Seems like there should be a decent way to reward winning games, instead of rewarding losses. In the league I run, draft position depends on how many games you win, compared to how many games your franchise won in real-life that season. So you win your way into a high draft pick. Playoff teams are automatically at the bottom. It works well, and gives teams a reason to keep competing even after they are out of playoff contention. This is easier in my league because the rosters do have some connection to what those franchises had in real-life. I wonder if something similar could work in other leagues, with teams randomly matched to target win totals they would have to try to exceed.

One other idea is to assign draft position by some combination of (wins + previous draft position). For example, you win 86 games and drafted #16 last season, you get 102 points. Someone else wins 80 games and drafted #17, they get 97 points. Whoever gets the most points has the highest draft order. The points coming from previous draft position could be weighted some way, or could be a combination from the last few seasons. Maybe use the previous three drafts, so a team that gets #1 three seasons in a row only gets 3 points added to their win total, and a team drafting #24 three seasons in a row gets 72 points added to its win total. Everyone would have a reason to try to win as many games as possible, but there is a built-in mechanism to prevent teams from getting stuck at the bottom or top.

I stopped playing any progressives that use any form of reverse-order-of-finish drafting for this reason. Even lotteries, win floors, minimum IP requirements, etc...don't solve the problem of tanking. And more to the point...I like to win, with every team I play. I really like the challenge of taking a team in a rebuilding year and trying to win 75 games with 60-win talent. And in almost every progressive around, you get penalized for doing that.

There are a handful of owners out there who have run leagues with different draft methods. gonoles is one...most of his leagues use a formula that reward winning relative to your salary. just4me is no longer active I think, but in several of his leagues he used a similar formula that set a win expectation for every team based on salary, and you got a better draft position the better you performed relative to that win expectation.

In both of the progs I founded (NWP and NWPEE), the draft order is entirely randomized. And it worked great. Yes, you get the occasional "unfair" outcome like a last place team getting the worst possible pick, but owners knew that was a possibility going in and used other strategies to rebuild: stockpiling draft picks, making aggressive trades, etc.

I'll never play a traditional progressive again, for what it's worth.

I think it's worth exploring. The biggest issue I see is differentiating those owners who are truly leaving PA on the bench (and deliberately playing fatigued players instead) from those owners who are legit light on PA. We've all been in progs where 1 year you have to suck it up with low PA and low IP...actually to my earlier post I think that's a fun challenge...one season I had no P with > 150 RL innings.

It creates a perverse incentive, IMO, if owners have to trade for (or draft) bad players just to meet a PA or IP requirement, rather than take the players who help the team rebuild.

But note that even if you solve for that problem, there are still a million other creative ways to lose games. The root cause issue to me is not PA/IP/fatigue, nor is it "gutless" commissioners. It's draft orders that reward losing. Until you change that, tanking will always be a problem.

It's really, really hard - and quite likely impossible - to set PA/IP minimums. Too low and they don't help. Too high and you get into a situation where there aren't really enough extras to go around, and you have chaos.

Say you make it 1200 innings per team. And a 24-team league has maybe 2500 extra innings floating around the whole league. If a team has a bunch of randomly healthy starters they could have 1500+ innings and they've eaten up 1/8 of all the extra innings for the whole league. And they may not want to trade them if guys are injured or useless in future seasons.

And as so many have said, just because you have enough IP/PA doesn't mean you'll use them correctly.

Just came back to the site and joined a progressive. We are 35 games in. 1 team is 3-32. But fear not they wouldn't be rewarded with the first pick if the draft order was set today. . . because there is a 2-33 team.

I have an idea for a new sort of progressive that rewards winning. I will have to sort it all out again.

Re: dino27's idea on team stamina, that seems very hard to compute. Unless I am missing something, the commish would have to go through each team's box scores, or each player's game logs, to compute it. An owner who wants to tank could still make a point of using his worst players. There are so many other ways you could try to weaken your team if you really wanted to... I don't want to list examples, in case it would give someone an idea! If there is an incentive for losing, some owners will try to lose.

If there is no incentive for winning, many owners won't put much effort into winning. I say that separately, because often an owner whose team is out of playoff contention would rather trade players for draft picks, than try to win games and finish second. That happens a lot in real life baseball, too. The team isn't necessarily tanking, but has lost all interest in winning games during the current season.

As for commissioners policing their leagues to prevent tanking... that could address the most obvious examples, but there are a lot of shades of gray. Is it tanking if you don't even try to draft a decent team for the current season, but instead focus on a team's future? Most owners would say no. What about if you trade away your best players, but then you do play the best lineups and rotations you can make from the remaining players?

I'll confess, in a league where the draft order is set after game 120, I'll sometimes juggle my part-time players so the worst ones are used more before that mark, and the best ones are relatively fresh for the remainder of the season. That is tanking, to some degree. But I've never been "good enough" at it to get a pick higher than #6!

Posted by kneeneighbor on 12/4/2018 3:02:00 PM (view original):
Just came back to the site and joined a progressive. We are 35 games in. 1 team is 3-32. But fear not they wouldn't be rewarded with the first pick if the draft order was set today. . . because there is a 2-33 team.

I also joined that same league, and was disappointed to see how bad multiple teams are. The two teams kneeneighbor mentioned went 11-151 and 39-123 the previous season. I have no interest in the kind of league where teams routinely lose 120+ games. That league has some weird roster rules that I didn't know about until after joining. I'm not even certain the horrible teams are trying to tank. The roster I inherited looks like a team that is trying to tank, but it is 14-22, 4th place in a 7-team division! I've already told the commish this will be my only season in that league.

Billcf7 was commissioner of a progressive (originally started by occsid) I was a part of since the inception (1901 season). 12 team league.

I played about 30 seasons in this progressive.

After seasons of rebuilding my team through the draft I felt they were close to competing again.

The commish proceeds to complete a one-sided trade involving a HOF shortstop for a number 12 pick, in his favor.

Now I have a solid 2nd place team for seasons to come.

I will never play another progressive. Can't even trust the guy running the league.

dino (and others)...if you are looking for a well-run league where there is NO tanking...consider taking the currently advertised open spot in the No Whining Progressive. disclaimer: I started this league but am no longer part of it...I left the site in 2016 and although I have returned for a while, I am not making long-term commitments to any themes at the moment.

coachgreat1 runs the NWP now and does a great job.

Gonole's WESPL progressive has solved the tanking problem. Current team salary + next season (before the draft) keepers' salary is penalized. Wins are rewarded. He's worked out a formula which encourages winning while spending the least amount possible on payroll. We're 95 games in and will have an opening next season. Minimum win floor and minimum payrolls are established so you really can't tank.

I had developed an idea that was similar to College where teams that win gain more "recruiting points" and then those points are spent auction style to add to your roster the following year. Also had some things in place where you could only have a player for 4 years (5 with a red shirt) and then he graduated. There was some randomnees to it to account for a player not living up to potential. I think I posted it once 2 or 3 years ago and no one seemed interested.

Posted by marcstuart on 12/12/2018 3:04:00 PM (view original):
Gonole's WESPL progressive has solved the tanking problem. Current team salary + next season (before the draft) keepers' salary is penalized. Wins are rewarded. He's worked out a formula which encourages winning while spending the least amount possible on payroll. We're 95 games in and will have an opening next season. Minimum win floor and minimum payrolls are established so you really can't tank.

This is another great league that I was in for many years.