I was roped into a league this year where the owners do not trade. Right now I have Hideki Matsui on the block and am willing to sell low on him because I need more pitching and I have an adequate backup, yet I can't get anyone to bite. I am not going to drop him because Matsui is too valuable. This isn't the first time this year either. I have noticed that nobody trades, except for one person. So this one player and I have traded players with each other a couple times.
I have been greeted with the philosophy, "If I wanted him, then I would have drafted him." This philosophy has really sucked the fun out of this league for me. I understand not going trade crazy, but when they just keep the same roster all year it makes no sense. Nobody drafts perfect. There is a guy who is dead last in the rankings and he refuses to trade anyone. You can look at his team and see why he is struggling.
It has just been a frustrating league to deal with. It has gotten to the point that I just set my roster and forget about it. I don't care if I finish last in that particular league. If I get hit with a bunch of injuries then I can't trade to improve myself.
I thought I would start this topic for those would like to share their most frustrating league experience.
Outside of that I have enjoyed most of the leagues I am in this year.
Oh man. For the past 3 years, I played in a league that was composed of people at my buddy's company. He got invited to the league one year, and knew nothing about fantasy baseball, so he asked me to co-manage with him. Well, this league was really tight - very few trades, and those that did happen were mostly waiver-wire material moving back and forth. Regardless, we won the league our first two years, mostly due to WW diligence (thanks Cafe!).
However, last season (our last year in this league), a couple new owners joined, and these guys weren't so reluctant to make trades. We made a couple savvy early season deals, and were well on our way to a third championship. We had a couple injuries that were slowing us, but had depth to deal (having both Chase Utley and B.J. Upton allowed that), so we worked out a few deals where we would move either Utley or Upton to a team that needed a 2B for a combo package of starting pitching and a closer. Unfortunately, this league had the "veto" system in Yahoo - and the other owners, sick of us winning (and the fact that we talked alot of trash), kept getting the 5 votes or whatever it took to veto us. EVERY TIME. Despite both owners involved pleading for them to let it through, our commissioner took no action and we kept getting vetos. These trades were fair - I can't remember exactly, but one example was something like Brandon Webb and JJ Putz for Chase Utley; one team had a surplus of pitching and saves, and no 2B, we had two great second basemen - but it kept getting vetoed.
We finished third - and started a new league this year, with a bunch of friends who are all serious about playing. Much better.
Russell James wrote:I was roped into a league this year where the owners do not trade. Right now I have Hideki Matsui on the block and am willing to sell low on him because I need more pitching and I have an adequate backup, yet I can't get anyone to bite. I am not going to drop him because Matsui is too valuable. This isn't the first time this year either. I have noticed that nobody trades, except for one person. So this one player and I have traded players with each other a couple times.
I have been greeted with the philosophy, "If I wanted him, then I would have drafted him." This philosophy has really sucked the fun out of this league for me. I understand not going trade crazy, but when they just keep the same roster all year it makes no sense. Nobody drafts perfect. There is a guy who is dead last in the rankings and he refuses to trade anyone. You can look at his team and see why he is struggling.
It has just been a frustrating league to deal with. It has gotten to the point that I just set my roster and forget about it. I don't care if I finish last in that particular league. If I get hit with a bunch of injuries then I can't trade to improve myself.
I thought I would start this topic for those would like to share their most frustrating league experience.
Outside of that I have enjoyed most of the leagues I am in this year.
Its been 3 weeks. Its completely reasonable for people to not want to tinker at this stage in the game. If I was in dead last, I may not be looking to trade either, if my studs were just slumping early, which may be the case. I also wouldn't trade you for HIdeki Matsui. I don't think you can judge the propensity for trading in your league on April 25th.
We had a company league for a few years that just died because half the league dropped out of it and started a new one over frustration about this very type of thing. We had 12 owners, and there were 6 who were very conservative, didn't like trades, didn't like to change rules, stopped paying attention when their team started losing, etc. and we had 6 owners who were more progressive, wanted to trade & stay active even if they were way behind in the standings, evolve from redraft to keeper, switch from weekly to daily line-ups, and possibly switch from draft to auction.
Some of the more frustrating things about this league:
1) If you made a trade, chances were about 80% that it was gonna get vetoed and you had to literally wait 3 days before finding out if it was approved.
2) If you made a lot of waiver wire/add & drop moves, some of the people in the league would ridicule you for being a fantasy baseball geek. (Which begs the question, "What the hell are you doing playing this game, anyways?"). On the plus side, I ended up with Lincecum, Gallardo & Ryan Braun while they held onto guys like Jose Uribe all year long.
