To each their own for sure. We’ve made tweaks on how to ensure we’re rewarding teams that actually need help and I believe the formula is in the best state it’s ever been. We only had 5 teams with less than 70 wins, and really only 1 team that had a “bad” team. All the others still put a competitive team on the field. Every owner tries to win every game, I was able to play spoiler in this league, and not only that but improve my pick from 16-14 in the process. It’s definitely not for everyone, have had a lot of great owners leave because it wasn’t for them. But it doesn’t impact the bad team negatively as much as it may seem. Boston built a fantastic team that was streamlined. No excess PA, no excess IP, and matched up well against his league too.

This isn't real baseball, tanking has always been some sort of strategy, I probably tanks at least 6-12 games in every season to rest my staff. Gotta pick the right games to tank. That being said, I'd say I win about 5-10% of those games I had planned to tank, I call em miracle wins. You just never know with this game.

Posted by chargingryno on 9/13/2022 1:00:00 PM (view original):
If you’re in a wins floor/lottery league, and you think 98% of the owners aren’t doing anything to improve their chances to get the top pick, you’re kidding yourself. Like contrarian mentioned, there are dozens of ways that you’d never even know.

to be honest, I think a majority of Wis owners wouldn’t even call it cheating. It drives me crazy, and is why like contrarian, all my leagues take tanking out of the equation with a draft formula or random 1st round. I’m only in one league with a wins floor and I’m only still in it cause I respect the commish, but every year the same team tanks and puts best players in AAA or as mop ups or a dozen other things and it drives me crazy.

While I don't disagree with you, that doesn't mean commissioners shouldn't make it more difficult to cheat. Playing a position player at C for a good chunk of the season is a great way to ensure losses. Shaving 10-20 pitches per start off someone like Kershaw is not going to guarantee a loss. I don't endorse tanking of any kind, but the old argument of "it's going to happen anyway, so we should do nothing" is foolish and damaging. Plus, if you come down hard on the obvious tankers, it might give some of the "subtle" cheaters pause, if they know people are scrutinizing.

Ultimately, I think other forms of cheating can still be sniffed out to at least let owners know they're on watch. A commish can send private emails to someone to say "Hey, it may not be anything intentional, but I noticed Maddux is averaging 83 pitches/start, when in RL he threw over 7IP/start, which is easily over 100 pitches available." or "I noticed Lincecum has over 200 RL IP, but he's on pace for 142 IP, while you have Pitcher X, who is worse and had 150 RL IP, on pace for 215 IP".

Posted by Funksteady1 on 9/19/2022 5:59:00 AM (view original):
This isn't real baseball, tanking has always been some sort of strategy, I probably tanks at least 6-12 games in every season to rest my staff. Gotta pick the right games to tank. That being said, I'd say I win about 5-10% of those games I had planned to tank, I call em miracle wins. You just never know with this game.

What you describe isn't really tanking. You're willing to lose those games to rest your players, but you're not hoping/trying to lose those games. Real life MLB teams put out awful lineups every now and then to rest players, but they're still trying to win, even with the garbage lineup.

Posted by Jtpsops on 9/19/2022 12:52:00 PM (view original):

Posted by chargingryno on 9/13/2022 1:00:00 PM (view original):
If you’re in a wins floor/lottery league, and you think 98% of the owners aren’t doing anything to improve their chances to get the top pick, you’re kidding yourself. Like contrarian mentioned, there are dozens of ways that you’d never even know.

to be honest, I think a majority of Wis owners wouldn’t even call it cheating. It drives me crazy, and is why like contrarian, all my leagues take tanking out of the equation with a draft formula or random 1st round. I’m only in one league with a wins floor and I’m only still in it cause I respect the commish, but every year the same team tanks and puts best players in AAA or as mop ups or a dozen other things and it drives me crazy.

While I don't disagree with you, that doesn't mean commissioners shouldn't make it more difficult to cheat. Playing a position player at C for a good chunk of the season is a great way to ensure losses. Shaving 10-20 pitches per start off someone like Kershaw is not going to guarantee a loss. I don't endorse tanking of any kind, but the old argument of "it's going to happen anyway, so we should do nothing" is foolish and damaging. Plus, if you come down hard on the obvious tankers, it might give some of the "subtle" cheaters pause, if they know people are scrutinizing.

Ultimately, I think other forms of cheating can still be sniffed out to at least let owners know they're on watch. A commish can send private emails to someone to say "Hey, it may not be anything intentional, but I noticed Maddux is averaging 83 pitches/start, when in RL he threw over 7IP/start, which is easily over 100 pitches available." or "I noticed Lincecum has over 200 RL IP, but he's on pace for 142 IP, while you have Pitcher X, who is worse and had 150 RL IP, on pace for 215 IP".

But that too can depend on rotational setups... I rarely use pitchers to their max IP/G pitch counts. I typically run 2-3 man rotations even if I don't have a single pitcher over 200 IP. For example, on a team right now, I have Messersmith, Randy Jones, and Mike Marshall as my only pitchers with more than 120 IP. I have Messersmith and Jones in essentially a 2-man rotation. By that standard, Messersmith is throwing roughly 1 IP less per game than his RL IP/G and on an 85 PC, but I'm absolutely not tanking. And Marshall is obviously an odd case, but even with the best management of his IP, IP/G, and appearances, there's just no way to realistically even approach his RL IP, but no one one my team is being used remotely like RL (and I only have 1,256 total RL IP, even knowing I can't use roughly 40 IP of Marshall), nor did I draft a pitching staff that looks like it would remotely work. And yet, I actually have the league best pitching staff right now by virtually every measure (OAV, OOBP, OSLG, WHIP, ERA).

