Strategic Spite
My ottoneu rivals are conspiring against me. Not really, it just feels that way because several have reached a conclusion that is not beneficial to me. Luckily, I have some options. And if those don’t work, I have one final spiteful course of action available.
So let’s set the scene. We’re allowed to roster 40 players for a maximum cost of $400. My roster presently has $559 of players. Aside from a few cheap players, all of them are on keepable contracts. Only Greg Holland ($13) costs more than $10 and will be cut.
To get under budget, my original plan was to trade Clayton Kershaw ($64), Mike Trout ($62), and Zack Greinke ($36). I’ve since added Paul Goldschmidt ($48) and Corey Kluber ($27) to the list of players I’m shopping.
I’ve set a taut asking price – full value and not a penny less. Historically, these expensive, hyper-elite players like Kershaw and Trout have gone at a discount in the offseason. I don’t like discounts. Four of my leaguemates – those that are most able to take on these large contracts – have shown an unwillingness to meet my ask. And when I suggest a discounted rate, they’re still out.
Then they send something along these line: “We think you and two other owners will be forced to cut some good players. We’re going to take our money to the draft.”
There are two problems with this line of thought. These owners with money are going to be competing with each other for a few prime assets. If it was just one guy taking this approach, he’d deserve kudos for the proverbial zig. They’re also making an erroneous assumption about me as a fantasy manager.
Ottoneu has an option to trade a player for nothing. I’ve dumped a few guys in this manner over the years. In the offseason, it’s a means to clog a rival’s roster with players you don’t consider to be keepable. During the season, it’s a good way to free up cash. I discarded David Wright in this manner after he hit the disabled list last season.
I can keep all of my elite assets and stay under budget. To do so, I’ll need to convert Anthony Rendon ($27), Yasiel Puig ($24), Alex Cobb ($15), Matt Kemp ($14) and a few others into much cheaper pieces.
My rivals can, and probably will, apply the same logic when I begin to shop these players. Something like “these are the guys you’re going to cut.” Wrong. Remember, I have an option to give these players away for free.
At least one owner is a great fit from my perspective. His roster won’t contend next season, and he hasn’t expressed an unwillingness to trade with me. He has the necessary money to take on a few rebound candidates. If all else fails, I can give him my players.
Something smells fishy about this process, right? Surely I’m breaking or bending some written or unwritten rule. I’ll let you decide in the comments. For me, this scenario meets all the requirements of a mutually beneficial trade. The other owner receives talent at market or better rates. I receive salary relief while ensuring that my closest rivals can’t roster those players cheaply.
If video games have taught me anything, it’s that your opponent’s strategies can and must be countered. When multiple owners tell you they’re going to benefit when you cut your players, what’s the counter-strategy? You just don’t cut those players.
If all goes according to plan, four owners are going to have about $500 to spend on Troy Tulowitzki, Robinson Cano, Evan Longoria, and various bits of roster ballast.
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This is 100% within your right to do. It’s something I’d do, even if it ruined my chances, because I’m a spiteful person.
Its easy to bluff in December. Don’t budge.
My poker buddies know I don’t bluff. However, I will play my position which often works out to the same thing.
I meant THEY are bluffing. It takes the perfect mix of value plays and super stars to win. You have the super stars, they likely have the value players. Assuming both parties are correctly valuing your assets, the trades will eventually happen.
Worst case scenario, you trade them after the auction but before the first pitch, thats better than discounting players.
That’s my plan if I come up short on a full roster. Better to not get paid for core players than to give away my elite assets.
That doesn’t scare you? If your leaguemates are OK with waiting out your trade offers now, what makes you think you wouldn’t have to drop these guys on opening day? I’m not saying holding out until after the draft is a bad move, but it certainly has potential to blow up in your face.
Is it really worth angering so many of your league mates? If I was in your league and you pulled this stunt (with no benefit to yourself) I would refuse to trade with you forever. Just because it is in the rules doesn’t make it sporting.
