Not to beat a dead horse but the playoff races in the AL are over and it is only mid-June. If we adopted the MLB divisional setup and playoff rules at least two of those teams would be set up for a great pennant race and the other teams would have the low hanging fruit of the final wildcard spot to keep them invested.

Meanwhile in the NL there is a good race for the final spot going on. But even here it is four teams chasing three spots and what order they come in hardly matters. In a divisional setup you'd likely have two great pennant races.

I know there are logistical issues to consider (though I think the new version of dmd will allow for this setup) but I really think we should revisit this idea. It would keep more teams invested much longer from top to bottom.

Given that divisional play is itself an abomination, as is the DH, and the current 1-game MLB playoff system is orders of magnitude worse, I'm not sure I can get on board with this idea. /tongue somewhat in cheek

What's the concrete proposal anyway? 3 4-team divisions with two wild cards in a play-in? That actually seems like it basically means a lose-lose for the two current teams that end up in a division together with all the benefit accruing to whoever the current 5th place is in the current AL, and a way to shoehorn in the 5th solid team in the NL at the cost of a division loser in the current NL.

Also, I think 4 team divisions probably leads to more competitive imbalance with regards to scheduling unless you can equalize the number of games played or want to re-align divisions routinely.

I think you'd be better off with an NBA style seeding system, maybe with one division per league, if the goal is to just expand the playoffs. Might want to explore expanding the schedule to 168 or cutting it to 154 games to balance the schedules in that event as well. With 6 teams in the post-season, you'd have a pretty epic battle for 6th in the current NL, and another for 2nd (and a bye). In the AL you'd have a 4-way scrum for the byes and at least as much competition for spots 5 and 6. Not that I'm a fan of half the teams in real-life making the post-season, but I feel like that's a better solution for a league like ours.

I don't want to expand the number of teams that make the playoffs, I want to expand the interest in the regular season for all teams. What I'm really after is making winning the division an important goal.

So my proposal doesn't really expand the number of teams that make the playoffs. It is still four per league with the wildcard game a play-in game. It does, however, expand the interest in the regular season from top to bottom. At the top it makes winning the division matter because that's how you avoid the play-in game. And at the bottom, the fifth spot is achievable for much longer.

I'm not concerned with the fairness of the divisions. The goal isn't fairness, the goal is fun. Being in a competitive division only makes it more fun. If you want to avoid the play-in game, win your division.

I like Gaelan's plan. We should try to maximize fun for the most possible owners.

I don't understand how you get a play-in game with 4 teams, you need a 5th team for that. And having split into 3 divisions to get 3 division winners, you're adding that 5th team at the cost of having one team that would previously get into a regular playoff consigned to playing a sudden death game. That's a huge drawback to the real-life system, made worse by the greater potential for disparity in our league.

If you're adding a playoff round anyway, expanding to two division winners with byes, and 4 wild-cards gets you both the drama of division races and a much higher likelihood of competition to the wire for the final wild card spot or two. Given our setup, that's a much more viable proposition that also addresses some of the complaints that often come up with regards to owner disinterest.

The play-in game is between teams four and five. I'm not trying to add a round of the playoffs or the number of playoff teams. I'm trying to make the divisional races exciting while at the same time providing an incentive for teams around .500 to maintain interest. It is the best of both worlds because it increases the drama of the season without diluting the playoffs with extra teams.

I don't see hurting the fourth place team as a problem. That's a feature in my mind because it comes with rewarding the divisional winners. It's a zero sum game. You can't make winning the division meaningful without there being a cost somewhere.

I preferred top-six teams in the playoffs with byes for the division winners, but I can't say I particularly mind our current system.

That said, I think the proposal *is* better from a competitiveness standpoint than top-four (MLB have, to my surprise, done something I like). However, because it means using three four-team divisions, there I draw the line. Our six-team divisions make for wonderfully neat and symmetrical scheduling (18 against divisional opponents, 12 against non-division). I'd rather keep that.

How do people here feel about inter-league play?

If you have each division play one 3-game series against one division from the other league, you get a very nice breakdown with 3 4-team divisions.

18 games ea. vs. 3 division rivals, 12 games ea. vs. 8 league rivals, and 3 games ea. vs. 4 interleague rivals =162.

