ESPN starting pitching problem

[Fantasy GM]

-Everyone knows the limits each week, it's been that way all year.
-No one knew that ESPN allows you to go over the limit if your last eligible starter goes that day as well.

Yep, no one would know the second bullet unless they read the rules. The whole point is that by definition on espn a limit of X starts per week allows your second condition.

I didn't notice this. I figured a limit is a limit.

My point is what you figured was not the case. You failed to notice something and clarify it. To retroactively say this is what I meant is always an iffy situation. My point is you told them to read the rules to understand them. Say the guy did read everything, he would have thought he was doing something legal. Can you really punish someone for unintentionally doing something that IMO someone would have had a strong case for doing intentionally? I also might wonder if he really is so dumb he cannot count to 12 or he was just being savvy. Three times in 7 weeks is a pretty big coincidence. Whatever the case do you really think it is fair to punish someone for something you as the commish clearly did not understand at the time he made the move. If you did not know how it worked how was this dumb guy supposed to?

Maybe even more important: how do you punish a guy for something he already did 2 times and you never even said anything about it? If he had any questions about whether it was legal before doing it twice he would be pretty sure it was alright the third time.

None of the other teams can see the second bullet. It's in the fine print on the League Manager "edit options" page under that category. Every team only sees the start limit per week (which in this case was 12). I should have looked into all the boxscores the previous weeks - I didn't notice anything the two other weeks because the affected pitchers didn't score much at all and the team won by a big margin.

When every team enters the game limits page, the ONLY THING they can see is the max # of starts. They don't see this ESPN exception thing (just to clarify), so he couldn't say he read about this, because it's not even there.

[walkoffblast]

None of the other teams can see the second bullet. It's in the fine print on the League Manager "edit options" page under that category. Every team only sees the start limit per week (which in this case was 12). I should have looked into all the boxscores the previous weeks - I didn't notice anything the two other weeks because the affected pitchers didn't score much at all and the team won by a big margin.

When every team enters the game limits page, the ONLY THING they can see is the max # of starts. They don't see this ESPN exception thing (just to clarify), so he couldn't say he read about this, because it's not even there.

So you told them to read the rules but you meant get all their rule info from one page not related to rules? I am not a league manager in espn, in fact I do not even have an espn team at all this year but it took me like 2 minutes to find this, maybe 10 seconds after I was on the actual rule page.

H2H WEEKLY start maximums

* Batters - Unlimited starts - No maximums.
* Pitchers - Limited starts - Maximum of 12 games started by active roster.

NOTES:
1) In the event that a H2H scoring period is shorter or longer than a 7-day week, the number of starts does not change.
2) If a team exceeds the max in the middle of a day, the team will continue to accumulate stats until the end of the day.

[Fantasy GM]

I was referring to the league settings, not the ESPN.com rules. However, if the article you copied is clearly visible, then that makes the decision easy, doesn't it? Thanks for the head's up. I'm new to running an ESPN league (was always Yahoo), so it's good to learn these things before anything really bad happens (this one involved a top team and a last-place team).

[bennyz]

I'm having a similar issue with a 9 start week (10 team H2H). Currently, teams have went over the 9 start max (12) times so far. I went over the so-called max this week with 13. One of the teams in our division noticed this and wrote a thought out post on our league homepage, basically incriminating me as a "non fair" commish. Thing is, he has been (1) start over twice during the season. He was warned and I posted a league note on the homepage informing everyone of the 9 start max that really isn't a max as long as you haven't hit 9 before Sunday's game. I don't see a problem with exploiting the 9 start max because no one is given a disadvantage in this situation. An advantage is you have poor pitching and can afford to pick up leftover starters on Sunday for W's and K's and hold your breath for ERA and WHIP.