He Hate Me FF Keeper League - Year 15

The Game Room
101

Taking Elliott 4 will probably doom my team, I probably should have taken Jones there, but I just didn’t see a good outcome from any of the other RBs. Maybe I’m too down on McCoy, but come round 2 the options at RB were dismal. I figure Elliott will be fun to own late in the year if I’m not 0-7.

Yahoo really hates my team, but I actually kind of like it. I really need Montgomery and Kelley to stay healthy into week 8 and be modestly productive, and then the Elliott and Martin combo should be potentially devastating. That’s a lot of the season though.

My WRs didn’t suffer nearly as much as I expected with my RB blitz, but my depth did. An injury to Thomas or Marshall will be painful. I like to think I have a punchers chance though. Corey Davis playing like a star would help a lot.

We’ll see.

102

On second thought it was a bad idea for me, sorry. I realized when Ajayi’s game got moved that my RB depth is just not there, but my WR depth is. I’d be jeopardizing my whole season if one of my RBs went down.

103

It’s deep enough that you felt free to grab every rookie in sight (which, btw, is why your claim to being such an awesome drafter is a little disingenuous). You don’t need depth. While I was still scrambling to shore up a sinking team you were snarfling up the future. It’s the Yankees style of drafting.

My biggest fail of the draft was the last pick. I know who I should have taken, and did at the time, but I chickened and went with Vereen.

For the rest of you making all these trade offers to Beef, you should think of the aftereffects. Just how certain do you want to make his walking away with the league, and continuing that dominance? You’re really not doing yourselves any favors, let alone the rest of us.

104

It’s how keeper leagues work. If you don’t have a chance this year, you need to focus on next year. And if you keep doing that successfully, you get to keep 3 awesome players for nearly free, and keep doing it. No need to bitch about it - it’s just the reality of this league.

And then there’s me. Last year I failed to draft for the future knowing there wasn’t a chance I’d win, and then I miss the boat completely this year by missing the draft. Wheee!

105

It sure helps when somebody hands him a free keeper slot for practically nothing.

106

Your tone seems over the line to me. This isn’t competitive ribbing, you seem to be a bitter, butthurt little man with real animosity and a stick up your ass with accusations that I’m breaking the league.

Unlike the yankees, I have the same resources you do in this league. I’m not working with twice the salary cap you are.

Why didn’t you draft Martavis Bryant last year in the 15th and give up a roster slot for him last year? Why didn’t you draft Pryor in the in the 14th? Was it because I had some yankees-like competitive advantage, or did I use my picks better than you did?

I’m actually pretty fucking good at fantasy football. I’ve made the playoffs in in the all-pro league 10 out of 11 years, with 7 top 3 finishes. After starting in last place in the dynasty league, I’ve put together a powerhouse dynasty with no end in sight that has made the playoffs for 8 straight years. I’ve had the best keepers in this league 3 years in a row now, which, given that I’ve only been in the league for 4 years, is the best I can do. Your idea that I’ve only gotten anywhere here because I’m the yankees makes no sense, it’s a level playing field and I’m good at it.

Aside from one person who offered me a fairly radical 2 player offer, I got pretty timid offers for one of the WRs I was trying to sell, I think. You were free to make the best of the timid offers if you wanted one of my keepers.

Varlos’ offer wasn’t even some craazy giveaway from him. He traded a 5th rounder for a 7th rounder to basically move up from 1.02 to 1.01. That’s a surprisingly sane trade given the weird circumstances keeper trades could potentially have. That trade could’ve happened in a vacuum if two players felt differently about who should be the 1.01 pick.

But let’s say it didn’t work that way, and instead I took the second best offer that let me keep 3 - I think it was swapping a 6th for an 11th for Bryant. Am I that much worse a team with David Johnson, Jay Ajayi, Terelle Pryor, and an extra 6th?

As for me running away with the league - I’ve had the best keepers for 3 years in a row now, were all the years in which I could have keepers… Once I got 4th, the other two times I barely finished in the top half. It’s not some foregone conclusion.

107

Har. Cute. Reported.

So am I, buddy. You might remember which of us beat the other last year. Hmm, could that be me? It wasn’t luck. I’ve been playing for 14 years, and I know a rules exploit when I see one. Deal with it.

