Tanking

[St. Louis Cardinals (Andrew)]

I have been through the numerous threads in here about anti-tanking. I have two solutions I want to fine tune before we create a poll for 2025 season.

Option 1

Draft Lottery. 30th gets 10 balls, 29th gets 9 balls, etc. 20th through to 1st in standings get their picks per normal. This way the team coming last gets 10 in 55 Balls (18% chance) of getting no.1 overall pick. It minimises the incentive for tanking to finish last.

Option 2

Draft pick penalty. If a team misses minimums, their first round pick in the following year drops one place.

For example : STL misses three rounds minimums in 2025. My 2026 first round pick gets designated with a +3 meaning that if I finish 23rd in 2026 (would normally be pick 8), my pick drops to 11 (8 + 3).

The obvious caveat here would be that if I was no longer STL GM for the 2026 draft the penalty disappears. There's no point penalising the new owner for old owner's past indiscretions.

I feel like this option would need to come with a drop of the 40 man MLB roster to 35 although I personally have picked up as MILB FA - Bivens, Little, Hanifee and Burr who have combined for 100 IP this year. I feel if you really want IP and AB there are players there that can help meet minimums. Increasing the pool by another 100 or so players will only help those teams meet minimums.

What are your thoughts ? what have I missed ? what needs to be added to get this to something we are comfortable voting on ?

[BrewCrewGM]

option 1 seems to be the most reasonable, plus MLB now does a lottery. i’d be for it.

[cleguardiansmike]

Honestly, both solutions seem fully baked to me. I actually think we could implement both if we wanted to?

For #2, I suggest leaving the 40 man alone, but giving 1 or 2 "freebies". So maybe the there would be no +1 or +2, just start at +3 if a manager misses 3 in one season. And add more for 4,5, etc... Like you said, you can find innings on the waiver. I traded nearly all of my starters by the end of the year and easily met minimums each week thanks to FA claims.

[BrewCrewGM]

option 2 makes things way too complicated. option 1 is very simple.

[St. Louis Cardinals (Andrew)]

Aug 22, 2024 22:00:26 GMT -5 cleguardiansmike said:

Honestly, both solutions seem fully baked to me. I actually think we could implement both if we wanted to?

For #2, I suggest leaving the 40 man alone, but giving 1 or 2 "freebies". So maybe the there would be no +1 or +2, just start at +3 if a manager misses 3 in one season. And add more for 4,5, etc... Like you said, you can find innings on the waiver. I traded nearly all of my starters by the end of the year and easily met minimums each week thanks to FA claims.

I like the idea of two 'passes', penalty starts at 3. I'll amend that before putting up the poll.

[cleguardiansmike]

Aug 22, 2024 22:08:52 GMT -5 St. Louis Cardinals (Andrew) said:

Aug 22, 2024 22:00:26 GMT -5 cleguardiansmike said:

Honestly, both solutions seem fully baked to me. I actually think we could implement both if we wanted to?

For #2, I suggest leaving the 40 man alone, but giving 1 or 2 "freebies". So maybe the there would be no +1 or +2, just start at +3 if a manager misses 3 in one season. And add more for 4,5, etc... Like you said, you can find innings on the waiver. I traded nearly all of my starters by the end of the year and easily met minimums each week thanks to FA claims.

I like the idea of two 'passes', penalty starts at 3. I'll amend that before putting up the poll.

If it helps at all for #2, I don't mind volunteering as the person who tracks these.  I'm envisioning a proboards post that's edited weekly for visibility.

[Houston Astros]

Orrrrrr what if you implement it into the lottery “ball system”, team misses a minimum, they lose a ball. So if team 30 misses 3 minimums on the year, they lose three balls (or whatever the equivalent is). So if team 29 hits all the minimums and just blows, they’ll have better odds than team 30

[BrewCrewGM]

really don’t understand why you guys want to make this so elaborate when option 1 is just as effective and requires no effort to implement and keep track of.

[cleguardiansmike]

Aug 23, 2024 7:37:51 GMT -5 Houston Astros said:

Orrrrrr what if you implement it into the lottery “ball system”, team misses a minimum, they lose a ball. So if team 30 misses 3 minimums on the year, they lose three balls (or whatever the equivalent is). So if team 29 hits all the minimums and just blows, they’ll have better odds than team 30

I like this a lot to be honest.