The negative to Gaelan's idea is I loathe small divisions -- there's an increased chance one division will have four week teams and one of them has to win the division.

The negative to Craig's idea is that DMB v10a does not easily support two LDS. It's a headache for the file drones and the owners in the 2nd LDS who have to track playing time.

We could combine these two as a compromise -- A single 12-team division in each league. The top two teams in each division receive passes directly into the lone LDS. Teams #3-#6 play the one game "sudden death" to see who advances to the LDS. Playing times rules could be tricky. Do you count it as a regular season game? Give every player an extra 1% of PT from the regular season? Don't even worry about PT?

An alternative, perhaps, could be providing financial incentive for teams to keep trying to win throughout the season, even if it evident they are not going to make the post-season in our current format. I have not created a reasonable idea, though.

We had that in the past, Arthur, before we successfully voted to do away with four-team divisions and interleague play.

Though a majority of the current group of owners might want those two ideas.

I think it's generally a better idea to have each team play every other team the same number of times both home and road for a league setup like we have. I don't hate the 12 team divisionsetup we have now though (I grew up on 70s NL), I'd just be opposed to anything that imbalanced the schedule more. Aesthetically, I prefer not to have interleague play, but I'm agnostic if schedule is balanced. Along those lines, I think we should probably have a unified DH rule (the same for both leagues, or not at all), and that's more important with an inter-league schedule, but I'm not super attached to that position.

With regards to adding a 5th post-season team, it was a terrible idea in real life because 1-game playoffs are inherently a bad idea in baseball. It's an even worse idea here because significantly lessening the value of the 4th playoff spot to marginally increase the value of coming in 5th is a much bigger problem in a league where competitive balance issues cause bigger problems (team abandonment/disinterest).

Also, how are we going to split into 4 divisions from here without starting a fight over which current teams have to be the ones to end up with an actual rival in their division at the beginning.

I hadn't given any real thought to post-season expansion before the OP here, but I really do think given our setup and the desire to keep owner interest high that expanding to 6 teams per league is a better way to go. Probably enough so that I'd actually prefer it to the status quo.

I guess everything old is new again at some point :-)

Greg Tamer Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
>
> We could combine these two as a compromise -- A
> single 12-team division in each league. The top
> two teams in each division receive passes directly
> into the lone LDS. Teams #3-#6 play the one game
> "sudden death" to see who advances to the LDS.
> Playing times rules could be tricky. Do you count
> it as a regular season game? Give every player an
> extra 1% of PT from the regular season? Don't even
> worry about PT?
>

I'm adamantly opposed to the idea of 1-game playoffs of any kind. I'd actually prefer 7-games throughout if given a choice (and that has the advantage of not needing new PT rules), but in a 6-team setup with byes the wildcard round needs to be at least 3 games. How to set that up logistically within the current (or future) version of DMB, I don't know.

I like one-game playoffs. Gives the mediocre teams a chance at the playoffs, but substantially handicaps them vs. the really good teams.

Either a 3 division set-up, or a single 12 team division where #4 and #5 have a play-in game would work.

For what it is worth I also like the balance of the current schedule. I like the current system as well. I'd just like to find a way to make winning the regular season meaningful. For instance though I'm currently in first place in my division I find myself paying more attention to the fifth place team in the league. They are the only team I have to beat. I find that odd.

So from my point of view increasing the interest for teams #5 and #6 is a nice plus, but the real benefit is increasing the interest for teams #1,2, and 3. If the fourth place team doesn't really make the playoffs because they lost the play-in game well, they should have won their division.

That said, I agree with Greg that four team divisions are not ideal so I also like Craig's view. Winning the division still matters which is the thing I care about the most. For myself, I'm not concerned with playing time issues in a one game playoff.

arthur gandolfi Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I like one-game playoffs. Gives the mediocre
> teams a chance at the playoffs, but substantially
> handicaps them vs. the really good teams.
>
> Either a 3 division set-up, or a single 12 team
> division where #4 and #5 have a play-in game would
> work.


A one-game playoff does not handicap the 5th place team in a meaningful way vs the 4th place team, allows for a single dominant pitcher to have an out-sized impact, and in our current NL it would effectively be a crapshoot between two broadly equal teams.

