What I read here is:  Please take this sh*tty team in my world, but dont make the necessary moves to actually contend.  

If an owner hires a GM to manage a previous year, 52 win team, he wont usually get fired for winning 49 in the next season, and will definatley get credit for bumping up to 70+ in the 2nd season..

Is this tanking?

World	Franchise	Season	Player	Big League	Div	WS
			Payroll	Record	Standing	Winner
	TOR Blue Jays	9	$87.4M	63-99 (.389)	3	-
	NY1 Highlanders	10	$54.1M	62-100 (.383)	4	-
	NY1 Highlanders	11	$28.8M	66-96 (.407)	3	-
	NY1 Highlanders	12	$32.6M	65-97 (.401)	3	-
	NY1 Highlanders	13	-	32-54 (.372)	-	-

Posted by willsauve on 9/16/2010 5:51:00 PM (view original):
What I read here is:  Please take this sh*tty team in my world, but dont make the necessary moves to actually contend.  

If an owner hires a GM to manage a previous year, 52 win team, he wont usually get fired for winning 49 in the next season, and will definatley get credit for bumping up to 70+ in the 2nd season..

Anyone who ever builds a 49 win team (in HBD or real life) should be fired 100% of the time.

Posted by deanod on 9/16/2010 5:57:00 PM (view original):

Posted by willsauve on 9/16/2010 5:51:00 PM (view original):
What I read here is:  Please take this sh*tty team in my world, but dont make the necessary moves to actually contend.  

If an owner hires a GM to manage a previous year, 52 win team, he wont usually get fired for winning 49 in the next season, and will definatley get credit for bumping up to 70+ in the 2nd season..

Anyone who ever builds a 49 win team (in HBD or real life) should be fired 100% of the time.

After further thought, I agree..

Posted by csherwood on 9/16/2010 3:23:00 PM (view original):

Posted by deanod on 9/16/2010 3:17:00 PM (view original):
It's not always about the desination, the journey counts too.

1) I do not enjoy paying $24.95 for 3 months of rooting for my team to lose
2) If you enjoy playing Madden, some people like playing on Rookie mode, others like playing on All-Madden.  I always played on All-Madden, even though I could have had way better stats and had a much easier time winning the superbowl on Rookie mode.

1) I am not rooting for my team to lose, I am being realistic in knowing that my first season will not be good -- but I still try to win as many games as I can.
2) Awful analogy. Playing Madden on Rookie versus on All-Madden is more like being in a lousy public world versus a top private world. Two completely different games.

Sure I exaggerated a bit, but the basic point aligns perfectly.

You tried to liken it to some sort of job.  But you don't get paid, it doesn't go on your resume, and you don't win a dream vacation.  It's a game- some people to play games that are easy to win, others like challenging games.  I get bored of easy games very quickly.

Posted by willsauve on 9/16/2010 5:51:00 PM (view original):
What I read here is:  Please take this sh*tty team in my world, but dont make the necessary moves to actually contend.  

If an owner hires a GM to manage a previous year, 52 win team, he wont usually get fired for winning 49 in the next season, and will definatley get credit for bumping up to 70+ in the 2nd season..

I'm pretty sure no one gets props for taking a bad team and making it historically worse.

In some cases you have to gut a team to get better and that could mean a step back, but 49 wins is sickening

No, you don't have to gut a team to get better.  Especially if that team lost 110 the season before.

In most worlds you could win 60 games with scrap-heap FAs you pick up for 1 x `1.5M at the end of the FA period.

The way I always considered tanking was whether it would get you on the hot seat to be fired if you were a "real-life" GM.

(1) Lose 110 games or more. I think, in any case, if you lose 110 games or more, that's tanking as a season like that in real life would almost certainly cause a rash of firings.

(2) If you have a crap team with a bloated payroll and some young talent that isn't ready (still in 1st or 2nd MiL seasons), I think it's fine to trade some of the ****** contracts, limp by with some weaker stop-gap FAs, and win 60-65 games again. I see that as a situation where, in real life, fans would understand for a year, maybe two. Even if you traded a good player, as long as your win total didn't decrease, and you got a good prospect, I'm fine with that. There are some teams that have such a screwed-over financial situation, that spending a year to untangle the mess is acceptable, as long as you at least spend a little on some stop-gap FAs and keep the team able to win 60+.

(3) If you have a crap team that's not totally hamstrung with a crap payroll and an utter lack of talent, you should be improving your win total... or at least making moves that have the clear intent to improve the win total. This includes promoting star prospects who are in their 3rd or 4th MiL seasons, if need be. Imagine the Nationals trying to leave Strasburg in the minors until Bryce Harper and whoever they pick next year were ready to come up as well. That would be an outrage. However, this doesn't mean that you need to shell out big bucks to 33 year-old FAs. In real life, you wouldn't be asked to go from 60 wins to 90. But you would be expected to go from 60-70. If you inherit a 60-win team (that's not in a total financial debacle), you should be either promoting a few prospects to improve your team, or (if you want to leave them down because they're not ready), you should at least pick up one or two decent FAs. They don't need to be top-end, but spend 5M a year to pick up a solid 3rd/4th-starter that will keep you from having to trot out a waiver-wire guy until your stud prospect is ready.

