yeah rob, that is probably good thinking.

I like your idea also.

My goal at the beginning of a prog season is for my team to make the playoffs or the lottery. Two lottery years followed by a five-year playoff run makes more sense to me than winning 75-80 games every year. I will not manage my team below its potential by resting better players who don't need it, but I see nothing wrong with creating a team whose winning potential is very low. My SPRL team was not going to be competitive for the next two seasons, so I traded away six players, and I'm trying to trade two more, for future value. I am 100% in favor of a 40- or even 50- win threshold to qualify for the lottery. The problem isn't with teams trying to make the lottery; the problem is there is almost zero risk of not making the lottery. Increasing that risk is the best solution, not accusing people of tanking.

Quote: Originally Posted By rooskie on 4/07/201040 will also eliminate owners dumping their rosters to try and gain picks when they should be focusing on playing the competition as tough as they can to keep races competitive.

Long live the 40 rule!

Commissioners from other leagues and owners reading this take heed, this is the wave of the future in progressives as owners who play to win are getting sick and tired of owners dumping rosters because they may only come in 2nd...those strategies are for losers, IMHO

Let me say that if there are no tanking restrictions, then at rebuilding time I will definitely trade away my good players for additional draft picks, and get earlier draft picks as a result of my now-crappy team. I just did that in what is currently an 04/84 league. I don't intentionally manage the team to lose, but I do trade away talent, knowing that just about any non-fatigued team will win 30/120 or 40/160.

If the rules allow it, I will always follow that strategy. I don't like it, but I do like to win, and I'm not going to give away legal advantages.

I do prefer the 40/120 and 9th place restriction. I think that does encourage players to not completely dump, and I like that. I don't like dumping, but I refuse to handicap myself by holding myself to stricter rules than all owners in the league must follow.

Quote: Originally Posted By tigerrott on 4/08/2010
My goal at the beginning of a prog season is for my team to make the playoffs or the lottery. Two lottery years followed by a five-year playoff run makes more sense to me than winning 75-80 games every year. I will not manage my team below its potential by resting better players who don't need it, but I see nothing wrong with creating a team whose winning potential is very low. My SPRL team was not going to be competitive for the next two seasons, so I traded away six players, and I'm trying to trade two more, for future value. I am 100% in favor of a 40- or even 50- win threshold to qualify for the lottery. The problem isn't with teams trying to make the lottery; the problem is there is almost zero risk of not making the lottery. Increasing that risk is the best solution, not accusing people of tanking.

Should have read this first. This is what I do as well.

One last note... there was a time when I was considering building a progressive, but I decided that I couldn't afford the time. I spent a lot of time and discussion with a few other owners about coming up with a way to discourage dumping, but still allow teams that aren't currently competiitve a chance to improve. The consensus of the 4 owners I discussed this with, was that this would actually likely improve trading (to me, one of the most fun parts of progressive leagues), and reduce dumping.

It's basically a relatively random draft order, where any team has a chance at the first pick, playoff teams have fewer chances than non-playoff teams, and the bottom 4 teams have a slightly better chance at an early pick.

There would have been 100 "slots" in the draft lottery. 8 Playoff teams get 2 slots each. Thats' 16 slots gone, 84 .

All 16 other teams get 5 slots each. That's 80 additional slots gone, 4 . The last 4 slots go to teams in order of bad record, as long as they won at least 50 games by the end of the year. So the bottom 4 teams get 6 the next 12 get 5 and the playoff teams get 2.

Then we would have used random.org to get the draft order assigned. All teams, even the WS winner, would have at least 2 chances at the first pick. No team would have more than 6 chances. Most years, it would allow non-playoff teams a good chance at improving, but there are no guarantees, and you might as well do as good as you can.

Long term, I think this would be a very fair way to encourage teams to do well, and to discourage dumping, while giving the teams who don't make the playoffs a little more chance to improve.

I'm in two leagues that use formulas and I really like them.

2 X total salary at the All-Star Break (after game 81) + keeper salary for following year at game 135 (failure to have keepers in by game 135 results in every eligible keeper to be a keeper in determining keeper salary) - wins in the regular season. Low score drafts first and so on.

The minimum keeper salary for this calculation is $50 mill, even if the actual salary is < $50mm

There is absolutely no advantage in losing games, but stockpiling more talent than you really need is usually counterproductive. This encourages owners to strive for lean and mean. Simply put, winning and sound team management are rewarded. Going the low salary route is an option, but not a guarantee.

Quote: Originally Posted By biglenr on 4/10/2010
One last note... there was a time when I was considering building a progressive, but I decided that I couldn't afford the time. I spent a lot of time and discussion with a few other owners about coming up with a way to discourage dumping, but still allow teams that aren't currently competiitve a chance to improve. The consensus of the 4 owners I discussed this with, was that this would actually likely improve trading (to me, one of the most fun parts of progressive leagues), and reduce dumping.

It's basically a relatively random draft order, where any team has a chance at the first pick, playoff teams have fewer chances than non-playoff teams, and the bottom 4 teams have a slightly better chance at an early pick.

There would have been 100 "slots" in the draft lottery. 8 Playoff teams get 2 slots each. Thats' 16 slots gone, 84 .

All 16 other teams get 5 slots each. That's 80 additional slots gone, 4 . The last 4 slots go to teams in order of bad record, as long as they won at least 50 games by the end of the year. So the bottom 4 teams get 6 the next 12 get 5 and the playoff teams get 2.

Then we would have used random.org to get the draft order assigned. All teams, even the WS winner, would have at least 2 chances at the first pick. No team would have more than 6 chances. Most years, it would allow non-playoff teams a good chance at improving, but there are no guarantees, and you might as well do as good as you can.

Long term, I think this would be a very fair way to encourage teams to do well, and to discourage dumping, while giving the teams who don't make the playoffs a little more chance to improve.

I like this.

Thanks Juice... I don't remember who I discussed that with, it was more than a year ago. But a lot of thought went into it.

The consensus was that it would IN GENERAL help worse teams rebuild, but it offered little incentive to intentionally dump... You didn't have a much bigger chance at a high draft pick than finishing last than you did just missing the playoffs. That extra 1 pick for finishing in the bottom 6 gave you a little better chance of improving, but not enough of a chance to make it worthwhile to dump.

Note that this would have been a 2 year progressive... a 1 year might or might not have worked.

The best way to eliminate tanking is to eliminate the incentive for tanking, i.e., have the draft order randomly determined each season. Teams would likely still trade talent for picks, but it's hard to believe you'd see as many fire sales.