Didn't yahoo pretty much prevent churning this year, since if you cut a player the same day you pick him up he goes straight back to the FA pool and not onto waivers?
1> its the most ridiculous rule i've ever read
2> its completely unenforceable as it is so incredibly vague it isnt funny
3> others have already pointed out tha apparently yahoo has side-stepped "sameday' churning, so now if you keep a guy for a day, is that still bad? how about if you only start him for one day, but still pull the same trick and that was always your intention?
in the computer age, if something is a RULE in a game, the computer program should be written to make it IMPOSSIBLE for a player to break the rule. To me, disallowing "automatic" churning should have been done from day one. As it is an obvious ploy that the most obvious loophole-seeker could see. Altering it to 1-day does little to stop it in a league with unlimited transactions.
I already have a huge problem with Sportsline this year arbitrarily picking positions for players, and due to a possible misinterpretation of our rules, have had to let one player be played out of position. I've already edited the rules for next year.
But my point still stands, saying certain moves are "unethical" is silly. whatever rules you use, everyone in the league is following the same rules. And if someone finds a way around them, or to use them to their advantage, it is not the fault of the owner, it is the fault of the rules.
As we've already seen in this thread, different people draw the "ethical" line in different places. This is already problem in important real-life matters, it is just silly to make it a problem in a game with rules. Play by your league's rules. If you do so, there is no "unethical".
"Baseball is like church. Many attend. Few understand." -- Leo Durocher
stevelabny wrote:If churning was illegal,it would be in the rules, if its not, then oh well, everyone is playing by the same rules, and you have to use them to your advantage.
Yahoo Fair Play & Sportsmanship Rules wrote:No owner will make any roster moves (including waiver claims, trade proposals, etc.) whose sole purpose is to hamper the play of other owners.
'Churning' as defined in my league, is picking up and dropping a player on the same day simply to make that player unavailable to other teams. We had one guy in my league do this to FA starting pitchers a couple times in one week and had to remind him this was not allowed.
Picking up a player and spot-starting him for a day, or picking up a player and stashing him on your bench, on the other hand, is perfectly fine.
That's an interesting rule. I'm in a league which has a fairly tight race for the lead, and many teams are bunched together in saves. Around July, I realised that I could make up an easy 6 or 7 points if I played 5 closers for the rest of the year. I have done that, and recently it appeared the team that was in first (now in second) had also realised this just prior to the deadline, as he posted a message on the board saying he was looking to trade for a closer. As a result, I started to stash the closers-in-waiting (like Valverde and Farnsworth) on my bench, despite the fact I never intended to play them, even if they did become the closer. Does that make me in breach of the rules too? If I interpret the rule correctly, the answer would be yes, but in my opinion I'm just playing a good strategic game here.
stevelabny wrote:As we've already seen in this thread, different people draw the "ethical" line in different places. This is already problem in important real-life matters, it is just silly to make it a problem in a game with rules. Play by your league's rules. If you do so, there is no "unethical".
I didn't say anything about the ethics of it, I merely pointed out that according to Yahoo churning is against the rules. You might interpret the rule differently, but vague or not I read it as ruling out some of the activity mentioned in the thread. Whether or not it's enforceable is a separate matter. In our league it's not allowed because we have a rule against 'blocking' players with the waiver system.
Your post brought to mind people on reality shows who get all bent out of shape when they discover there's some 'alliance'. I remember on the first 'Survivor', some of the players wouldn't join an alliance because they thought it was unethical or somehow deceptive. I always thought that was the dumbest thing I'd ever heard. They are playing a friggin' game, for crying out loud. That's like getting upset at someone for being dishonest because they bluffed in a poker game. That's simply to misunderstand how the game may be played - and to fail to grasp the ethics of game-playing.
"The game has a cleanness. If you do a good job, the numbers say so. You don't have to ask anyone or play politics. You don't have to wait for the reviews." - Sandy Koufax
stevelabny wrote:If churning was illegal,it would be in the rules, if its not, then oh well, everyone is playing by the same rules, and you have to use them to your advantage.
Yahoo Fair Play & Sportsmanship Rules wrote:No owner will make any roster moves (including waiver claims, trade proposals, etc.) whose sole purpose is to hamper the play of other owners.
'Churning' as defined in my league, is picking up and dropping a player on the same day simply to make that player unavailable to other teams. We had one guy in my league do this to FA starting pitchers a couple times in one week and had to remind him this was not allowed.
Picking up a player and spot-starting him for a day, or picking up a player and stashing him on your bench, on the other hand, is perfectly fine.
That's an interesting rule. I'm in a league which has a fairly tight race for the lead, and many teams are bunched together in saves. Around July, I realised that I could make up an easy 6 or 7 points if I played 5 closers for the rest of the year. I have done that, and recently it appeared the team that was in first (now in second) had also realised this just prior to the deadline, as he posted a message on the board saying he was looking to trade for a closer. As a result, I started to stash the closers-in-waiting (like Valverde and Farnsworth) on my bench, despite the fact I never intended to play them, even if they did become the closer. Does that make me in breach of the rules too? If I interpret the rule correctly, the answer would be yes, but in my opinion I'm just playing a good strategic game here.
