@SenorBeef did you puzzle out the draft pick issue?
I was hoping one of the advocates of changing the rules not to require getting picks back with future pick trades would figure it out, because to be honest I never really understood what the objection was to the previous system or how it’s supposed to work. I went back and skimmed through last year’s thread to re-read the argument and I’m still not getting it.
Some of the trades made last year had no (explicit) “and their last pick” clause, so even though I’m not sure we declared it official, I think people were treating it as if the balancing rule were gone. And so we made trades that weren’t balanced and I’m not sure what to do with it.
Quite simply - let’s say someone in the middle of a season trades their second round pick for a player. Now the trade for that year is that player A gets Player B’s 2nd round pick. Let’s say each team kept 22 players, so they each have 3 slots. The trade is executed, and now A has his first, second, third, and B’s second. He has 22 players + 4 picks = 26. Whereas player B kept his 1st and 3rd round pick. 22 players + 2 picks = 24. What do we do?
Player A can’t draft his third round pick. His roster gets full after he picks at player B’s 2nd round pick spot. So he has a pick he can’t use, there’s no room on his roster. And in fact, yahoo wouldn’t allow the draft to be finished because a player cannot have any number of slots but 25. Meanwhile, player B cannot finish the draft because they only have 24 slots and yahoo requires that he has 25. We need to give him an extra slot from somewhere, but the only “unused” draft slot is player A’s third round pick he can’t use. In the past… we just give this unusable last pick from player A back to player B. Solved. Everything works out great. But several people were passionately against this for reasons I cannot understand at all and I just sort of had the attitude of “fine, fuck it, they sound like they have a plan and we’ll just figure it out when we get to it” and to be honest I don’t have it figured out.
I think our options at this point are to either just use the old rule and add an implicit “and his last round pick” to last year’s trades so they’re done the way they used to be, or someone who wants to get rid of that system explain what we do now.
I think Ellis Dee came around in this post to why the system worked as it did after we hashed it out.
Edit: I realize I’ve been pretty hands off and passive about commishing on this issue. That’s my bad. To be honest it kinda gave me a headache to think about.
To clarify, I was a strong advocate for the “draft pick trades must be balanced in number” rule when we originally set it up all those years ago. To my mind, draft pick trades just flat-out do not work unless everyone involved ends with the same number of picks in each year as they started with. (Meaning you can’t trade your 2nd rounder next year for my 1st rounder this year without also sending back the appropriate last picks to keep both years even.)
I think there is probably a way to make it work, but the bookkeeping would be challenging and prone to error. Considering the last-minute nature of cuts and setting up the draft board, that’s a dangerous proposition. The upside to allowing unbalanced trades isn’t worth the added complexity.
More pressing, @SenorBeef there is an error in the draft setup right now. You granted my 5th round pick to Jules and my 6th round pick to Retro leaving me with a 7th rounder. Those need to be shifted back a slot so that I retain my 5.1 pick, Jules gets 6.1 and Retro gets 7.1.
This is where I lose it, because it seems completely non-sensical to me to have the total number of draft picks assigned before trades/cuts are calculated. Using your example, Player A would have 22 players and, thus, 3 picks. Why the heck would they be assigned 4? And Player B would have 22 players, thus get 3 picks, and they would be B’s first and second round picks, and Player A’s second. Not that hard to figure.
The answer, near as I can figure, is that “thats how its always been”, and when asked why that is, the answer is “It’s yahoo’s fault”.
Hope you’re well. If you’re still having lingering effects of the anesthesia, might I suggest you trade me Jordan Love and Tee Higgins for Aidan OConnell and Sean Tucker.