3) The 6 people in the league who were ruining it for the other 6 people NEVER wanted to make rule changes. It was a h2h points league with a draft and weekly line-ups... I made a proposal to switch to daily line-ups last year instead of weekly, and a few of the guys immediately tried to shoot it down - "Oh no way... there is no way I can do daily line-ups, I can't possibly keep up with that, I'm too busy, blah blah blah."
4) if you won, you wouldn't get paid till Jan or Feb of the next year 'cause nobody paid their money until then.
At the end of last year a few of us said, "Screw these guys! let's start a new league"... we found 6 other like-minded individuals to form a new 12-team auction-based keeper league with daily line-ups! I could feel the overwhelming sense of relief from the minute I walked into the draft room in March.
I'm in 2 pay leagues and we have had 2 trades so far combined. And that's OK. These are lots of wavier wire and FA moves, so they are active leagues. Typically I find that the more experienced the group of owners, the less trading that goes on in the league.
Russell James wrote:I was roped into a league this year where the owners do not trade. Right now I have Hideki Matsui on the block and am willing to sell low on him because I need more pitching and I have an adequate backup, yet I can't get anyone to bite. I am not going to drop him because Matsui is too valuable. This isn't the first time this year either. I have noticed that nobody trades, except for one person. So this one player and I have traded players with each other a couple times.
I have been greeted with the philosophy, "If I wanted him, then I would have drafted him." This philosophy has really sucked the fun out of this league for me. I understand not going trade crazy, but when they just keep the same roster all year it makes no sense. Nobody drafts perfect. There is a guy who is dead last in the rankings and he refuses to trade anyone. You can look at his team and see why he is struggling.
It has just been a frustrating league to deal with. It has gotten to the point that I just set my roster and forget about it. I don't care if I finish last in that particular league. If I get hit with a bunch of injuries then I can't trade to improve myself.
I thought I would start this topic for those would like to share their most frustrating league experience.
Outside of that I have enjoyed most of the leagues I am in this year.
Its been 3 weeks. Its completely reasonable for people to not want to tinker at this stage in the game. If I was in dead last, I may not be looking to trade either, if my studs were just slumping early, which may be the case. I also wouldn't trade you for HIdeki Matsui. I don't think you can judge the propensity for trading in your league on April 25th.
I agree, I usually don't look for trades until mid May when you can start to tell how your team is panning out.
I ain't askin' nobody for nothin, If I can't get it on my own. - Charlie Daniels
April is absolutely the best time though to try and pitch trade offers to owners who might be growing impatient with slow-starting Top 50-type players.
Russell James wrote:I was roped into a league this year where the owners do not trade. Right now I have Hideki Matsui on the block and am willing to sell low on him because I need more pitching and I have an adequate backup, yet I can't get anyone to bite. I am not going to drop him because Matsui is too valuable. This isn't the first time this year either. I have noticed that nobody trades, except for one person. So this one player and I have traded players with each other a couple times.
I have been greeted with the philosophy, "If I wanted him, then I would have drafted him." This philosophy has really sucked the fun out of this league for me. I understand not going trade crazy, but when they just keep the same roster all year it makes no sense. Nobody drafts perfect. There is a guy who is dead last in the rankings and he refuses to trade anyone. You can look at his team and see why he is struggling.
It has just been a frustrating league to deal with. It has gotten to the point that I just set my roster and forget about it. I don't care if I finish last in that particular league. If I get hit with a bunch of injuries then I can't trade to improve myself.
I thought I would start this topic for those would like to share their most frustrating league experience.
Outside of that I have enjoyed most of the leagues I am in this year.
I feel your pain. I think you should trust your gut on this one and if its really that ridiculous then quit and never look back.
my most frustrating experience happend 2 seasons ago. it was a league of friends (or acquaintances would be more accurate). i needed SS help and this owner had both rollins and tejada. it was late april, beginning of the season, this was before rollins big power breakout, and i was trying hard to strade for him instead of tejada because he was considered the lesser one at the time. we negotiated for about a week and he was trying to get all kinds of talent for him. finally we are about to agree to a deal when he agrees to trade tejada to another owner for shelton (who was having that insane month we all remember). i confronted him on this, and he said he wasn't expecting shelton to consider hitting like he was. "so why did you trade one of the top shortstops for him?!?!" i nearly killed the guy. but i won the league, beat the guy who stole tejada in the finals
Cafe Home
Fantasy Football
Fantasy Basketball
Fantasy Hockey
by Russell James » Fri Apr 25, 2008 8:33 am 
