Tanking

[mike]

Because the AL has become a laughing stock. For a league that strives to be realistic it couldn't be further from it right now. When every division in the AL was decided last year in april that is just pathetic and it won't be much different this year either. It shouldn't be a viable strategy to slash and burn simply because you think you won't win the WS and then have your team rot for 5 or more years. Be competetive don't sit on your hands and collect 40mil in profit every year. Right now we are headed towards an era that if your not winning you might as well be losing. Which in turn is going to turn the amount of viable trade partners way down. Right now we have a shitload of sellers which is causing people to low ball to an extent. Once all their peices are gone there will be no trade partners because everyone is rebuiding aside from the few teams who are actually trying to win. In which case they wont beable to trade with eachother either since in most cases you see deals for established players in return for specs not established player for established player. In the end what you have will be a very boring Vanilla league. What Matty, Andy and myself are trying to acheive is the prevntion of this as theer is no need for it. The whole league will be helped. No one is going to get hurt by it unless its justified. I think simply having the threat of a punishment will deter most of the gm's. Rather than what we have now which is no punishment at all so the might as well employ the best strategy that there is when playing a video game manager sim. This would be a different story if the game was ctaully coded properley and had major side effects if you lose but it does't.

[jhc54]

Hey Andy,
Last year my roster was filled with MLB players. They sucked but they were MLB talent. Hokey is different. I did not intend to tank. I ended up with the worst record. But in no way did I attempt to include players that would help me lose purposefully. In fact I auto-sorted my lineup so theoretically, Mogul was already assigning me the players that would give me the highest likelihood of winning an individual game (I'm not sure if that is how they assign players though).

[AndyP]

All I'm saying is that more teams were entertaining that notion of "rebuilding" and the Texas situation put it in the spotlight. If it becomes trendy then it really undermines league integrity.

The Texas slash and burn, as I've said before, was a much bigger problem. But we have slowly built to that because people weren't very vocal about their concerns.

As far as I'm concerned there is no reason you can't rebuild and win 70 games. I understand it sometimes gets much worse, but what was clear recently is that people were intentionally making their major league roster awful. And then XAT conversations were about how it could be further slashed and burned to get that number one pick. It's way too comfy for teams to take this mentality. In real life the fan base would never allow it so blatantly, so the league should watch out for it becoming a fad.

That's all I'm saying.

[mike]

I've been making the 70 win comment for seasons now because you are exactly right its fairly easy to acheive that goal. I think it already is a fad, one that will not go away without a deterrent.

[jhc54]

Talk to the losing teams (they clearly care about this a ton considering they are commenting on it).

[AndyP]

Sarcasm?

Adult discussions = too much for some apparently.

[jhc54]

I can use sarcasm. But that is the underlying point. Who cares about this?

[Cdawg]

I think this is just bigger than tanking.

[AndyP]

Yeah, everyone is a bad guy. I totally think Nick was just pulling that out of his ass in the early days too. I think I'll tank my season next year.

That way I can act like a bitch and have it count - since apparently winning here makes your opinion less valid.

[Corey]

The worst record in the league ends up with 30th in the draft, GMs will want to avoid being the worst team in the league and therefore will not tank.

Problem solved.