Fantasy baseball roundtable
BY ADAM RONIS
I was the host of the fantasy baseball roundtable this week. The question is: What is the best way to handle trades? Should all trades be approved? A league vote? If you're running a league, what's the ideal way to approve trades without too much controversy?
Andrew Cleary http://www.fantasybaseballgenerals.com:
Ideally, I think trades would be automatically approved, and only subject to the commissioner's veto. Even though the best trades add to each team's strength, it's always possible that one team comes out better than the other (in fact, we all tend to try for this anyway). This is not an abomination. It is not unfair. It is an outcome to be expected in any game that features real human people playing against other human people (see also Major League Baseball). The flipside of this, of course, is that people get greedy, and trades that smack of collusion should be subject to veto, at the commissioner's discretion. Being the commissioner of a league takes responsibility and fairness, and it's appropriate that they should have the final say.
That said, however, I think such an ideal system is more suited to older leagues where the players have known each other for some time, and especially in keeper leagues--there's less of an incentive to pull off a stinker of a trade if you know it can affect next year's team, and your relationship with the managers next year. If you're playing in a league with a lot of people you don't know, and it's a non-keeper league, there's a higher chance someone abandons their non-contending team at the end of the year, and approves any trades that come their way, no matter how lopsided. I think it's better in this kind of league to have some sort of league veto, requiring half of the other managers to vote against a trade for it to be vetoed.
Tim Dierkes http://www.rotoauthority.com
I find it ridiculous that owners voting on each other's trades has become the accepted practice in fantasy leagues. Commissioners who run teams in the league having sole approval is also a terrible idea.
Why should trades be voted on? Most people will tell you it's to prevent unfair deals from being made. Are trades really supposed to be fair? I never give thought to fairness. I just try to help my own team. One apparent reason for vetoes is to prevent dumb owners from being ripped off. Making it a money league with decent stakes takes care of this problem, though. Otherwise, if you don't want a novice in your league, don't let that person in. Part of having a novice in the league is that people will try to take advantage of him. Let's be honest - you're only vetoing that rip-off trade because you didn't think to make the offer.
The one reason I find vetoes acceptable is to prevent collusion. If you have two brothers in a non-keeper league and the last place brother dumps off all his best players to the first place brother, that's collusion.
Say, for the sake of argument, trades need to be fair and veto power is necessary. How does it make sense that the other ten teams, with an obvious vested interest, are the arbiters? That'd be like Omar Minaya and Pat Gillick voting down the Braves' Rafael Soriano-Horacio Ramirez swap. At the very least, appoint someone outside of the league.
By the way, why are the players in the league authorities on trade equity? Can they predict the future? I have seen way too many trades vetoed because 10 amateurs took a quick glance and saw a "name" player swapped for a less famous guy. Last year I caused an uproar by trading Jeremy Accardo for Joe Mauer, even though the Accardo side ended up winning the deal.
Zach Piso http://www.mlbfrontoffice.com
I think this is pretty much status quo, but I am opposed to any sort of "League Vetoing". On paper, every trade is going to have a winner and a loser, but I've seen some pretty obviously slanted trades end up favoring the apparent loser. It is a strategic move available to everyone, so their is nothing "unfair" about an unbalanced deal. The obvious exception is collusion of any kind-and I think responsible league commissioners should invest more time recruiting sportsmanlike owners rather than worrying about how to handle trades. If collusion does happen, just veto it as the commissioner. The rest of the league should recognize the act as justified, as well as the owners involved.
Brett Greenfield http://www.fantasyphenoms.com
All trades should be automatically put through. If you find that certain owners are making lopsided trades that upset the league balance, use the offseason to replace them.
Commish http://www.fantasybaseballgeeks.com
Every league should have well defined rules in place that will determine the steps to take if a trade is deemed to be collusive in nature. All trades should be initialed automatically approved and then if an owner finds a deal to be too lopsided they should be able to request a league wide vote to determine if action needs to be taken. For the most part if you are in a league with dedicated owners that want to win then this type of behavior should happen quite infrequently. If this comes up a lot you should either consider joining another league or losing the owner that is causing all the fuss. In a moment of glaring self-promotion, our site offers a trade review
submittal for free in which our Geeks will vote on and provide feedback for questionable trades. This is not a computer generated piece of boilerplate output, but instead subjective feedback from the 12 Angry Geeks.
