Thus far, Arthur has presented the following ideas:

1) I would like to propose an earlier cut-off for FA pickups to be "keeper-elligible". I'd suggest synching it with the trade deadline, Aug. 1, or the roster expansion deadline. This would allow more roster flexibility when PT gets scarce, b/c you wouldn't have to worry about protecting guys you have no intention of keeping, but don't want someone else to grab.

2) I'd suggest allowing some extra salary cap room, in season, to facilitate deadline trades. This should be a major mechanism for bad teams to rebuild quickly, but is harder to do in this league than others. Perhaps the cap expands to $450, or $425 on July 1.

OK ... discuss!

While I'm not completely opposed to the idea of a FA pickup cutoff of, say, Aug 31, I don't think it's really that necessary and would largely just result in the new deadline creating a flurry of activity that would otherwise be spread out more over the last month or whatever.

I'm opposed to changing the salary cap as suggested. I don't think there's really a need to make it easier to rebuild or load up for the post-season than it currently is. Plus, I can see this change distorting the market in unintended ways.

1) Rather than change the deadline and cause the flurry to happen earlier ... how about changing the minimum salary increase from $2 to $5. This accomplished two things - it makes a guy who is borderline keepable at $3 not keepable at $6 and it changes the dynamics of cheap pickups that turn into stars (i.e. a $7 guy who goes to $9, then $11, then $13, then $15, then $18, then $21 - six years until he goes over $20!!

Instead, he goes $7, $12, $17, $22 ...

2) The problem with raising the salary cap is that it not only allows for trades but it allows for pickups - so if I spend higher in the draft and only have 32 guys for $400, when the cap expands I can pick up a bunch of guys to fill to 40 (which might stifle the need for a trade) and hope they become keepable.

I propose that each team gets a $25 "blank cheque" (i.e. player named "Blank" that costs $25) added to their roster that can be traded. For example, Team A & B are at $400. They each get a $25 blank cheque on July 1st. Team A trades Jason Werth at $32 to Team B for Joe Kelly at $7 abd Blank at $25.

It helps in trade discussions because usually the struggle is to make the dollars work without the team willing to give low priced talent giving up high dollar players they need for this year. The Blank player could be set by the trading team to any value from $1-25.

This also allows for only one net deal per team where they take on extra salary.

Just my thoughts on the subject.

Steve
Firedogs

I'm with Bill on an increased in season cap. It will create a boom and bust cycle. It's one thing to have the opportunity to load up for the postseason but this would require it. I'm also opposed to making rebuilding through a teardown easier. In a perfect world every team would play only for the present.

I like the earlier FA pickup cutoff because I think it is too easy to pick up value players that way. However, I am worried about unintended consequences. For instance, an August 31 cutoff penalizes teams that just miss the playoffs while rewarding rebuilding teams, when we should be encouraging more teams to try and make the playoffs.

I love Steve's first idea (increase the minimum salary increase to $5). Right now if you sign a player cheap you have him forever. If he turns into a star, or even a useful regular, you are set. However, this is mostly good fortune, not skill, and what skill there is is still rewarded.

It also makes redundant the Aug 31 deadline proposal since anyone keepable at $6 will have already been signed by then.

It hasn't been officially nominated as a rule change proposal but if it is I will second it.

Bumping the minimum salary increase to $5 is just going to create more roster churn, and I'm not really a fan of that idea. The idea that cheap keepers, especially FA ones, are mostly a product of luck is also incorrect, IMO. Mike Jeziorski looked at it in the super-email Greg talked about and found that there were 4 times as many players from the auction who were kept year-to-year than FA pickups going from the 2011 to 2012 seasons, for instance. To the extent there are issues valuing players in the FA market or auction, those problems would be solved by more aggressive and better strategic bidding.

Another idea I'd proposed and forgotten about from that long e-mail thread, and which might address some other concerns but also fits in with Arthur's first proposal:

We should expand rosters and salary cap on Sep 1 to 50/$410, and all players signed as FA after Sep 1 are released at the end of the season. The goal of this proposal was to make it easy for the commissioner to manage PT issues of "abandoned" teams in a single sweep, but it would also allow teams that hit unexpected PT difficulties to add real scrub players to cover PT to make it through the season without having to cut actual keepers.

It has the side effect of being slightly gameable by good teams which plan to intentionally get by with minimal PT, but with everybody playing by the same rules the negative side effects should be pretty small and keeping teams with PT problems from becoming CM nightmares is a big plus.

I like Steve's proposal on how to implement the exra $25.

Instead of increasing the minimum salary increase across the board, how about just setting a minimum salary for post-auction pickups? Say $5.