7-game playoffs aren't long enough to pick the "best" team consistently, 1-game playoffs might as well be a coin-flip. This is just math.

I should also add that you will need really restrictive PT rules to make a 1 game playoff work equitably, unless you're OK with every part-time player on a roster playing a full game. I (and I assume other owners) would absolutely make adjustments to build a team capable of dominating a singe-game if necessary. I mean, I already consider post-season PT limits in the context of my current team-building decisions.

Bill Liming Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> arthur gandolfi Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > I like one-game playoffs. Gives the mediocre
> > teams a chance at the playoffs, but
> substantially
> > handicaps them vs. the really good teams.
> >
> > Either a 3 division set-up, or a single 12 team
> > division where #4 and #5 have a play-in game
> would
> > work.
>
>
> A one-game playoff does not handicap the 5th place
> team in a meaningful way vs the 4th place team,
> allows for a single dominant pitcher to have an
> out-sized impact, and in our current NL it would
> effectively be a crapshoot between two broadly
> equal teams.
>
> 7-game playoffs aren't long enough to pick the
> "best" team consistently, 1-game playoffs might as
> well be a coin-flip. This is just math.


What's wrong with a crapshoot between two broadly equal teams. It's no more or less fair than one team getting in at 92-70 and one going home at 91-71.

"7-game playoffs aren't long enough to pick the "best" team consistently, 1-game playoffs might as well be a coin-flip. This is just math."

I agree, Bill, BUT ... I believe the objective here is to increase interest and participation (i.e., submitting results, adding/dropping, trading) during the regular season with likely a cost of degrading the post-season's integrity.

And perhaps the argument is, "Oh, boo-hoo, you're a 4th-place team that lost a one-game playoff to the 5th-place team. Get over it. You didn't win your division any way!"

So your argument, Bill, regarding picking the "best" team consistently could be thrown back at you. The regular season is better than a 7-game playoff. And the division winners survived a 162-game schedule to finish first i their division. They are likely the better team (close division races excepted). So why should 2nd place teams be given a chance to win the World Series in an inferior format (7-game series vs. regular season)?

Thus the given proposal handicaps the 2nd place teams.

I'm not saying I would vote for the current proposal. But I do see its merit.

Heh ... we could be more stingy with post-season teams but still reward 1st place finishers.

12-team leagues. 2nd and 3rd place play in LDS, face off against 1st place team in LCS.

Could also copy fantasy football and have a consolation post-season for 4th through 6th place teams.

Could also add financial incentives. Ideas:

1. If you finish in top half of league, 6th place or higher, can pick ONE player whose salary will not increase for the next season.
2. # of your wins (capped at, say, 90) divided by 10, rounded down, is how much you can reduce a player's salary by. For example, if team has 82 wins, can reduce a non-LTC player's salary by $8.
3. Can provide incentive to only non-post-season teams. If going with the idea above, that would be 4th through 12th place teams. Let's label incentives as the following:

A - Pick one player whose salary will not increase.
B - Can reduce a player's salary by $10, salary must be higher than, say, $30.
C - Can reduce a player's salary by $5, salary must be higher than, say, $20.
D - Can cut a LTC player without a penalty
E - Has $X to play with to decrease salaries. Can distribute it across as many players as desired.

So then 4th place teams receive, say, all five, A-E. 5th, A-D, 6th place A-C, 7th and 8th, A-B,, 9th and 10th, just A, and 11th and 12th - Nothing!

I'm not proposing this specifically, but presenting the case that a financial incentive can exist to motivate teams during the regular season while keeping the "integrity" of the post-season.

A 92-70 team beating out a 91-71 team in the regular season isn't a crapshoot, it's a narrow victory measured over 162 games. A 91-71 team, or worse an 81-81 team which is where our current AL is headed, beating out a 92-70 team in a one game playoff because that 5th place team has a single stud SP or a bench of 90 PA studs that can start 1 game isn't helpful.

In a 6 team per league post-season, the worst team in our current AL would be 7 games out of the playoff hunt right now (while the 5th place team now is 9 games back), and there would 4 teams within 1 game of 6th. In the NL, the farthest team back would be 9 games out, and 3 teams would be within 1 game of 6th. If you really want to increase incentives to participate, I think leaving almost everyone within shooting distance for as long as possible is a better way to do it.