I wouldn’t characterize it a stunt, especially if multiple owners are colluding against Brad. I’d argue that it does benefit Brad. Not this time of course. But if these guys try pulling the same thing two years from now, maybe they won’t actually hold out if they think Brad is going to do this.
I don’t see why this would be any worse than telling someone you won’t trade with them because it will force them to cut their players. They’re both opportunistic meta-strategies.
And there is a benefit to me in this situation. My chance of winning the league is (theoretically) improved if my closest rivals have to pay for my talent. And if they won’t pay me, maybe they’ll pay someone else. The whole point is to prevent players from being available for pennies on the dollar.
If you cut them, and they go to auction, how are they going to be available “for pennies on the dollar”?
Isn’t there inflation on FA’s? if anything they should cost more than they are worth, assuming that there is more $ available than talent to spend it on.
Ive never seen a keeper or dynasty league where the average price of FA’s is less than their projected value.
Historically, inflation has been negative in our drafts.
This seems like a very legitimate strategy. First, it seems like a bit of collusion that these other owners are deciding not to trade with you, since they had to come to a previous consensus that none of them would trade with you. Second, it makes sense from a meta-theory perspective. If these are folks you’ll be in the league with for years to come, they know to make you an honest trade offer in the future, because you might do something like this otherwise. I’ve done similar things in games like Risk, and it’s played into future meta-games.
Its a problem because the situation you are in is due to your own moves done to benefit your team in 2015. You are trying to weasel out of paying the consequence for blowing past the cap. Cut the players and move on, it isn’t worth setting the league on fire over. Win straight up and not by technicality.
What weasels? I’m trying to extract fair value for expensive players. If that doesn’t work, I’ll try to extract fair value for a bunch of mid-priced players. If that doesn’t work, I’ll go to the next most beneficial strategy.
Maybe people will get upset, but they won’t have any just cause to do so.
Your logic behind this makes no sense. If I have a player at $30, and I think he’d go for $33 on the market, in theory it’s worth it for me to turn him into $3 of value – leaving the idea of your rivals getting a good player out of this.
Are you saying then, that it’s wrong to trade a high priced player to a rival for next to nothing if you think that player is priced above market. The value in the trade is hamstringing them. I’ve done this with David Wright before. Eat their salary space up with a player that I thought would sit on the DL most of the season. It worked.
I agree with you, Brad. They are saying you must trade with me in a way that I get a good deal. But you don’t have to, and it is smart not to, for obvious reasons. As for trading others for nothing so as to be able to keep them vs. being “required” to dump them into the FA pool, it really does benefit you, because those four then have a bunch of money but not as many elite guys to spend it on, making it a plus for you… they get less for all that cash. So I see no reason why anyone should take issue… this isn’t spite, and it’s a logical decision to make in response to being strong-armed by people saying that you have to give them a good deal.
I see no problem with what you are doing at all.
do you pay a penalty for cutting players? If so, obviously you should be able to give players away then
but if not, I don’t think giving away the players is right. But giving a sharp discount (so you also gain something), would be right. I’ve had a time when a few owners wouldn’t make a trade with me for a position I needed so I was going to have to take a hit. I went to Team B, got them to give me a lowball offer. I took that offer to Team A, their biggest rival (who I wanted to trade with most because of their player) and told them “Congratulations on holding out on me. I’ve got this offer from Team B. It’s clearly very beneficial to them. If you want me to trade Player X to you instead, I’m going to need X. Let me know within the next few hours.”
In antitrust terms, it’s breaking up a cartel. Each person can refuse to deal, and in theory, that would benefit them. But if you get one of them to cheat the cartel just a little, you can destroy it and get someone else to top the offer.
Do you have a list of salaries on your team that we can see? Also, that sounds like some collusion if they made this plan together.
There is an in-season penalty, but there’s no penalty cut between now and the end of January.
