Okay. Well. I'm gonna see if I can try to help something out here. Honestly, I've been coasting and neglecting the MLD for a little while, but the state of discussion has intensified this season and it's really caught my attention. And I'm going to say that the renewed intensity is because we are currently in a season marked by higher numbers of Boom Or Bust teams, and the feeling within the league is that this is bad for competitive balance.
Since the (I'll call it) "20 Game Rule" was instituted - we'll recap - it achieved exactly what we wanted it to. Teams cannot be stacked for the playoffs. It's easy to follow, use, police. BUT by enhancing the odds that only the best teams win, we created a situation in which owners who know they are in the middle of the pack will decide to lay back and play for next season. And IMO that can't be helped. This happens in every league I'm involved in where there are clear frontrunners; others play to live and fight another day. We are all smart people, we are all strategists. You can't ask us not to play the angles, or find the exploits.
The second big issue which comes up is warehousing. Warehousing has been around for the entire run of this league, before sim updates, before engine revisions. It was there even when players didn't improve in the minors. Warehousing was originally used to let those ten extra spots in the minors extend players' careers, while developing younger players in the majors. I have often wondered if warehousing is something that it might be time to do away with - I believe I asked onekrazypuck that question on a couple of occasions - only to find that other owners were using it for other reasons than the ones I was. It's multi-faceted, not just about building perfect players. Different owners use warehousing for different reasons, which is why I've found that over the run of this league there has never seemed to be a genuine outward interest in doing away with it. And I have to say specifically to paul71, who has been most critical of warehousing, that I don't believe abolishing it would pass with a majority if put to a vote.
EVEN SO - last week I updated the Franchise Player list, and too extra time to evaluate each team's roster. I was thinking that perhaps I'd find some evidence that would give me an idea about limiting warehousing, but what I discovered was that it wasn't exactly the problem.
With only a few exceptions, most teams are not hoarding experienced veteran players. What I WAS surprised to find is a number of teams building low-experience but higher skilled players. And that's when I finally realized the true advantage of running a short game roster. By shuffling players on and off the roster and in and out of the minors, it's possible to improve virtually all of your players AND have them accrue NO seasons of experience. And it's only possible by gaming the roster, because the sim doesn't penalize you for running a short game roster with the exception of virtually guaranteeing a Loss. So I was dead wrong, when I said in the league forum that I couldn't see any point to playing a short roster. I didn't see it at all.
To my mind, it's the combination of the short roster WITH warehousing that turns this strategy from Boom Or Bust to Ultimate Boom or Ultimate Bust. As I said earlier, we are smart people. We will find the exploit in any system. I commend the owners who found and developed this. I wouldn't even be talking about it openly, had I not found that others have begun to follow suit, and that more will.
So here's what I want to say - there's nothing "wrong" with what I'm talking about here. It's all within the rules.
But do we want to leave it as is? There have already been a few suggestions about rules for minimum game rosters. This is the hard part - any rule we want to bring in should be easy to execute, easy to follow, and easy to police. No one wants to sit around and read every box score, pick apart our opponents' rosters game by game, or sitemail complaints to the commissioner. Everyone has to be on board.
Given what I'm seeing in the league right now, I think some kind of roster limits would indeed address the current state of unrest.