Offseason rules proposals

[alanv25]

A year or two ago, there was some discussion about how an owner could do a lot of research on minor leaguers and post a bid on a prospect, only to lose him to an owner who did no research at all.  There was talk about how we can give more credit to the owners who put the time in doing the research.

My manager at work actually thought of this idea when I was explaining this situation to him, that certain owners in our leagues do a lot of research on minor leaguers and post them on the board, but many times get outbid on them.  So the owner who did no work to discover this prospect gets rewarded with the prospect.

This idea could be used for all free agents, but it also could be narrowed down to just prospects.  The idea is that the owner who posts the first bid on the message board only has to match bids made by other owners.

So if owner 1 posts a bid for $1M, owner 2 would have to beat $1M with his bid.  So let's say that owner 2 bids $1.5M.  Then all that owner 1 would need to do is match owner 2's bid of $1.5M because owner 1 was the one who first posted this player.

For prospects, this would reward the owner who did the research and found the player.  This would give owner 1 the edge in winning that prospect since he did the research and posted this player to the FA board.


I would just make this the rule for all free agents.

Also, this is an easy rule to remember.  Once we see it a few times, it will be in our heads.

I like where you are heading with this Alan.  My thought process on this is adding another thing to your "match bid" to give the original poster/bidder the advantage.  My idea is adding a "poker-betting" style to bidding process as well.  My first thought is to speed up the bidding process significantly and eliminate the ever so popular 200k raises on 1m raises or 1m raises after there was a raise of 10m!
With this raising-requirement it still gives a lot of power to the original bidder and puts the raiser in a position to put their money where their bid is sort to speak!

If someone is not familiar with poker bidding process... The raiser must match or exceed the last bid on the player.  You raise by 1m, the next bid/raise has to be at least 1m.  You raise by 5m the next bid must come in at 5m or more etc.

So what if we combined the two?  Owner who posted only has to match the previous bid.  All other owners must raise by at least the same amount of the latest raise.

As an example:
1- Owner 1 opens bidding at $1M.
2- This means all other owners would need to raise by at least $1M.  Let's say owner 2 raises by $1M (the minimum), making his bid $2M.
At this point, owner 1 can bid $2M (or more) because he posted the 1st bid for this player, but all other owners must raise by at least $1M (the latest raise), so all other owners must bid at least $3M.
3- Then let's say owner 3 decides to raise the bid by $2M, so his total bid is $4M.  (Now the minimum raise is $2M, except for owner 1 who made the original bid.)
4- Then let's say owner 1 matches the latest bid, so he bids $4M
5- Then let's say owner 2 jumps back in and raises by $3M, so his total bid is $7M.  (Now the minimum raise is $3M.)
6- Then, owner 4 raises by $3.5M, so his total bid is $10.5M.  (Now the minimum raise is $3.5M.)
At this point, the owner who made the original bid can bid $10.5M, but all other owners must raise by $3.5M, so any of them must bid at least $14M.
7- Lastly, owner 5 raises by $4M and after 48 hours, wins the player at $14.5M.

This wouldn't be too difficult to remember, I don't think.
A couple of observations is that the longer the bidding goes on, the more of an advantage the owner who made the original bid has, which is what we want.
Also, this method would favor those with more cap room.  In the example above, if I'm sitting with $5.5M cap space, I would still be in it at step 2, but after the owner raised by $2M in step 3 to make the total bid $4M, then with my $5.5M cap space, I'm out.  Under the current system, I could still bid 0.5M or 1.0M, and maybe win the player at $5M.  But in this example, I'd be out because the minimum raise is $2M.  I think this would favor those with more cap space, most of whom would probably be rebuilding.
One possible advantage would be once the bidding gets high, like total bid of $15M, you probably won't see these small raises, like someone raising by $0.5 to make the total bid $15.5M.  By this time, the minimum raise would probably be at least a couple million.

Another method could be:  One thing that I've thought of in the past is owners must increase bids by at least 10%.  This would not be too hard to calculate in our brains.
If the latest bid is $2.0M, then you just move the decimal one place to the left to get the minimum amount that you must raise by.  In this case, you would need to raise by at least $0.2M.
If the latest bid was $5.0M, then the minimum raise would be $0.5M.
If the latest bid was $10.M, then the minimum raise would be $1.0M.
If the latest bid was $20.M, then the minimum raise would be $2.0M.  And so on.
You can see that as the total bids get larger, the minimum raises get larger.
For $50.0M, the minimum raise would be $5.0M.  But the owner who originally posted the player would just need to match the $50.0M.  All other owners would need to bid at least $55.0M.
This would be a little easier to understand and calculate than the 1st example above.

[SoonerorLitigator]

This is just something that the commish did in leagues that I was in for about 15 years.  He had 30+ fantasy baseball leagues, and the entry fee was $200 per team per season.  He closed down his fantasy service in about 2015.

He did something called a re-stocking draft.  It was basically used to improve teams whose owners had left the league.

Let's say 2 owners leave the league.  One of the teams has a .300 winning pct, and the other abandoned team was at .400.

The commish had a formula.  I don't remember exactly how it went, but it was something like this.
If an abandoned team had a winning pct below .300, that team would get 4 major league players in the re-stocking draft.
If an abandoned team's winning pct was .300 to .400, it would get 3 major league players in the re-stocking draft.
If an abandoned team's winning pct was .400 to .500, that team would get 2 major league players in the re-stocking draft.

