Potential rule changes

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Potential rule changes

Postby Kevin » Sat Jun 09, 2012 2:58 pm

As promised, I am starting a thread to get a discussion going on potential rule changes for the 2013 season. In my last blog post, I alluded to Charlie's proposal to add additional DL slots. In the comments section, Charlie expanded upon that and Marc and Nick added their suggestions on a couple other possible rule changes. Since I'm not sure how many of you saw those comments, I think this forum thread will be a better way to start a dialogue about this.

What I'm going to do is recap the three rule changes suggested by others with a simple explanation on why the change was proposed. Then I will go on to explain why the rule is the way it is today. This is probably going to sound like my defense of the status quo, but that isn't really the case. I just want to make sure everyone is aware of the reasoning behind the current rules and to keep that in mind when forming your opinion. I would like to get feedback from as many people as possible on this. I don't know if we will put these to a vote, but I want to hear as many opinions as possible before deciding how to proceed. Also, if you have additional rules that you would like to see changed, please bring them up here too. We have plenty of time to figure this out, but it is probably best to discuss this while the season is in progress, rather than in the post season when little thought is being given to fantasy baseball.

#1 - Add additional disabled list slot(s)
Charlie originally proposed this to me in a direct email. As my recent blog post mentioned, several teams have been absolutely decimated by injuries this season. A few teams have had virtually no roster flexibility because their minor leagues are almost full of nothing but injured players. I haven't done the stats to see if the number of injured players is significantly higher than usual, but it certainly seems like it. Charlie's proposal is to give each team a third DL slot, specifically reserved for players on the long term (60 day) DL. I countered by suggesting that we just add a third regular DL slot instead, for the sake of simplicity. However, I'm willing to consider Charlie's exact proposal too.

The reason why we only allow two DL slots right now is to keep the overall roster sizes relatively small so that at least some decent players remain available in the free agent pool. As the season wears on, the free agent pool tends to get pretty weak, especially in years like this one where team's DL slots are completely full. So if we were to expand the rosters by as little as one extra DL slot per team, that is potentially 10 more free agents who wouldn't be available later in the year. We could get around this by adding additional players to the overall league roster, but I can tell you from experience that we are already pretty much scraping the bottom of the barrel as it is at certain positions. Also, adding more players could weaken the draft pool for the following season. I think I hinted somewhere that we could also consider adding more than 10 free agent signings per team as a result of this change, but I'm going to kill that idea right now. I don't think it is necessary, and really don't want to make any changes that would further discourage trades. We already see very few trades in this league as it is now.

#2 - Rolling waiver priority
In response to my comment about possibly adding additional free agent signings per team, Marc suggested that we change the waiver priority from the reverse of the league standings to a rolling priority list, in which you would go to the back of the line every time you sign a player. Now, since I already shot down the idea of adding additional free agent signings, maybe this one is moot. However, it could be implemented even under the current rules. The idea is to give every team a fairer shot at free agents rather than rewarding the teams at the bottom of the standings.

The current rule is all about parity. In a deep keeper league like this, it can be very difficult to turn your team around from a bottom feeder to a championship contender. Of course, Marc is proving this year that it is certainly not impossible. But the idea behind the reverse standings priority rule is to give the supposedly weaker teams a better chance at being competitive. Also, our free agent priority system actually closely mimics the MLB waiver system, which gives priority to the worst teams when a player is placed on waivers by a MLB team.

I also want to add here that even if we keep the priority rule the same as it has always been, I do want to make an enhancement to the web site to allow you to submit multiple free agent claims in case one of the claims doesn't go through. Right now, this is done by emailing me and manually taking care of it after the fact. I think I can do some work to make this more automated. So keep that in mind if that is one of the reasons why you don't like the current system.

#3 - Roster cut deadline
Finally, Nick proposed that we push back the 16 player roster cut deadline to a date closer to the draft rather than early December. This would allow teams to make more informed decisions based on winter player movement and possible injury updates.

Frankly, there is only one reason why the deadline is when it is: trades. As you know, we have a trade freeze from August 15 until roster cuts are made. This is pretty much essential to keep teams from making "something for nothing" trades in which they give up a player whom they had no intention of keeping anyway. So if we were to move the roster cut deadline to early February, for example, that means there would be nearly six months out of the year in which you would not be able to trade players. This probably isn't a big deal since mid-winter trades are extremely rare in this league anyway. As long as everyone is on board with not being able to trade players over the winter, I have no problem with this suggestion.

That's all I've got. What say you?
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Re: Potential rule changes

Postby David » Fri Jun 15, 2012 3:56 pm

My take on the proposed rule changes (and Kevin's comments associated with these changes):

1. I would consider myself neutral to mildly supportive of adding another DL slot, but I do agree that it should only be one slot and that it should ONLY be for 60-day DL guys so that you can have a bit more flexibility in terms of keeping a good player who likely won't be able to help you in the current season. I am against expanding the player pool or the number of FA selections, even if the 60-day slot gets added.

Regarding injuries in general, I have three comments:
a) Injuries, injury-proneness, etc. should be factored in to drafting by each manager. There are many situations where player A has more ability than player B when healthy, and player A may have a significant history of injuries, and you have to decide whether you are willing to take that risk. I think it takes something away from the competition when you start giving each manager more and more ways to mitigate making a risky decision.
b) I think we are all getting overly excited about injuries and injury mitigation because of the incredible and unprecedented rash of injuries, especially to good players, this year. This really hasn't been an issue in past seasons for the most part, and it's usually not a good idea to make a rule change based on a statistical anomaly such as this one.
c) This is coming from a guy whose team / season has been decimated worse than all of you by injuries. Yeah, it's unfortunate, but it's part of the game.

Two closing comments related to this:
a) While I agree that the total number of allowed FA signings should remain at 10, I'd like to propose that FA signings become tradeable entities.
b) I have a brief comment regarding Kevin's concern about the lack of trading. While I do not support additional FA signings, I will just say that there are much bigger reasons for the general lack of trading than the FA signing limit.

2. I would consider myself neutral to mildly against changing the waiver rules that we have now. In my opinion, the main reason this rule change was proposed is not so much to prevent the 10th place team from hogging all the good FAs as it is keeping the 2nd and 3rd place teams from blocking the 1st place team (and/or taking all the best "remaining" FAs). Thus, I would suggest consideration of a split system whereby the "top tier" of teams for any given week (let's say teams 1-4 in the standings for arguments' sake) work on a rolling waiver priority (based purely on ranking and not team: thus, if 4th place has first priority and a new team moves into 4th, they inherit first priority) and the "bottom tier" teams (5-10) continue to have priority based on standings the way it is now. It would be more complex and give Kevin a lot of algorithms to create and coding to do, but I know he likes that sort of thing anyways.

3. I agree with moving the roster cut deadline later (late January / early February) for the reasons mentioned. As you said, there are rarely any trades in this time frame anyways, and trades can always be agreed to in principle and completed when the deadline passes, so I see no major drawbacks.
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Re: Potential rule changes

Postby Nick » Wed Jun 20, 2012 7:03 pm

1) I guess I'm against the extra DL slot for reasons Kevin mentioned about further reducing the amount of players available in the FA pool. I wouldn't have a big problem if another slot was added, but I don't see a huge need for it.

2) Prefer a rolling waiver priority, as it's fairly simple and seems the most fair. The teams at the bottom usually are at the bottom because they aren't as active and aren't bidding on these players anyway.

3) I don't think many trades are happening in the offseason anyway, so I'm definitely for moving the keeper deadline back.

4) Trading can be difficult in keeper leagues because we get attached to "our" players... which is why Marc is always going after the draft picks!
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