They didn’t make the plan together. Three of us went all in last season and rostered about $600 worth of players. It’s not hard to look at that and jump to the conclusion that good talent will be available in the draft if nobody bails them out.
Maybe there are some rules that I’m not aware of in this league, but what do you have to gain by “trading them for nothing” as opposed to releasing them? And if you think it will clog your rival’s roster, leaving him with a lot of money to chase the few superstars in the auction, won’t he just release them once he realizes this?
I brought that up as a past tactic I’ve used. And usually, those players are ultimately cut. Sometimes, the new owner simply liked them more than me.
In this case, the guys I would be offloading are mid to high value players who will bring back good prospect hauls after the draft. For example, $27 Rendon isn’t an automatic keep, but I think it’s a pretty easy decision to hang onto him for another year. Last winter, I made some nice offers for $25 Rendon that were ultimately turned down. Perhaps not as much has changed since last winter as appears at first glance.
By trading them for nothing, Brad controls the team they wind up on. (In this case, a non-competitive rebuilding team that is not a threat in 2016.)
By releasing them, these players are able to be bid on by his real competitors who could challenge him this season.
I’m going to skip over the ottoneu specifics and focus on the fascinating theme. At the end of the day, people want to save face, and this shows up most prominently in trade negotiations. It’s the best way I’ve found to close a deal.
Therefore, extracting maximum value should happen as a result of optimizing your valuations against the league. In other words, sell the guys you don’t like as much as others and buy the guys you like better. In this way, trading should be a means of entropy.
Trying to leverage someone into a trade to maximize value is the opposite of looking to save face, obviously, and it can only hurt future negotiations. It seems these guys overplayed their hand, but I hope the motivation to maximize through leverage wasn’t “because I can”. Reacting with spite seemed like the only thing to do.
While I understand that winning trades ultimately helps win leagues, I see it as a means to an end. Using it as a strategy misses the point of fantasy sports. It’s competing on a level that has nothing to do with baseball.
Honestly, selling stars in the offseason is only the flip side of buying them at the deadline. If you expect superstars at a discount at the deadline, you should expect to sell them at a discount in the offseason. You cant expect the same return that you bought those stars for in the first place… or else what is the benefit of selling them at at the deadline if they have to buy them back at the same price???
I didn’t really get these guys at a discount. I paid full price.
I’m cheering for the underdog that you dump them on.
I’m not going to pretend to know ottoneu, but would it be worth it just to cut Rendon, Puig, Cobb, and Kemp? As you said, your other managers have $500 for Tulo, Cano, and Longoria. If you throw those guys in then they’ll still be overbidding on them, which hurts all future trade value for them. Plus, your underdog dump buddy can still potentially get them from the contenders (or at least bid them up), but not at the discounted price that you are giving him.
Does what I’m saying even make sense or apply to ottoneu?
Underdog could also very easily flip them to the same contending opponents, and they would have them at a decent-good price.
***he can flip them to the contenders after you dump them on him.
But then the contending team would be giving something up other than Auction Dollars to acquire them.
It’s not as ideal as if Brad could strike a deal, but sapping value from this year’s competitors is the goal if value cannot be recouped.
Yes, to be clear, Plan A is to trade them for what I deem to be fair value. Plan B is to settle for less than fair value from a mid-tier team (farther from contention but not entirely out of it). Plan C is the pure dump.
Okay I got it. I’m in a competitive ESPN league with 12 teams, 25 man rosters with 10 keepers (not near as much goin on, I know). Because of that, it’s hard for me to wrap my head around the fact that there are already non-contending teams in ottoneu, since in our league most every team is in contention from the start.
So in my case, this season I have 12 very good valued keepers. I can only keep 10. So I would have to find a team who needs 3 good keepers and is willing to part with 1 great keeper. That likely won’t happen, but if I did, I also have to decide if I even want him to have those 3 at such a good value. I don’t think I do. That’s where my thinking is coming from. Anyways, enough about me.