To answer the why 2nd place teams should have a shot question, because keeping interest in the league higher is worth the tradeoff of a lesser team winning it all due to a playoff system of some kind. Otherwise, we could play in a 24 team league with no divisions and whoever won the most games would be the winner. There's a difference between allowing an element of chance in a 7-game series (or an element of post-season roster construction decisions), vs rolling the dice with a 1-game playoff. I don't really think the 8-team system we have now is bad, but given our setup I think the 12-team suggestion is better, and the 10-team suggestion is actually worse.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/30/2014 11:44AM by Bill Liming.

We should separate the discussion in principle from the discussion of logistics; the discussion of what we want from the discussion of how to achieve it (and what unintended consequences there might be),

What animated this from my perspective was the idea that I would like it to be both more difficult and easier to make the playoffs.

The reason is simple. The bulk of our time is the regular season. It should be important. If I have a very good team, I want to have a higher bar if success than beating the fifth best team. This is where winning the division comes in.

If I have an average team, I want to do something other than play out the string. This is where the fifth, or perhaps, sixth team.

What I don't really care about is fairness. If a system is "unfair" to the team that ends up in fourth place I don't really care so long as it was competitive and the rules were followed.

If we don't get agreement on these things no system can be designed that will work.

My objection to changing to 3 divisions is that you are effectively penalizing one or two current teams (by putting them into a division with a division rival stronger than the other division favorites will have) in order to add a wild card team that may or may not be as good as the existing 4th place team. On top of that, you're reducing the chances of the 4th place team advancing on top of that to the benefit of the 5th place team.

It's not an issue of fairness, it's an issue of what makes sense to achieve your goal of keeping teams interested in making the playoffs. 2 division winners and 4 wild cards gives everyone incentive to win their division. It also gives more teams a realistic shot of making the post-season. The division winners have a better chance of winning the WS because they only have to win two series to get there instead of the three everyone else has to. It's both broadly easier to make the post-season and generally more difficult to win the WS.

An additional wild card with a 1-game play-in doesn't really change the odds of making the world series, it just splits the 4th place teams chances between the 4th place team and the 5th place team. In our current NL it won't really change the competition for the WC spot much. In the AL, it markedly reduces the chances of the unluckiest of the 4 roughly equal teams and distributes that chance among a handful of .500ish teams

In the KDBL, which consists of 14 teams currently playing the 1954 season, only 4 teams advance to the post-season. But to encourage all teams to win as much as possible, we have a lottery for the top four picks of each draft, with the number of lottery balls based on your win total (capped at 85, post-season teams receive limited number) from the just-finished season.

It's a reasonable incentive to stay active throughout the season, even if you're not competing or in full rebuilding mode.

Thus my interest in a financial incentive instead of expanding the TRHL post-season.

After more consideration ... If we increase the number of TRHL post-season teams to six instead of four, then, given the standings as of now, a .500 team and two teams below 0.500 would be given a chance to win the World Series. Unacceptable!

If we went with five teams ... the .500 team still advances. Not as bad. But the four-team divisions ... pass. Bill's already stated the cons for smaller divisions.

One thing that works pretty well in my Roto auction leagues is a cap on the number of keepers that varies by your place in the standings. In a 10 team league where top-3 get money, 1st and 10th get 6 keepers, 2nd and 9th get 7, 3rd and 8th get 8, and 4th-7th get 9 keepers.

You could do something similar here. 8 Playoff teams capped at max 15 keepers. 2 best non-playoff teams get max 20, next 2 max 19, next 2 max 18, next 2 max 17, next 2 max 16, and the last 6 get 15.

Three positive effects 1) you keep it interesting for the near contenders, 2) you pull down the playoff teams a little bit, 3) you put more players into the auction, which is fun.

It shouldn't hurt the really bad teams that much because they generally won't have that many good keepers, and if they do, they can always do 2 or 3 for 1 trades in the off-season.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 06/01/2014 09:31AM by arthur gandolfi.

The financial incentive plan misses most of the point: which is to make winning the division a meaningful goal. That should be the number one priority. Right now, there is no real reason to have divisions at all. So if that plan came to pass I think the divisional winners should be rewarded too. But that means that everyone but the wildcard teams would

Four team divisions aren't ideal, but they are hardly a disaster. Especially since the point is (I think) to create a structure of competition and not to identify the best team under ideal circumstances.