If I had wanted one of your keepers and thought I could find a somewhat equitable trade offer, you would have gotten one. Since you didn’t, I didn’t or couldn’t.

But you didn’t, now, did you? Hypotheticals don’t impress me.

As evidenced by last year, and I worked my ass off to pull it off. But if you think you’re going to be able to sell that you don’t have a huge advantage, you’re dead fucking wrong. I’m a helluva lot more formidable opponent than you apparently think, in fantasy AND reality. And buddy, you done pissed me off with your rationalizations and your doubling down. You want a war, baby, you can have it.

108

I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but you’re disinvited to any other fantasy football league I run (obviously not including this one) and I’m going to ignore you except in as far as I’m required to interact with you as commissioner. If you act like this towards other players in the league I’ll take a vote to see if you will also be removed from this one.

109

Since the words “rules exploit” were used, does anyone else feel as though a rule was violated by what I did? We can discuss rule changes and hold a vote (I’ve been thinking about what exactly the rule should be) going forward, but does anyone else feel there was any sort of ethical problem that occured? If so, we can discuss it and potentially come up with a remedy, but if not I’m going to assume I’m just the target of some over the top message board rage.

110

And to recap on that one - if we’re allowed to trade keeper rights, then what is it that we trade them for? This occurs pre-draft so we’re talking about swapping draft picks, right? I give you player X, you give me your Y pick for my Z pick.

The trade I made with Varlos was exactly that. I offered Bryant for a 6th for 16th swap, which no one seemed to object to. But when I went the other way, and traded away my most valuable keeper instead of my least valuable keeper (and the most valuable player in the league at that), I swapped a 1st round pick for a 7th rounder. They’re both the exact same thing, just the quality of the player is different, since it’s the #1 overall pick vs like the #50 overall pick. So what exactly are we saying was unfair? Was it the fact that I had David Johnson as a keeper? If we did exactly the same sort of swap, say, Bryant for a 6th-for-16th swap, would anyone think that was somehow sketchy or exploiting the rules? I don’t see how.

I think some people may just be angry that I have a ridiculous set of keepers this year, and that brought extra scrutiny to any trades I made, otherwise I don’t see how what I did is in principle different from any other trading of keeper rights pre-draft.

That said, if people want a rule going forward, that’s fine, let’s work that out. What rule, exactly, though? No pre-draft trading, period? No ability to trade keeper rights? No trading of keeper rights except for player for player swaps? No trading of keeper rights if the person is going to keep 3 players? What if, in that case, the person swaps the keeper rights to 2 players and keeps 2? It would bypass the 3 player rule but they’d still get value for the “extra” player (I had an offer like that this year). No trading of keeper rights above a certain round value?

Figure out exactly what you’re mad about and we can talk about legislating it.

111

Awww, my heart is broken. I’m devastated. Matter of fact, I was already considering quitting this league as a personal ‘fuck you’ to you, but that would be unfair to everyone else. You can bet this will be my last year here, though. I don’t need commissioners using Trumpian tactics to enforce their dominance. Believe it or not, this isn’t the only game in town.

Other players in the league didn’t just get an effective fourth keeper slot and then bray about how great they are, starting with the draft and continuing here. It is a rules exploit, no matter how you try to portray the vast gulf of difference between David Johnson and Bell (which isn’t the biggest pile of bullshit rationalization I’ve ever heard, but it’s in the ballpark).

Btw, how’dja like last night’s performance by Hunt? Karma’s a bitch, ain’t it?

112

Karma for what? You’re severely delusional. How is one of your RBs having a good game karmic punishment for me? Is anyone in the 95% of the league I don’t own having a good game now karmic punishment for me? How does that remotely make sense?

If there was such a thing as karma, it would punish you. I took on the burden of running this league - and it’s a burden, I gain no fun from doing it, only work - so that it would run smoothly and everyone can have fun. I’ve offered it up to someone else to take on every year, so I’m not running this thing to have a power trip. I don’t want it. You, on the other hand, are trying to ruin everyone’s fun by being an exceedingly toxic person. In my 10+ years of commissioning 4+ leagues, I’ve never had to deal with anyone remotely as toxic as you are. You are trying to harm and destroy. You are a genuinely vile and unpleasant person, and to think that it’s other people who deserve karmic punishment, not you, who sit there wishing harm to people who’ve done no wrong to you, indicates that you do not have a grasp on reality. It’s always a little strange to me how often genuinely toxic people believe karma is on their side, punishing normal people for slights the toxic person imagined.

