The Unwritten Rules
Throughout the season I have been and will to continue answer questions based on fantasy ethics and rules in this recurring piece. You may not always like the answers I give, but I hope that it is informative and makes you think about how you construct your leagues and play the games. Typically I do 4-5 questions per piece. You can send me more questions via email, JustinMasonFantasy@gmail.com, my twitter account, or by posting in my facebook group.
Question: I’m running a 20 team deep keeper league that has a 35 IP minimum and a 60 IP maximum. When checking for the maximum IP, the site will check daily, meaning that you could be sitting at 59.2 IP with four starters going that day and get an additional 20-30 IP for the week over the maximum. The idea was to limit streaming without straight up eliminating it and to keep the league more or less equitable by not having teams lose W, QS, and K’s because the other team had an additional five starters on them. So far this has been going well, with teams generally averaging around 60 IP per week, however, one team has managed to manipulate his pitchers playing time excessively. The second through fourth highest IP totals vary from 222.2 – 199.1 (I’m currently writing this in the middle of week 4), while the leader in IP has somehow managed 282.1 IP. Not surprisingly, this team also has the lead in W’s, QS, and K’s. The league rules do not specifically state that this is illegal, but I have mentioned that I wouldn’t be happy if people abuse this loophole. What, if anything, should I do about this? Should I just sit back and applaud his gamesmanship? Or should I warn him to start averaging closer to 60 IP per week? The league is new, and I’m a new commissioner, so I don’t want to rock the boat too hard, but I also don’t want to wind up letting this become more of an issue.
-Chris W.
Answer: I don’t think you need to sit back and applaud his gamesmanship, but there is not much you can or should do right now. If this isn’t how you anticipated the format working out, then change it for next season. You can’t change rules like this midseason, it is not fair to owners that may have strategized around it. Call for a vote for a rule change for 2018.
Question: I own Price in a league. Guy who wants to trade for him wants insurance. (i.e if he gets reinjured he wants me to send him something.) Is this ethical? Personally, I don’t like it and I feel icky about it. But, I’ve never come across this.
thoughts?
-Simon M
Answer: I appreciate the ingenuity of this owner, but I would not do this kind of deal. Ultimately, we all accept there is risk attached to trading for any player, much less one that is already injured. Not to mention, I am assuming he’s not going to be paying the price for a Cy Young caliber pitcher which David Price has been in the past, so he is already getting an injury discount. May be in a keeper format or one that allows draft pick trading you could offer a draft pick compensation that escalates or decreases based on how many innings he throws, but honestly I wouldn’t even do that. I don’t see anything necessarily unethical about it, but it’s like someone going to purchase a corvette at a junkyard and asking that they cover the cost of any repairs.
Question: I’m in a 15-team dynasty league and a number of us are getting hammered by injuries this year. We have only 2 DL spots and the commissioner has proposed that we increase them because so many people are having to drop players we wouldn’t normally want to. Everyone in the league wants to make this change now except one guy who hasn’t been affected by any real injuries. Is it really unfair to him that we make this change now as opposed to next season?
-Mike B.
Answer: No rule changes should occur in season unless it is a unanimous decision. Is it an unfortunate situation for many of us that have been killed by injuries? Sure, but making rule changes in season sets a dangerous precedent. You can try talking to the lone holdout and explaining why you feel this change would benefit the league as a whole, but ultimately he is correct.
Question: Is it ethical to leverage dump trades against another team. Example. “If we can’t get a deal done, I’ll have to go to feed your competition.”
Answer: I don’t think it is unethical, but I think it is poor strategy especially in a keeper or dynasty format where you are going to be playing with this person in future seasons. Trading is a relationship and if you attempt to strongarm a competitor it won’t be forgotten. There are better ways of getting the point along, but ultimately I think most people realize that if you don’t trade with them, you will with someone else.
Question: An owner is on his app trying to move Bradley Zimmer from NA to his active lineup and somehow accidentally drops him. He immediately posts a message explaining it was a mistake and asks for the move to be undone. Here’s the twist: a couple months before, during this past football season (same parties involved), we did a live draft where people enter their picks on a Google Doc. During the draft, one owner accidentally typed in C West instead of S Ware. The owner had been drinking and mixed up these Chiefs RBs. After entering the pick, he immediately realized he took the wrong player and asked to reserve it. The owner in the first example with Zimmer became belligerent and threatened to quit the league if this owner was allowed to reverse the pick. Is this owner a hypocrite? Just a ? Or are these instances different enough where they can’t be compared? Is it ok to reverse a mistake during the season but not during a draft? Or should neither be reversible – once it’s done it’s done? Need your help here with The Unwritten Rules! Thanks man.