1.01 Ides of Martz (Omniscient) - Marvin Harrison Jr., WR, ARI
1.02 Formerly Sentimental (Spiritus_Mundi) - Malik Nabers, WR, NYG
1.03 The Great Old Ones (Ol’Gaffer) - Jonathon Brooks, RB, CAR
1.04 Peteys (PeteyPart2)
1.05 No Use For A Name (Retrovertigo)
1.06 Warner’s Brothers (dalej42)
1.07 JB’s Gusterrhoids (Justin Bailey)
1.08 Nine Inch Neils (RNATB)
1.09 Exploding Pancakes (SenorBeef)
1.10 New York Fanboys (Ellis Dee)
1.11 Omniscient, originally HungryHungryHaruspex (Jules Andre)
1.12 Moridwon (Hamlet)
Weeks 1-4 are gonna be fire.
@PeteyPart2 is up.
1.01 Ides of Martz (Omniscient) - Marvin Harrison Jr., WR, ARI
1.02 Formerly Sentimental (Spiritus_Mundi) - Malik Nabers, WR, NYG
1.03 The Great Old Ones (Ol’Gaffer) - Jonathon Brooks, RB, CAR
1.04 Peteys (PeteyPart2) - Rome Odunze, WR, Da Bears
1.05 No Use For A Name (Retrovertigo)
1.06 Warner’s Brothers (dalej42)
1.07 JB’s Gusterrhoids (Justin Bailey)
1.08 Nine Inch Neils (RNATB)
1.09 Exploding Pancakes (SenorBeef)
1.10 New York Fanboys (Ellis Dee)
1.11 Omniscient, originally HungryHungryHaruspex (Jules Andre)
1.12 Moridwon (Hamlet)
I mean, it’s a little hard to figure. You have both players using Player B’s 2nd round pick, for example. (This is mostly a joke. You simply switched the player letters by accident.)
How do we determine which of your natural draft picks gets replaced by the other guy’s pick you acquired? Your worst pick, I assume. And note that I’m not opposed to it being your worst pick. But why? Why is your worst pick the choice instead of, say, your natural pick in that same round? What’s the logic behind the rule?
Let’s ask a different question. Why is our current method so problematic? What problem are we solving here? If it’s just “this seems arbitrary” then that’s not really a compelling reason for all the noise. What we do works and as far as I can tell it’s not causing some massive conflict nor does it really limit trading in a noticeable way. Even if it COULD work with no drama, what’s the upside? Trading your last pick is functionally the same as forcing you to cut one more player, it’s just accounting.
Okay, you are correct that I didn’t correctly see which round was your last pick so each pick going the other way are too high. I’m going to explicitly spell out how I’m processing these trades to make sure it’s understood and we get it right.
Spelling out the trades from last year’s thread:
Trade 1:
Ides of Martz gets 1.03 (2023) and Retro’s 2024 2nd round pick
No Use For A Name gets 1.02 (2023).
Unbalanced. We need to put an “and Omni’s last round pick” to this trade.
Trade 2:
HungryHungryHaruspex receives:
QB Brock Purdy
TE George Kittle
WR Cooper Kupp
Peteys receives:
TE Mark Andrews
WR Davante Adams
2024 2nd round pick
This one is unbalanced. A second round 2024 pick is being given up with no 2024 pick in return. We have to add a “and his last round pick” to Jules’ side of the deal to make this work under the old rules.
Trade 3:
Omni receives 1.09 (2023) and Jules’ 2024 1st round pick
Jules receives Jaxon Smith-Njigba and Omni’s 2nd to last 2024 pick.
Nothing needed here - one future pick is being swapped for another. Good.
How they’re resolved:
Trade 1: Omni Retro receives Omni’s last pick, 7.01. Omni receive’s retro’s 2.05.
Trade 2: Jules has 4 picks, omni has 7 at the start of the draft. Jules 1.11 goes to Omni. Omni’s second to last (6.1) goes to Jules.
Trade 3: Petey keeps 19 players and therefore has 6 draft picks. Petey receives Jules 2.11 pick. Jules receives Petey’s last pick (6.04).