(4) If your team won 70+ the previous year, there's absolutely no reason you shouldn't be trying to improve it, and if you don't, that's tanking, to me. You can win 70 games and still have tanked, IMO, if you weren't making any moves to try to win. Besides, you never know, I won my division in Happy Jack last season with 76 wins, so going from 72 wins to 78 wins (not worth it according to some on here) can mean a playoff spot every now and then.

I cannot believe the trades made by this guy to "rebuild" Wow.

Posted by jtrinsey on 9/16/2010 10:33:00 PM (view original):
The way I always considered tanking was whether it would get you on the hot seat to be fired if you were a "real-life" GM.

(1) Lose 110 games or more. I think, in any case, if you lose 110 games or more, that's tanking as a season like that in real life would almost certainly cause a rash of firings.

(2) If you have a crap team with a bloated payroll and some young talent that isn't ready (still in 1st or 2nd MiL seasons), I think it's fine to trade some of the ****** contracts, limp by with some weaker stop-gap FAs, and win 60-65 games again. I see that as a situation where, in real life, fans would understand for a year, maybe two. Even if you traded a good player, as long as your win total didn't decrease, and you got a good prospect, I'm fine with that. There are some teams that have such a screwed-over financial situation, that spending a year to untangle the mess is acceptable, as long as you at least spend a little on some stop-gap FAs and keep the team able to win 60+.

(3) If you have a crap team that's not totally hamstrung with a crap payroll and an utter lack of talent, you should be improving your win total... or at least making moves that have the clear intent to improve the win total. This includes promoting star prospects who are in their 3rd or 4th MiL seasons, if need be. Imagine the Nationals trying to leave Strasburg in the minors until Bryce Harper and whoever they pick next year were ready to come up as well. That would be an outrage. However, this doesn't mean that you need to shell out big bucks to 33 year-old FAs. In real life, you wouldn't be asked to go from 60 wins to 90. But you would be expected to go from 60-70. If you inherit a 60-win team (that's not in a total financial debacle), you should be either promoting a few prospects to improve your team, or (if you want to leave them down because they're not ready), you should at least pick up one or two decent FAs. They don't need to be top-end, but spend 5M a year to pick up a solid 3rd/4th-starter that will keep you from having to trot out a waiver-wire guy until your stud prospect is ready.

(4) If your team won 70+ the previous year, there's absolutely no reason you shouldn't be trying to improve it, and if you don't, that's tanking, to me. You can win 70 games and still have tanked, IMO, if you weren't making any moves to try to win. Besides, you never know, I won my division in Happy Jack last season with 76 wins, so going from 72 wins to 78 wins (not worth it according to some on here) can mean a playoff spot every now and then.

I agree with everything you said with one caveat - I think in real life, a GM thatcomes into a team that is a complete mess (such as the Pittsburgh Pirates), who goes in from Day One stating that we are rebuilding this thing from the ground up and cleaning house, and then loses 110+ in his first year, while at the same time making very good trades and having a great draft, would be given at least one more year. I will fully admitthat when I take on a new team here, if I do not think that a couple of minor moves will make me a contender, I will clean house the first season (for value though unlike the moves being made in this thread), and by the second year I normally have a handful of prospects ready for the big leagues to add to the leftover major leaguers that werent worth enough to trade but do fill out the roster (or didnt have too big of a salary so they were worth keeping). I also normally find myself with a lot of excess payroll by the second season and I can then hit the free agent market hard and suddenly have a team that is a playoff contender.

As for Mike, just because you like ot make the game tougher than it is doesnt mean the rest of us have to follow you. If you want, you can skip free agency entirely..or maybe only build with free agency and 0 out your drafting. I don't really care what you do to makethe game more interesting or tougher for yourself - I think winning a WS is tough enough in this game as it is and I play every season in a way to best get myself to a championship, and sometimes that means tearing it down and starting over again -- a process which I actually find to be one of the most enjoyable in this game. I like taking a lousy team, watching a few stud prospects come on up, and turning them into a title contender much more than simply having a team that wins the same 90 games every season and maybe once in a while gets lucky and makes a playof run. To each their own though.

Then you should probably create a couple of aliases, join public worlds and dominate.    You could have three lousy teams, get some stud prospects, move them all to one team and watch them contend for a title.   Or is that not tough enough for you?    Because, quite frankly, tanking works.   A lot of worlds are filled with contenders who were once 40-50 win teams with 32m payrolls for a couple of seasons.    To me, that's the same as copying a WS winning line-up in SLB and using it over and over again in open worlds. 

Posted by MikeT23 on 9/17/2010 9:49:00 AM (view original):
Then you should probably create a couple of aliases, join public worlds and dominate.    You could have three lousy teams, get some stud prospects, move them all to one team and watch them contend for a title.   Or is that not tough enough for you?    Because, quite frankly, tanking works.   A lot of worlds are filled with contenders who were once 40-50 win teams with 32m payrolls for a couple of seasons.    To me, that's the same as copying a WS winning line-up in SLB and using it over and over again in open worlds. 

if this game is too easy for you, then quit and find another one and leave us all alone.