Answer: Honestly, I think there is a huge difference between the two. Accidently dropping a guy should be reversed as long as it noticed within a reasonable amount of time. Typing in the wrong players name while drunk isn’t the same. First of all, don’t drink and draft. It is a bad example for the kids. However, in a home league, you shouldn’t rake your buddy over the coals over it, but in the end he has a valid point even if he is being a by threatening to quit.
Justin is the co-host on The Sleeper and The Bust Podcast and writes for Rotographs covering the Roto Riteup as well as other periodic articles. In addition to his work at Rotographs, Justin is the lead fantasy writer/analyst and co-owner for FriendswithFantasyBenefits.com, and the owner of The Great Fantasy Baseball Invitational. He is also a certified addiction treatment counselor. Follow Justin on Twitter @JustinMasonFWFB.
Looks like a word got censored out of the post in the last question (and your response). I don’t know why I am so curious about what said insult might be.
Something tells me the author called the guy a Richard.
That Richard should be expelled from both leagues. But the commish of the league should make the same decision for all owners in the league. The decision should be independent of the person making the request. Zimmer should go back to the Richard.
Starts with a “D” and rhymes with swoosh
Do not drink and draft, really dont
This is absurd. It’s like telling someone to golf without drinking, or bowl without drinking. There aren’t enough down thumbs in the world to assign you.
You can do both without drinking. If you can’t enjoy yourself without getting drunk, then do you really like the thing you’re doing, or do you like the excuse to get drunk?
Now, we don’t know how drunk the guy was, but if he was getting light headed or starting to slur, then he should have taken it easier on the alcohol. We also don’t know what happened to his pick, all we know is that the guy who dropped Zimmer protested any attempt to fix it. I can see why he would be upset, but the guy caught it immediately from what Sammy said. In both cases, if it’s caught immediately and was an honest mistake, fix it.
Couldn’t agree more Hitch.
Can we at least admit that when alcohol becomes a hindrance to your activity, you should probably stop?
It’s really difficult to be a commissioner, but it’s so cool to see something that you made be enjoyed by others.
My only quibble with the advice here is that we shouldn’t be changing rules midseason at all. If you’re in a deeper league getting a everyone to vote is hard enough, to have a full and unanimous vote is almost impossible. I tried to have one to move our live draft time back an hour, out of the 20 managers, only 14 voted. The vote was 8-6 for moving it back, but I wanted a 70% majority before moving it, so unless all 14 managers had voted for moving it, the vote was doomed by people who didn’t respond.
Making it almost impossible is the entire point…
This. The majority of leagues, even if they have no real dormant owners, still are not populated exclusively by people paying as much attention as, well, the kinds of people who read Fangraphs (let alone write for it).
Important to distinguish between “full” and “unanimous,” though. It has to be unanimous to be fair. But if you have a few owners who don’t respond reliably, I think it’s reasonable to say it has to be unanimous, but only among people who bother to vote. Just so long as everyone has a reasonable period of time in which to object.
My worry is that if you do the vote, and you normally have 10/14 people who vote every time, you still have four that could be out of town, could be experiencing an internet outage, etc, etc, etc… If one of them comes back after 5-7 days (or whatever you deem to be reasonable) and realizes that a rule change they didn’t agree to or want was passed in their absence, it could raise a huge stink.
In my league, settings can be changed from year to year as I see fit during the offseason, but anything codified in the constitution needs to be voted on before it gets changed. Right now, I have people clamoring to speed up trading periods which are set to a two day waiting period so that the league has a chance to review them. There are two problems with this: One is that it’s not fair to previous managers who traded if trades go through faster now and B: The rule has been codified in the constitution.
The exception to this is that the constitution was originally written with another site in mind, so wordings will have to change clarification. That’s something that I’ll do without a vote.
I agree. Most of our owners have full-time jobs, have kids, and travel in the summer (I would say this is every league with adults participating). It would be very easy for us to find when the dissenting voter would be out of town or unlikely to check on the league to go ahead and make a vote.
If you must make a change, it needs to be unanimous by every league owner. If they aren’t voting either way, contact them and get them to vote.
My preference has always been to not make changes mid-season. It’s bad form and usually looks like you’re trying to screw over one owner. We have ongoing discussions every offseason about rule changes that need made and rarely ever have qualms then. Just do it in the offseason.
In this day and age of technology, no one is unreachable. Whether it’s via phone or setting up a league Facebook group, an active commissioner should have ways of reaching every owner for league votes. I do believe everyone should have a say, but it’s the commissioner’s responsibility to ensure that.
I don’t carry around a smart phone normally, and I live outside of the US. So unless I’m at home or work, I don’t have much access to the league. If I went camping for a week after setting up my lineup, I may look active but I would be out of reach for sure.
