Quote: Originally Posted By plague on 3/14/2010
I think most people feel that they can win 50 games. I think most people just feel its not worth the investment when they can use the extra dollars towards Intl players. Anyone that only wins 30 games is probably tanking. What is the advantage of winning 70 games over 60 games if it costs you a future Intl player. My general strategy when taking over a rebuild team is use the rule 5 draft and get almost minimum wage players off the free agent list and then use the rest for Intl players. Most games I ever lost with this strategy is 99 games
herein lies the issue with not having a performance penalty built into the HBD game. If you did this repeatedly with a ML franchise there would be a financial effect on the franchise as attendance fell and 2ndary reciepts fell (the compounding problem for small market clubs). In HBD nothing happens.
If you can do it and stay below the commishes radar (or the commish doesn't care) then you have successfully "soft" tanked your way to a good team. It is this attitude of if this team can't win then I might as well only win 60 that is the bane of every league and why I stated every league as some tankers in it.
The good news for the non tankers is that it actually makes it easier to stay on top because you can pay less for mature free agents. If Coop had not had a full share of "soft" tankers the Detroit Pink Slipped's run in the NL would have been over seasons ago. You have to assess your leagues and take advantage of every situation - ultimately HBD is a variation of moneyball - find what is undervalued - as long as there are "soft" tankers it will NOT be IFA's