Michael Muschiano http://pojofantasybaseball.blogspot.com/
Having used both options before, commissioner review and league votes both have
their flaws and can easily stir up some drama. Commish review gives too much
power to one manager, almost like a dictatorship. League votes is a more
democratic way about things, but can get out of hand in a hurry. Managers can
hide behind their computers and vote against a trade with just one click and no
justification. That's why the ideal way to handle trades is a combination of
league votes and commissioner review (assuming this is a private league and a
not public one with strangers). Managers can send in their "votes against" in
the form of e-mail with a reason for why they wish the trade should be vetoed.
After X amount of votes against have been received with some reasoning to the
commissioner, the commish should veto the deal. However, it is at the
commissioner's discretion as to whether the votes are good reason.
Adam Ronis: I don't think a veto system is appropriate. I see too many people veto trades just because the team in front of them is getting better. Leaving the vote solely to the commisssioner doesn't work either because if the commissioner is involved in the trade, it's a conflict of interest. The only reason a trade should be vetoed is because of collusion. A lot of trades will appear like one team has an advantage, but as long as the league members are legit and it's a money league, a trade shouldn't be vetoed.
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Comments (5)
We require a vast majority (75% of the teams not involved) to vote against a trade to veto it. In 5 years, only one trade has only been vetoed, and maybe only 3 or 4 trades have received any veto votes at all. Basically, if 8 out of 10 teams think the trade is bad, then it is, and you really can't debate that.
Owners can veto a trade for any reason, and the vote is public. No need to prove collusion, which is, in my opinion, an even stickier subject.
And take it from me - this is a high-stakes, very serious league, with some professionals and former LABR participants in it - there are ALWAYS stupid trades made. The main complaint is that people don't shop their players around enough. And if 8 out of 10 teams say "Man, I didn't even know that he was dumping, and then he goes and trades his stars for THAT?", then the trade was bad, and that's that.
I'm completely opposed to giving the commissioner power to veto. How can you give that much power to one owner? Also leagues that require a small amount of votes (eg. 4) to veto - then reasonably fair trades can be vetoed.
No matter what, precise rules must be defined. There can be no "ok, if the commissioner gets enough valid arguments then he can veto it".
Hey Jon, have you ever considered a trade posting rule? My high stakes leagues use it and it works like a charm to prevent complaints that trades arent shopped. essentially you have to post a trade and email it to the league. then the trade has 48 hours before it goes final. during that pendency period anyone can counteroffer. the key to the rule is that once a trade is posted to the league, or if a counteroffer is posted, it MUST be done. so guys cant use it as a shopping technique and only serious offers are posted.
Our money keeper league used to be a 2/3 vote for trade rejections, leading to lots of heated accusations about teams voting against trades to keep other contenders from strengthening their teams, teams which had worked hard to put together their deals upset that someone else would insert their subjective standards into the trade evaluation, etc.
This year we adopted an outside trade evaluation fee-for-service as our standard. If a person wants to challenge a trade, they tell the Commish that they want to challenge the trade. The trade is submitted to the outside service, which has a 6 point scale for trade fairness (we set the level of how "collusive in effect" a trade must be on that scale in the preseason), and delivers back a reasoned opinion and rating based on our league's unique rules. If the trade is upheld, the challenger pays the fee for the challenge. If the trade is rejected, the teams involved in the trade split the fee. We have had one challenge, and I thought it was great because it took all of that self-interest and emotion out of the process. The trade was vetoed, and the lengthy written evaluation circulated to the whole league, so after the fact there wasn't the same post-challenge sniping from the teams who were vetoed or the teams who did the vetoing normally would engage in. Because there is some money on the line, that should regulate gratuitous challenges. We also make public who it was that challenged a trade - it may suppress valid challenges somewhat, but probably best to do it that way rather than let people hide behind anonymity and encourage more trade challenges.
Trade challenges and vetos should be only for the most egregiously lopsided trades (whether caused by collusion or laziness), ones that can ruin the competitive balance of a league and take the fun out of it - not just protecting less savvy owners from themselves. At the end of the day, having a group of competitive, involved owners who care both about the integrity of the league and their own chances at winning is the key. After all, it's just a game, so not worth ruining friendships (whether old or new) over, and the outside trade evaluation has taken some of the venom out of the process, while giving everyone a tool to ensure that the most extreme trades get reviewed.
Patrick - interesting suggestion. How many trades would you say are actually completed as they are originally posted? Do people often try to top the current trade that was posted (and are they successful)?
Thanks for the idea, it's something I'll seriously consider.
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