“No one is unreachable” = not close to true. I travel globally for work and my off time is spent hiking places like the AT and the Long Trail. I frequently have periods of time where I cannot access the world with technology, some of that is unavoidable and some is by choice. As an active manager I plan for this by setting my lineups ahead of time. The problem I have in scenarios like this is that most of the time the commish wants a resolution/vote within 24-48 hours and there are legitimate times when that is not possible.
I totally disagree with the last one. There really isn’t that big a difference between making a little misclick or mistype whether it’s in the draft or during the season, as long as the person realizes it immediately and asks for it to be reversed. IMO for such a simple mistake, it should always be reversed as long as the person says it immediately. If anything, the guy in that league is being a hypocrite.
IMO, if you’re drunk, you kind of did it to yourself. In the instance of Zimmer, the UI for the website is being cited as the cause when the manager was using a device. I misclick all the time when using my league’s site on my phone. It happens.
The underlying reasons for reversing the mistakes:
Owner A. I was drunk.
Owner B. I clicked the wrong button.
One is something few people will find sympathy for. The other is something that could happen to anyone. There is a world of difference.
Being a recovering alcoholic and substance abuse counselor, I tend to rule on the side of sympathy when it comes to chemically induced issues. However, while being drunk can cause issues, one must take ownership of their actions while under the influence. Before I quit drinking, I made numerous faux pas while drinking at the the draft table, but when I realized my mistakes I accepted the consequences of my actions and didn’t ask for a redo. If one was offered, I graciously accepted if the entire league was ok with it, but ultimately the league wasn’t responsible for my drunken mistakes
I’m all for people drinking and drafting them f they can handle it. I know I couldn’t, but I was the exception rather than the rule.
I didn’t intend to sound like an unsympathetic d-bag. People with chemical dependency issues need supportive people.
But if you’re drinking and make a silly mistake, I don’t see the need to feel bad about it enough to reverse it. (If these mistakes are because of one’s addiction to alcohol, fantasy baseball decisions become irrelevant).
I really apologize if it seems like I don’t care about those who struggle with alcohol abuse.
Something else I wanted to say that I’ve been seeing as a trend on the FB page and here: Just because a guy is Richard (h/t drewcorb), doesn’t mean that we should let that influence our decisions. Our personal feelings shouldn’t get in the way of ensuring fair and enjoyable play for everyone.
I personally don’t have a problem with conditional trades as long as it’s manageable within the game. After all, real MLB teams do this with real contracts, PTBNLs, etc. As long as both owners agree to the terms, where’s the problem?
I agree there’s nothing technically unethical about it, but I don’t think it’s great strategy either. I do see it causing a problem with other owner that might object and that kind of disturbance within a league isn’t usually worth it. Just because something is within bounds doesn’t mean you should do it.
Like this feature and thought your answers were well-reasoned.
I redrafted our league constitution this past off-season, changing some rules that had been in place for 20 years, and while you try to anticipate issues and draft rules accordingly, some new circumstances always arise, so it’s nice to have a forum of FG to gain a helpful perspective.
The first question is one I’ve had to deal with in a couple leagues, both on ESPN. For whatever reason, ESPN is just incapable of enforcing a hard games started or innings pitched limit and that Sunday loophole can be a nightmare.
In one league, we just kept it legal. I hated it because in some cases you’d just have mass streaming on Sundays to pick up cheap counting stats but I was outnumbered. In the other, we decided to manually enforce the limit, which takes a bit of legwork by LMs. If someone exploits the loophole, we will go through and remove whichever starter(s) started last based on first pitch time. Takes some work in a 16 team league, but I like it way better. We’ve had to be doubly careful this year because ESPN stopped live updating games started counts on the scoreboard so it is easy for owners to accidentally lose track and go over.
That isn’t a change you can make mid-season but it is definitely the first thing I’d bring up after the season. Replacing some counting stat category with ratios (K/9 or K% in place of K for example) also helps dissuade mass streaming and puts the focus more on quality of innings.
In my league I can look up a team’s IP per week after the fact, and I’ve used that to warn managers and I can set rosters to be illegal for a given week, even retroactively if they get out of hand. I can also lock out a manager from being able to make trades, drops, or adds. I find that warning managers of these potential consequences is enough to get them back in line. I hate that I have to resort to it though.
Got my own question: I offered a guy Bundy for Chapman 3 days before Chapman got hurt, no word from the owner. Once Chapman is hurt, he accepts the offer. This is lame as balls right?
It’s lame, and realistically, the guy should have rescinded the offer.
Obviously, Chapman’s injury is not season ending, and he could be back very soon, so you should be able to rest easy knowing that, but it’s still a shitty thing to do.