I also don't get this notion that two of the four wild card teams that end up in the same division are unfairly penalized. To my mind, those teams are the lucky ones. They get to have an exciting season. Moreover, this also introduces fun incentives to tailor your team to your division and heats up rivalries. All good things. The group of death in soccer is a good thing.

Finally, the problem of four team divisions is overblown. I didn't have the Clowns on my radar at all, and here they are in playoff position. Conversely, I had the Chinook right there to the end and they are in last place. I thought Forsyth was the third best team and they are crushing the competition. That's why we play the games, as they say.

As to the integrity of the post-season. First, I don't see how it gets diluted. You still have to win the games, and the difference between teams isn't that large that a team which wins three series in a row won't be worthy. Second, why is the integrity of the post-season more important than the integrity of the regular season. The AL season is over, right now. The NL season has four teams fighting for three spots. This is easily my favourite diamondmind league I've ever been in. Great structure, great owners, great everything. But I think this is a problem, and it has an easy solution. MLB got this one right.

[www.hardballtimes.com]

The calculator provided there illustrates why, IMO, 1-game playoffs are a bad idea.

In our current system, I don't care about winning the division or which division I'm in for the most part, I care about winning the WS. In a 3 division setup with two wildcards playing a play-in game, it's going to matter a lot to me who's in my division, where it matters only marginally now (and we could change to a balanced schedule to eliminate that if we wanted). I'm not at all interested in trading away a portion of my chance to win the WS in order to have a competition to win my own division (as having a divisional rival would force me to do).

If you want me to care about winning the division without me objecting to the plan, the incentive to win the division has to not have the potential to disproportionately effect my ability to win the WS negatively. I think my plan (or the status quo), possibly with a completely balanced schedule, does that better than a 3-division, 5-team system does.

Also, if we assign teams randomly to divisions there's the distinct possibility that you end up with one or two divisions won/winnable by sub-.500 teams. The math for figuring out the exact probabilities escapes me but you can play around with it at random.org and you'll end up with a "weak" division a substantial portion of the time.

Why do we care about our chances to win the World Series? We're not playing for money.

I want to be competitive to keep the season interesting, but I couldn't care less if I ever win the WS.

I'd rather make the playoffs or be close every year, and never win the WS, than win it every 5th year and suck in between.

I'm glad for your response because it reveals the differences clearly.

Myself, I care much more about the regular season than I do the world series. Indeed, the playoffs are NIT tournament in many ways. We spend months on the regular season, everything about the league is focused on the regular season. It matters much more. What I want to to do is build a team that is good and wins as many games as possible. The playoffs, I barely care about. You have no control over what happens. Play the games, enjoy the drama, move on. But I won't be too disappointed if I lose. Indeed, in other leagues I've found playing the playoffs a bit of a pain. Having a bad regular season, on the other hand, matters.

The current system treats the regular season like a prelude. Given the time spent on it, I think this has things backwards.

It's funny, we agree on the facts. Your description of the current system is exact. I don't care about winning my division either. But I should. I don't care who is in my division. But I should. I mean, I trick myself into caring and so I still really want to win my division. And I care more about winning my division than winning the world series. But that's all a trick.

Anyway, I've said my piece on this. I am interested in knowing if I'm the only one who thinks this about the regular season.

I missed Arthur's response. Anyway, I totally agree with him. I want to have a competitive team in the regular season. The world series is just a cherry.

I want to build the best team possible every season, with the goal of winning the WS, the two aren't mutually exclusive. I don't think you should have to care about who's in your division, I'd prefer we had a balanced schedule. I'm ambivalent about whether there should be an advantage to winning the division, I don't think the current system is bad but I wouldn't be opposed to giving division winners an advantage beyond the home-field they already enjoy. Switching to 3 divisions isn't going to reward the good teams though, it's going to reward the lucky ones who are in weak divisions.

I really think you get a lot more competitve bang-for-buck with 2 division winners (or even 1 if you want to revert to really old school) and some number of wild cards playing best of 5 or 7 series to face the division winners.

