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Message #: 3983
For the moment, there's just one official change: Effective immediately, draft picks may no longer be traded. This restores us to SMILEY's original state (draft picks were not allowed to be traded until 1969), makes deals more difficult to obfuscate, and simplifies our overusage-penalty scheme, because no longer do we need to be concerned with traded draft picks. TRADING: ======== The rule change mentioned above partially addresses one of two problems we believe we currently face in SMILEY. We are seriously considering other restrictions upon trading as well. At a minimum, from this point forward, all trades will be subject to greater scrutiny before being approved. Accordingly, any trade involving any of the Commissioners' teams will be subject to being evaluated and approved by a neutral third party. There have been instances of what we refer to as "pipeline" deals. That is two teams make several deals over a course of time that alternately help one team and then the other (and conveniently when those teams happen to be good). A hypothetical example of this would be for Boston to trade Carl Yastrzemski to Detroit for lesser value now and then for Detroit to turn around in 1976 and trade Mark Fidrych and Ron Leflore to Boston for lesser value to make up for it. Detroit comes out ahead now when they are good, and Boston comes out ahead later, when they are good (and Detroit would not be very good anyway). In the past, as long as both the Yaz & the Fidrych deals were not TOO bogus, they would have been approved according to the standards we've applied up to now. Because of the way SMILEY works in terms of Restricted players & future rookies, it is not only possible, but ridiculously easy, for two teams to work out deals YEARS in advance in order to rig pennant races for the forseeable future. With the exception of draftees, who account for only a small percentage of our rosters (currently), we all know exactly what players we'll have, exactly when we'll have them, and exactly how well they performed. Also we know that are cases of deals being done with another related deal already planned. In one case, apparently a team has traded a reliable "star" player and left a hole for 1970 with the understanding that another deal has already been agreed upon (with a different team) to get a player to fill that hole in 1971. There have been cases of "payback" deals meade in order to try to balance a trade from the year before. In 1970, we disallowed some trades (very few), and permitted nearly everything to go through. All deals from this point forward will be more heavily scrutinized, and we may even establish a "trade approval committee" if need be. If there is any hint of "payback", "pipeline", or any future deals whatsoever, the trade will stand an excellent chance of being denied. We regret having to make subjective decisions on each and every deal (or having a committee do so), because we are well aware of what will happen when trades are denied and that the participants will naturally disagree with us. The RFA issue (see below) is generally considered to be much more pressing than any concerns about trading, however we feel that these sorts of trades can have as much of an effect on pennant races as RFA. ROAD FIELD ADVANTAGE (RFA): =========================== Things have really gotten out of hand as far as home/road splits. In 1968 the visitors lost 10 more games than they won. In 1969, the visitors won 16 more than they lost. In 1970, the visitors won 128 more games than they lost. There are several teams that have won 10+ more road games than home games, and in some cases it approaches or exceeds 20 games. We have no handy explanation for this phenomena. Attached to this e-mail is a spreadsheet that documents road and home records, by owner, for all three SMILEY seasons. The spreadsheet is sorted by Lifetime Road Field Advantage (Column N). Owners are strongly encouraged to review this data. We are not accusing any owners of cheating. This issue is being raised (and has already been raised by some owners) because we are acknowledging the problem and looking for ways to address it. Keep in mind that one team's road record impacts another team's home record. In other words, one team having a "remarkable" RFA can cause other teams to look that way too. Also note that in some teams' cases there have been significant year-to-year swings (differentials that are bad one year, good the next). As one owner has pointed out, RFA can be caused by "ego" (or other reasons) rather than cheating. Regardless of the reason for it, RFA is a serious problem. Potential solutions we have so far include: 1. Require online play and/or autoplay for a significant portion of the schedule. 2. Require the above ONLY for teams whose differential (road vs home) exceeds some limit at any time during the season. 3. Penalize (somehow) owners whose differentials exceed some threshold, or conversely: reward owners who do better at home. We need to find a scheme that is effective in dealing with the problem (i.e., the penalties cannot be trivial), yet one that is not overly harsh (expulsion from the league in the absence of evidence of cheating). We are looking for a lot of input on this issue. I trust that nobody, the Commissioners included, wants to see a repeat of the imbalance we saw in 1970. Alan/Mike |
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