Bumping the salary increase scale or the minimum salary is going to have adverse consequences. $5 minimum jump will mean that some substantial portion of bullpens is rebuilt every year, and an awful lot of otherwise useful bench players will be recycled all the time. I suspect that it won't actually change the auction prices of very many low-end guys, they'll just all get released every year. I think you might also see money pushed into more expensive guys and you'd end up with fairly few mid-priced guys, which might make trading a lot less productive.

A $5 min salary would likely result in largely the same things happening, though maybe not quite as bad.

I'm not sure about the "blank check" idea.

My $5 minimum was suggestion not meant to apply to players acquired in the auction.

To repeat my position, I oppose changes to the current rules regarding in-season free-agent acquisitions. Somehow the idea persists that teams get fat on such moves, despite no evidence to support such a notion. For teams drifting out of contention, however, free agents offer a reason to stay active and make minor improvements for next year. The way in which FAs are acquired is no less equitable than the auction itself.

Nevertheless, I might be persuaded to back a Sept. 1 deadline for FAs to be kept for the following year, because some violent roster upheaval can occur in the final weeks of the season as teams scramble to cover playing time. If such a rule is implemented, I argue that it should also include that players picked up after Sept. 1 are ineligible for the postseason, so that stars dumped in September cannot benefit a contending team.

I don't support new changes to allow owners greater flexibility in picking up needed playing time. Owners should have foresight in managing their rosters.

Players picked up in September are already ineligible for the post season, so that shouldn't be an issue.

I also generally oppose the idea of change the FA/auction/salary rules, though I think if we must make PT-accommodating changes the September idea I proposed above or something similar is a reasonable compromise.

I had assumed that players acquired in September were ineligible for the postseason, but couldn't find the language in the Constitution. Ah, there it is--section 4.3.4. I had done a search for "September", but the clause states "August 31st".



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/06/2014 09:25AM by Mike Jeziorski.

Mike Jeziorski Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> To repeat my position, I oppose changes to the
> current rules regarding in-season free-agent
> acquisitions. Somehow the idea persists that
> teams get fat on such moves, despite no evidence
> to support such a notion.

The strongest evidence that in-season FA keepers actually matter is the energy you're putting into this discussion, frankly. If they had no real impact on your team or the league, why would you care so much?

Beyond that, assuming Bill is right above, 20% of keepers are FAs. That's a pretty significant fraction, no?

And I doubt it's distributed evenly -- I'd guess that 20% of teams make 80% of FA bids (though last year's bids have been wiped so I can't check), most of which are fishing for keepers. Heck, I could carry 8 FAs (IIRC) from last season into the auction this year, ranging from Dylan Bundy to half of my ready-to-roll bullpen for next season.

So I think there is a significant impact. Next question is whether it's good or bad. Here's why I think it's a problem as is:

The main difference between auction keepers and in-season keepers is that auction keepers are signed before their future season performance is known, whereas in-season keepers are generally signed precisely because their future season performance is at least partially known. As a result, signing keepers in the auction is more a function of skill relative to signing keepers via in-season FA, and signing keepers via FA is more a function of diligence (scouring the FA lists). And for my money, I am more interested in rewarding skill than diligence. None of us are getting paid to do this, so giving teams a boost just because they can put in more hours than others (or happen to have the cap space to sign Dylan Bundy when he's waived) seems foolish.

In addition, the FA signing frenzy significantly (again, ~20% of keepers are FAs) cuts down on the player pool for the auction. That makes it even harder for teams to put together a full roster, as many flukishly adequate players who weren't deemed worthy of an auction bid the year before are nevertheless off the market this time around.

Finally, as others have noted, it impacts PT struggles at the end of the season significantly -- and like it or not, those do happen. And just telling people to "plan ahead" has never been an adequate solution in any league I have ever participated in (nor have penalties, frankly, as they tend to just increase the gap between the stronger and weaker teams). So many teams are now faced with the lousy choice of dumping keepable players of their own or dumping overpriced good players who might be excellent keepers for someone else. I don't see why that's good for the league.

So my preferred solution would be some combination of

1) Giving FAs a larger one-time salary bump if they are kept ($5 instead of $2 would probably be enough)
2) Having a cutoff for keepable FAs
3) Prohibiting keeping FAs who were waived after having an in-season salary >= $10 (whether as a keeper, auction signing, or previous in-season FA bid)

I would not support a higher initial salary for FAs, since I think it interferes with picking up marginal players for the current year too much.

ChrisC Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Mike Jeziorski Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > To repeat my position, I oppose changes to the
> > current rules regarding in-season free-agent
> > acquisitions. Somehow the idea persists that
> > teams get fat on such moves, despite no
> evidence
> > to support such a notion.
>
> The strongest evidence that in-season FA keepers
> actually matter is the energy you're putting into
> this discussion, frankly. If they had no real
> impact on your team or the league, why would you
> care so much?