I would be fine with two divisions, six teams make the playoffs, division winners get byes.

Though, as noted above, that means that a sub .500 team will make the playoffs most years. It's a trade I'd be willing to make. Others might not.

After reading and considering Bill's, Gaelan's, and Arthur's posts, and knowing what DMB v10a can and cannot do -- though v11 might be different -- I would strongly support the following, likely already stated above:

Two leagues, each with one division of 12 teams. 2nd and 3rd place play in LDS to determine who plays division winner in LCS. That's it. There's a battle to win 1st, and there's a battle to finish in the top three. The stingier we are with post-season teams, the regular season is more important. And .500 teams likely have no shot at winning the World Series. A financial incentive can be added to motivate the non-contending, rebuilding teams.

This would then satisfy the following:
1. Winning the division matters.
2. No BS four-team divisions.
3. Regular season even more important with top X teams battling for only three spots in their league.
4. With financial incentives, all teams have motivation to win as many games as possible and not finish in last, despite their chances of participating in the post-season.

Does this structure miss any one's objectives?

It's a radical plan but I could support it.

It's not a bad setup, but I'm not sure I prefer it to the current.

They key is the incentives to remain competitive. I think we should institute those regardless of the other changes.

The teams who just miss the playoffs should get some advantage for next year vs. both the teams that make the playoffs, and the teams that suck.

12 team leagues will require a schedule adjustment. I don't think that's a huge deal, but it's worth mentioning.

I don't think reducing the number of playoff teams is a good idea from a keeping people engaged standpoint, and I'm not a huge fan of building complicated incentive systems to solve that problem either. At least, I haven't seen one I really liked proposed yet.

If we expanded the post-season to six teams, we'd up with a .500ish team winning the league less than 5% of the time, which is a trade-off I can live with if will help overall engagement significantly. Given the typical breakdown of wins, it's unlikely that expanding to less than 6 teams will have a big positive effect on engagement, as it's really that 6th spot where the .500ish teams start to all be in the fight.

If we expand to 5 teams in one 12 team division and make the non-division winners slug it out to face the division winner in the LCS, winning the division would increase in value substantially, and we wouldn't have to worry about .500 teams advancing very often. I don't really think this is a better plan than 6 playoff teams in one or two divisions because I think one bye for the division winner(s) is enough, but thought I'd throw it out there.

The proposal to narrow the playoff contenders from four teams per league to three is a terrible idea. There's more than enough apathy at the end of the season to begin with.

I still think we should be enlarging rather than reducing the playoffs, but I decided not to fight the spirit of exhaustion with the extra round (and six qualifiers per league) because we said we'd be going back to how it was before.

"The proposal to narrow the playoff contenders from four teams per league to three is a terrible idea. There's more than enough apathy at the end of the season to begin with."

I would suggest you look at the past X seasons and reconsider it being a *terrible* idea. It might not be excellent, but it's not terrible. The apathy would still exist, and any increase in it would be marginal. I would consider that a small price to pay for more exciting battles for 1st and for 2nd+3rd. The teams that would be competing for the three spots are likely the same teams competing now for four spots.

I suppose a couple or a few teams might decide earlier in the season that they cannot battle for 3rd or higher, but if you add the financial incentives to keep them competing rather than dump players and start rebuilding mid-season, then the apathy issue is resolved.

I just don't see how reducing everyone's chances of making the post-season is supposed to make the race to the post-season more appealing or solve problems with owner apathy.

"I just don't see how reducing everyone's chances of making the post-season is supposed to make the race to the post-season more appealing or solve problems with owner apathy."

It's already been stated. There's an additional race to finish in 1st. Three teams advancing instead of four adds importance to the regular season. Having SIX teams from each league (50% of the teams) advance ... we did that in the LBBL, and as the file drone for some of that time, I felt a sense of apathy even with the top competing teams who clearly weren't going to finish first in their division but who very likely were going to finish in the top six overall.

And the post-season with 12 teams was unwieldy.

And, I've decided, screw apathy. If an owner is not self-motivated and self-respecting to maintain a minimum of activity, whether competing or not, then perhaps they should reconsider being in DMB on-line leagues.

Or if want to embrace the apathy and eliminate it completely, we chuck the regular season model and have multiple, varied huge-ass tournaments between the auction and the release of the next DMB season disk.