My feeling is that having the acquired pick take the place of one of your natural picks introduces a possible way to manipulate things. Let’s see if I can come up with a scenario where it ends up creating value that wasn’t already there.
Hypothetical is Me and Hamlet. I suck, he’s great. I’ll end up drafting six guys, while Hamlet only needs to draft 3. Let’s imagine this two ways, first with me getting Hamlet’s pick and then with Hamlet getting mine.
I trade away my WR2 for Hamlet's 2nd next year:
Balanced (traditional rules):
Me: 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, Hamlet’s 2nd
Hamlet: 1st, 3rd, My 6th
Unbalanced:
Me: 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, Hamlet’s 2nd (no change)
Hamlet: 1st, 3rd, 4th (last pick is now his 4th instead of my 6th)
Already it strikes me as weird that Hamlet is creating a 4th round pick when he only cuts 3 players. I think that’s where my weird feeling is creeping in. And we do see extra value created that wasn’t already there under the traditional “balanced” rules.
Hamlet trades his WR2 for my 2nd next year:
Balanced (traditional rules):
Me: 1st, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, Hamlet’s 3rd
Hamlet: 1st, 2nd, my 2nd
Unbalanced:
Me: 1st, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th (his 3rd is now my 7th)
Hamlet: 1st, 2nd, My 2nd (no change)
So it definitely changes the resulting value compared to the traditional rules regardless which way the trade goes. Either the person drafting fewer plays gets a free boost, or the person drafting more players gets nerfed. As a general rule, drafting fewer players = good team, drafting many players = bad team. So I’m not loving the idea of a rule change whose only effect would be to either help a good team or hurt a bad team.
Now let’s do one last extreme example: I trade away my future 2nd and 3rd round picks for Hamlet’s RB2. Remember the hypothetical is I’m the bad team drafting 6 guys next year, Hamlet is the good team drafting only 3:
Balanced (traditional rules):
Me: 1st, 4th, 5th, 6th, Hamlet’s 2nd, Hamlet’s 3rd
Hamlet: 1st, My 2nd, My 3rd
Unbalanced:
Me: 1st, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th (way worse)
Hamlet: 1st, My 2nd, My 3rd (no change)
That’s a pretty brutal downgrade in outcome for the bad team. And if the trade went the other way it would be a significant boost for the good team. (His last two picks would be his 2nd and 3rd instead of my 5th and 6th.) So I guess I would say it isn’t yahoo’s fault, it’s a parity measure.
Unless I’ve made a mistake, this is the finalized draft order:
1.01 Ides of Martz (Omniscient) - Marvin Harrison Jr., WR, ARI
1.02 Formerly Sentimental (Spiritus_Mundi) - Malik Nabers, WR, NYG
1.03 The Great Old Ones (Ol’Gaffer) - Jonathon Brooks, RB, CAR
1.04 Peteys (PeteyPart2) - Rome Odunze, WR, Da Bears
1.05 No Use For A Name (Retrovertigo)
1.06 Warner’s Brothers (dalej42)
1.07 JB’s Gusterrhoids (Justin Bailey)
1.08 Nine Inch Neils (RNATB)
1.09 Exploding Pancakes (SenorBeef)
1.10 New York Fanboys (Ellis Dee)
