Alright, thank you for your support and input.
This is what I think I’m hearing.
People agree that there’s no difference between my original trade proposal (Bryant’s keeper right in exchange for swapping my 16th round pick for the other guy’s 6th rounder) and my second proposed/actual trade (David Johnson’s keeper rights and my 7th round pick for Varlos’ first rounder) fundamentally. Those are both the same type of actions. The only difference is the value of the players and picks involved.
Furthermore, I haven’t seen anyone make the argument that this is actually disallowed by our rules (aside from Johnny Ace, but he has failed to actually make this case and implicitly basically agreed that he feels like it’s okay with Bryant/6th but not David Johnson/1st). Some others have agreed with me that this sort o trade this has always been part of the league, even if it doesn’t happen every year, and trades of this nature have taken place in the past.
Additionally, I announced my intention to make this sort of trade on 8/17. If people thought this sort of trade was against the rules, or just something that we should outlaw, they had over two weeks to voice that concern, and for whatever reason, no one seemed to mind the idea (enough to raise it as an issue) on the Bryant trade but only began to talk about it after the Johnson trade.
And I’m also hearing that people are uncomfortable with that being allowed, but in the past, there hasn’t been a trade involving trading a fourth player after keeping three other players that was big enough to matter, so people didn’t feel compelled to raise whether the issue should be allowed or not. It was inconsequential enough that it wasn’t worth having a debate about a new rule. But now since the players involved are bigger, people are more motivated to voice their concern.
Is this an accurate assessment of the situation?
If these things are correct, then I think that this conclusively proves that I did not break or bend the rules. I used a mechanism that we have allowed in the past and never seriously discussed disallowing to my memory. I brought the idea of making such a trade up two weeks before the trade was made, giving people plenty of time to voice it if they thought that something was unethical or disallowed about what I was proposing, and no objection was raised.
It also shows that there are people who do not like this mechanism and simply haven’t acted on it until now. So, with that, we move forward by voting on how it should work.
I asked for specific proposals as to how we might legislate this going forward but didn’t really get specifics other than the proposal that a player with three keepers can’t trade another one. I pointed out that there’s a potential exploit in that rule, for example, keeping two and trading away two, or keeping one and trading away three. You’d still gain value for a fourth player, even if you never hit the three keeper threshold. One of my proposals will try to factor that in.
So, this vote will happen in two stages. The first stage will be voting on which rule proposal you think best fits the league, and the second vote will be whichever rule proposal got the most votes actually going up to a yes/no vote as to whether we implement it.
I was thinking of adding a second question which would be “should this take effect immediately, or only apply to players drafted next year going forward?” but I realize that the implementation of that would get ugly. For instance, if a guy was keeping three new players from after the rule change, could he trade away an old player that was a keeper from before the rule change and get value? That would be a mess, so unlike most of our rules which only take effect the year after they’re implemented, I will say that this rule, if it passes, will be implemented immediately going forward.
If you have alterations or alternate rules to propose, you may, but I think I’m covering most scenarios with these.
So, please respond to this.
- On the matter of being able to trade away keeper rights, which rule would you most prefer? This is not a “yes” vote on the rule. You may vote on one of these proposals as the one you think is best/least bad, but still vote no on whether or not we should actually implement it.
A. Ban all off-season trading. Players traded during the season for other players will retain whatever keeper rights they have. So players who trade for a keepable player during the season would get the same eligibility to keep them as they would any other player they could keep. But only in-season trading would be allowed.
B. Ban trading of keeper rights for draft picks (or exchanging value of draft picks, ie moving up in exchange for keeper rights). This would allow player for player swaps in the offseason, but not allow trading away the right to keep a player in exchange for draft value.
C. Ban the trading of keeper rights for a player that would be getting value out of more than 3 keepers. This one is a bit more complicated but relatively easy to understand. You could get value from three keepers, and no more. You could keep two and trade one for a better draft pick. But you could not keep 3 and trade to get value out of a 4th. Essentially, it’s as if you kept that player (up to a maximum of three players kept) and then got value for him after he is kept. Does this make sense?
Now, the second issue I want to raise. I do not want the apperance of corruption or unfair advantage to taint my team this year, nor to taint the league because I’ve been accused of abusing my power as commissioner. So I’m going to make a proposal that we mitigate the effects of this trade by basically retroactively hurting my roster. I cannot undo the trade that was made - I can’t get David Johnson back, and I can’t get my 7th round pick back. But what we can do is reverse the (what I believe to be false) appearance that I retained a 4th keeper rather than simply trading a keeper right for draft value.
Now, in the event that we did not allow trading keeper rights for draft value, I would’ve simply kept three players. My keepers would’ve been Johnson/Ajayi/Pryor. Or Johnson/Ajayi/Bryant. I would’ve had a hard choice between them. But I was 100% obligated to keep Johnson and Ajayi.
So, if we feel that what I did was league breaking, and what’s needed to restore the balance is to strip my roster of value, that I should have to give up one of my keepers, probably Bryant. It doesn’t make sense to force me to get rid of Bell - Bell is my replacement for the David Johnson keeper, and if I could’ve only kept three players, I would’ve obviously kept Johnson. So what I’m offering is that we can strip my least valuable keeper, either Pryor or Bryant. It wouldn’t make sense for anyone else to pick them up for free now, so they would be banished to limbo for the rest of the season, no one allowed to own them.
I don’t feel like this is fair or right, because as I made the case above, I think it’s clear that I did not cheat, but I do want to make this remedy available to the league, and if the votes are there for it, I will abide by it. My commitment to a perception of fairness and against corruption is more important than the quality of my team.
- Should SenorBeef be stripped of one of his keeper players in order to remedy any sort of imbalance in the league? That player being sent to limbo for the season so no one unfairly gets value for him.
On this issue, I want to say that I should see a minimum of 5 yes votes for it to count, because I’m worried a lot of people will abstain and I’d lose 2-1 and that wouldn’t feel very fair either. This is a fairly drastic action and I feel like it’s fair to set the bar at 5 out of 14 players feeling as though this remedy should take effect.
