Prohibiting firesales until late in the season

[Danimal]

The firesale that caused the firestorm led to 16 e-mails in three hours and a poll. Looks like my idea will not be approved, but I got my point across. I'm hoping for a line in constitution reminding owners that such sales soooo early in the season are borderline unethical and very uncool.

[neoforce]

I'm in a H2H keeper league that uses escalating values and space for prospects.

I don't think you can define fire sale. As soon as you try, owners will just say that they don't consider it a fire sale.

That's what I was thinking, it is too subjective of a term. How would you define a firesale so that you could look at it objectively and prove it was a firesale?

Depending on your league, I think I have a way around the issue of definition of a firesale.

Not sure how the original poster uses escalating values. My league uses salary caps and I'm thinking of proposing a rule to help fix the early fire sales. (We have teams who go into the yearly auction planning to play for the following year!!)

Our salary cap is $260 at the auction, then $350 the rest of the year without a salary floor. I do like this structure because it encourages play for next year trades. I just hate seeing those trades start in April/May.

So, what I'm thinking of proposing to our league is rolling caps:

$260 cap at auction
$230 floor and $290 cap through end of may.
$200 floor and $320 cap through end of July
no floor and $350 cap the rest of the way.

The rule would include something about salarys on the DL counting toward the floor.

This avoids the problem of rejecting a trade based on an arbitrary decision if it is a firesale. If your trade fits the salary/cap floor, you can do it.

[Danimal]

Very logical approach. Thanks for the idea!

[KCollins1304]

I'm in a H2H keeper league that uses escalating values and space for prospects.

I don't think you can define fire sale. As soon as you try, owners will just say that they don't consider it a fire sale.

That's what I was thinking, it is too subjective of a term. How would you define a firesale so that you could look at it objectively and prove it was a firesale?

Depending on your league, I think I have a way around the issue of definition of a firesale.

Not sure how the original poster uses escalating values. My league uses salary caps and I'm thinking of proposing a rule to help fix the early fire sales. (We have teams who go into the yearly auction planning to play for the following year!!)

Our salary cap is $260 at the auction, then $350 the rest of the year without a salary floor. I do like this structure because it encourages play for next year trades. I just hate seeing those trades start in April/May.

So, what I'm thinking of proposing to our league is rolling caps:

$260 cap at auction
$230 floor and $290 cap through end of may.
$200 floor and $320 cap through end of July
no floor and $350 cap the rest of the way.

The rule would include something about salarys on the DL counting toward the floor.

This avoids the problem of rejecting a trade based on an arbitrary decision if it is a firesale. If your trade fits the salary/cap floor, you can do it.

I was commenting more on the problem of the individual trade, this system seems like a decent idea on the surface. I think there would still be trades that people considered firesales though, people would just move expiring contracts like the NBA to fit the cap.

[xeifrank]

I've seen leauges implement rules that after a certain point in the season you are only allowed to trade with teams within X places in the standings with you. A last place team might only be allowed to trade with the 8th, 9th, 10th and 11th place teams for example. The idea to keep one of the teams playing for next year from having a large impact on who wins the league via a trade with one of the top couple of teams.
vr, Xeifrank

[Yoda]

I've seen leauges implement rules that after a certain point in the season you are only allowed to trade with teams within X places in the standings with you. A last place team might only be allowed to trade with the 8th, 9th, 10th and 11th place teams for example. The idea to keep one of the teams playing for next year from having a large impact on who wins the league via a trade with one of the top couple of teams.
vr, Xeifrank

Hell why not just lock up trades? You have to play with what you have plus the free agency.

[Snakes Gould]

in h2h leagues, theres no way any team can be out of it this early, especially if the top 4 or 6 make the playoffs. roto, thats another story. its the main reason why i dont play roto, because people quit far too early.

[Fantasy Sports Genie]

I think you'd find it difficult to legislate any sort of "no firesale" rule, for the reasons that were mentioned, though the rolling salary cap idea is interesting. My keeper league has similar concerns, and has done a few things to try to combat them. In my league, it really isn't practical to say, "Crawford for Milledge is ridiculous" without having more information. We get to protect 20 "years of service". If Crawford currently costs 10, then he is effectively unprotectable; he is purely a season rental for whoever gets him, and there will be a very limited audience who has any interest in him at that price. That understandably drives his price down substantially. The two things we have in place, however, are:

- An in-season salary cap. This is a looser form of the proposed rolling salary cap. You can protect 20 years of service prior to the draft. At no point in the season can you have more than 35 years of service (I think that is the number... my team is hideous this year so I haven't exactly had to worry about it This puts a bit of a governor on the teams that are playing for the present; they can't just go trade for every high-priced player in the league, and have to be a bit more discerning when taking on expensive players.

- Peer pressure. In a league with good owners, problems like these sort themselves out somewhat over time, because if you give up too easily/too early/whatever, a bunch of other owners say, "Pssst. You just got screwed. I would have given you more for him." Or they see another team that was supposedly in the same boat that recovers and does well. Or whatever. As a commish, I tend to point things like this out to my managers, particularly new managers, to try to keep the league healthy. And if I see a manager that consistently does more harm than good, then I'll find a way to replace them after a season.

[Danimal]

The owner got an earfull. Horrible, ridiculous and "most unbalanced trade ever in the league" were just some of the reactions in our message board.

I think he got the message, but the damage is done.

Thanks to all for the comments. Good stuff.