Roster Management

[Cincinnati Reds - Chris]

I'm just wondering what the rationale is with a couple of TPB teams not fielding anything close to a full roster?

I've populated my team with scrubs, but scrubs who are playing.

I don't understand. There's either the laziness of not looking to play with a full roster and not looking for players to fill voids. Or there's an intention to not field a full roster and pretty much gain the top pick, which would essentially be tanking. Unless there's another reason.

This is what the rules state below....so I guess I can chalk it up to laziness.....amirite?

"Tanking:
If you are "caught" tanking your team on purpose to up your team in the draft first you will get a warning. If you get caught again you will forfeit your first round draft pick and be given the last 10th rounder of the draft as a replacement. Now I'm not talking you take A-Rod out of the lineup for awhile cuz he is Day to Day or something like that, I'm talking an obvious abuse, benching all your top guys and sticking your bench players all over the field and sitting your best pitchers. Also teams tend to "disappear" from time to time, if they abondoned the team and we get a new owner obviously we aren't going to punish the new owner by taking away the draft pick."

[rangers]

Prob a couple of definitions of tanking, but for my part - if a team is forgoing competing this year because they don't have a shot and they do a tear down ala Marlins, it's different then a team having players on their roster and not playing them in the second half of the season or something. In deep leagues, I think there has to be some exception for teams doing tear downs and rebuilds which will leave roster spots open.

[Deleted]

I thinktanking is not starting your players where as teams like Miami just don't have players.

[Dodgers GM]

There is a difference between roster spots open and one guy going 3 for 19 for the year and him being the only one on his entire roster to have stats

[Dodgers GM]

Apr 30, 2013 13:51:56 GMT -5 @patriotsfan4ever said:

I thinktanking is not starting your players where as teams like Miami just don't have players.

Well isnt that the same thing? There are players out there that can be picked up to give him stats. So if thats the case isnt that tanking aswell. Not making an effort to field a team?

[rangers]

is there a team besides marlins that is tanking?

[Cincinnati Reds - Chris]

Apr 30, 2013 14:00:07 GMT -5 rangers said:

is there a team besides marlins that is tanking?

I'd like to hear from the teams who aren't fielding full teams as to why?

I'd also like my memory refreshed if the Orioles said he was planning on being absent from the league for an extended period time right after the past discussion of activity? He hasn't signed in here in two + weeks and is rostering a team littered with DL players on the active roster.

[Cincinnati Reds - Chris]

Apr 30, 2013 14:00:07 GMT -5 rangers said:

is there a team besides marlins that is tanking?

I guess it depends on the explanations from the managers why a full roster isn't being attempted to be fielded.

[rangers]

a quick scan of the ESPN rosters for the AL and NL look like Marlins and maybe the Dbacks have truly hollowed out teams. Other managers leaving DL players in slots could be for varied reasons. Take for instance San Diego. He's got Dayan Viciedo and Pryor in his active line up, has a full team but no other options to switch to, so he just left them there. Since Miami and Dbacks are two of the most active members in this league, seems like we are doing pretty well on the roster management front.

[rangers]

this probably would go back to the question posed about reducing team slots so there is more talent available league wide to plug in when guys get hurt.

[Deleted]

For us, tanking is not fielding a proper team. Whatever your future desires, you should be obligated to field a player at every posiiton and try to win. If you aren't doing that, you're tanking... even if you want to call it rebuilding.

All teams should be doing the best they can. If you are in 23rd position, you should be striving to get to 22nd. Some teams are obviously not doing the best they can -- unless you count doing the best they can to lose.

[rangers]

any ideas on how to measure or punish a team for not trying to get to 22nd? Seems a bit excessive...

[BrewCrewGM]

I'm not a fan of what Miami's doing. He's building for the future like Reds and myself are but we're at least trying to compete and have a full MLB squad with several starters.

I don't know if there should be any penalties but I think he should make more of an effort to compete and not just blatantly tank like this.

[rangers]

for my part 2 points:

1) i play in other dynasty leagues and have done similar approaches where it's a complete tear down. The leagues have a rule in place that you have to have a player rostered in each active slot. This seems reasonable, but was not in place when Miami traded in his previous franchise to take on a completely hollowed out team. I think a rule change like that would be completely reasonable to propose going forward for next year.

2) I would expect that given the talent in his minor league system and where they are at development-wise, Miami will be forced to field a largely complete squad by the start of next year. Several of his players are AA or higher and will be looking at roster spots as early as now (Cingrani) or by the end of the year.

It's really not fair if teams in the NL get to play Miiami while others don't, allowing certain teams to jack up their win totals against a hollow team. It's something we all watch pretty closely though and it seems like Miami will become more or less a non issue within a year.

[Cincinnati Reds - Chris]

Apr 30, 2013 14:52:13 GMT -5 rangers said:

any ideas on how to measure or punish a team for not trying to get to 22nd? Seems a bit excessive...

I'm not looking to punish teams, I just want an explanation why there is zero attempt by them to even try to find, or be gifted a crappy player who is dropped to atleast fill a position.

Why should the rest of the managers be able to play a team almost like having a bye-week?

And really if the Marlins prospects make it to the majors slowly, does this mean that in 2014 he's gonna throw the towel in as well? Because it gets even lamer if he did.

