Greetings and Salutations

[MGrage]

Aloha y'all,

Well, I think I've finally recovered from my annual AZ fall league trip. This year's special surprise guest was none other than Harry's right hand man, Steve Stone. Last year, I got to conversate briefly with Ozzie if you guys forgot. I sat with the Stone pony for a couple of innings talking all things baseball and Steve reminisced alot about his playing days. Good stuff.

Anyways, that's not the reason I brought you all here today though. There was a panel discussing league rules and whatnot when one of the other attendees brought up a great idea for an alternative to our draft. What his league does is put all 30 MLB teams in a hat and an owner picks one name out of that hat and those are the players that come up for bid. The biggest reason to do that was to make the stars & superstars available during the entire auction, not just the beginning. A guy like Pujols could come up early or he could be the last team taken. This makes budgeting your money even more important. The exact order of each team selected wasn't discussed though. I guess it could be time of service or alphabetical or perhaps even chosen by the picking owner. Since we're NL only, I thought we could separate the hitters and pitchers to increase the number of selections, otherwise only 1/3 of the league would get to pick from the hat twice.

So what do you guys think? Mahalo

Matt

[Nick's Picts (archived)]

mgrage said:

What his league does is put all 30 MLB teams in a hat and an owner picks one name out of that hat and those are the players that come up for bid. The biggest reason to do that was to make the stars & superstars available during the entire auction, not just the beginning. A guy like Pujols could come up early or he could be the last team taken. This makes budgeting your money even more important. The exact order of each team selected wasn't discussed though. I guess it could be time of service or alphabetical or perhaps even chosen by the picking owner. Since we're NL only, I thought we could separate the hitters and pitchers to increase the number of selections, otherwise only 1/3 of the league would get to pick from the hat twice.

I'm not sure how doing it this way would change how I approach the draft. Either way I'd still end up with a $.17 Adam Kennedy. Which is to say I would still be monitoring positions I need filled vs. who is available at those positions and how much I have to spend no matter how they were called to the block. And still make bad decisions.

The one question I do have, though, is how we would treat the dregs on the early rosters? Also, do you have to work completely through a roster before moving on to the next? After a roster has been set aside, can you return to it later? Without a 1:1 correspondence between players and CFCL spots, I'm not sure how this would work.

[kenndoza (archived)]

It's one of those ideas that would be fun in theory but not necessarily fun in practice.

Then again, I still want to do my "year-round draft" in which you have a Christmas draft of a baseball, basketball, and football roster and you have that "team" for the entire next calendar year.

[MGrage]

nickpicts said:

The one question I do have, though, is how we would treat the dregs on the early rosters? Also, do you have to work completely through a roster before moving on to the next? After a roster has been set aside, can you return to it later? Without a 1:1 correspondence between players and CFCL spots, I'm not sure how this would work.

You go through the entire roster top to bottom before heading off to the next one. Once you pass on someone, they don't come back either. Hmm, I didn't think of that. The original owner's league was a mixed league one so they don't have the penetration that we do. Their dregs and our dregs are two completely different animals. I guess we could get to a point at the end where a team or two won't have enough players to fill out their roster spots. On the bright side, that would put more available talent out for the rotation draft portion ....

BTW, it's good to see you back Nick. How is Wyoming treating you nowadays? Or is it South Dakota? I'm sorry I can't remember where you're off to. ;D I feel your Adam Kennedy pain dude. I can trump you with a 14 cent Nick Johnson though.

Anyways, happy holidays Nick. See you next spring at the Draft. Mahalo

Matt

[Copperfields]

Just getting around to replying to this.

My initial thought was that the method of determining players to bid on by selecting an NL roster from a hat and nominating each of the players on that team in turn is a gimic with the sole aim of "jazzing things up." I don't really see the benefit of this approach.

After a closer reading of Matt's post, I see that he explains that one of the main aims is to ensure that superstar players are available later in the Draft. There's something to be said for that, and it would certainly help maintain the interest level throughout Draft Day.