Chris, in the discussions over the past couple of years regarding TRHL's free agent rules you've seen fit to call my motives into question at least three times. I have reached my limit. I've explained my position as clearly as I can--that in-season FA pickups serve more to keep owners motivated to make minor improvements than to stockpile troves of sharply underpriced talent--and done a good deal of research to offer factual evidence supporting it. Your repeated response is that I must be disingenuously protecting an edge for myself and a handful of other owners. Such a tactic is cheap, insulting, and unproductive. Make your arguments based on facts, not your sneering accusation of what I hope to accomplish.

I will address your other points once I have the time and temperament to do so.

There's enough PT to go around for every team every season with even a modicum of planning, or even without with just some minimal involvement in shuffling through otherwise worthless FA. PT issues are not a good reason to adjust the FA rules.

The effort required to maintain some kind of handle on the FA wire is also not really that exorbitant, so the idea that some teams have an advantage here is overblown. To the extent it's true, it's because they're exerting the minimal effort needed to stay on top of things. If we want to balance this aspect, someone can publish a rudimentary excel sheet that sucks in the data from BBREF and the season DB and makes all the FA and their current stats trivially sortable. For those reasons, I don't think the value aspects of the FA signing process really need to be addressed, either. I'd also add that I believe there is a substantial skill component to it as well, and it's not like these FA pickups never move after being signed, if I'm counting right 5 FA pickups from last season have already been traded this off-season.

Moreover, I actually find the process of hunting up FAs, finding bargains in the auction, planning a team budget, and figuring out ways to make trades work under the salary cap as interesting as the actual simulations. If we start handicapping the system in ways that greatly curtail those aspects, we'll end up turning this into something much more like a standard keeper league, and taking a great deal of the fun and challenge out of it.

Bill,

I don't think anyone wants to take that away. The issue is that the FA waiver process causes some unintended consequences in terms of fielding a competitive roster through the end of the season.

There is no reason to have valuable keepers (guys who went for double digit $ in the auction) get snagged on the waiver wire, when only a small number of owners have the ability to bid. But, as it currently stands, teams are forced to either let that happen, or field less competitive rosters in-season.

How about an alternative rule that says, if a player was bid in the auction, his keeper price is the higher of his auction or Waiver price? Combine that with a Sept. 1 cut-off for keepability, and I think you solve 90% of the problem while keeping 90% of the fun of the waiver wire.

I don't think the FA process is what's culpable for causing PT/valid roster problems, I think that's almost entirely a product of poor planning and (often understandable) owner disinterest.

To the extent it's worth addressing those underlying problems (I'm essentially ambivalent about whether it's really necessary), I'd again go back to the proposal I made above which would relieve every team of the need to cut anyone of value after Sep 1 in order to maintain a valid roster, and do so without substantially distorting the existing value of players or requiring/allowing some teams to effectively play by different rules than others.

"There is no reason to have valuable keepers (guys who went for double digit $ in the auction) get snagged on the waiver wire, when only a small number of owners have the ability to bid."

I'm sorry, but I don't understand why only a small number of owners have the ability to bid.

I can understand that teams might have their $400 already invested in other present and future value, but that's by choice.

I can understand that most owners do not have spreadsheets created to quickly gather online data and display current-season (i.e., next season in DMB world) data for the free agents. That's quite a disadvantage.

Solution - what if we created an online Google Drive spreadsheet that presents this data for all owners to use should they choose to do so? I'd suggest that I would write code that would present the data on the TRHL website, but that could be time consuming to write, and a Google Drive spreadsheet might be easier and also perhaps better.

"This would allow more roster flexibility when PT gets scarce, b/c you wouldn't have to worry about protecting guys you have no intention of keeping, but don't want someone else to grab. "

So, for example, someone who is over-priced for next season, thus you don't want to keep them, but if you cut them "now", in September, all 23 other owners can try to claim him at a reasonable price. So you'd rather wait to cut him until the off-season, thus also giving *you* a chance to claim him at a reasonable price?

For all the ideas presented thus far, and given I'd like a minimum amount of change to the current structure, the idea that free agents acquired in September cannot be retained seems like a reasonable idea to help with PT issues.

It doesn't necessarily considerably help the file drone save time, though. But I will post a new thread on some ideas I have.

One issue with many of these rule changing proposals is that they counter the rule we have in which all teams must have 25 players on their active roster at all times. The rule is in effect to keep teams somewhat competitive and not a laughing stock, thus not damaging the "integrity" of the season, especially in the latter months. Otherwise, too many teams not in a position to advance would abandon the current season altogether and stock pile future players at the expense of active roster players.

We all abide by the same rules. 40 players, $400. Players are available via auction and via free agency. Get 'em while you can. If you're team is out of the running, the rules encourage/enforce you to stay somewhat competitive, but you can still find a few maneuvers to help you prepare for the future seasons.