I know this is a crazy proposition, but if the contenders are all at the same level, I say you do whatever makes YOUR team the best, even if it does improve your contenders a little as well (but not better than you). The season is long, injuries happen, and a lot of luck is involved. Having the best team/depth helps counter injuries. I know that’s not sexy, but it would be a lot easier mentally if you lost knowing your best team is out there, as opposed to being tricky and losing. Tricky and winning, of course, would be the most fun and would deliver the spitefull knock out.
I’d love to get into ottenue but I think my wife would kill me. I’ll shut up now.
And nevermind, since the contenders aren’t willing to trade, that won’t happen anyways. My vote is dump them on mid-tier team but try to get back something/anything that can help, especially knowing he may just flip your players.
Jadama, ifyou’d love to get into Ottoneu we have a couple of available teams in our points league – the old owners didn’t pay their fees so their available at 1/2 price…
Let me know your league name and I’ll check it out.
It’s “Anyone but the Royals in ’16” (co-commissioner’s fault for that one) http://ottoneu.fangraphs.com/160/home
Available teams are “Penny Whistles & Moon Pies” or “Prospects a Plenty” – where the owner tried to go big, but then gutted some of the team. Each team has its benefits, but one of these comes with a reasonably priced Machado.
I think I’ll snag that Prospect team and try to build it. I need to read a lot since I’m used to 5×5 H2H, and I’ll probably have some questions. That’s only because I don’t like to half ass this stuff, so bear with me.
@Jadama
Brad’s written a lot of Otteneu articles, which were useful for my first year (last season).
There are also some forums and other information that I can point you towards from the larger Otteneu community. Otherwise, ask me any other questions (I’m Arctic, not NxNW).
Okay, so let me get this straight.
Is the rule that allows you to unilaterally place one of your players on another owner’s roster specific to your league or generally part of the “ottoneu” format? That will inform my response.
On that note, do y’all not have vetoes?
We have vetoes, but the prevailing sentiment is that it can only be used in something unconscionable. Since I have a pretty clear use case for the move, I can’t see it getting vetoed. I have noticed that these player-for-nothing swaps do draw a couple veto votes.
In general, I have a policy that I won’t play in a league that vetoes an allowable trade. Our commissioner would have to tell me this is specifically banned behavior for me to accept a veto.
I would consider giving players away to be collusive behavior and worthy of a veto. And the last time I was in a league with a vetoed trade was 2001, so take that as you will.
I haven’t played ottoneu, and I am having a hard time wrapping my head around a league with deflation. Probably a topic for a future post!
Collusion requires two or more parties. For this to be collusion, I would have to request the other owner does not trade my former players to one of my rivals. I won’t be doing that.
Not really collusion, agree, but generally anti-competitive behavior, in the economic sense. You intuitively understand this, as you realize that you are not trying to maximize your own gain, but instead trying to retaliate and bring harm to individual owners.
You may view this as a battle between the owners with “Competitive teams,” but I don’t think the other owners in the league will appreciate your deliberate attempt to enrich another owner.
wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-competitive_practices
Well I am actually trying to maximize my gain. If I simply cut the players, I come out behind because my closest rivals improve using only dollars. If I give the players away, my rivals will have to pay talent and money to get my former players. My team is better off in the latter scenario.
The topic is spite, but I’m always maximizing for expected finish in the standings. That includes exerting what little influence I can upon my rivals’ rosters.
It’s an ottoneu rule. It’s because player contracts have to be balanced at all times. The few of us that were way over budget also traded for additional salary cap space. That resets in the offseason.
He is not unilaterally putting a player on an opposing team. He is referring to a trade with another team in which he gives up a player and gets nothing in return. It happens – not often, but from time to time.
This would be vetoed in the ottoneu league that I am in. We recently vetoed a trade that was heavily lopsided. I have seen this done in season as a means of cap relief. The veto rule is in place for a reason.
