Dear Disengaged Owner
Dear Disengaged Owner,
This has been hard for you in the past, but please read carefully. Today, we are officially ending our relationship.
I wish I could say it’s been fun, but I think we both know this is long overdue. As good as your original intentions may have been when you first joined our league, this is no longer meant to be. But don’t worry, it’s not me, it’s you.
You’re probably thinking you deserve some kind of explanation, but I struggle to know if you’re thinking at all when my only impression of you is just a random one-liner every six weeks to ask me what I might want for Cody Bellinger. I used to play that game with you, but not any longer. I used to give you the benefit of the doubt that you were the most indecisive human on the planet, but I now know the real reason it takes you fourteen days to respond to a trade offer is because you’re completely checked out.
Why even play at all? Your annual signature move is to complain about small rule changes you conveniently failed to vote on. Your trade offers are like surprise drone attacks, coming out of nowhere to drop a payload of destruction so lopsided that it would literally force me to rebuild my roster the next morning. You have 10th place on cruise control, expertly playing for the future every single year. You somehow never remember to plan for injuries. Your trade block still lists players you dropped in April. Your biggest yearly contribution is the day you pay your league dues.
Hurt your feelings? Look, I know you’re super busy with the other game of life because you remind us all the time. By our count it appears you have at least ten weeks of vacation a year, but since your employer forces you to use them all between April and October, I’m sure life can feel pretty restrictive. True, I don’t know the other owners well enough to verify if you’re the only one in the league with a full time job, a yard to cut, a dog to walk, and a couple of kids to feed, but they seem to be able to live up to their commitment every year without complaint. I understand in today’s environment where the average American spends almost five hours a day using their phone that it can be especially difficult to spare two minutes for setting your lineup when the website does only 90% of the work for you. And you’re right, leaving your 60-day DL players in your active lineup is an interesting best practice for someone who reappears twice a season to recommit themselves publicly to being more efficient with their time. That said, we do appreciate that this is “one of your favorite leagues”.
Where do we go from here? There are a lot of reasons to be frustrated with your antics, but I’m not going to mention how your total lack of participation damages the competitive balance of our league, or how your maddening disconnect with player values causes our other owners to scream, or how your utter inability to pay attention to baseball during pre-season football forces us to check your social media accounts just to see if you’re still alive.
Instead, I’m only going to mention one reason why it’s now finally time to end our relationship: you have a complete lack of passion for playing this game with excellence. Where is your desire to win? Where is your pride in avoiding to lose? Where is your commitment to seeing something through to the very end? Where is your honor in trying at every moment, at all costs, to sharpen your skills, improve your analysis, and master your craft?
Maybe things will change in the future, but today I have to officially say goodbye. You’ve been quitting us for years, Mr. Disengaged Owner, so today we’re quitting you.
Sincerely,
Your Commish
This post is about 20 years in the making, but somewhat inspired recently by a new relegation rule we implemented in the Ottoneu Champions league. For the first time ever, the race at the bottom of the standings is just as fun as the race at the top.
Have you ever had to deal with a disengaged owner?
Trey is a 20+ year fantasy veteran and an early adopter of Ottoneu fantasy sports. He currently administers the Ottoneu community, a network of ~1,200 fantasy baseball and football fans talking sports daily. More resources here: http://community.ottoneu.com
We once had a guy leave the league cause he was moving across the country, and then come back 15 years later who only showed up for the auction and, at least once, literally do NOTHING else. No trades, no FAAB, no reserving of players… nothing. We didn’t understand why he came back. Weirdest thing is that he was friends with most of the league and had been an active owner the first time through.
you answered it. He’s friends with everyone and wanted to be at the draft
I had to bump a long-time friend once from a league. But luckily, as soon as I brought it up, he was like “yup, you’re absolutely right.” Soon no feelings hurt.
This is probably best case scenario and hopefully the friendship remained strong outside the league.
I’ve never been a commissioner, but I know what you’re talking about, Trey. I’m surprised you didn’t kick this guy out sooner.
It seems just about every league has an owner like that.
Fortunately, in the keeper leagues I’ve been playing in, these kind of owners don’t stay long, whether or not they have to be kicked out.
I dropped out of two leagues this year, because I knew that this year and the next one would be a very difficult time for me.
I didn’t want to be known as the type of owner you’re describing in your goodbye letter. If I don’t have the time or the ability to play the game with a plan, it makes no sense to stay in the league.
In my case, I looked around and found two very good replacement owners, so the commish in each league wouldn’t have to bother with that.
It’s too bad that I can’t offer to replace this owner. I’d love to play in an Ottoneu league someday, but now is not the time to do it.
I really didn’t have a single owner in mind when writing this, but just a mesh of personalities and excuses I’ve seen consistently over the years. Obviously this is just a game we play, but I expect people to take it seriously enough to make good on their commitments and give it their best shot.
A given owner might not actually be trying to win. He might be testing theories out of academic interest.
Then this given owner needs to have a ‘learning experience’ for academic interest.
Thinking… play some computer version so that other folks don’t have to scratch their heads over your theories.
The lawn mowing, IS IT EVER SHORT ENOUGH FOR YOU???!!????? (HINT: It’s never short enough)
The “I don’t have enough time” excuse… It is a classic.
Everybody has literally exactly the same amount of time. Time is the true equalizer; we all get the same number of hours each day.
What people really mean when they say they don’t have time is that their OttoNeu team is wayyy down their list of priorities to which they will dedicate their time.
