Since you believe the first 10 picks are valuable assets, I don't know why you'd be opposed to inverting all 10.

With that, invert 11-20 also. If you play games for the 10th spot to pick first and screw up, you'll be drafting 20th. May as well try for a playoff spot.

I'm not sure I love the idea of tinkering with the draft, but if it is going to be done, then I think some version of what the NBA does would work best. Take all non-playoff teams and put them in a lottery for the top-6 picks (NBA does only 3). Make it an unweighted lottery (NBA uses a weighted lottery). After the top-6 picks, the remaining non-playoff teams are slotted by record, such that the worst pick the team with the worst record could have is 7, and so on, with the best team to miss the playoffs either picking 1-6 or 20th.

I think this solution strikes an elegant ballance between disincentivizing tanking and helping legitimately bad teams (and in particular new owners of teams that have been wrecked by previous ownership) improve through the draft.

I'd be totally fine with that. It would suck to finish 11th vs. 10th though. It's the difference between drafting 1st and drafting 20th. If you have a lottery for both then there is a much smaller difference from 10th to 11th, and people would have less incentive to game the system (expected pick of 5.5 vs. expected pick of 15.5). Frankly, I think that the 20th pick is still valuable enough that a lottery for all top 20 teams would be fine. Yes, sometimes a truly bad team will get screwed and draft 19th, but they will be in the top 10 50% of the time, and it's very possible to get a good player at #20 with decent scouting budgets and a good draft board.

I would point out that the NBA lottery system was implemented in response to actual, real-life tanking (and full-on tanking where games were actively thrown, not any kind of simple, low-payroll, soft tanking). That was over 25 years ago and they have found fit to change very little, as they system has truly worked to disincentivize tanking, while still helping maintain competitive ballance.

Thanks for that example.

Hugs and kisses

The Los Angeles Clippers.

Quote: Originally posted by gjello10 on 4/15/2010I'm not sure I love the idea of tinkering with the draft, but if it is going to be done, then I think some version of what the NBA does would work best.  Take all non-playoff teams and put them in a lottery for the top-6 picks (NBA does only 3).  Make it an unweighted lottery (NBA uses a weighted lottery).  After the top-6 picks, the remaining non-playoff teams are slotted by record, such that the worst pick the team with the worst record could have is 7, and so on, with the best team to miss the playoffs either picking 1-6 or 20th.I think this solution strikes an elegant ballance between disincentivizing tanking and helping legitimately bad teams (and in particular new owners of teams that have been wrecked by previous ownership) improve through the draft.

That's certainly better than what we have now, but it still doesn't solve the problem that the bottom 20 teams all have an incentive to lose once they know they are out of the playoffs. If I have the 13th worst record but I know that I am only a few games away from having the 7th worst record, I have every incentive to rest my starters to end the season. If there was a full lottery, then it wouldn't matter.

Basketball and their two rounds of drafting, where a #1 pick represents 8% of your team and 20% of your team on the floor, is not comparable to baseball.

If they expanded the unweighted lottery to 10 teams, that would be a little better, I think. The worst team can draft no lower than 11th, and 11-20 have a 50% chance of randomly ending up in the top 10. Any kind of lottery would be better than what we have right now.

Quote: Originally Posted By deathinahole on 4/15/2010
Basketball and their two rounds of drafting, where a #1 pick represents 8% of your team and 20% of your team on the floor, is not comparable to baseball.

I think it's a perfect comparison, seeing as how HBD is pretty much a two-round draft (as far as ML talent goes) just like the NBA.

No.

If you get #1 pick, and draft X player, at best that player is either 1 of 9 batters or pitches once every 5 days. The rest of the time, they have little if any impact on the team.

No comparison. None.

While the top player in the HBD draft doesn't have the impact that a player like LeBron or Tim Duncan does in the NBA, I still think the lottery would be very useful. It doesn't have to be a perfect comparison. The question is would the lottery make HBD better? I think it clearly would.

Quote: Originally Posted By kahrtmen on 4/15/2010

Quote: Originally posted by gjello10 on 4/15/2010
I'm not sure I love the idea of tinkering with the draft, but if it is going to be done, then I think some version of what the NBA does would work best. Take all non-playoff teams and put them in a lottery for the top-6 picks (NBA does only 3). Make it an unweighted lottery (NBA uses a weighted lottery). After the top-6 picks, the remaining non-playoff teams are slotted by record, such that the worst pick the team with the worst record could have is 7, and so on, with the best team to miss the playoffs either picking 1-6 or 20th.

I think this solution strikes an elegant ballance between disincentivizing tanking and helping legitimately bad teams (and in particular new owners of teams that have been wrecked by previous ownership) improve through the draft.

That's certainly better than what we have now, but it still doesn't solve the problem that the bottom 20 teams all have an incentive to lose once they know they are out of the playoffs. If I have the 13th worst record but I know that I am only a few games away from having the 7th worst record, I have every incentive to rest my starters to end the season. If there was a full lottery, then it wouldn't matter.

It wouldn't totally erradicate incentive to tank, but if you totally get rid of that incentive, then you also drastically reduce the incentive to make a long-term commitment to a previously crapped-out team, because being bad will be of no value in terms of acquiring new talent.

The goal shouldn't be to get rid of all incentive to tank. It should be to get rid of enough incentive to tank to make it a much less lucrative long-term strategic decission than it currently is, while still keeping a system to "boost" bad teams who are trying hard up and maintain competitive ballance.

Quote: Originally Posted By kahrtmen on 4/15/2010
If they expanded the unweighted lottery to 10 teams, that would be a little better, I think. The worst team can draft no lower than 11th, and 11-20 have a 50% chance of randomly ending up in the top 10. Any kind of lottery would be better than what we have right now.

Sure. 6 was a number I pulled out of my ***. Any number between 4 and 10 would, I think, suit this system well.

Quote: Originally Posted By deathinahole on 4/15/2010
No.

If you get #1 pick, and draft X player, at best that player is either 1 of 9 batters or pitches once every 5 days. The rest of the time, they have little if any impact on the team.

No comparison. None.

While I think it's fair to suggest that the value of the talent relative to your team is very different in HBD and NBA, I think the value of players in the HBD draft relative to one another (i.e. the slope of the curve of declining value as you move deeper into the draft) is very similar to the NBA (and very different than MLB or NFL, where the slope of the curve is much more gradual). Also, I think NBA players are the atheletes who most closely resemble HBD players in terms of the accuracy of your ability to project their future value.

Like I said, the comparison isn't important. If the only negative to putting in a lottery is that a horrible team might (emphasis on might) have to draft as low as #11, I just don't think that's a big negative, especially when weighed against the anti-tanking benefits.