The Veto, A Vote By Any Other Name?

Last week, a trade was accepted in my home league. It nearly split the league in two. 

Jack’s Cool League, the JCL as it’s lovingly known amongst friends, is a home league that is going on 14 years of competition amongst 10 teams, conducted in the endlessly entertaining and frustrating head-to-head categories format. 

As you may have guessed by the name, I’ve been commissioner of the league since its inception. Various rule changes have reshaped strategy over the years. 

We added quality starts. Then OPS. We expanded the default Yahoo lineups to add additional IL slots and NA slots. We increased the active roster size to 25, and then to 26, to keep pace with our colleagues in the majors. We instituted a minimum weekly innings threshold. And moved up the playoffs to end the season before major league teams start resting their stars. And this year, we rebalanced the number of utility and bench slots to try and make streaming starting pitchers more of a calculation. 

The only other change has been moving from the Commissioner having discretion to veto egregious trades to having each team having a chance to cast a vote to veto within a two-day trade review period. 

It is extremely rare for a trade to be vetoed in our league, as I believe it should be, but it has happened. Teams will use their voting power and rally other managers to vote if they feel one team is benefitting so much that it dramatically shifts the balance of the league. 

Most recently, this impacted an otherwise simple one-for-one swap, when two managers agreed to exchange Jac Caglianone for Brent Rooker. Because the news that Rooker was out for the season came during our trade review period, managers were able to decide whether or not to veto the deal. 

Argument immediately broke out in the group chat. In the end, enough managers joined the Rooker-receiver and agreed that this would create an imbalance. The reasoning was that the manager dealing Cags away was essentially doing so without any benefit due to the injury, and thus, the result of the deal would be the same as if the two teams had colluded to make a one-sided trade.

Is this how the veto should be employed in fantasy baseball? With an eye to uneven results?

Or should the veto be allowed only in obvious instances of collusion or cheating? And does this injury news element provide an exceptional circumstance?

I’ll give you the point of view of the dissenting managers in Jack’s Cool League. 

Put simply, they say “Too bad!”

In the majors, if two teams agree to a trade and everything checks out, including physicals, and two teams agree, then the deal is done, even if a few days later one of the players in the deal is ruled out for the season. It isn’t considered collusion, it’s just bad luck. The same as when you draft a pitcher who then is under the knife for Tommy John surgery a few days later. 

To state the obvious, in fantasy baseball, we operate at an obvious information disadvantage compared to MLB front offices, one that Fangraphs and outlets like it help poke holes in, at the very least. But especially when it comes to the severity of injuries, it is even more of a guessing game for the fantasy manager than it is for the general manager. 

At least in Jack’s Cool League, the norm of voting in the face of clearly outlandish trades was important because we started the league as teenagers. And sometimes, a seventh-grader can be convinced to deal away a star player for a cheeseburger. So, it was clear the veto needed to be used to maintain the integrity of the league at that time. 

More than a decade later, this is no longer the case. And since the JCL is not a keeper league, opportunities for collusion are happily infrequent. Plus, none of us make enough to pay off another manager to accept an otherwise ill-conceived deal. 

Even still, our league’s managers have grown accustomed to having veto power, and wielding it when a particularly absurd deal is struck. 

In referring the question back to my league, I came across MLB’s own trade policy. Throughout major league history, the commissioner has used the broad, and Congressionally-approved (happy Fourth!), “best interests of baseball” clause for a variety of ends, as outlined for MLB.com by Richard Justice. These included doling out punishments related to perceived crimes, drug use, PEDs, and gambling.

But the clause has also been invoked by the commissioner to veto trades that would threaten the integrity of the league. This primarily has been used against teams selling star players when their owners were going through financial troubles. One of the most prominent examplesof this came when the A’s (plagued it seems by questionable owners) owner Charlie Finley tried to sell the legendary pitchers Rollie Fingers and Vida Blue in separate deals in 1976, attempting to deal them before free agency was instituted.

With that example, it seems that maybe there is some argument to be made for fantasy commissioners to be able to keep the best interests of their own leagues in mind.

But when asking some of my fellow Rotographs colleagues about the veto, the reply was unanimous. Vetoes should be used sparingly, and should only occur when you believe a team is cheating or teams are colluding. 

Is this how your league operates, with limited instances of the veto? Do you think a perceived imbalance is enough to justify a veto? Especially when season-ending injuries are involved? And does the “best interests of [fantasy] baseball” argument hold water for you?

Better yet, do you want to know which end of the cheeseburger deal I was on? 

Let me know below.