It takes about 2 minutes a day to fix your lineup card, and you can set it in advance if you know you won’t be available. It takes less than that to respond to trade offers – even just a note that you need time to check out the players. A “no thanks” is better than totally ignoring an offer for weeks.
Even in leagues where I am rebuilding and can’t win, I get a lineup done and respond to offers daily.
League commissioners should spend time identifying disengaged owners and getting them replaced. It is not that I think OttoNeu should be everybody’s top priority… But if you don’t have 2 minutes a day, then you should not be allowed to play the game.
You can just bring your phone with you during your daily ablutions, and get 2 priorities done simultaneously if you don’t have enough time to do both things.
Exactly. I used to play two or three super competitive leagues a year, but now that I’m back in school, work full time and am in a relationship, I stopped playing because I wasn’t able to devote the same amount of time that would be necessary to be competitive and active enough to be a positive for other members of my league(s).
I think this (cannot “devote enough time to be competitive”) is absolutely the right way to look at league commitments. Obviously life also throws curveballs and things can change suddenly, but it’s a good exercise to review your league commitments every off season.
This is a good way to decide whether to continue or drop out. Heck, I quit a league where I had won 4 years in a row, because I got so busy that even though I could still check in everyday, I didn’t have the time to be as prepared and scout players in the way I need to in order to really enjoy the experience. It was instead just that, checking in. I hated to leave the league, but I wasn’t at my best and it didn’t make sense to stay and be basically a superficial owner.
the flip side to this.
We have an owner who from year to year makes fewer than 10 roster moves and wins consistently. I can’t comprehend how he/she does it… I’m making that many moves some weeks! He just got done demolishing a squad, that went 16 and 6 for the year, after having only made two FA moves all year to go with zero trades.
Sounds like the average fantasy football league. I dont get the popularity? There’s a draft, most people show up. No trading, a few free agents are added and maybe most people play it out. If your draft is bad or one key player is injuried, you’re done. How exciting! Checkers compared to chess. Count me out, i’m taking a knee.
I agree on fantasy football. I have one money league that I’ve ran for 9 years now. It’s just friends and family. I spend half the season trying to track down the same 3 guys for league fees. I think the last trade in that league was 2012. I couldn’t imagine dealing with strangers, especially in a free league, for fantasy football.
Please post their team after next year’s draft. Haha.
I tried a daily moves league, with bench players, this year. I became more disengaged as the year wore on. I finished middle of the pack.
I remained fully engaged in my home league, which has weekly moves and no bench players (except DL). As I write this (6:13 Saturday), I’m in first by 2 points, with a total of 5 points balanced on a razor’s edge for me and the second place team.
I’m pretty sure I know how engaged I can be, and my daily moves league will be a one time experiment.
How my home league (10 team mixed keeper [3 yrs max for any one player] with 40 players per squad) deals with it is to reverse the round one draft order so that places 6-10 have the first five picks with 6th being the first pick, 7th 2nd, etc., and places 1-5 (we pay the top five finishers), have the last five picks in reverse order. It’s worked very well. The competition for 6th place is very fun to watch. I will be introducing a proposed rule change before next Spring’s draft that the 10th place finisher have the 9th pick in the draft. The intention would be to keep the cellar dwellers engaged, too, since they are often too far out of it to climb to 6th place.
We did that for a few years but realized it hurt teams rebuilding and created worse balance. Instead we added a sandwhich round to our minor league draft. 3 picks between the first and second round for places 4-6 (1-4 get paid). Very much helped. A free Cody Bellinger? Yes please! Sign me up!
hahaha right on. I’m ‘engaged’ but busy, I have to admit that most of my moves are just based on reading and general knowledge vs. more detailed analysis I’d like to do.
With that said, I would like an ‘Ode’ to another type of manager. Mr. Overengaged Time Suck. These owners come in two typed – trade maggots and waiver wire sucksters. Trade maggots will literally offer you a trade every day…that is useless. They thrown things against the wall, looking to make a ‘great deal’ with little actual engagement into the trade process. No, I don’t want to deal Mike Trout for Chris Davis, Matt Harvey, and Jon Jay. I used to spend a lot of time thinking if this offer was just an initial salvo to say ‘hey, I’m interested in making a deal’ but have come to find out that these owners almost NEVER have any interest in what may resemble a fair deal. Unfortunately, due to their incessant badgering they do sometimes manage to swing an unfair blockbuster on some sucker, which only makes them worse. Waiver wire sucksters burn through the wire…to the point where everyone I want or consider is always on waivers. Ugh. Dude, is 200 moves a year a little too many ya think?
My number one criteria for a good and engaged owner is can he identify if a trade is good or bad for his team within a few hours. If he can’t or can’t figure out what makes it fair and counter, then he doesn’t have the chops to play at the level we require.
I don’t need more than 10 minutes with a trade offer. This isn’t rocket science if you’re actually paying attention to your team and have a plan.
Disengaged owners used to trouble me but it’s less of a concern after a strong stretch in my main league, with 1st place finishes in 2017, 2015 and 2013. Winning fixes a lot of woes, and as it turns out, some of the least engaged owners in my league are great guys otherwise, so I enjoy spending time with them even though it’s not likely to lead to a productive baseball trade. It’s an auction league too, and very deep (40 man rosters, 12 owners, AL-only with keepers), and I find even owners who are less engaged during the season tend to come to the auctions more prepared compared to several years ago.