My "issue" would be that a few of us (including me) go nuts with the small sample size players and churn our roster with these sort. Not that I officially propose this, but I would be curious to see what would happen if we increase our minimum active roster size eligibility to be 100 PA and 25 IP. I suspect then in the auction, given teams are going after quality *and/or* quantity, that several marginal players who rarely get to play in the TRHL are in fact claimed and used. More PA and BFP are likely claimed by the end of the auction, and perhaps this is a decrease in PT issues throughout the season.

It also might minimize the number of in-season free agency claims that some owners are concerned about, as owners are less likely to go after small-sample-size, flash-in-the-pan performances that would help them in the future season.

I think that could actually make things worse, most likely at C, where it's not uncommon to need to pick up a handful of useless PAs (Stephen Vogt for me last season, for example).

At a quick glance, the only hitters that's likely to effect from the current FA pool are guys like Snyder, Valaika, or Medica, most of the other useful small sample size guys actually have at least some prospect sheen. The small sample size pitchers aren't a lot different.

Edited to point out that this is a response to the last post by Greg, not the one directly above it.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/06/2014 08:51PM by Bill Liming.

"I think that could actually make things worse, most likely at C, where it's not uncommon to need to pick up a handful of useless PAs (Stephen Vogt for me last season, for example). "

Yes, catcher's a different animal, but, otherwise, it *might* be counter-intuitive that it would help. But most likely not, which is why I didn't officially propose it. Thinking out loud, really.

Mike, you're the one who stated that there is "no evidence" that FA keepers have a significant impact on the league (despite multiple owners who clearly feel otherwise). I did not intend a personal attack in pointing out that your vehement defense of FA keepers and your insistence that they are not important appear to be inconsistent with each other.

If you take it to be one, I apologize.

Here are my questions for the league:

1) How important are FA keepers in determining team success, as compared to auction signings and trading? Much more important, somewhat more important, about as important, somewhat less important, or much less important?

2) How important *should* FA keepers be?

I think FA keepers are slightly less important than the other aspects, but not much. I would prefer that they were much less important, useful primarily for filling in a hole or two rather than building an entire bullpen and grabbing some prospects to boot.

I have tried to explain why I prefer this above.

What do other owners feel?

"What do other owners feel?"

I feel this came about at the end of last season because the file drone (i.e., me) was spending an hour or more with the droning, with most of the time being spent on fixing "abandoned" teams or teams with PT issues.

A big time sink was deciding which free agents to add and then also which players to cut. I then had to process these on the website and within the league file, plus note them in my update e-mail.

So the topic has drifted, now focusing on fair or not fair with free agent signings during the season, when I'd rather keep the rules as they are but minimize the file drone time.

To that end, I can do the following:

1. If a team continues to not submit their home results without contact (e.g., "I'm on vacation for two weeks!", then I can declare the team temporarily "abandoned" and adjust their MP as needed to deal with any future PT issues. I will save their original saved lineups in saved lineups #5 and #6 spots, and then plan a long-term view of their PT as needed, especially with regard to platoon vs. LHP, as too many players are automatically farmed after surpassing 150% vs. LHP when they have considerable more PA remaining vs. RHP.

2. Come August, I will ask teams, if they so choose, to submit to me a list of players in preferred order of being cut, should I need to cut players during droning to honor the at-all-times, 25-man active roster rule. If you don't submit a list, you can't bitch later.

3. E-mail owners as needed to ask them to fix their bloody team so I don't have to!

Somewhere between somewhat less and as important, which I think is appropriate.

Though I'm not opposed to the above, I really think it would be easier to just allow the commish to sign actual scrubs in Sep without having to cut anyone, and we can just let everyone do it including the active owners so there's not any real advantage to be gained by doing so.

Heck, we could even allow active owners who keep their roster at 40 or less to keep the guys they're signing if we want (maybe an accounting headache, though).

This is my latest attempt to clarify the question of how free agents acquired in-season may add value to rosters and whether they confer a notable advantage to teams that are more aggressive in scouting FAs, using data from the 2012 season played last year. Note that my data are not exactly correct because they were updated constantly during the 2012 season, so players who were dropped will not be accurately tallied. With that caveat in mind...

1. How many free agents are kept?

Going into the 2012 auction, 438 players were kept that I have records for. (This number is lower than the 483 figure I gave in the other thread for the reasons given.) I started playing in the TRHL before the 2007 season. 34 players kept in 2012 had been acquired prior to 2007; I don't have auction or FA breakdowns for them. Here's how the other players had been acquired:

auction/free agent
2007 - 19/5
2008 - 21/8
2009 - 43/8
2010 - 76/16
2011 - 164/44

Roughly 18% of all kept players were acquired as free agents.

