Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Camp Season 16 - Moving Forward

First I would like to say that in no means am i trying to take a shot at any 1 individual. I think most of us can take a little blame for the world being the mess it is. I personally have made 1 or 2 suspect trades and also won 22 games. You guys can blame me if you want. Now with that said, time to discuss some new rules. Lets just forget the past and not take things personally and move forward. I think everyone that looks at this blog would like to see the world improve and its not gonna happen if nothing changes.

Rule #1 - Anti-tanking Rule - I think this should be as simple as possible. Easy for owners to understand, easy for us to police.
-50/75 win totals. You must win at least 50 games every year and 125 any 2 year span
-50/110/180/260 I believe MikeG mentioned it, little more complex

Rule #2 - Setting your minor leagues - Pretty self explanatory, Not sure the exact wording for this rule though. Maybe no SP below 50% for x amount of games/Must have at least 9 active bats

Rule #3 - Major League players payroll budget minimum - some leagues restrict transfer amounts and international spending. Im personally not a big fan of these but a ML player floor kind of restricts them a little bit, while ensuring more competitiveness at the ML level. Nothing major here, just to keep teams from running league minimums. Maybe 40 million or something

Rule #4 - Cash in trades. I personally am against the buying of players. I like the idea of amount of cash a team offers can only be as high as their players' involved salary. Basically you can only pay your guys salary for the other team.

Please post any rules you guys would like and your feelings on these rules. In no way do I want to put in place rules that we cant all agree on. A few other ideas : voting in new owners, which i dont think is possible with the number of openings we will have this year, restricting relocating/renaming, Contract/transfer/IFA maximums, and ballpark restrictions.

9 comments:

e_mandat said...

I forgot the #5 I hope to see next year : Any brand new owner must wait until say the all-star break to trade. Guys who have never played before and know it all seem to kill us in this league.

mikeg740 said...

Very nice. Couple comments. Rule 1: I don't think this rule needs to be complex, but I think trying to rebuild a burnt-out team may take three seasons instead of two. Maybe a 55/65/75 three season rule, with an owner vote coming after the 2nd season. It's a little complex. However, a team I'm rebuilding in another world has averaged 64 wins in two seasons (58 and 71), and I'd fall just short with the 55/75 rule (and I'd consider myself to be a fairly competent owner).

Rule 3: I don't think there's anything wrong with a limit to prospect budget, as long as it's got a high ceiling (no prospect budgets higher than 40M). It might be a good compromise.

Rule 5: I agree, but I think this is another rule that can be up to commissioner discretion (a first year owner would need commissioner approval to propose a deal). I think it would give a new owner training wheels, while not completely handcuffing them, especially if they need a hard-to-find skill position player they don't have... especially if we're going to have the anti-tanking rules as they are.

Rules 2 and 4 are self-explainatory. I've got no additional comments.

Again, nice job, and a great start!

austinfan1 said...

Rule 1: I agree with mikeg's comment: 55/65/75 is probably a better rule for this league because some teams are almost completely barren.

Rules 2 and 4: No problem with these at all. Maybe give an owner a one-week grace period after spring training to get his minors in order before notifying him and giving him one more week to fix it.

Rule 3: I think the win minimums should keep this from being a problem... i.e. if a guy needs to win 80 his 3rd season, he's probably not going to transfer a ton of money. I have a team in Metropolis currently in 1st place 100 games in with a 15 M payroll without any drafted or international guys playing yet. And if a guy can succeed with low payroll, more power to him.

Rule 5: Not sure if you can give the commissioner discretion on this. It could cause: "I can't believe e_mandat didn't let me make this trade and allowed that other trade to be made!" and other such complaints. I think you need the rule for any completely new owner and any owner who joins camp with < 2 seasons played.

mikeg740 said...

I think your right about rule 5, austinfan1. We're probably better off not making too many concessions in the rules. I guess my main concerns would be both turning away prospective owners and handcuffing a team by not allowing him or her to deal. Then again, the other concern is what e_mandat stated, that "newbie" deals have killed teams in the past. In the end, I'd rather avoid that from happening.

e_mandat said...

All-star break may be a tad extreme but I definitely believe we need a waiting period. Again this is only for brand new HBD owners, not new guys to the world with experience.

mikeg740 said...

Maybe after the amateur draft (esp. since you can't sign draft picks and INT's signed that year)?

Anonymous said...

I know I'm a waffler, but the direction things are going are starting to shift my thoughts about staying.

#1- On the wins- I think that 50/125 is a bit too hard for a true newbie, or a real disaster project. (I'm on pace to have 130 with this year and the previous owner, and I'm trying very hard to win). The only initial thought I have that is far from hammered out is something like a 70 win 'soft floor' and a 45/50 win 'hard floor'. You can only drop below the soft floor x times in y years or must improve by 15 wins if you drop below it.

#2- Minors- I like 9 bats (I would prefer 10 since that allows for owners to miss a day and still be okay usually), but I think just having 0 or 1 active 0(0) pitcher may solve the problem. I would like to know how the AI would be able to keep up with a rule- to allow folks who don't care to just set their minors to AI managed.

#3- I think the number of needed wins eliminates the salary minimum. I think a minimum may also cause players to be overpaid in order to keep up.

#4- Cash- I don't like cash at all in trades, but I think the rule is fair.

#5- Like it. I would also add a limit of trades between owners (3 per season between owners or such). This would keep people from getting fleeced even after a half a season or longer under their belt. Not sure how easy to track though.

Sorry I'm long winded...

vjm269 said...

I guess I need to brush up on my foreign language to read the last post. Anyway these are my thoughts on the current issues:

#1 - I'm on board for a minimum win requirement. Whatever we can come up with as fair I would agree with. I do suggest that before we boot an owner for not reaching minimums we look at the totality of circumstances before we decide to act.

#2 - Self explanatory. Do the opposite of Zona.

#3 - I'm opposed to salary minimum. If you can run a competitive team with minimum salary then so be it. Once again if you can't make the minimum win totals and we see that your salary is extremely low then this wold be another factor on deciding to boot a team.

#4 - I'm not opposed to cash in trades. If it is a blatant buy a stud for 5 mil then that should be vetoed. If cash is included to either pay a salary for that year or provide cash for cap relief or to sign a draft pick I'm all for it.

#5 - New owners should be allowed to trade but if they are a true newbie then we need to come together as a world and veto an obvious ripoff.

I do understand this world needs some major changes and I believe we are heading in that direction. Some of our problems may be fixed with something as simple as a little more effort with teams posting and being active on the blog. I do not want to see this world become too restrictive to where it is not fun to play. I also think the fixes are a work in progress and may night happen overnight and may need to be tweaked as we grow.

Stents said...

Rule 1: I'm ok with a minimum win requirment. Though I'd probibly go for something like a three year running average of 60 or so rather then hard numbers.

Rule 2: I'm not in love with salary limits. If an owner can comply with rule 1 let him do it with whatever salary he finds he needs.

In general I think that trading problems can be handled via the veto process especially by owners monitoring the trades involving newbies.