I have come to realize that progs are as much about draft order as OLs are about cookies. 

So I am wondering why, rather than jump through hoops trying to find a way to prevent tanking, leagues don't just use either of two very simple methods.

After all, some of the solutions are almost as bad as the problem: systems that calculate expected wins versus team salary are complicated to figure out, random systems are unfair unless by random chance they work out fair (they are examples of Rawlsian justice, as in John Rawls, whose ideas I consider  unjust, but that is another issue - I left him off my "not on the smartest person in world list" list. But he belongs there too.). 

Best to Worst systems are likewise unfair. All of these are attempts to kill a mosquito with an atomic bomb. 

Why not just do two obvious things: either go by salary instead of wins, or eliminate all uncertainty in draft order altogether ?

The first may have a flaw I don't see - so enlighten me whoever understands this stuff better or has more experience. Instead of wins v. salary, why not just salary ? Lowest to highest salary on opening day (so what you do after that has no effect on draft order) is the draft order. period. No tanking possible. 

Second is what I would call the Calvinist-Korean immigrant system. Korean immigrant networks have a unique social organization-lottery system based on solidarity. Each family kicks in a certain equal amount of money into a common pool each month. Each month one family wins this in a lottery - often it is enough to buy a house or start a business. Each family, including those that have won already keep putting that equal amount in and each month all the families that have not yet won keep drawing in the lottery until every family has one once. 

Calvinist because you can accomplish the same thing merely through predestination: just come up a starting date (current season or the start of the league) and a random system for choosing the initial order. First pick in the first round goes to owner A. That owner cannot have first pick again until everyone else has had first pick, in order. It will already be known 16, or 20 or 24 seasons ahead who will have first pick, so nothing you can do during the season, no act of yours, tanking or improving, can change your destiny (hence the reference to Calvin and predestination). Just take turns until everyone has had a chance to go first in the draft. Sometimes a good team will have first pick, sometimes not. But the key thing is to eliminate prospective draft order as a factor altogether from league play. You can trade that pick, but the order will not change, so you would be trading the only number one pick you are going to get for maybe 24 seasons. 

These are both approaches that eliminate any incentive to tank without punishing weak teams by making it even harder to get good players. 

Make round 2 reverse order each year from that of the first round, so round 1 of the salary only system would go round 1: 1A, 2B, 3C ...24X in a 24 team league, and round 2 would be 1X, 2W, 3 V...24A. 

With the Calvinist-Korean system, the order would again in round 1 of year 1 be 1A, 2B ...24X, but the following year it could go serpentine so to speak, so year 2 would be 1X, 2W, 3V...24A, with round 2 again reversing that. Year 3 however could be: 1B, 2C, 3D...23X, 24A, and year 4 round 1 would go: 1W, 2V, 3U...23AX. Year 5 would go 1C, 2 D, 3E...22X, 23A, 24 B...and so on. In each case the order is reversed in round 2. Rounds 3 and beyond could even then be based on W-L or any other formula the league decided on as the competition is really about the first round and at most the second. 

These both seem to me to eliminate any incentive. One might decide, I suppose, to drop a lot of players to get the lowest salary to get that first round pick,but a good player will then raise salary, so the advantage would be fleeting at best and in any case real tanking is based on doing poorly compared with how you are supposed to do salary-wise and talent-wise. Losing talent before the season started only to get some other talent is rebuilding, not tanking. It is hard to see how this could become a regular practice as tanking is. 

The Calvinist system also has the advantage that it would create an incentive to stay in leagues for a long time, since you know that within 24 seasons you will get the number one pick no matter what and that you will have a number 2 pick every 24, in short that every six years you will get one of the top 4 picks. 

What am I missing ? What would be the problem with either of these systems that I don't see ? Or, who is ready to propose one of these ideas in one or more of the prog leagues they are in ? 

Some leagues definitely already use salary, but it's usually not total salary, it's something like salary of your top 8 players, or top 12, or some number which it is reasonably safe to assume each team will be keeping.

Good point, 12 or 13 makes sense, as if you drop them to gain advantage you are cutting not fat but bone and muscle. 