Or we have tournaments along the way during the regular season, perhaps mutually exclusive from the regular season (i.e., no injuries, PT, etc. carried over to the tournament league file).

So while we are racing during the regular season to win the ultimate World Series, there are also chances to win single-elimination three-game series tournaments, or double-elimination one-game series tournaments, or complete season quick-sims to see who is excellent at building complete-season MPs, or division All Star teams competing against each other where the six owner from each team have to work together to create their best 25-man teams from their six teams, then decide upon manager(s) for the tournament.

The problem is the uneven teams, not the playoff system. Do we want to solve the problem or try to manage it?

Gaelan has tried to tackle the problem too, to be fair to him. Last year he highlighted the way we can make in-season additions to strengthen the following year's roster. You can pick up an entire relief pitching squad this way (let's say 7 pitchers) for around $10-$14 (which is $24-$28 next year). You can also find some 4th OFs or middle IFs and maybe even a starter who flew low under the radar, eg Collin McHugh. The trade value of these players is also significant as an attentive team can pick up more arms and bench fodder than it can feasibly use in a season.

The problem is this market is not competitively fought over. It is very hit and miss, you have to get unproven and unrated players almost as soon as they are promoted (or even before in some cases) and it requires one's focus twice a week to compete as well as the most attentive teams.

There are only a handful of teams doing this and certain teams are dominating the market in what seems an unhealthy way. Now, I am not blaming those teams at all, I am saying that the rest of us need to be equally attentive or the gap will widen. If we have this means of picking up players, we all either need to compete or we should close it down.

My team has been picking up players this way an awful lot over the last few years, but I am either not as attentive as I used to be, or certain teams are way more attentive than I ever was. (I suspect both are true.) Percentage-wise this year I probably have done better from it than most, however, I have fallen behind certain teams in a way that makes me fear for next year already.

If a couple of teams can pick up 75% of all the WAR from the pool of unpicked players every year and pay most of them $3 and none of them more than $7, this will go a long way to skewing the league especially if these teams are already good and have done well in the draft.

One other comment, an uncompetitive divisional race is not necessarily down to lack of incentive to win or apathy. One occasionally wonders just how strong the incentive must be to win one's home matches or, for that matter, the road matches sent as backup.

I agree with Phil. Shutting down, or limiting in season keepers would help balance. Especially since there's the random factor of whether a guy got a cup of coffee last year or not. At least we could make the guys who had too little eligibility to be used this year ineligible to be picked up and kept.

I also think allowing more salary cap flexibility to enable dump trades would help. Floundering teams with expensive, great players, should be able to cash those in for keepers at the trade deadline.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/04/2014 05:55AM by arthur gandolfi.

This conversation has a way of going in circles. Anyway, I don't think apathy is that big a problem. We have a good set of owners who mostly turn in their results, who don't make too many crazy trades, and who are invested in involved.

My initial proposal was almost entirely me-directed. I want winning the divisions to matter and I think this would make the regular season more fun. Not because I'm apathetic right now, I'm not. Simply because I think it would be better.

To that end, I would vote for both the 3-team proposal and the 6-team proposal. That said, I really think MLB got this one right. It's the best of both worlds.

It keeps more teams involved in the regular season without expanding and hence diluting the playoffs. Isn't that exactly what we want?

The only objection seems to be the vagaries of four team divisions. I don't see this as much of a problem. This is a problem that is only apparent after the fact. It doesn't exist a priori. For instance, if I were in the same division with the Outlaws this year that would be unlucky for me. However, before the season I would have thought being in the same division as the Marauders would have been the unlucky draw. So, I don't accept that four-team divisions hurt one team versus another. It only appears that way after the season has already happened. Who saw the Clowns coming? I didn't.

Finally, I strongly disagree with Arthur's comment on salary cap flexibility. I really don't want a situation in which the playoff teams load up every year with all-star teams through trades. Making trades to improve your team should be hard. Greg still manages to do it every year. We should be doing what we can to avoid boom and bust cycles of winning.

Lastly, to Phil's point, I think signing players during the season is lots of fun. However, it obviously gives some teams an advantage over others. The other side of it, is that signing players last year is part of what kept me invested in the season. So perhaps, it is a good thing.