1.11 Omniscient, originally HungryHungryHaruspex (Jules Andre)
1.12 Moridwon (Hamlet)
2.01 Ides of Martz (Omniscient)
2.02 Formerly Sentimental (Spiritus_Mundi)
2.03 The Great Old Ones (Ol’Gaffer)
2.04 Peteys (PeteyPart2)
2.05 Ides of Martz (Omniscient), originally from No Use For A Name (Retrovertigo)
2.06 Warner’s Brothers (dalej42)
2.07 JB’s Gusterrhoids (Justin Bailey)
2.08 Nine Inch Neils (RNATB)
2.09 Exploding Pancakes (SenorBeef)
2.10 New York Fanboys (Ellis Dee)
2.11 Peteys (PeteyPart2), originally HungryHungryHaruspex (Jules Andre)
2.12 Moridwon (Hamlet)
3.1 Ides of Martz (Omniscient)
3.2 Formerly Sentimental (Spiritus_Mundi)
3.3 The Great Old Ones (Ol’Gaffer)
3.4 Peteys (PeteyPart2)
3.5 No Use For A Name (Retrovertigo)
3.6 Warner’s Brothers (dalej42)
3.7 JB’s Gusterrhoids (Justin Bailey)
3.8 Nine Inch Neils (RNATB)
3.9 Exploding Pancakes (SenorBeef)
3.10 New York Fanboys (Ellis Dee)
3.11 HungryHungryHaruspex (Jules Andre)
3.12 Moridwon (Hamlet)
4.1 Ides of Martz (Omniscient)
4.2 Formerly Sentimental (Spiritus_Mundi)
4.3 The Great Old Ones (Ol’Gaffer)
4.4 Peteys (PeteyPart2)
4.5 No Use For A Name (Retrovertigo)
4.8 Nine Inch Neils (RNATB)
4.9 Exploding Pancakes (SenorBeef)
4.11 HungryHungryHaruspex (Jules Andre)
4.12 Moridwon (Hamlet)
5.1 Ides of Martz (Omniscient)
5.2 Formerly Sentimental (Spiritus_Mundi)
5.3 The Great Old Ones (Ol’Gaffer)
5.4 Peteys (PeteyPart2)
5.11 HungryHungryHaruspex (Jules Andre)
5.12 Moridwon (Hamlet)
6.1 HungryHungryHaruspex (Jules Andre), originally Ides of Martz (Omniscient)
6.3 The Great Old Ones (Ol’Gaffer)
6.12 Moridwon (Hamlet)
7.1 No Use For A Name (Retrovertigo), originally Ides of Martz (Omniscient)
…and of course this year Hamlet (reigning champ) is drafting 6 players and Jules (massive points leader) is drafting 5, undercutting my assumption that good teams draft fewer players…
Minimalist version for ease of seeing who’s been drafted and who’s about to be on the clock:
1.01 Omni - Marvin Harrison Jr., WR, ARI
1.02 Mundi - Malik Nabers, WR, NYG
1.03 Gaffer - Jonathon Brooks, RB, CAR
1.04 Peteys - Rome Odunze, WR, CHI
1.05 Retro -
1.06 dale -
1.07 Justin -
1.08 RNATB -
1.09 Beef -
1.10 Ellis -
1.11 Omni -
1.12 Hamlet -
remainder of draft
2.01 Omni -
2.02 Mundi -
2.03 Gaffer -
2.04 Peteys -
2.05 Omni -
2.06 dale -
2.07 Justin -
2.08 RNATB -
2.09 Beef -
2.10 Ellis -
2.11 Peteys -
2.12 Hamlet -
3.01 Omni -
3.02 Mundi -
3.03 Gaffer -
3.04 Peteys -
3.05 Retro -
3.06 dale -
3.07 Justin -
3.08 RNATB -
3.09 Beef -
3.10 Ellis -
3.11 Jules -
3.12 Hamlet -
4.01 Omni -
4.02 Mundi -
4.03 Gaffer -
4.04 Peteys -
4.05 Retro -
4.08 RNATB -
4.09 Beef -
4.11 Jules -
4.12 Hamlet -
5.01 Omni -
5.02 Mundi -
5.03 Gaffer -
5.04 Peteys -
5.11 Jules -
5.12 Hamlet -
6.01 Jules -
6.03 Gaffer -
6.12 Hamlet -
7.01 Retro -
Okay, so player B gets 3 picks - his own 1st and second, and player A’s second. Which is exactly how it is under our current rules. What would player B get? Their first and third? Now they have 22 players plus two picks - what is done with player A’s third pick that he’s not using any longer?