2. What value do free agents provide?

The table above shows that a few free agents turned into players worth keeping for several seasons. 21 players picked up as FAs in 2009 or before were still valuable enough to hold for 2012, compared to 83 players bought at auction. Using WAR as a flawed but quick measure of player value, five of those 21 players had WAR of over 3.0 for 2012: Zobrist, Prado, Pagan, AJ Ellis, and Dickey. That handful represents the golden nuggets of free agent scouting.

Focusing on the players bought at auction in 2011 or grabbed as FAs during the season who were kept going into 2012, here's how they broke down by WAR:

auction/free agent
>7 - 1/0
6-7 - 3/0
5-6 - 3/0
4-5 - 6/0
3-4 - 12/1
2-3 - 17/5
1-2 - 39/13
0-1 - 59/18
<0 - 24/7

3. What is the disparity in salary between players bought at auction and taken as FAs?

The average salary of a player bought at auction in 2011 who was kept for the 2012 season was about $10, although that is derived from a skewed distribution with some much larger salaries and a great many smaller salaries. The average salary for kept FAs was a shade over the minimum $3.

4. How many teams picked up free agents that they kept?

Twelve of the 24 teams in TRHL kept at least one free agent. The six free agents tabulated above with WARs between 2 and 4 were kept by six different teams.

5. Did any team gain a significant advantage in 2012 by aggressive FA scouting in 2011?

This question is easier to debate than resolve. Forsyth, the eventual champion, held five free agents over from 2011. However, four were hitters averaging 210 PAs and the fifth was a 40-inning pitcher. My team, which energetically scouted FAs throughout a lackluster 2011 season and picked up the best one in Fernando Rodney, finished under .500 in 2012.

A confounding factor needs to be recognized in answering this question. In general, free agents are snapped up by active owners, and active owners tend to be good owners. Over the years the teams that have been most aggressive in claiming free agents, like Corpus Christi, Halifax, and Munchen, have fielded great teams, but their success is reflected in all aspects--wise auction buys, clever trades, shrewd roster management.

In scanning the 24 teams, I can't find an example of any that has had a predominant contribution from free agents. The profile of a typical free agent, as illustrated in the tables above, is a dirt-cheap player who fills a small role--backup catcher, utility infielder, middle reliever. These guys are useful and certainly a benefit to a team looking to deal before the auction or reduce needs during the auction. On occasion they are worth keeping beyond one year, and a select few become stars. However, RA Dickey doesn't represent the typical free agent pickup any more than Mike Trout does the typical young player bought at auction. The overwhelming majority of FAs are either thrown back or kept to provide a small gain. Given the constant problem in the TRHL of midseason owner apathy, I would hate to see a minor but motivating way to improve a foundering roster become constrained.

Thanks, Mike!

I'd be curious to know if more owners would be active in the free agent market if they could "easily" see those players' next-season (current season in real life) stats. I will admit that's often a road block for me, as I didn't bother the past couple of seasons to create the appropriate data-grabbing worksheet.

Would the active free-agent-market owners be annoyed if a league-wide worksheet were to be made available for all?

Let's now look at the upcoming 2013 season with respect to free agents.

1. How many free agents from 2012 are on TRHL rosters?

There are 65 hitters and 101 pitchers currently owned that were taken as FAs during last season. I would guess that roughly 30-40% will be kept.

2. How good are the best FAs taken last year?

Again using WAR as a Q&D measure, the best hitter by far is Juan Uribe of the Chinook with 4.1 WAR. Two other position players, David Lough of Edmonton and Nick Punto of Forsyth via Halifax, earned between 2 and 3 WAR, although Punto would cost $6, not $3. Six hitters have WARs between 1 and 2.

Pitchers are a little more difficult to evaluate, and I would have preferred to separate them from hitters in my previous post. Pitchers in TRHL are valued for their splits or reverse splits and their number of innings. The best pitcher picked up last year was Tyson Ross of Forsyth with 125 innings of 3.17 ERA. The next best starter might be Todd Redmond of Corpus Christi, who threw only 77 innings, or maybe Tom Koehler with twice as many innings of lesser quality.

The large majority of pitchers who were picked up as FAs and will be kept are short relievers. I would guess that middle relievers make up roughly half of all FAs who are kept. There are a great many of them and it's relatively easy to place bets on 8-10 during the year to find a few who offer 50 innings of 3.00 ERA for $3.

3. Are all FAs at the minimum $3?

Not this year. Most are, but due to heightened attention toward free agents, the most attractive get bid up to higher prices. Of the 101 pitchers taken as FAs, 16 would be over $3 this coming season and six (Feliz, Matsuzaka, Duffy, Bundy, Erasmo, Petit) would be priced between $10-19. Thirteen hitters are over $3 and four (Markakis, Hairston, Barney, Olt) are $10 or more. Most of the priciest players, of course, were name players caught in a roster crunch who were tossed back into the pool, where several vigilant owners were ready to bid for them. You might almost call it an auction.