Being able to sign overlooked players is a big part of rebuilding so quickly, so I don't think we want that to go away, nor do I really think it's a good idea to adjust the system to make low end players harder to keep cheaply (think a Nick Punto type).

FWIW, before this season, I manually scanned through the FA pool periodically looking for useful guys to replace my dead weight. After reading about other people doing it programtically in our last thread about this, I did actually automate a good bit of it though. My experience with that is that it wouldn't be difficult to produce a list of all FAs with their current-season #s and post it on the site if we want to make sure that information is more readily available to everyone to make use of it. That would actually probably be a good thing with regards to balance without changing any of the existing rules.

On that note, a quarter of the teams in the league currently have at least one open roster spot, and my guess is at least that many with a full roster are carrying a player who's of no real value and could be cut to pick up a prospect. The Hawks with Overbay, for instance. Not prospect mining in that situation, and there are at least a half dozen useful FAs right now, isn't the fault of the teams who do stay on top of it.

Finally, to Phil's implication that home-team winning (or road-backup-winning) is somehow inherently evidence that there's potentially cheating going on, a few points:

First, to be unequivocal, I don't cheat, and while I don't really care if others think I do (largely because there's nothing I could do about it anyway), I think it's worth making that clear.

The CM is mind-bogglingly stupid. For instance, no amount of tweaking on my part seems to be able to get it to use relievers in a way I'd consider marginally sane. That might be a limitation of the game engine, or my ability to build an MP, but it's definitely a huge factor in the inherent HFA in the league.

On top of raw stupidity, the CM is really bad at managing complex roster construction, especially with regards to platooning, and there are inherent limitations to how effective it can be given the way it's setup. I platoon, or semi-platoon, at 6 positions right now, and when I'm managing the game directly it's much easier to know when the payoff to using a sub is worth it, and when to allow Crawford, for instance, to face a LHP isn't a big deal. The CM routinely screws up decisions based on this.

To compound that problem, our PT system requires careful management of players' PT to get the most out of them (Gennett, Hudson, Ross, Punto, Lucas in my case for this season). Getting the CM to do this often requires a heavy hand (not starting Gennett at all for instance) or setting it to prematurely yank Hudson and Ross as a matter of routine. It is much easier for me to manage the leverage of the situations when I use my best, but PT-limited, players to maximum effect.

Given our financial system, the best way to build a good team generally requires effective platooning both in the traditional sense and in the PT sense, which often leads to having the teams that do that having a larger HFA, effectively by design.

Though it's not really particularly valid to do this mid-season given our imbalanced schedule, but road record is actually a pretty good predictor of overall record for our league this season. In the AL the 4 current leaders are the only teams with winning road records, and in the NL the 4 leaders have 4 of the 5 best records (and 2 of the 3 winning records), and 5th place team still in the race has the 6th best road record.

Finally, this is also a feedback loop problem. HFA is going to accrue more to the teams with complex rosters generally, and those teams are often going to be better due to the complex roster construction. When those teams play on the road vs poorer overall teams, the gap between the teams is narrowed, which artificially suppresses the good team's road record and the poorer team's home record. When those teams play with the good team's manager live, the opposite occurs because the CM is now making dumb moves for the poorer team and widening the gap between them further, enhancing the HFA effect.

Also, on HFA, the engine has a built-in homefield advantage based upon the historical evidence that players perform better at home.

The rest of it actually creates interesting dynamics. For instance, I try and avoid relief pitchers with large platoon splits because there is no way to get the computer manager to use them effectively. A lefthander who is mediocre against righties can't be used on the road.

As Bill points out managing platoon splits throughout the season is a huge part of putting together a good team.

FWIW, I don't agree with you about the division strength information being solely known only after the fact. When I rejoined the league, I picked the division I'm in now in part to avoid being in the same division as Greg and Chris given our imbalanced schedule. If we were to split to 3 divisions, I'd definitely have opinions about who I wanted in mine long-term. Past that, it doesn't actually matter if the knowledge about the weaker divisions is knowable in advance. The fact is that with three divisions it's much more likely to have at least one outlier weak division, which will benefit someone to the detriment of a better team in a different division. Even with our imbalanced schedule, that's much less likely now.