On Thursday, I discussed my views on non-contenders trading with contenders in fantasy leagues and whether or not there should be special considerations when making such deals. Naturally, this evolved into a discussion in the comments section on how this applies to keeper leagues versus redraft leagues, leading reader brucegilsen to request:
Derek, I think you should post an article about your take on dumping. It should lead to an interesting discussion. My 24-year-old 4×4 25/280 NL only league uses an in-season salary cap to prevent contenders from building $500 super teams and it would be fun to discuss on here.
While I don’t think a league’s rules should ever be left up to a single person, if I were creating a keeper league myself, I would definitely take a very laissez-faire approach to the matter. The same as I’m against trade vetoes, I am (for the most part) for so-called “dump trades.” If an owner is in a position to win a championship this season, I believe it should be fully within his rights to sacrifice the future of his team to secure a banner. I’m fully aware that this is an unpopular opinion among many people, but it’s how I feel, generally speaking.
Last week, I said that a team in contention shouldn’t have artificial limits put on its ability to make trades with non-contenders, and I feel the same logic applies to teams who are out of contention and want to offer up their non-keepable stars for long-term assets. Sure, some may see it as unfair that one owner gets Justin Verlander and Josh Hamilton for a pair of B-level prospects, but his competitors have the exact same opportunity to trade for Verlander and Hamilton or to respond with trades of their own. Yes, maybe it becomes an arms race, but there’s still skill in that. There’s the skill of posturing, negotiating, and such when making these deals. There’s the skill of setting your team up for this situation (i.e. acquiring enough long-term assets along the way for use in stretch-run dump trades). There’s the skill of evaluating your position once July and August roll around—do I have enough ammo for this arms race, and if not, do I have a big enough to warrant weathering the storm? Or is it smarter to sell?
This being said, I wouldn’t necessarily be against some form of regulation on dump trades. Nothing extreme, but something to help maintain a semblance of competitive balance might not be bad. Reader brucegilsen’s league uses a salary cap. Other leagues, like reader eliyahu’s, use a reverse salary cap (aka salary minimum). An idea of mine would be to penalize teams for finishing below a certain threshold. Go ahead and dump trade all you like, but for every roto point below 40 (or whatever) that you finish, you’re going to lose $10 in next year’s auction. This helps keep dump-trading in check while simultaneously allowing owners to make some interesting strategic decisions.
I can see the other side of this argument that many make, and I think the side of the fence where each individual person falls really comes down to what that person is hoping to get out of the fantasy baseball experience, what kind of game they want to be playing. Some want it to mirror real-life baseball as much as possible. Some simply want it to be as much fun as possible. There are an infinite number of reasons for playing fantasy baseball, and these reasons will dictate a person’s thoughts on this matter. There are no right or wrong answers here, but I’m sure it will still make for some interesting discussion. Take it away, guys…
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It's not like other people are being shut out from making similar deals or acquiring particular players - they are entirely free to make offers. If another player makes me a better offer for the Pujols and Verlander, he'll get them instead.
Also, people tend to make deals with friends or people they work with for one reason - they talk about the league with those people more. Your rule seems to me to be an example of a rule that appears to make sense, but is actually just an unnecessary infringement on a manager's right to run his team as he sees fit.
No matter what you do, there's no perfect solutions.
What I suspect causes most of the trouble is when the team in the hunt gets big pieces for the playoffs, yet is not perceived to have given anything up in return. That starts to blur the line between legitimate trading of this years piece to come back next year (I trade you this year's pieces for a shot next year), and teams colluding (Here's a good player, hope you win).
What gets me worked up is when an LM who is out of the playoffs trades away their best players to a contender, but gets waiver wire guys in return. Not fringy-but-rosterable players, but actual waiver wire guys picked up a short time ago.
To me, that crosses the line between legitimate "punting this year for next year" trade strategy to "I don't care anymore, here's the championship" type of shennanigans.
I guess when I hear the term "dumping", I think of an LM who doesn't care anymore giving away very useful players to the first person they see, no matter what garbage, if anything at all, they get in return. I would describe trading the present for the future as punting, but that's just semantics, really.
2. Dumping at the end of the season, pre-trade deadline is fine, it's dumping early in the season- with a manager who has already given up- that causes fights. Getting a Kemp, Verlander etc... with just a month and a half to go is not really going to change the standings all that much in roto.
3. The bottom place finishers in a league should not be rewarded with high draft picks or the same amount of FAAB$ that helps control tanking issues.
4. I think that the more keepers you have it actually helps this situation.
By limiting trades to one unbalanced (by one asterisk player) trade, one owner can't "dump" all of his high priced/expiring contract players in one one trade to one owner. You can make two such trades with one owner but they have to be done in two different months. Each owner can only make one such trade in August and none in September.
It seems to work pretty good, other than complaints when an owner "dumps" early (April/May). Then there are complaints, but really all owners have the same opportunity to obtain asterisk players from a bad/dumping team that wants to start rebuilding for next season early. They just need to stay in contact with early poor performing teams.
If you have owners that trade valuable assets for waiver wire assets(our waiver wire/FAAB bids is very shallow with 40 man rosters), I welcome the charitable donation of such incompetent owners. Historically they only last one or two years in the league.
The above system seems to work pretty well for our leagues.
The only time this becomes acrimonious is if a team on the bubble - say, a few games out of a playoff spot - sells for next year, but even then, it's that manager's decision and if he or she wants to give up, I'm happy to take advantage of it if I'm a contender.
As for arms races, it's actually pretty fun to see some of the crazy good teams going at it head-to-head with the season on the line.