Anyone else notice that all the big trade deadline names are AL players? Holliday, Halladay, Lee, VMart, the entire rosters of the Jays, Orioles, and A's...it seems like Adrian Gonzalez is the only big NL name I've heard tossed around much. So far, our league has lost just Holliday and DeRosa, but there's potential for a lot more. And our frustratingly thin waiver wire will just get frustratingly thinner. I thought I'd re-explore the option of allowing us to add NL players who are traded to the AL.
One major theme of the complaints in the thread two down from this one was that things this year felt pretty static, that the league's leaders had already been determined, months ago. The fear with allowing us to add players from the NL was that it would be unbalancing - a huge change in one's team could be made off the waiver wire, based mostly on waiver priority. While I think this is an understandable concern, I've come to think that our rosters are deep enough that any one NL player (except maybe Pujols) couldn't really unbalance things that much...and even if they did, wouldn't that maybe be a welcome change for most of the teams in the league? Unbalancing is already a key feature of fantasy baseball, in the rather random nature of trades, injuries, and waiver wire pickups. I don't really see how opening up another avenue for player acquisition would be harmful.
As it is now, there's really no one to use a waiver wire priority on. I've sat on the number one priority all year, waiting for a top notch prospect to be called up (or are they not going on waivers?) or for someone to drop a decent player (I almost grabbed Matsuzaka, but he's not going to be helping me out any time soon). Waiver priority could be determined in a more meaningful way than draft order, and could add some strategy as we have to decide whether to spend our high priority on the Scott Posedniks of the world when we need them in May, or hold out for the Adrian Gonzalezes at the end of July. We could also trade waiver priorities. As it is now, teams with injuries or who lose players to the NL are left picking from the pitiful scraps on our waiver wire, and its a real buzzkill. I think we should reconsider the rule for next season.
11 comments:
One thought - if we were to allow NL players to be added, we might want to include a caveat that they could not be kept at the end of the season. That would limit any unbalancing to the remainder of the season.
In the future I'd be fine with NL players being allowed to get picked up. It would give waiver priority some value, which isn't the case right now. I'd only be on board if we agree with Caleb's idea that they cannot be kept though.
I am a fan of that idea and I think it is pretty standard for most al/nl only leagues.
Aren't we a little worried about the potential value of waiver priorities? They could become a deciding factor, which would be unfortunate, since they are basically already established (in effect, since the deadline is coming so soon). I think I would not have wasted a waiver priority on Chris Getz if it meant I had a better shot at a useful NL player. I like the idea, but implementing it 6 days before the trade deadline doesn't make a lot of sense.
Yeah, I missed the "last season" sentence at the end there. I'm dumb, and am also all for Caleb's proposal.
I don't think we're talking about this year - that isn't something you can implement in the middle of the season.
No no, definitely not this season.
It may also not be a bad idea to have NL players be on a 2-day waiver period (if that's possible). That gives everyone enough time to realize that there's a new player available and decide whether or not they want to make a waiver claim. It could result in some interesting strategy around the MLB trade deadline - if a handful of good new players come into the league, teams will have to hedge their bets with their waiver wire claims. That probably wouldn't actually happen, but I'd like to think it could.
With Yahoo I don't think we could have incoming NL players have 2 day waivers, but everyone else 1 day waivers. Of course, everyone could be on 2 day waivers.
Honestly, I'd be fine with everyone on 2 day waivers. I think that would add to the value of waiver wire position as well, which is part of what we're shooting for, right?
Yeah, I don't like this rule either. I agree with Caleb that we should change it next year but not be allowed to keep NL players.
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