4. Have you fattened up on FAs for 2013?

Who, me? As one of the brigade of owners who sifts through free agents all season long, I have ten on my roster who were picked up last season. I will keep between 4-6 of them. The best are middle relievers Latroy Hawkins and Chad Qualls. I also took Trevor Bauer, a dimmed prospect but a good flyer at $3. If he turns it around and becomes a minor star in a couple of years, you can write the legend of how I put one over on the league.

I also have a few players who were acquired as FAs in previous seasons and have maintained value--Estrada, Lobaton, Rodney. My best players were obtained either in the auction through the years (Iwakuma, Utley, Heyward, Fowler, Kendrys, Nolasco, Altuve) or in trades (Belt, Alvarez, hopefully Beachy).

5. OK, Mike. What's your angle? If free agents aren't a sneaky way for you to gain lots of ground on other owners, why are you defending the current rules so rabidly?

I've played some variant of fantasy baseball since the late 80s. I've played in online leagues, money leagues, historical leagues, and modern-day sim leagues like TRHL. I've been commissioner of a few. Now I'm down to three--a long-standing rotisserie league with a sizable pot, a historical league currently in 1943, and TRHL. I've been in each for between 5-9 years and hope to continue in them.

In my experience, the single biggest problem with any fantasy league is the midseason apathy that strikes owners who have nothing to play for. In the absence of money, the best motivator is next year, which is why all my leagues carry players over from year to year. TRHL has a clever structure that prevents the wild swings between success and awfulness often required to compete in other leagues. Its rigid salary cap inhibits big dump trades, so in-season trading is not as important as in other leagues. If an owner has a .450 team after two months and can make only minor trades for next year, what keeps him from checking out?

I've been in that position more often than I'd like. I haven't had good teams in recent years, but I'm a good owner and want to play. Free agents are a way to stay in the game and sort through the heaps of ignored players to try to find a gem, or more likely a few scraps of metal that can be turned into something useful.

Furthermore, owner apathy in this league turns into a ton of hassle for Greg, who is the guy left to prop up the league. I still fail to understand why in-season FA activity is considered a minus by some owners rather than a reflection of strong, active participation. If you don't want to play that way, fine. You won't be losing some tremendous edge.

To answer Greg's question, I would not object strongly to a league-wide summary of current stats for free agents. I think the argument "I don't have time for that" is a weak one--the auction turns out to be a much greater time suck than FA scouting--but don't have a big problem with any measure that is equitable for all owners.

Also, after further thought, I offer more enthusiastic support for a Sept. 1 deadline for FAs that can be kept for the following year.

FWIW, I've always done this by hand before (going back to my first stint in the league), but will probably start exporting BBREF and DB data to do it now, since it's not that hard, I had just never gotten around to it before.

Covering a few points at once:

I already have a script to suck FanGraphs (easier to crawl) data into my DB which keys players by DMB ID (part of a much larger DMB web project that will hopefully get off the ground this spring). Spitting out stats for current TRHL FAs is trivial.

Mike, one point missing from your analysis is that FAs do not always wind up being kept by the team that signed them. In fact, arguably the biggest winner of the 2011 FA crop was my Marauders, since IIRC I flipped two FAs (Darren O'Day and Troy Patton) for half of my playoff rotation (Javier Vasquez and Daniel Hudson) in deadline deals (with a third playoff starter, Guillermo Moscoso, a FA signed in 2010). In other words, you may be misstating the distribution of FAs by looking at the teams who kept FAs rather than the teams who signed keepable FAs.

What I really find interesting here is that you and I and Bill disagree not only on how important FAs should be but on how important they actually are. You think they are of limited importance (teams "won't be losing some tremendous edge" if they don't participate in the FA market), while Bill and I both think they are of significant value, close to if not equal to the auction and trading in importance.

I have to grok your data a bit more, but I am not sure it quite gets to the real question in my mind, which is not how many keepers or how much WAR but how much net "profit" teams got from FA. If my math is right, in 2012 teams retained ~45 WAR worth of FA value for ~$132 and ~243 WAR worth of auction keeper value for ~$1640. It appears at first glance that FAs are a better investment (~3 $/WAR for FA keepers v ~7 $/WAR for auction keepers), but frankly WAR is a very iffy value measure here (in addition to the points you made, our replacement level should be higher than MLB's since we have fewer teams) so I'm not sure that's true... or how we would figure it out with the data we have.

However, we are actually in complete agreement that keeping owners active throughout the season is a good thing. Where we differ there is how to do that. Your perspective is that the FA market leads to greater engagement because it gives owners something to do throughout the season. My perspective is that the FA market tends to lead to less competitive balance (because, as you point out, the strong teams are also the ones who best leverage the FA market) and thus more apathy because more teams are out of the running earlier.