You threatening to leave because this isn’t the only game in town reminds me of a toxic customer yelling “I won’t be coming here any longer!” after throwing a big fit and harassing the staff - fantastic, that does everyone a favor and solves a problem for us. I’d imagine you’ve done that a lot in your life, convinced yourself that when people exclude you or reject you because you’re such a toxic person, it’s actually you who’s in control and leaving them, not them leaving you.

As to your specific accusation, you did indeed just confirm confirm that you believe that it isn’t the action I took that’s a violation of the rules, but simply the difference in value between David Johnson and Martavis Bryant that you’ve decided somehow makes it a violation. You implicitly admit that it’s not a procedural violation or rules violation if the exact same actions are taken with a lower value player. You’ve only invented a rules violation when it involves a high value player. My position as commissioner also had nothing to do with any of this, your “Trumpian tactics” are completely imagined. I called for a discussion for people to make a case as to why they might feel that this is an ethical violation, and if so, we could discuss remedies for it, or invited people to make a case for changing the rules next year. I have a history of people knowing I’m more than fair as a commissioner, that in most disputes involving me I actually tend to act against myself more than I would as any other person as to avoid the appearance of a power abuse.

That was your chance to actually make a case that what I did was wrong, should be changed, or should be fixed, and how. But you declined to make such a case, again only re-iterating that you’re angry I got value for David Johnson instead of Martavis Bryant. You can’t even make a case for what you’re angry about, instead addressing a call to actually make an argument as “bullshit rationalization”

You are doing your best to make this league fun for no one, not just me. Do you think everyone else involved in the league wants to experience your toxicity? And since you’re clearly obsessed, crowing about how when your team does well it’s somehow a karmic punishment for me, and I’m sure you’ll be there being toxic about my losses, telling us how the gods or the fabric of the univerself itself is punishing me since you’re on a holy crusade, and I doubt people are you going to want to hear it. I’m going to take your promise here not to be next year as binding so that I don’t have to call a vote on the issue, but for the duration of your stay, could you please stop shitting on the furniture?

113

I vaguely recall a rule where anyone who objected to a trade could call it up for a vote in-thread. I wasn’t exactly happy to see that trade but I didn’t think it was unfair or anything. Still, if we’ve banned the trading of keeper round picks, maybe we should ban the trading of the rights to keepers over the three-player limit.

But either way, you really need to settle down, Johnny.

114

I don’t see the similarity of banning keeper round picks - that was purely gaming the system, taking advantage of a bookeeping error that made no sense. Trading away keeper rights is different - you’re exchanging things of real value that you’ve earned through good drafting.

But even so, how exactly would we write the “over the three-player limit” rule? As a real example, someone sent me a substantial offer to take both Pryor and Bryant off my hands, but only as a package. Had I accepted that deal, I would’ve only kept two players. But I would’ve gained value from having traded two other players, including a fourth player. That wouldn’t run afoul of any “three player limit” rules, and yet I would be gaining value for that fourth player the same as if I kept three and traded the fourth one for a draft pick improvement. So then it would seem that a “three keeper limit” rule about keeper trading is insufficient.

I do want to re-iterate that I did not “gain a fourth keeper”, I moved up in the draft. Let’s say that I have a mediocre player that doesn’t really interest me that much but is a potential keeper. And someone says “I’ll give you my 14th round pick for your 16th round pick for the keeper rights to that player”, and I say sure, I was on the bubble about keeping him anyway, so I’ll just move up 2 rounds in the draft and keep someone else. Did I “gain a fourth keeper” here, even if I ended up keeping 3 other players? No, I moved up in the draft. I got his 14th round pick, he got my 16th round pick. I don’t have an extra player.