[Deleted]

I think it is actually a poor strategy even for tanking purposes. If you literally leave your MLB roster blank just to get #1 overall think of all the empty roster spots. Those could be filled with potential "bounce back" players that could turn into something of real value. If I were Marlins I couldn't stand to have all those empty holes and would trade for guys that everyone has given up on but could do something next year. Guys like Kazmir or Tazawa or anyone like that that had virtually no value last year and now do. I would fill my team with those guys, they will generate some stats but if a couple of them pan out and it knocks you from first overall to second or third overall I'd rather have option A.

[St. Louis Cardinals (Andrew)]

This point is actually like shutting the gate after the horse has bolted. We allowed Marlins to trade away ALL MLB players, we can’t now complain that he doesn’t have a MLB roster. He’s not the first and won’t be the last.

It’s a little bit late to change the rules now.

[St. Louis Cardinals (Andrew)]

As for the discussion on who can and cannot be on MiLB rosters … let’s change the rules and make them really hard to police because we all have so much spare time to take on additional admin tasks (insert sarcastic tone).

I had the pleasure of doing the salary audit for four of the six leagues because we are all too busy. To introduce new rules that require supervision is ridiculous as we don’t have the time to police it properly.

Yes, the current rules have a loophole. For example, when Oscar Taveras or Billy Hamilton get called up, I am probably going to use the loophole to send down Pete Kozma to make room on my MLB roster. Sure, that’s not in the best interests of the league but at the end of the season, I will be forced to trade guys away as I won’t be able to keep Kozma in my minors once he exceeds those AB/IP limits.

The ‘loophole’ is really only relevant for one season … at the end of the season, if they have exceeded AB or IP limits, they need to be traded away.

We could introduce a new rule whereby a prospect MUST be called up to the bigs once he exceeds minors AB/IP limits but who is going to police it ? does the player become waiver wire claimable if he is not called up within 7 days of exceeding those limits ?

It’s just another way of rewarding those more active and penalising those that are less active and creating a whole lot more work for the few who do it.

Not having a go at anyone in particular but we seem to have a lot of people wanting to introduce all new and wonderful rules that are hard to police but everyone is more than happy to back away when there is work to be done to police the rules we already have in place.

I say leave the rules as they are … they aren’t perfect but we don’t have the manpower to police the rules as they are.

[Deleted]

applause to the Cards.

And for the record the Marlins have done absolutely nothing against any rules and in fact has been very forthcoming and upfront about his strategy of pure rebuild. He is a very good owner and his strategy shows a long-term commitment to his team. I don't have a problem with what he has done whatsoever. Like I said I think it would be wise of him to try to buy low on some guys to put on his MLB roster but if he thinks the tradeoff is worth the #1 overall so be it I say.

Tweaking the roster size or adding slg% would be a mild bump in the road for teams that didn't plan for that, switching that up on the Marlins would really be a sucker punch and would negate everything he has done since he took over the team. As Cards says the rules aren't perfect but they are pretty good I think for the milb/MLB players at least.

Angels used loopholes (which we fixed) and he won a championship. Then his players got old fast and his team crumbled and he quit the league. Marlins is working to make his team a powerhouse years down the road and that is commendable to me and vastly different than some of the stunts Angels pulled. Marlins is a quality owner and has worked within all of the rules.

[Arizona Diamondbacks]

I would probably be one of those owners you are putting in the "tanking" category, not to just call out Marlins. It's myself as well probably. However, I don't understand why Marlins has the empty roster spots in MLB. I chose to use my "empty" MLB spots to stash more prospects, essentially giving myself 90 MiLBers. I would rather have guys who may pan out down the road.

I completely agree with Steve here about picking up guys who have bottomed out and are looking to get back. If you'll recall, I picked up Kazmir, Vicente Padilla, Manny Parra. All of those guys were bouncing back from long absences and I flipped them for small pieces that may be valuable down the road for me. However, I don't see much point in hanging on to these guys when they're not benefitting me at all. Instead, why not trade them for guys who I can use later or add depth to my minors for future trades.

I'm just curious what you see as the incentive of trying to get the illustrious '22nd place' over 23rd? Obviously my team isn't in competition for this year. Why not ditch off my MLB talent for prospects and be in the running for a top 5 or so overall pick? I understand that real-life teams can't (or shouldn't cough cough real-life Marlins) just field garbage teams because they have a fan base to worry about and that determines their overall cap allotments. However, in a league like this, we don't have to worry about fans or anything like that. So why not try for the 1st overall pick to get a guy like Justin Upton, Luke Hochevar, David Price, Tim Beckham (ehhh....), Strasburg, Harper, Cole/Bundy, Buxton/Correa... guys who can seriously turn a franchise around.

I completely understand competitive spirit and the idea that everyone should be trying to win, but I argue that this is trying to win. Maybe I'm not trying to win this year, but I am building for the future and the idea that I can win down the road. I would be perfectly fine with a rule preventing hollow rosters. I.e., must have at least an active player in 50% of your active roster spots (like not bench spots). Something like that. But as has been said, the rule wasn't in place so I, and Marlins as well, worked within the rule to give ourselves a better chance down the road.

As a caveat, given the chance to go back to June of 2011 when I took over this team, I would have handled things in a completely different manner. My team wasn't nearly as bad as I thought when I first took over. However, I do enjoy having one of the stronger minors in the league, and I do see myself competing in 2-3 years or so. I just don't see much point in trading for a guy like Verlander or Halladay at this point (guys who have been offered to me) when they're only a drop in the bucket.