Anyhow, thanks for sharing the data.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/10/2014 12:31AM by ChrisC.

I suspect this discussion interests about six owners while the rest roll their eyes. Anyway...

Rather than spend more time trying to answer questions, I'm going to pose two questions to the owners who feel that free agent acquisitions play a significant part in the success of teams that pursue them aggressively.

1. Can you name one specific example? I stated that roughly 18% of keepers were acquired as free agents, so what would be a disproportionate fraction of value? 30%? Define it however you like--overall value (very unlikely) or profit on investment (more likely). There are 24 teams and the free agent rules have been debated for several seasons. Please offer a single example of any team in any season for which free agents approach drafted players in importance, as has been claimed.

As a vocal advocate for maintaining the current FA system, as well as the owner of a team finishing under .500 three straight years, I would seem to be one of the best candidates to manage such a team built on free agents. I may keep up to a half-dozen this year to join some holdover FAs from past seasons. Here's my best guess as to the dollar profit provided by each free agent on my team:

player, year obtained, salary, WAG of 2013 auction price
Marco Estrada, 2010, 7, 20
Jose Lobaton, 2011, 5, 11
Fernando Rodney, 2011, 5, 8
Jerome Williams, 2011, 5, 6
Steve Delabar, 2011, 5, 6
LaTroy Hawkins, 2012, 3, 8
Chad Qualls, 2012, 3, 8
Dan Jennings, 2012, 3, 5
Trevor Bauer, 2012, 3, 5

These are the best values I've bought at auction that are currently on my roster:

Hisashi Iwakuma, 2012, 14, 50
Ricky Nolasco, 2007, 13, 30
Hanley Ramirez, 2006, 27, 40
Kendrys Morales, 2008, 13, 25
Justin Smoak, 2012, 3, 15
Chase Utley, 2012, 35, 40
Jose Altuve, 2011, 18, 22
Jacob Turner, 2012, 13, 16

These are the players acquired in trades:

Pedro Alvarez, 2012, 12, 30
Brandon Belt, 2011, 23, 35
Brandon Beachy, 2010, 10, 12
Alexi Amarista, 2011, 5, 6
Jason Vargas, 2011, 9, 9

Summarizing:
$39 cost and $38 profit for 9 roster slots for free agents (~$4 profit/slot)
$136 cost and $102 profit for 8 roster slots for players bought at auction (~$13 profit/slot)
$59 cost and $33 profit for 5 roster slots for players acquired in trades (~$6 profit/slot)

About 22% of my profit comes from free agents, and at a markedly higher opportunity cost in filled roster slots. 59% of the profit was found in the auction and the remaining 19% in trades. The total profit offered by the nine listed free agents picked up over the past three seasons is roughly equivalent to that provided by a single drafted pitcher, Iwakuma.

2. Could someone please explain to me how the free agent acquisition rules are less fair than the auction? Or how scouting free agents requires more time than the auction? I have yet to hear any reasoning other than "Some owners don't have time for that." This is the league in which owners spend a month of evenings making last-second sniping bids, right? Free agent scouting takes about ten minutes per week.

Last year was my first season. Somewhere along the line I realized that if I didn't start acquiring free agents I would have no chance, despite being gifted Mike Trout.

So I started signing (and releasing) free agents obsessively. The result is that I am likely to keep all of the following players:

Tim Federowics
Stephen Vogt
Anthony Recker
Chris Herrmann
Jayson Nix
Don Kelly
Ryan Sweeney
David Lough
Jake Arrieta
Russ Ohlendorf
Chris Rusin
Jerry Blevins (acquired for Chad Allen)
Dane de la Rosa
Juan Perez
AJ Ross
Tanner Scheppers

That's 16 players, all of whom would go for their current price or more in the auction. And it would have been more but things got crazy at the end and the free agent market became inflated. I don't see how anyone could argue that free agent salaries are undervalued in comparison to the auction. Moreover, the relationship is reciprocal since the money I save scouring for free agents leaves me with more money to spend on the auction. Mike is right that if everyone did this it would balance out. However, everyone doesn't do this. BTW this doesn't take a fancy script, all it takes is to read the boxscores every day and a memory.

The question is whether this is a good thing or not. I'm sympathetic to both arguments. On the one hand, I agree with Mike that it kept me interested and involved in the league. So that's a good thing. However, on the other hand, I agree with Chris that it shifts value from the auction to free agents and this isn't really a good thing. There is no skill in signing a guy towards the end of the season. All it takes is roster and cap space and diligence.

In my mind, increasing the minimum salary increase to $5 is a good compromise. It isn't large enough to stop me from looking for free agents since many of these guys would be keepable at $6. On the other hand, it shifts the focus back on the auction, restoring some balance.

I've read all the posts, though not just now.

My take is that I initially should pursue two rule changing ideas in addition to my plan of action to help teams with PT issues while I'm file droning.