The problem I see with the second option is tracking it for the commissioner. Not just the first pick ,but the order every year. It just seems like a lot of work when they already do so much. Maybe I am just over thinking it. Maybe I just don't notice it, but I haven't even heard a peep about tanking being an issue in any of the leagues I am in. I think the lottery's work. I am in 1 24 team league that puts the bottom 8 teams is non weighted lottery. Maybe take the bottom third of the league and do a random order every year for the first 6-8 picks. Or you implement a wins floor like a lot of leagues have done and make it a challenge to hit or make the punishment for not hitting it severe. Rather than dropping out of the lottery, dro them to the end of the first round

byeags25, I think blatant tanking is rare, but there are all sorts of ways to get fewer wins than you should out of a team, and I imagine it happens a lot.  One obvious thing is, most of us, in any league (prog or not), give less attention to our non-contenders than we do to our winning teams.  That's natural.  The problem in progs with worst-to-first draft orders is that you're rewarded for neglecting your team.  

A couple of examples I've seen first-hand:

In one of my progs, an owner with a 3-man rotation (deadball era, so 3 was enough) traded away 2 of his starters for draft picks in a mid-season deal.  What happened then was, he didn't check on his team for about two weeks after the trade went through, so his remaining starter got to start about 40 games in a row.  Needless to say, the team lost the vast majority of those 40 games.  The owner finally showed up and apologized, explained he'd gone on vacation while the deal was pending and never had a chance to reset his rotation until he got back.  I have no reason to doubt his explanation, but the fact remains he improved his draft position by neglecting his team.

A more common example: I noticed in another prog that an owner "going for" a top 3 lottery pick had a 4-man rotation, made up of a good pitcher and 3 bad ones.  All of them had around 200 RL innings.  By the end of the season, the 3 bad ones had gone way over their RL innings (and had started many games tired) while the good one was underused (I can't recall exactly, but it was something like half his RL innings).  This was in one of my first ever seasons as a prog owner, so I didn't comment in the league forum on it, but I sent the commish a sitemail asking about it.  He told me that it was expected in a prog, that most owners didn't "knock themselves out" in seasons they weren't going to make the playoffs. 

Personally, I'd like to play in progs where even owners of bad teams try to win.  Failing that, I'd like to play in progs where owners weren't rewarded in any way for not trying their best.

Good point crazy. I was just thinking about blatant tanking and not the many ways out there to improve your draft position. Those are probably much more common and much harder to detect. Nobody should be rewarded for neglecting their team. I am sure the salary structure works. And maybe Italyprof's ideas would both work. It just seems like a lot of work for the commissioner to me. I could very possibly be over thinking it. All of those letters and numbers together made me feel like I was back in college and my brain cells may have just stopped workin as a natural reaction. In looking at it again, it seems like there would essentially be a rotation of draft slots on a yearly basis. What about a non weighted lottery for every non playoff team? If you have a 16 team league with 4 divisions, the bottom 12 teams all get a number. Somebody randomized the list and that's your draft order. The 4 playoff teams get put in order of their record or order of finish. Yes, the worst and/or neglected teams would have a shot at the top pick, but no better a chance than the teams that missed the playoffs by 1 game

Using salary in any way is "manipulatable".  I do it all the time.   I  don't think that makes me a cheater, it just a part of the game to me.

The second way just seems silly to me.


Honestly, I don't think tanking is nearly as bad as it sounds on the forums.   In like 200 seasons I can only think of a handful of times where someone has truly done something I considered awful.

I like the 2nd idea, but it won't work because of the turnover of ownership in prog leagues.  As a commish, I think it would be very difficult to sell a new owner on a team that doesn't have another chance at at 1st overall pick for 20+ more seasons. 

Sometimes I think a salary cap might be more helpful than any kind of draft lottery.  We can't replicate the gamble of not knowing how a player is going to perform next season (or the season's thereafter) but we can replicate the plight of non-Yankee/BoSox/Phillie etc. teams who have to move guys for the sake of budget... allowing for a larger stable of free agents to choose from.

Posted by eastvanmungo on 8/9/2012 11:52:00 PM (view original):
I like the 2nd idea, but it won't work because of the turnover of ownership in prog leagues.  As a commish, I think it would be very difficult to sell a new owner on a team that doesn't have another chance at at 1st overall pick for 20+ more seasons. 

