deal is not somewhat even.

For the record, I give a lot more leeway to experienced, long-term owners.    They have a track record I can see.

To put HBD trading into a RL situation, think about Jason Williams.   Showing off his guns to his friends after a night of partying.  Shoots a cabbie.  No evil intent, just a bad decision.   Still have a dead cabbie.     That's a bad HBD trade.   Doesn't have to be intentional cheating to make the situation a lot worse.

That comes down, then, to where you draw the line.  I'm assuming, by what you're saying, that if two owners with similar experience to you had made that trade you would be okay with it.  Or, at least, give it a second look.  So where do you draw the line?  Simply looking at my history tells you nothing about how well I know this game, who I've had help me learn the game, who I've gotten advice from, etc.  All you can see is that I haven't been playing very long, which doesn't necessarily speak to my understanding of the game.  And would you even consider experience on this site away from HBD?  You're getting into really fuzzy territory with all this stuff which can be removed from the equation by not trying to legislate trades through vetoes and just letting things that aren't obscenely bad play out.  


And oh my god that Jason Williams comparison is so bad and off base I can't even reasonably respond to it.  Wow.

Posted by alleyviper on 7/26/2012 3:42:00 PM (view original):
Loss of employment may ultimately come for a GM who makes poor decisions but a.) that doesn't stop the poor decisions from happening prior to the unemployment and b.) it doesn't assume the new GM will be better (just ask Seattle fans).  

When the Yankees acquired Bobby Abreu from the Phillies, there wasn't a soul in the baseball world who thought Philly got anything close to fair value for Abreu.  In fact, the four players they got for Abreu (and Cory Lidle!) have combined for 67 major league games played.  It was an absolute dumpster fire of a trade.  And yes, that trade affected the other 28 teams in the league.  The Yankees got MUCH better, the other AL teams were adversely affected by the Yankees' improvement, the NL missed out on a chance to acquire Abreu, etc. etc.  It was an awful, awful, AWFUL, trade.  And there have been countless similar traded before and since that one.  And not a single one was struck down by the league.  Because it was up to the two teams involved in the trade discussions to determine if they were getting fair value on their end.  Nobody said "wait, Philly is making a really ****** trade here!" and stepped in.  Nobody made an "attempt to stop the Yankees from building up their franchise."  The two teams came to an agreement and that was that. 

If the stud CF your trading for a handful of spare parts is going to a team that is already stacked, while YOU may think that's best for your organization, can't you see that OTHERS may not think that it's best for the world?

What if your bad trade cripples your team so badly that you decide to up and leave at the end of the season?  Now the world has one team that's even more stacked that it originally was, and a second team that's been crippled in need of a new owner.  Don't you see that the other 30 owners might see that as harming the world with competitive imbalance?

I'll flip it around: what if the only team that I find to be a reasonable trade partner is a stacked team?  Am I forbidden from dealing with that team simply because you don't want that team to get better?  Should I be forced to sit on my pieces because I can't find any other trade partner I want to deal with? 

As for someone leaving a team after a crippling move, that's what vetting owners is for.  It's pretty easy to tell when you look at a HBD owner what kind of track record they have and if there's any risk of them doing something like that.  I'll grant you that if you were to veto a trade like that made by an owner with a shady track record it would be more reasonable.  But if it were someone like Mike who has a long history playing these games, who everyone has a pretty good feel for, I'd let it go without a second thought because I don't see him as a risk of jumping ship because one thing went wrong (and I'd let it go because he has such a long history that, even if I see a trade as terrible for him, I'm guessing he sees something in the player evaluations that I don't see).

Given the trade that you're defending here, you don't want to play the real-life card, since the Commish DID once step in to make the Yankees re-work a trade for Aaron Boone because they were giving the Reds too much cash instead of players.

And in real-life, there's a commissioner and a league office that exists to police and to act in the best interests of the game.  We don't have the same thing in HBD, we police ourselves, the veto process being one aspect of that - and like Mike says, we can only vote on what we see.

And Bowie Kuhn (in the 70's) did exactly the same thing by preventing Charlie Finley from selling off A's players.

In that case, Al, there was an explicit rule on how much cash could change hands in a trade.  No such rule in place here.

No, I've already said I veto the selling of players.   I commish two worlds and we have specific cash rules.   I'm in one public world, where I pretty much rubberstamp everything except the selling of players.   And my other worlds I look at the experience and competency of the involved owners before I make a decision.  I'm pretty fortunate(or good at picking worlds) so I don't have to look at many "bad" deals.   As I said earlier, I seldom veto.

Jason Williams was meant to refute "There has to be collusion to veto" by pointing out that lack of evil intentions does NOT mean a horrible result is impossible.  This is a dynasty game.   A decision made today can have far-reaching, long-term effects.  

Posted by alleyviper on 7/26/2012 4:05:00 PM (view original):
In that case, Al, there was an explicit rule on how much cash could change hands in a trade.  No such rule in place here.

Incorrect.  There's no limit on cash in trades, there's an amount of cash in a trade above which requires league approval.  Trades have way more cash than was involved in the Boone deal all the time, but usually it's going to the team acquiring the more expensive player to cover salary, not as an actual payment for the player.

In HBD, every trade requires league approval.

Posted by MikeT23 on 7/26/2012 2:54:00 PM (view original):

Posted by Mark17Grace on 7/26/2012 2:01:00 PM (view original):
I think that the other issue people are having is that it is not against the rules to make a trade like this one. It is also a public league so there are no set rules against it. There have also been much greater lopsided trades in the world that haven't been vetoed. 

I

Two bad trades doesn't make the world better than one bad trade.

What the hell are you talking about? You obviously missed the point. Holy  cow.

Posted by Mark17Grace on 7/26/2012 5:11:00 PM (view original):

Posted by MikeT23 on 7/26/2012 2:54:00 PM (view original):

Posted by Mark17Grace on 7/26/2012 2:01:00 PM (view original):
I think that the other issue people are having is that it is not against the rules to make a trade like this one. It is also a public league so there are no set rules against it. There have also been much greater lopsided trades in the world that haven't been vetoed. 

I

Two bad trades doesn't make the world better than one bad trade.

What the hell are you talking about? You obviously missed the point. Holy  cow.

When you say "There have also been much greater lopsided trades in the world that haven't been vetoed" aren't you implying that a "bad trade" precedent had been set and that this one was no different?

Maybe the cows have left the barn.    No need to push the goats out with them.

 

I never try to invalidate someone's opinion, but having said that... You get these threads in the forums (like this one) every so often (that are highy entertaining, in a way) where a pretty inexperienced owner (or two, maybe three) argue with a multitude of highly experienced, successful and respected owners on whatever issue the thread happens to be about. One would think that the new players would defer a bit to the experience of the other guys. Alas it is not so.

And the argument for these particular newb owners usually ends up essentially being, "Its my $25 and I'll do what I want with it."

I have more experience than some and less than others, but I would think I qualify as a veteran owner by this time and in the case of buying players, my opinion is essentially this...

The majority of well repected and successful owners will veto a trade that involves simply buying a player. The majority of the highly competative, well established and well run private leagues either have specific rules against it, or veto those types of trades. There is a reason for this. Its because we've seen through either direct or indirect experience that buying players is a problem. Its not good for leagues. It seems as if many new players though seem hell bent on learning this for themselves though.

The fact that one bad trade already went through just reinforces the point several of us have made repeatedly: If 10 owners actually veto a deal, it's got to be a stinker. Bad trades go through all the time. But even in mostly tarded-up worlds, selling players attracts vetoes like shipoopi attracts ridicule.