This particular strategy is perfectly fine to me. It's not like his opponent was resorting to spot starting and the guy picked up the good ones and left them on his bench just so his opponent couldn't have them. His moves have no effect on his opponent in this case, as his opponent wasn't going to pick up and use those guys anyways. If the opponent gets affected by this, it's the fault of the opponent, not the other guy. If it's a very active league, it might work too. Not a bad idea.
I did pick up some extra SP's, and it turned out that I might actually use them. The interesting thing -- he had guys scheduled to pitch at noon and 4 today. And I had three guys scheduled to pitch at 7:00 and 10:00. Odds were...if he played his guys, I sat mine. And vice versa. The ball was in his court, and either way I could respond appropriately. I've noted the advantages before of "picking up the West coast guy" in these situations, but this is the first time it's really been pivotal in a matchup. I've engineered the same situation tomorrow. You wouldn't want to do it if the late guy was a clown, but all else being equal -- pick up the guy who starts later.
ironman wrote: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.
It might have worked awesome, but you broke the rules.
Rule #4 under fairplay and sportsmanship. "No owner will make any roster moves (including waiver claims, trade proposals, etc.) whose sole purpose is to hamper the play of other owners."
Rules schmules, it was a money league, and the commish refused to add a transaction limit. I'm gonna do what I have to do to win and if Joe Manager is running 25 different SP's on me that week because he's too incompetent to actually run a winning rotation, then I'm gonna employ any method I can to stop him.
Did you hear me from all the way on top of your high horse?
Last edited by ironman on Sun Sep 18, 2005 10:48 pm, edited 1 time in total.
This smells a lot like churning when managers pick up players and then drop them with no intention of ever using them. If there is a chance that you will use them, I have no problem with it. If you have no intention of using them, why even bother??
ironman wrote: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.
It might have worked awesome, but you broke the rules.
Rule #4 under fairplay and sportsmanship. "No owner will make any roster moves (including waiver claims, trade proposals, etc.) whose sole purpose is to hamper the play of other owners."
Rules schmules, it was a money league, and the commish refused to add a transaction limit. I'm gonna do what I have to do to win and if Joe Manager is running 25 different SP's on me that week because he's too incompetent to actually run a winning rotation, then I'm gonna employ any method I can to stop him.
Did you hear me from all the way on top of your high horse?
Yes, I heard you loud and clear. You said it was ok to cheat because there was money involved.
Wait a minute... doesn't that make it worse?
ironman wrote:Rules schmules
If I'm on a high horse, this must be your horse...
Did your commish refuse to add an innings pitched limit too?
ironman wrote: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.
It might have worked awesome, but you broke the rules.
Rule #4 under fairplay and sportsmanship. "No owner will make any roster moves (including waiver claims, trade proposals, etc.) whose sole purpose is to hamper the play of other owners."
"Sole purpose" is a tricky phrase. Rule one, if I'm not mistaken (in Yahoo! at least), says something about all moves being made with the purpose of improving your teams standing. One could argue that the moves in this example are made to improve standing...not JUST to hamper another owner.
I agree with this. The strategy in question might be hampering another owner's play, but the ultimate goal here is to win the matchup. For that reason, it's tough for me to say the "sole purpose" was to hamper another manager's play, and therefore no rules were broken. My interpretation of how this rule is to be applied is when some disgruntled owner is well out of contention, and decides to play some games with players on the waiver wire (or anything else that a disgruntled, out-of-contention manager would do that a normal manager wouldn't do).
The other problem with trying to judge the legitimacy of such a strategy is it really has to be viewed within the context of the league and its managers. If you're in a league full of no-holds-barred sort of guys, then this would be perfectly acceptable. If the league is full of, well, uptight managers (not the best word, I admit), then I probably wouldn't do it.
Rule #4 under fairplay and sportsmanship.
"No owner will make any roster moves (including waiver claims, trade proposals, etc.) whose sole purpose is to hamper the play of other owners."
This rule is clear as day. I can't believe so many people are arguing semantics.
Does picking up players that you have no intention of starting make your team better? NO!!! Does it make other teams worse? YES!!! Hence the SOLE PURPOSE is to hamper the play of other owners. It doesn't matter what the side effects are of hampering the other owner... it's still against the rules.
If this isn't against the rules, why did Yahoo change it so that players dropped the same day aren't placed on waivers anymore????
Rule #1 under fairplay and sportsmanship:
"All league-related transactions will be executed with the intent of improving the owner's team and/or its standing within the league."
This rule is clear as day, I can't believe so many people are arguing semantics.
Can picking up players you have no intention of starting improve your standing in the league? YES!!! Hence, the SOLE PURPOSE is to improve your standing. It doesn't matter what the side effects are of making a move to improve your standing...it's still within the rules.
If this is against the rules why does Yahoo! deem it acceptable as the #1 rule?
Good grief. IT'S COMMON SENSE!!!
Seriously though...the rules are up for interpretation, so it stands to reason that different people will interpret them differently. This should be voted on or otherwise worked out in leagues before the season starts.
Art Vandelay wrote:Rule #1 under fairplay and sportsmanship: "All league-related transactions will be executed with the intent of improving the owner's team and/or its standing within the league."
This rule is clear as day, I can't believe so many people are arguing semantics.
Can picking up players you have no intention of starting improve your standing in the league? YES!!! Hence, the SOLE PURPOSE is to improve your standing. It doesn't matter what the side effects are of making a move to improve your standing...it's still within the rules.
If this is against the rules why does Yahoo! deem it acceptable as the #1 rule?
Good grief. IT'S COMMON SENSE!!!
Seriously though...the rules are up for interpretation, so it stands to reason that different people will interpret them differently. This should be voted on or otherwise worked out in leagues before the season starts.
Once again, you're saying rules #1 and #4 have to be broken to be against the rules?
Do you honestly think rule#1 is designed to allow teams to pick up players and immediately drop them so that they are on waivers and unavailable for other teams to pick up? Because it helps your standings in the league? That was it's intention?
Scary.
Last edited by josebach on Tue Sep 20, 2005 12:48 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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