Even so, it still seems like it's an attempt to artificially spark Draft Day excitement, and I've never been a fan of making a change of that magnitude just to make things "more interesting".

I actually like the strategy involved with our current method of nominating players. When's the right time to nominate that potential sleeper you've got your eye on? When you're down to your last spot, how long can you wait to nominate the player your REALLY want while risking getting stuck with the slugs you keep nominating in order to stall?

I remember in last year's draft - I was saving my last pitching spot for Manuel Corpas, but I could just sense that Holian had him targeted as well - and he had more cash than I did. I kept hoping he'd win a player that would put his remaining budget below mine, and all the while I had to keep trying to identify other pitchers to nominate who I thought someone else might go to .02 on and let me off the hook. That type of analysis/strategy goes out the door if you're simply sitting back waiting for a name to be called off a roster.

I don't think the order in which CFCL teams get to choose NL rosters from the hat really matters. It's all random anyway, so you may as well just have one person pull all the rosters - it's not like there's any strategy or skill involved. Now, if it worked where instead of pulling a random NL roster from a hat, each CFCL owner actually got to choose a specific roster when it was their turn, the order might be a little more meaningful. There'd be some strategy involved where you could actually target a roster that were strong in a position you needed to fill, or those rosters that would be best at soaking up money from your richer competitors.

Here's one way to handle Nick's concern about what to do with the dregs from each roster: rather than select a roster and work through all 25 guys in order, only bid on the starting position players, starting rotation, closer, and set-up guys from that roster. Go through all the NL teams that way (by which point CFCL rosters would be 80%-90% filled). Then toss all the remaining players in the pool together and fill the last couple spots on each CFCL roster using our current method.

Overall, I don't think I'd care for the method, but if there's enough interest we could talk it over some more.

David

[MGrage]

Well, I'm all for making more work for you at the Draft Dave. That does sound like an interesting synthesis of the two systems though. I'm not saying the current way we draft is broken either. I know that we're open to innovations and trying new rules/operations. Maybe we could try it out like back in the day when you guys went to an open auction format for the first 3 rounds with Paul serving at the barker.

That said, this is most likely not the offseason to make any major changes though. With up to 1/3 new owners coming on board, it probably wouldn't be fair to the newbies coming in. BTW, it's too bad I didn't know about the departures of Eric, Paul & Teddy before I went to AZ. Maybe I could have sparked some interest with some of the other big names there. Who wouldn't want a Jim Callis or Joe Sheehan to fill Jason's shoes next year? Though John DeWan never attends, I know a couple of his co-workers there. Or maybe even one of the other Mastersball brain trust? Mahalo

Matt

[kenndoza (archived)]

I'd vote against John Dewan, but I'd accept Steve Moyer or Pat Quinn with open arms. Those are good guys.

[Nick's Picts (archived)]

David, I think your solution comes close to solving how we would work this approach for the CFCL but since we generally draft the day before Opening Day, there's always a few teams (Pirates, Rockies, Reds) who always seem to have a number of spots open until the last possible moment. It just seems like a lot more work than any benefit that might be derived.

But I've gone from being a proponent of change to crusty, bitter conservatism w/r/t CFCL rules.

[MGrage]

kenndoza said:

I'd vote against John Dewan, but I'd accept Steve Moyer or Pat Quinn with open arms. Those are good guys.

That's interesting. I've never met JD but I have talked to both Steve & Pat over the years that I've been going to the AFL symposium. Pat's the guy who gave me the Cubs' media guide last year and he gave two more this year ('03 & '04). The only problem with him is that he lives in Phoenix. He is pretty cool though. He's probably the guy I've talked to the most outside of the Mastersball guys there. Mahalo

Matt

[kenndoza (archived)]

Pat has the loudest laugh I've ever heard in my life. You always know when he's in the building. Next time you see him (I guess at next fall's AFL thing), please give him my regards.

Steve would be fun to have in the league. He obviously knows his stuff, and he's not afraid to try unusual strategies. I always like seeing what he does in the "expert" leagues. He was my supervisor at STATS and probably remains to this day my all-time favorite boss (he probably doesn't know that).