1. Explore idea that all free agents signed after August 31st (or starting September 1st) cannot be retained for the next season.

2. Raise the minimum salary increase from $2 to a higher value (a few have suggested $5). If $5, this would affect all players with salaries of $27 or less.

Am I missing any others? It appears there wasn't much traction with the ideas to change the salary cap in the middle of the season, or give teams one "blank check", or go with 50 player roster size and $410 cap at some point. Can still explore this, though, if there is additional support.

At the end of the season I proposed changing the playoff format to mirror MLB. Three divisions per league, divisional champions and 2 wildcard teams make the playoffs, wildcard game, etc. Only Bill commented on it so I suppose there probably isn't much support but I thought I would mention it again.

I think this has worked brilliantly for MLB. It keeps more teams in the race longer which increases interest at the bottom while at the same time reinvigorating the divisional races because winning the divisions matters again. So it makes things more exciting at both the top and the bottom of the league.

Gaelan,

Did you only propose it via the message board? Perhaps I can e-mail your post to all so they can directly see it.

Instead of three divisions of four, what about two divisions of six with the division winners automatically advancing to the LDS while four Wild Card teams battle in Game 163 to determine who advances?

Given DMB version 10a -- we cannot declare any one-game playoffs to be LDS, or whatever, as it will screw with the PT percentages listed on player cards for that series.

One issue I have though is how would we deal with playing time for that play-in game. I'd dislike small-sample-size guys being able to play the entire game, or a 15 IP SP being used.

And I likely would support FOUR Wild Card teams with a one-game play-in to see who battles the division winners in the LDS. I like division winners having a considerable advantage.

I also like having more teams competing into August and September ... more teams still interested, updating their MPs, and not 100% rebuilding for the future.

Though last year a sub .500 team in the NL would have advanced to the Wild Card round.

We also might have HTH NetPlay issues with more owners involved. I'd hate for the LDS to be delayed a week or two while we wait for the one-game series to be played. Perhaps we can state that those games have to be played within one week of the final regular season sim, and if not, they will be centrally simmed.

This is, of course, given the league even votes on this idea.

AND ... we are likely voting for this to start NEXT off-season, as we're only a week away from the re-sign deadline. But I don't mind slow changes in the TRHL. I feel the current structure if not *broken* so we don't need to rush to change any thing.

I'm fine with any of those modifications. This format is different than MLB and so it makes sense to accomodate the format. All those ideas accomplish the basic idea which is to shift focus to the season in progress. Winning the division matters, which I think is important, and having a reason to win games without a dominant team, which I also think is important.

I also agree that there is no need to rush changes. There is nothing broken about the structure. Indeed, this is the best league I've ever been in.

I think the idea of a place (on or off site, either is fine, we can link from here) showing current-season stats for all free agents in the game (perhaps current-season and last-10-games stats, all of which we can take from Dougstats for example) would be great.

We're talking here as if in-season pickups bad, auction pickups good. One reflects lucky stats watching, the other rewards shrewd baseball knowledge. Well that isn't true at all and the auction itself has its own problems and it rewards those who are able to react every night just before the hammer goes down. It isn't exactly baseball wisdom, it's the obsessive ability to pay attention to the right things at the right time every night while the auction is on. If you're busy or asleep, you can't compete at the same level. In-season pickups are the same thing except you do it twice a week in your own time instead of every night at Hammer-time minus 15 minutes.

If the auction becomes even more important, last-minute sniping will get a bigger payoff, Im in the UK and it's 2am or 3am when the hammer goes down. It puts me at a huge disadvantage when I'm competing for popular players - the high-profile prospects or the guys with good stats for the year we're about to replay. Im not whingeing about it, it's the way it is and I have had to develop a strategy to cope. It's generally worked. Part of that has been paying attention in-season and it is no more obsessive or luck-based and no less desirable than auction-sniping.

What I am saying is, if we want to overhaul what is generally agreed to be a great league that functions well on the whole, we need to be holistic in the changes we make. If we tinker with one part and not another, it will skew the league in a direction that we don't necessarily want to take.

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I'm against increasing the luck of making the postseason. You play 162 games to determine the best teams, then you want a playoff over one game? In a sport where the worst team may win 40% of the time and the best team lose 40% of the time? Seems crazy to me.

I'd be OK with expanding the post-season, but not with 1 game playoffs, which are an abomination in baseball (not to mention the PT rules are easier with a 7 game series in our setup).

If we could have a rolling deadline on bidding on a per-player basis, I'd be OK with that as well, to help alleviate the sniping problem. That's said as an inveterate sniper. I'd argue that part of the sniping problem is that it's sometimes the only way to maximize the leverage you have at keeping players you're interested in going in the auction (thanks, in part, to the number of teams bidding at the last minute).