You can't always measure tanking by usage patterns. Results matter, too, and many times the two can be confused and hidden by an owner with the knowledge of how to do so.

I think you can still measure it by looking at PC, starts and IP. If a RL 250 IP pitcher's average PC is at 70% of what he could throw in a game, but he's started 30 of 80 games, it's probably a 3-man rotation situation. If he's made 15 starts in 80 games and is still only at 70% PC, there's a problem.

Just curious is there much difference between a D-/D/D- Catcher, and using a position player as catcher?

Posted by fatguyrd on 9/22/2022 9:24:00 AM (view original):
Just curious is there much difference between a D-/D/D- Catcher, and using a position player as catcher?

Depending on the D-/D/D-, and the OoP player, I would think an OoP player might be better

Posted by Jtpsops on 9/21/2022 3:53:00 PM (view original):
I think you can still measure it by looking at PC, starts and IP. If a RL 250 IP pitcher's average PC is at 70% of what he could throw in a game, but he's started 30 of 80 games, it's probably a 3-man rotation situation. If he's made 15 starts in 80 games and is still only at 70% PC, there's a problem.

I won't speak for anyone else, but as a prog commissioner, my thoughts are:
-- I have zero interest in regularly reviewing everyone's roster and usage to look for this kind of thing
-- I absolutely do not want the responsibility of making the call on what usage is suspicious vs not. It's so easy for that to devolve into accusations of bias, favoritism, negligence, etc.

This is why I vastly prefer leagues that confer zero benefit on losing. It completely eliminates the need for all of the above.

Yes, Contrarian, you hit the nail on the head. As a commissioner, anything that takes significant extra time and making judgment calls about someone's intent is a no-go for me. Who really wants to put that much effort into investigating someone else's team?

If someone really wants to spend their money to try and lose for a whole season just for the chance of getting a good player in the draft...well, to each their own. I don't get it, I don't like it, but it's a game, and if that's the strategy you want to use, go ahead and give it a try. I find much more enjoyment out of trying to find a way to win when the odds are stacked against me than I would trying to lose.

This is why I vastly prefer leagues that confer zero benefit on losing. It completely eliminates the need for all of the above.

While I understand contrarian’s opinion, those kind of progressive leagues really hurt me as a player. I very rarely put together a good team, and then I get penalize for it. I like progressives better than other kinds of leagues, but probable have the wrong mindset for them. I don’t have the patience to draft Sam McDowell knowing it will be his third season before he gives me anything, I’m more likely to go for a one year wonder, to be better this year.

I also really appreciate all the commissioners that run long drawn out drafts, because I know I couldn’t do it.

If the league is well-designed, then you shouldn't get penalized for it. Leagues like the ones discussed in this thread (gonoles, just4me, etc.) reward overperformance relative to salary. Getting the most out of your team.

The leagues that I run don't penalize anyone - they completely randomize the draft order.

What I absolutely don't understand is why a team that squeezes 70 wins out of a 60-win roster should be penalized compared to a team that (whether through tanking or negligence or mismanagement or bad luck) manages to get 50 wins out of the same-caliber roster. Seems to me that the 70-win team is that one that deserves the better pick. Or at minimum, should not be penalized for it.

It's a fine line though. I certainly see what you're saying and agree in principle. But what if there is a legitimately crappy team that can't win more than 50 games in a particular season (which does happen in progs)? I just won 22 games in the Early Icon league with the Indians. I dropped to 4th in the draft order because I didn't hit the minimum, which is fine - but there was no way I was coming close to the minimum with the roster I had.

Teams like that may desperately need the stud at the top of the draft to become mildly competitive, but in your scenario, it'll likely go to a team that's already got a stronger roster.

Posted by Jtpsops on 9/22/2022 12:58:00 PM (view original):
It's a fine line though. I certainly see what you're saying and agree in principle. But what if there is a legitimately crappy team that can't win more than 50 games in a particular season (which does happen in progs)? I just won 22 games in the Early Icon league with the Indians. I dropped to 4th in the draft order because I didn't hit the minimum, which is fine - but there was no way I was coming close to the minimum with the roster I had.

Teams like that may desperately need the stud at the top of the draft to become mildly competitive, but in your scenario, it'll likely go to a team that's already got a stronger roster.

I can only speak for the formula I put together, but legitimate crappy teams are still weighted by their expected performance, so if it's legitimately a team that is realistically expected to win 20 games (and the strength of schedule is weighed into the formula), then if you won 22, you'd probably pick in the top 5 picks (depending on how everyone else did relative to their expectations, and they'd have higher expectations based on how often they would play that very weak team).

In the current league using the most up to date version of the formula, we've had a handful of teams with extremely low salaries (defined as more than 20% below the league average). More than half of those extreme low salaried teams have picked in the top 5 draft spots in those respective seasons with ~90% of those teams picking in the top half of the draft.

But yes, occasionally you'll see a 115+ win team pick in the top 5, as well.