I'm with you. I think that's a good strategy too. I don't know that we've thought through our 'blocking' rule in great detail, but I think a big part of the idea was that roster spots are valuable things. Picking up and dropping a player on the same day has no cost. Devoting a spot to a player for even a day costs something. Stowing two or three players on your bench is downright expensive. I need those roster spots.
My league also has a 'good sportsmanship' rule. It basically says that people are expected to remain competitive and stay true to the spirit of the rules. It's vague but works for us because it's a private friends league made up of mature individuals. We needed something like that, because we developed our own complicated keeper rules. We wanted to encourage experimentation within the rules but have a way to close loopholes that might be discovered. We're all pretty competitive, but we want to keep things fun.
"The game has a cleanness. If you do a good job, the numbers say so. You don't have to ask anyone or play politics. You don't have to wait for the reviews." - Sandy Koufax
The Loveable Losers wrote:I've done quite a bit of both (especially with my revolving door of closers as I grab the new guys and trade the extras for value and upgrades). I think I've had about 12 closers on my roster this year...still have 3 left and have upgraded other spots a TON through that process and at the same time hurt the teams higher than me in the standings by giving the bottom teams in the league a lot of closers.
On the 'hail mary' it can work at any point in the season. It's tricky to pull off and plan correctly. What you need to do is VERY carefully get yourself as close to your IP limit as possible without going over. Once you're there make sure that you don't play any pitchers at all. Then you look for the perfect day to do your hail mary. Pick a day that has several of your current pitchers that are good pitching on the same day. Trade for guys in preperation if you have an active league with a short enough trade processing time (you can afford to trade down a little as long as it doesn't help a team that could hurt you in the standings). Once you've gathered the people for your hail mary either off of the fa list or through trades you simply start all of these guys that day.
The rules state that you can not accumulate stats at any position when you START THE DAY over the limit. Since you are not starting the day over the limit you're free to accumulate as many statistics as you'd like. This also works well in the OF on a smaller scale...if you're going to go over, make sure to get within one game of the limit on a certain day. You can start all 3 guys the final day then and still get statistics from them.
Thx for explaining the Hail MAry tactic.
I didn't know what everyone was talking about until you explained it.
stevelabny wrote:If churning was illegal,it would be in the rules, if its not, then oh well, everyone is playing by the same rules, and you have to use them to your advantage.
Yahoo Fair Play & Sportsmanship Rules wrote:No owner will make any roster moves (including waiver claims, trade proposals, etc.) whose sole purpose is to hamper the play of other owners.
'Churning' as defined in my league, is picking up and dropping a player on the same day simply to make that player unavailable to other teams. We had one guy in my league do this to FA starting pitchers a couple times in one week and had to remind him this was not allowed.
Picking up a player and spot-starting him for a day, or picking up a player and stashing him on your bench, on the other hand, is perfectly fine.
That's an interesting rule. I'm in a league which has a fairly tight race for the lead, and many teams are bunched together in saves. Around July, I realised that I could make up an easy 6 or 7 points if I played 5 closers for the rest of the year. I have done that, and recently it appeared the team that was in first (now in second) had also realised this just prior to the deadline, as he posted a message on the board saying he was looking to trade for a closer. As a result, I started to stash the closers-in-waiting (like Valverde and Farnsworth) on my bench, despite the fact I never intended to play them, even if they did become the closer. Does that make me in breach of the rules too? If I interpret the rule correctly, the answer would be yes, but in my opinion I'm just playing a good strategic game here.
maMorris: I would say no i have no problem whatsoever with what you are doing from the sound of it. If your league allows a player to remain on your bench then by all means go for it. IF on the ohter hand say your league has ONE bench spot and you employing the same strategy while 'churning' then what a person would do would be to pick up say farnsworth and immediately waive him,pick up valverde and immediately waive him, pick up Marte and immediately waive him, pick up 6 other potential closers and immediately waive them one right after the other. Doing this in many leagues would put those players into a 'waiver status' for about a week meaning noone can pick them up during that time frame. THAT would be unethical(at least to some)....
stevelabny wrote:ramble, that yahoo rule is amusing...
1> its the most ridiculous rule i've ever read 2> its completely unenforceable as it is so incredibly vague it isnt funny 3> others have already pointed out tha apparently yahoo has side-stepped "sameday' churning, so now if you keep a guy for a day, is that still bad? how about if you only start him for one day, but still pull the same trick and that was always your intention?
in the computer age, if something is a RULE in a game, the computer program should be written to make it IMPOSSIBLE for a player to break the rule. To me, disallowing "automatic" churning should have been done from day one. As it is an obvious ploy that the most obvious loophole-seeker could see. Altering it to 1-day does little to stop it in a league with unlimited transactions.
But my point still stands, saying certain moves are "unethical" is silly. whatever rules you use, everyone in the league is following the same rules. And if someone finds a way around them, or to use them to their advantage, it is not the fault of the owner, it is the fault of the rules.
Do you really think that just because it's not against the law or against the rules that it's ok? I guess abandoning your kids would be an ok thing to do for you? Hey, it's not against the rules.
The Yahoo rule is as clear as day.
"No owner will make any roster moves (including waiver claims, trade proposals, etc.) whose sole purpose is to hamper the play of other owners".
If you pick up a player without any intention of playing him, then picking up that player is against the rules... PERIOD!!!!!
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by Niffoc4 » Thu Aug 25, 2005 10:09 pm 