I think I would try very hard to initiate that first trade, even if it means taking a return that is less than ideal. Once people see that you are going to move certain players regardless of their ploy to force you to cut them, offers may start to trickle in.
One of them will cave, Brad. Give ’em time.
I have no objection to this strategy given the rules as they are, though I do think being able to trade players for nothing is something that would seem to need to be addressed. I guess you can do the same type of thing in “real life” — the Diamondbacks effectively sold Toussaint — but there are tons of other things at play that don’t exist in fantasy. And there’s always a way around it: another owner could just send you their very worst $1 player.
I look to substance over form. I see no difference in trading no players back to Brad vs. one inconsequential $1 player. Either both should be allowed or neither.
Or maybe the other owners are realizing it’s not beneficial to pay exorbitant prices for market value stars before the auction.
Yeah, but it is beneficial to pay market price for a market price star, and i think thats what the topic is about.
But, it’s not really. The same players are available after auction for the same price.
Actually, given Brad’s comment about deflation, it seems as though some players (not the stars, presumably) can be had for less than market value in the auction.
This is true. In general, the only players who go above cost are the ones we’re all focused on winning. Like when all the outfielders come off the board but we were secretly waiting for Josh Reddick and bid him up to $10.
On a side note… why the heck would you shop a $27 Kluber? I mean, i guess nothing wrong with testing the waters but i wouldnt be actively trying to move a $27 Kluber.
Nor have I been. One owner is trying to get him included as a throw-in but that’s not going to fly.
I do need to cut salary somewhere. If I have to keep Kershaw and Greinke, then Kluber probably has to go.
It would take nothing less than a cheap Corey Seager to pry a $27 Kluber out of my hands.
What if 1 of your biggest competitors has the same problem and one of them decides to “trade” the valuable player to a competitive team? Would you have a problem with that?
They can run their team however they choose.
I wish my league was like yours. The winner last year had a close to 600$ budget and has somehow been able to trade to get close to 400 for this year, getting pieces that will help him next year. As second place I refused to make a deal with him that helped him monetarily but my fellow league mates did not use the same strategy.
I think thats a bad strategy. Assuming everyone is competant in the league… trading SHOULD improve both teams. If everyone else is trading with this guy, then everyone is improving their team but you. I understand wanting to put the best team in a tight spot, but unless you can get everyone else to join you in that strategy, you are only hurting yourself.
I agree. Unless the league is very quirky, it should be rare for any mutually beneficial trade to be a bad thing.
People seem to have this idea in their heads that when you buy win-now talent, you’re supposed to lose out long term. As long as the asset retains a positive EV, it should be easy (and expected behavior) to trade back down to a normal roster.
Value should only be lost at the time of the initial trade in the form of win-later talent.
Yeah, but i think this brings into focus what it means to sell at the deadline. If you sell you Kershaw to a contender for Corey Seager, and then in the offseason when you have cap space, buy Kershaw back for your Seager.. then what did you accomplish? The difference is salary. If in 2015 you pay Kershaws salary when selling ($60), you are essentially giving him $120 in assets (assuming Kershaw is worth $60). You need to get $120 in perceived 2016 value back. Too many times, people assume the salary they are paying is just the cost of doing business (since the buyer couldnt roster the player otherwise), and this is how the top guys stay on top.
Right, I basically quote 1 Seager now for Kershaw or 2 Seagers after the draft.
The problem is, it only takes one idiot that doesnt realize this concept, which sets the market for buyer vs seller, and that ruins the negotiating ability for sellers (and ruins the league, since buyers will be insanely strong next year too).
RIGHT! If a $7 Corey Seager is hypothetically worth a $60 Kershaw, then it should cost the seller 2 Corey Seagers to acquire a 100% paid for Kershaw. Then it makes sense, becuase when he is trimming cap the following offseason, the seller sells him one of those seagers back for Kershaw, and keeps the other as a profit (the buyer keeping a championship as profit).
Kudos. I would do the same, but I am also a spiteful ass.