So if we did the final 10 teams, you're looking at 55 balls total.  Let's say you're the last place team:

0-2 mins missed (10/55): 18.1% chance at 1st overall pick on 1st draw
3 mins missed (7/52): 13.4%
5 mins missed (5/50): 10%

That's significant and keeps the benefits of the lottery system as well.

The reason I'm not just pro option 1 is because I don't think it actively encourages participation as much.   If you know you have missed 2 weeks and you care at all about the league, you're going to do whatever you can not to be penalized.  That means more trades and free agent pickups.  If it's a straight lottery system, its almost out of mind til end of the year.  Just my .02 cents.

Edit: I also wonder if we'd want to just expand the lottery to all non playoff teams, like the MLB currently does.

[brettgile04]

I like the lottery idea we do it in a 32 team dynasty football league im in and it seems to work. Also like it because its a lot simpler then option 2. Those are the percentage odds we employ ik itd have to be slightly different because in this only 12 makes playoffs vs 16 in that league

15
14
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10
9
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4
3
2
1
1
1
1

[Cincinnati Reds - Chris]

Aug 22, 2024 19:44:16 GMT -5 St. Louis Cardinals (Andrew) said:

Option 2

Draft pick penalty. If a team misses minimums, their first round pick in the following year drops one place.

For example : STL misses three rounds minimums in 2025. My 2026 first round pick gets designated with a +3 meaning that if I finish 23rd in 2026 (would normally be pick 8), my pick drops to 11 (8 + 3).

How does this system work if 30th place has 4 roster violations, 29th place has 3 RV's, 28th place 2 RV's, 27th place 1 RV & 26th place, none? Would 26th draft 1st overall? Who would be 2nd, 3rd....etc in that scenario

[Cincinnati Reds - Chris]

Aug 22, 2024 22:08:52 GMT -5 St. Louis Cardinals (Andrew) said:

Aug 22, 2024 22:00:26 GMT -5 cleguardiansmike said:

Honestly, both solutions seem fully baked to me. I actually think we could implement both if we wanted to?

For #2, I suggest leaving the 40 man alone, but giving 1 or 2 "freebies". So maybe the there would be no +1 or +2, just start at +3 if a manager misses 3 in one season. And add more for 4,5, etc... Like you said, you can find innings on the waiver. I traded nearly all of my starters by the end of the year and easily met minimums each week thanks to FA claims.

I like the idea of two 'passes', penalty starts at 3. I'll amend that before putting up the poll.

5 teams at one point or another didn't meet Minimums during a week this year. All 5 teams had 3 or more violations.

[St. Louis Cardinals (Andrew)]

Thank you all for your input. Option 2 does sound like more hard work than it needs to be but we’ll put it to a poll.

To Chris’ question, don’t know, we would have to work it out if that option wins the vote. I would assume you’re right, no.26 would get #1. I’d be in favour of 26, 27, 28, 29 then 30 as 30 missed the most rounds minimums so he’d be last in my eyes but that’s just one of the reasons why I think this option might be too hard.

[Cincinnati Reds - Chris]

Aug 23, 2024 18:02:07 GMT -5 St. Louis Cardinals (Andrew) said:

Thank you all for your input. Option 2 does sound like more hard work than it needs to be but we’ll put it to a poll.

To Chris’ question, don’t know, we would have to work it out if that option wins the vote. I would assume you’re right, no.26 would get #1. I’d be in favour of 26, 27, 28, 29 then 30 as 30 missed the most rounds minimums so he’d be last in my eyes but that’s just one of the reasons why I think this option might be too hard.

I was thinking what you said.

Standings place # (30/worst to 1/best) - subtract 1 spot per week of missed minimums.

You list every team and they will all have their number, The highest number for a team gets the top pick and so on. If there's a tie as you said the team with the least number of violations next...etc.


Another question would be is the penalty or draft lottery final order for only the 1st round, or all rounds.

[BrewCrewGM]

Aug 23, 2024 19:28:19 GMT -5 Cincinnati Reds - Chris said:

Aug 23, 2024 18:02:07 GMT -5 St. Louis Cardinals (Andrew) said:

Thank you all for your input. Option 2 does sound like more hard work than it needs to be but we’ll put it to a poll.