It’s very unlikely anyone would object to such a thing, since trading keeper rights for a draft pick swap is something that has happened in this league before and IIRC wasn’t considered controversial. You’re explicitly allowed to trade keeper rights in this league. That was established before I even entered the league.

So when I swapped a 7th round pick for Varlos’ 1st round pick, it’s the exact same thing, the only difference is degree. I did not gain a fourth keeper any more than I did in the previous example. I simply moved up in the draft. But now, since we’re talking about a first round draft pick instead of a 14th, people are uneasy about it.

It’s either something that should be allowed or disallowed. You can’t say “oh yeah we should totally allow this for a guy swapping late round picks with a mediocre set of keepers” but not “we shouldn’t allow the exact same thing for a guy swapping first round picks with awesome keepers” - otherwise this is just about the fact that I drafted really well over the last 2 years and have a great set of keepers and people want to tear me down for that.

If we really think that getting value out of players you don’t end up keeping is somehow wrong, then I propose we ban trading of keeper rights, except for in-season player trades. Traded players would still have their keeper elgibility, so that you could still make in-season trades for players, but there’s essentially no way you can allow keeper right trading outside of that context without someone being able to declare something about it is fishy.

115

Oh settle down. Beef hasn’t done a damn thing in his role as commish here*. Maybe keeper leagues just aren’t for you.
*I mean, apart from the giant pain in the ass it is to coordinate this group of people, communicate with them on a regular and timely basis, making sure Yahoo hasn’t fucked everything up again, fixing things when Yahoo fucks things up again, etc. I used to do it, and can’t imagine ever stepping back into the role. Now I’m even more grateful that I didn’t have to put up with you when I started this league.

116

Yet again, this is over the line as to what is okay outside of the Pit. You’ve been noted and warned about this many times before…so I would seriously try to keep your temper with other posters when not in the Pit and avoid giving verbal tirades against others that tell other posters about any sticks in their asses. That is if you want to keep being a poster here.

117

Yet another moderation win.

I put in the work of organizing this league and trying to keep everything fair and fun for everyone. This little toxic troll is basically stalking me trying to trying to declare everything I do an abuse and ruin everyone’s time. I’ve run 3-4 leagues for fucking 10 years on this board and only ever had any sort of problem with two people, both of whom were known to be severely toxic. Everyone else appreciates all the work I put into these things to keep them well-run and fun and active.

I would just assume you were too ignorant of the league and fantasy football in general to understand that he’s being the instigator and how toxic he is, except this is not the first time you’ve seen people being personal and toxic with me and the only chose to intervene on the behalf of the other person against me.

I didn’t lose my temper. What I said was an accurate, dispassionate observation of his behavior. He is actively trying to ruin everyone’s fun with his delusions of persecution and aggressively bringing up this issue at any chance he gets. Call it junior modding if you want, but as commissioner of these leagues I try to head off problems before they get worse. I was telling him that his behavior went well over the line of what would traditionally be smack talk or otherwise competitive animosity. His report to you, and your reaction here, is a part of the harassment on his part. Because you love to take moderator action against me any chance you get, and not against the people attacking me, it was an easy play.

Go ahead, IT. Make your play. Try to get me banned from your Fisher Price looking message board. Do you need me to do some sort of suicide by mod? I’m pretty tired of your one sided moderation.

118

Alright, guys, I’m going to need some support here. Idle Thoughts was asked to come in here based on Johnny Ace’s report, which obviously was part of his petty attempt to harass me. I’m sure he normally stays totally clear of fantasy football threads and no one ever asks them to be moderated, so he doesn’t know who the players are or what the situation is or what Johnny Ace’s goal is here.

I assume most of you have been quiet on this issue because I’ve been handling it, but now that I have a moderator threatning to ban me over the boards on this matter, if you think it’s Johnny Ace who’s being way over the line with his toxicity and turning the league into his battleground to attempt to harass me, please chime in to confirm that so that our moderator friends who may be looking at this better understand the situation here. Thanks.

119

Beef, I think that Johnny is out of line, but you know the rules here. Keep a cool head - and just walk away for a bit if you need to.

120

+1

Johnny complained, in very strong and provocative terms, but you were the one who took the bait and broke the rules. Johnny skated inside the lines, you didn’t.