What is your alternative proposal, how is it different than our current system, and why is it better? People keep pointing out what seems unintuitive over and over again but I don’t think anyone has posted a step by step plan of how we’d conduct the draft in a way that’s possible through yahoo that’s different and better than ours.
And, I don’t know, what are you so angry about? This system works fine, it’s well understood, it gets us to where we need to go, no one is victimized by it. I have no idea why I’ve had to answer for complaints about our system for 50 posts every year without anyone ever giving a solid proposal and explaining how else it would work. This is why I tend to tune out during this discussions, I am so fucking sick of all this gnashing of teeth over fucking nothing. It’s a non-problem. It’s so much of a non-problem that I could execute it silently and no one would even notice because the pick that’s being sent back is something they wouldn’t actually use because their roster would be full by that point anyway. The only difference anyone would notice is that people got “free” picks at the end of the draft instead of ending the draft with 24 players (impossible) or sticking a placeholder player in their last slot.
Honestly this issue makes the draft time commissioner job way more stressful and for no fucking reason, people are angry over nothing.
Edit: I’m not saying everyone has discussed the system is angry, but you are, and it’s weirdly passionate for a few people. Even after like 4 years of discussing it I still don’t get it.
I would rather this issue just falls off the face of the Earth altogether, but if you want to continue discuss changing it, at least give me a full working plan on how the whole process would work in an alternative system.
Player B would get their natural 1st, 3rd and 4th. It’s a little weird that Player B creates a 4th round pick while only dropping 3 players, but that’s how it would work with unbalanced trades. Everyone simply creates as many picks as they need.
Conversely, Player A’s 3rd rounder never gets created, because again, everyone just creates as many picks as they need.
It would absolutely work logistically. But the net effect is to either boost players drafting fewer players or nerf players drafting many. (But only if they trade with each other. I don’t think there’s any effect at all if they both have the same number of draft picks.)
I joked about the top two players last year drafting many players, but look at the list of draft picks. It’s no coincidence that the later rounds keep starting with #.01, #.02, #.03 #.04. Those are the four teams that finished in the bottom four of the league, and all four are cutting at least five players.
Last year, I lost 4 rounds of picks because of this. My 3rd round pick turned into a 7th round for a rule that makes no sense.
But, as I said then, its fine. No biggie. Let’s move on. Sorry it makes your job harder.
Given that yahoo’s handling of the draft is basically a big table, how would it work logistically? Since player A’s third rounder never gets created, does that mean we need to essentially manually have to move everyone up one spot for the rest of the draft? Or at least until player B’s fourth round pick is created, after which everyone would move back again to their proper spot?
That’s logistically possible but a lot of busy work if I’m understanding correctly.
I’m not going to go back and try to figure out what happened there, but I will say that Ellis eventually concluded that it was a misunderstanding that you got screwed. I don’t know if he’s correct without re-reading the whole thing, but the logic seems reasonable. Also this post.
In the end it turned out that you did not. There is no way you could have avoided turning that 3rd round pick into a 7th rounder, regardless if you made the trade before or after cuts.
You could have if we allowed unbalanced trades, but we never have. So you, as a (good) team that was drafting very few players would have gotten a significant boost from an unbalanced trade with a (bad) team that was drafting many players.
The longstanding rule does make sense. Everyone creates exactly as many draft picks as they are cutting players (below 25). If we switched to unbalanced trades, in Beef’s hypothetical scenario, Player B drops three players but creates four draft picks, while Player A also drops three players but only creates two draft picks. That definitely makes less sense, objectively speaking.
Yeah I didn’t think that through. Yes, that is exactly what would have to happen. So let me change my answer to no, it would not work logistically. I mean, technically, yes, an OCD obsessive could make that work, but no reasonable commissioner would spend that amount of time reordering draft picks. And just imagine how much error could get introduced by having everyone’s draft picks out of sync with when they are actually picking.