Ethics and Psychology

[rainman23]

A little variation on a question we've kicked around before...

Say your pitching staff is in disarray. Guys like Harden, Duke, and Bonderman aren't pitching. Guys who are healthy are pitching in unfavorable places like Texas and Boston. Your IP's are going to be low this week. You know you'll be conceding Wins and Ks. But hoping you'll hang onto WHIP, ERA, Saves.

Trouble is, your opponent is having a pretty good pitching week. He may snag WHIP and ERA too. Your IP's are going to be so low that you have no margin for error. You want to encourage your opponent to keep throwing pitchers out there, because you want him to find that one bad pitcher that will get his WHIP and ERA up to a more managable area.

So -- you pick up some pitchers who are starting tomorrow, maybe Saturday. Make him think the game is on, so he'll keep pitching his guys. Maybe pick up some spot pitchers himself. When you have no intention of starting the guys you picked up.

Anybody have any ethical problems with this? I'm thinking that it's definitely cool if you MAY use the guys, depending on how things go. But if you're picking them up only to mess with his head, to push him in the direction you want to go...how cool is that?

[zhutou]

you shouldn't be having qualms about this. this is perfectly acceptable.

[mweir145]

Sounds like a cool mind game.

[ironman]

Heck if it was a good enough start I'd play them. I don't see much of a problem with this. If you had guys like Duke and Bonderman that aren't getting you the usual start for the week, I don't see the problem in bringing in an extra SP or two for a spot start. Its the guys that bring in a spot start all week as their rotation that is an issue.

[dyuen87]

at this point do whatever it takes to win. worry about ethics later. good plan if it works.

[The Loveable Losers]

This almost won me a league except that I actually DID pitch the guys. But so did my opponent and he almost blew his ERA lead by doing it.

Any time you're trailing in pitching stats getting your opponent to spot start is a good thing...whether you spot start the guys or not.

[rainman23]

Heck if it was a good enough start I'd play them. I don't see much of a problem with this. If you had guys like Duke and Bonderman that aren't getting you the usual start for the week, I don't see the problem in bringing in an extra SP or two for a spot start. Its the guys that bring in a spot start all week as their rotation that is an issue.

I agree, I don't have any problems with spot starting when injuries leave you a little short. I've done that, and I'm comfortable when my opponents do it. To tell you the truth, come playoff time I've decided I'm not going to sweat it if my opponent starts piling on starters, either...I won't initiate those kind of battles, but if they want to do it, I'll follow suit. Different ways of managing your pitching staff makes things interesting in the playoffs.

In my current case, though, I think my best shot is to keep my innings low, and hope he eventually self-destructs. I'm not going to be competitive in W's or K's unless I really start piling on the SP's, which would screw me up for the next round. And probably guarantee that he would take WHIP and ERA in this round.

[StlSluggers]

This strikes me as being very similar to the strategy that real-life managers use where they will send up a hitter to the on-deck circle even though the manager has no intention of actually letting that guy bat.

I give it for creativity.

[ironman]

I used to employ a strategy on Yahoo to curb a manager from churning pitchers against me. In the past if you added a player and immediately dropped them they'd go on waivers. So each day before my opponent got on the horn I would find what I thought were the three best FA SP spot starts and would add/drop two of them and keep the best one for the rest of the day and drop him the next day when I repeated the process. This would put those guys on waivers and render them useless to the churning manager. At some point Yahoo changed it so if you added a guy and dropped him the same day that he would remain a FA, so that strategy doesn't really work any more.

At the time though it worked awesome.

[josebach]

IMO, picking up players without any intention of playing them is against the rules. At the very least, it's a morally questionable strategy to use. Why? Because the players you just picked are now inaccessible to everybody else in your league. Even if they're going for 5th place, they still have the right to pick up players and you just took away that right.

It just seems sh!tty to me.