Sometimes I think a salary cap might be more helpful than any kind of draft lottery.  We can't replicate the gamble of not knowing how a player is going to perform next season (or the season's thereafter) but we can replicate the plight of non-Yankee/BoSox/Phillie etc. teams who have to move guys for the sake of budget... allowing for a larger stable of free agents to choose from.

I agree with both of these. One thing I've always wanted to try was a single-season progressive with a hard cap on your keeper value. Say no one can keep more than $50mil worth of keepers. Sure, when A-Rod is $200k you're skirting the system, but there's a lot more talent in the draft.

The Calvinist thing sounds great in practice but you're totally right, what happens when an owner bails the season after they get their #1? 

Now, I know that the purists will give grief about this... But I'll be truthful and admit that I have done this.

In a progressive, where myr team is going to miss the playoffs... I don't intentionally play to lose.  But if there is something that i want to find out how the sim works, I will use that team to figure it out.  Who will the sim put in if all relievers are on rest?  What happens if you have a fatigued player and all replacements in the fatigued chart are more fatigued?  Will the sim choose a pitcher below his fatigue level in the 5th inning or a guy who is rested but not supposed to come in until the 8th inning?  What happens if a player is injured and all replacements are on rest?   Can I find a way to make the sim use a pitcher as a PH?

Those are all questions that I wanted to find out the answer to, and I've used progressives where my team was losing anyway to figure them out. 

In short, I may not play to win or lose sometimes, but I might be playing to learn.  By no stretch do I do this in every progressive, I do this when there is something that I want the answer to (maybe 3-4 times a year).    In any league I do this, I might be impacting the W/L of my team by maybe 5-6 games, so why not do that in a progressive where the team is not going to win anyway? 

To me that is very different biglenr. You are not necessarily trying to lose, even if it is an unintended, even foreseeable consequence. Motive matters, though since motive is hard to show, that leads to all these complex systems to prevent gaming the system and tanking on purpose for the purpose, in those cases, not of learning, or even testing out some players that were on the bench etc. as you do, but to lose as a goal in itself to get better position. Losing in that case is its own purpose. That is uncool. 
Not that I have not rested my starters before playoffs, or put all regulars on the bench for a couple of games or more in a row with a spot starter to rest regulars. But again, that is with the goal either of winning more games in the regular season in the long run - and the occasional victory with such a lineup is a very happy event. I even have a group of spot starters I go with that I like that do win sometimes when I don't expect to. Or you are resting because you have won a divisional title and want to rest your starters, but MLB teams in RL do that too. 

None of that is losing a whole season to achieve a draft order slot you would not otherwise have, essentially ripping off actually weaker teams that now won't have the benefit of a better draft position because with a stronger roster than they have you have thrown games to also get draft position advantage. Not cool. 

I like the salary idea.  Not as much as random order (for non-playoff teams), but a lot more than the worst-to-first business.  Anything to eliminate the feeling that your players screwed you by winning a game when you "needed" a loss.

The best remedy to tanking, IMO, might be to start a league by invitation only, inviting only managers whose reputation is beyond reproach.

Posted by pfattkatt on 8/10/2012 12:03:00 PM (view original):
The best remedy to tanking, IMO, might be to start a league by invitation only, inviting only managers whose reputation is beyond reproach.

this is correct.  

I actually like the salary idea as well, and this has just been implemented in the new Roll the Dice progressive - so i guess we'll see how it works.  

Something I think is worse than tanking is hoarding.  There is nothing more frustrating to me than when an owner (through good drafting or trading) has acquired enough good players to have 4-5 full time players on the bench.  I have always opposed max keeper lists, but lately have begun to like the idea a little more in leagues that don't have a wins formula.  If there is a wins formula then you are penalized for having extra salary so it solves that issue then and there.  

Something I think is worse than tanking is hoarding.

What?  I almost never have more than the bare minimum PA/IP in any prog season (whether my team is competitive or not) but I have to strongly disagree with that statement.  I'm not even sure how "hoarding" (or what some would call "having too many PA/IP") would help an owner, unless he planned to corner the market on a position and then hold an auction.  And even for that to work, he'd have to be in a single-season prog that had as many teams as there were in real life.  And he'd have to have owners willing to trade with him (which might not happen, if everyone knew what he was up to).   Either way, I don't see how that can possibly be worse than tanking.