These players would come from the better teams in the league.  So in the example, the abandoned team at .300 would get 3 players.  The other abandoned team at .400 would get 2 players.

The way it worked is that would be 5 total players, so the top 5 teams with the best winning pct would submit a list to protect 12 players, and then the commish would take one player from each of these teams and put them on the two abandoned teams in order to make them more sellable.

I just thought I'd mention this in case it was needed.

Understanding the desire to make teams more attractive to new owners, I would be opposed to this. I took over my team when they were a dumpster fire at the major league level. I didn't win more than a game or two that first season. However, the prior owner had a stocked farm system. He did, because he had traded major league assets to acquire more minor league assets and draft picks. Fast forward two years and I will be very competitive as those players are getting to the majors. I don't think my team should have been given an advantage because it was abandoned. 

I think we protect the integrity of the league with making sure trades are balanced and fair. We can reserve something like this for rare instances when a team is such terrible shape that they aren't viable and have limited hope for the future.

[tomviolence]

Yea the 1M exact was more of a ?. I was just thinking that the tier stop at 5M was very low. Any thoughts on the restructure option?

On the restructure idea, are you thinking restructure within confines of current deal (allow to shift money with our variance rule) or more within the financials of their current ranks?

[tomviolence]

OK a few rules updates as we approach 2023. 

First, the minors AB limit has been officially increased to 150. 

Second, I also agree that we could increase drop penalties and they could still be forgiving. Here is what I am thinking:
5M and under - remain free
5.1-8M - 2M penalty
8.1-12M - 3M penalty
12.1-15M - 4M penalty
15.1-20M - 5M penalty
20.1-25M - 6M penalty
25.1-30 - 7M penalty
30.1-35 - 8M penalty
35.1-40 - 9M penalty
40.1+ - 10M penalty

So basically just break it out a bit more on the higher ends. Still offers significant relief of bad contracts, but lessens the benefit as the cost increases. 

If no strong objections, that will go into effect for offseason 2023 (next year).

Third, I do like the bid-matching to award original poster, and I think it could be all FA, not just spects. I also like the poker-style increase. Alan wrote it succinctly and best: "Owner who posted only has to match the previous bid.  All other owners must raise by at least the same amount of the latest raise." I like the matching more than the percentages, so we'll go with that. 

Again, with no strong objects, this will go into effect this season.

Fourth, another to bring in line with other leagues is we will require the cap room to be available for bidding. I am OK with bids that would exceed roster space however, as a subsequent move could be made. But I agree that cap room should be available for all bids. That will also go into effect this season. 

As for general minors eligibility, we will stick with the limits regardless of real-life minors placement, as this is meant to be a form of roster control essentially. Will also not be entertaining a restock draft right now, since this league isn't too hard to turn rosters over with the forgiving offseason drops model. 

Also, I will be clarifying a ton of rules this offseason too to make things more clear and concise when it comes to simply reading through them all.

[JuicyJ]

With rule number three I would like to see us add some sort of protection against the original bidder posting, then the guy with the lost cap space posting a $100 mil bid. Now they next person would have to bid $200 mil, seems unfair bc it’s basically the first person to see it can bid it and only 1-2 people can even match that raise. A possible amendment could be to say any raise over $10 mil the next bid has to be $10 mil above. Could do the same thing at $5 mil. Still accomplishes the goal without ruining the free agent process

[thepetis]

Agree with the above.... even if it's not the first person, the second person can basically win the bid if they so choose.

[tomviolence]

yeah agreed. While I think that's probably a pretty extreme example, it's worth having that upper limit for sure. Will definitely put some language in along the lines of "poker-style up to XXXX amount, at which case bid increments will be XXXX." Something like that.

[MasterShonuff]

I see what a few of you mean with rule 3 however with TV needing to create more language for the bidding process I feel that we are going to tread on making this a really complicated change. If a team with a lot of cap space wants to muscle up on someone I say let them burn their cap space on that one player then they won't be able to flex their space on more future bids. In addition, if a team is willing to go that high on a bid they will just end up driving up the bid higher and higher to get their guy anyways so hypothetically you're just delaying the inevitable.
Again - I'm just thinking that we're already making a big change to our bidding process. Adding more context might really make thing crazy. But I am just one. haha

[jeffwp91]

I lean more on the side with Juicy. With the full transparency everyone know exactly who has bid what leading the team with the most cap just upping knowing theyll outbid most teams. We could do a blind bid system where the original poster has the option to match. Then again I'm throwing a bit of a wrench in the rule so ignore me if you're going ahead with rule 3 or very similar rule 3

[MasterShonuff]

Exactly Jeff that's kind of where I was getting at.  There are some potential quirks with the initial bid no doubt, but I feel that to make it "better" it's going to make things more complicated.  

If we look at it this way - I offer the idea of keeping our "original" bidding rules when free agency opens before the season starts.  THEN when the fantasy season starts we implement "In-season" new process.
Very very unlikely there will be a coveted FA in-season so there will most likely be no Big Initial Bid because we have already gone through pre-season free agency.

One of the concepts of implementing our proposed new bidding process was to expedite and/or streamline the process.  During the pre-season there is not a real urgency to get a player signed immediately like there is when the season has already started.

So "old" rules for the pre-season?  New proposal for in-season?