To Chris’ question, don’t know, we would have to work it out if that option wins the vote. I would assume you’re right, no.26 would get #1. I’d be in favour of 26, 27, 28, 29 then 30 as 30 missed the most rounds minimums so he’d be last in my eyes but that’s just one of the reasons why I think this option might be too hard.

I was thinking what you said.

Standings place # (30/worst to 1/best) - subtract 1 spot per week of missed minimums.

You list every team and they will all have their number, The highest number for a team gets the top pick and so on. If there's a tie as you said the team with the least number of violations next...etc.


Another question would be is the penalty or draft lottery final order for only the 1st round, or all rounds.

i think just the 1st round is sufficient

[St. Louis Cardinals (Andrew)]

Yeah, just first round. From second round it would go by reverse standings

[Miami]

The other issue and we discussed this Andrew, traded picks...If the "tanker" has already traded his pick, then he has no motivation to meet minimums. Maybe we apply the penalties to the next year 1st rd pick if the current one has been traded.

[Cincinnati Reds - Chris]

Aug 24, 2024 10:49:48 GMT -5 Miami said:

The other issue and we discussed this Andrew, traded picks...If the "tanker" has already traded his pick, then he has no motivation to meet minimums. Maybe we apply the penalties to the next year 1st rd pick if the current one has been traded.

That's what the thought would be. That it would be the following year's years pick. I'd be against implementing penalties against teams for this 2024 TPB season.

[Phillies]

I'm late on this trail...just wanted to add that I believe the 40 man should stay at 40.

Too many teams have worked for too long to build strong 40's, so it ends up penalizing teams that are active fully engaged owners. Seemingly an unfair impact when attempting to encourage that exact behavior by addressing tanking issues.

Also, 40 aligns nicely with the MLB rules. Which is sort of the point of our game - to closely align with the experience and approach of running a MLB team.

[doubleupagus]

I know I'm late to the discussion but I'm in favour of outright penalties rather than a lottery and here's my rationale.

First, running the draft lottery seems to me to be an inordinate amount of extra work for management. Obviously, I'm not part of management, and so I don't really have a say in that, but still ...

Most importantly, the issue is being framed as "tanking" when what the OP seems to be looking at is "missing weekly minimums." Now, clearly, missing weekly minimums can be a very effective form of tanking, but it is not hard to see a team making every effort to meet minimums while still and obviously making efforts to lose in order to tank. Hell, it's an epidemic in the NHL and MLB, only one of which has a lottery.

If the object is to impose a penalty for teams missing minimums (and I could certainly see a loss of one first round draft position per incident as a pretty solid incentive), then let's do it. If the goal is to penalize tanking, then we need to define tanking (more broadly than just missing a week's minimums) and go after it.

There should be an appeal process. I can see a situation where a team that is close to the edge gets a couple of pitching starts rained out or a couple of untimely injuries to a hitter that causes a problem.

As to Phillies point, While I agree that there are teams out there who have worked hard to accumulate "strong 40's" this is actually a bug in our League and not a feature. Yes, we are trying to emulate MLB teams with a 40 man roster, but MLB teams don't carry 40 men on their MLB rosters. A top level TPB Team that has 14 or 15 (basically) full time roster players and 10 Starters on their 40 man roster is not helping competition when the bottom dwellers are forced to rely on way below replacement level guys who maybe appear in an irl starting lineup once 8 or 9 days and possibly get a pinch hit AB every other day.

The reality is that we can't really say that we're pretending to be MLB teams when there is no significant Free Agent turnover. Yes, we have free agents and a bidding war every fall, but that's for old guys who aren't producing up to their irl contracts or underperforming players on their way out. We don't have free agency like MLB does and as a result it is very difficult to build a team when the only way to acquire real talent is through the draft or by making trades which is very difficult. There's a reason why this is a very top heavy League. Well, several, actually, but this is one of them.

If I had my druthers, we'd reduce the 40 man to something like 35 or have something like a Rule 5 draft where some players on the 40 man are left unprotected for perhaps the non playoff teams to have a couple of poach picks each year.