Monday, May 7, 2012
Rule Change in Order?
I'm in favor of not allowing anyone to pick up a player dropped on Saturday on Sunday. The point of having a Sunday deadline was in case you lost a bid and needed to find another pickup or if a player was injured on Saturday and you needed to quickly find a replacement. It might just be easiest from an admin standpoint to have one waiver deadline (Saturday) and leave it at that. Thoughts?
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19 comments:
I don't like the idea of one waiver period, especially since you're screwed if you miss the deadline like I did on Saturday. Losing out on Frieri is punishment enough for forgetting!
I'm fine with making dropped players not eligible to be picked up on Sunday, though. That has happened a couple times in the last couple weeks (Moreland and Jimenez).
I think we've argued about this before. In general, I think none of us are particularly fond of being allowed to pick up Saturday cut guys on Sunday, but I think it's crazy to remove one of the two waiver periods just to solve this issue.
I think the second waiver period is too important for teams that missed out on players due to higher bidders, had their team needs change between when they set up their bids (perhaps earlier than Saturday), or simply were too busy and forgot to do any add/drops on Saturday. Eliminating the Sunday add/drop period would solve the issue of adding Saturday cuts, but I think that is a small one relative to the troubles created by removing Sunday's waiver moves.
I don't have any problem with people picking up Saturday's dropped players on Sunday. We have so many rules to keep track of already. I guarantee you that if we make this a rule, I will forget about it by next season and violate it.
What is the reasoning behind not wanting to picking up Saturday's dropped players on Sunday?
I don't personally particularly like it because my already dropped Jimenez had a perfect Sunday (but when you’re in last you have to make crazy decisions (or so I'm telling myself.)) but why is it disliked in general? To avoid having to pay attention on Sunday evenings as well even if your roster is set?
The reasoning is that you have to check the league every Sunday. I thought the point of a weekly league was to give ourselves a bit more flexibility. Even in daily leagues, waiver periods are usually longer than 24 hours for dropped players so everyone has a chance to place a bid. 24 hours is just too short and doesn't make sense when the rest of the players are on waivers for 6 days.
I agree with Luke that having a rule that isn't really enforceable isn't a great solution either, but I think we can self police if it is established as a rule.
One idea to consider would be to move the Saturday waiver auction time back to Thursday or Friday.
The fact that you need to check up on your team and the league every day is kind of unavoidable I think. Even if we just had 1 waiver auction time, there's nothing we can do if, for example, 1 hour before the deadline, the news breaks that some closer is injured. Everybody who put in their waiver claims early won't be able to benefit from that news, and that's just the way it goes. Also, usually when someone gets dropped it's for pretty good reason. Let's face it, Ubaldo stinks. His 5 walk, 43% pitches thrown for balls outing on Sunday was like Liriano's 6 walk, 3 double play luckiest no-hitter ever last season. $5 says Taylor drops him by the all-star break. Yes, I'm saying all this after bidding $3 on him, but that's just an indicator of how desperate I am after watching Matt Moore give up 8 runs to the Oakland A's.
What we decide on this is fine with me as long as we still maintain 2 waiver auction times. If we decide to just say we won't claim Saturday's dropped players on Sunday, I'd like to see a shared Google doc listing all of our custom rules that aren't inherently enforced by ESPN. Actually, I think I'll try and get that started tonight.
I'll just text everyone before I drop someone. Problem solved!
I'm ambivalent, but I lean toward not changing the rule.
On the one hand, it sucks to have to check on Sunday whether any good players were dropped on Saturday. What if you're away for the weekend or something?
On the other hand, this rule would make things more complicated, but difficult to remember, and would almost certainly be violated by accident at some point. Furthermore, Luke's right that it's already important to check the state of things right before the waiver deadline. Frieri is one example of that, and so is Hector Santiago, who became the white sox closer after I went to bed one Sunday.
I also agree that it's important to have two waiver deadlines, in case you don't get who you wanted the first time around.
If we made a new rule, another thing to consider would be that we would have to decide whether or not to make a similar rule regarding all dropped players. Since ESPN allows us to drop players any time during the week, we'd have to decide if it was okay to claim Friday's drops on Saturday waivers and such.
There are things that are unavoidable (e.g. breaking news at 10pm on saturday) and things that are entirely in our control (e.g. not allowing saturday pickups to be claimed on sunday). I don't agree that just because somethings are unavoidable it should prevent us from having a more equitable system.
I believe that having people snake players dropped on Saturday is an unintended consequence of having 2 waiver wire pickups. The argument against having a self imposed rule that would eliminate this is that it would be difficult to enforce. However, we could come up with a procedure if the rule is broken that everyone agrees on (E.g. player is dropped and you lose that roster spot for the rest of the week). As long as there is enough disincentive to being careless, I think people won't make the mistake.
Of all the solutions, I think Luke's is the best. Perhaps having a waiver period on Friday and Sunday would solve our issue? That said, I'm not sure it is a huge one. In general, we're a pretty savvy group, and no one is dropping high quality players.
Except for Kate and Ubaldo Jiminez (ducks)
Luke told me he's dropping Josh Hamilton this Saturday. Just so everyone's forewarned.
I don't care strongly either way, though like Luke I instinctively lean toward fewer rules. I just need to know one way or another, so I don't let the cat out of the bag anymore by asking someone "So...are we allowed to pick up players who were dropped on Saturday? No reason, I mean. Just wondering about the rules. Not gonna bid on anyone, really."
I'm running my team with an iron fist. You don't perform? You are gone. Names don't matter to me - it's all about the scoreboard. Pujols, you are on notice (he is not.)
This entire post would mean more if I weren't very much in last place.
Should we vote, or does Mark want to make an executive decision?
I doesn't seem like people have much of a problem with picking up players on Sunday that were dropped Saturday so we don't need to vote. Not a big issue.
Eh. I'm totally fine with Kate cutting Ubaldo. While his results looked better, his underlying numbers are all going in the wrong direction and Sunday's start didn't do a whole lot to change my opinion on him. His velocity is down from last yeatr, when he was kind of awful, which was down from the previous season. He certainly has more upside than Josh Tomlin, who Taylor cut to grab Ubaldo, but it wouldn't shock me if Tomlin was the better pitcher at the end of the year.
A McDowell has spoken!
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