Thoughts
Moderator: WillyD
Thoughts
I just wanted some feedback from the owners who have been in the league. I know there has been somewhat of a flurry of trades with all the new owners, but I am guessing there isn't a lot of trading overall in the league without the rebuild cycle. What is the reason for the system 5 development instead of system 3? In the end, I guess it doesn't matter too much. Everyone is on equal footing, but it will take some adjusting on what a playoff team looks like to me when building.
Re: Thoughts
So ... I know I don't really qualify as an "experienced" Frank Robinson owner ... but I'll drop my 2 cents in here anyway.
1) Regarding rebuilding/contending ... this is still going to be slightly cyclical. Look at the SF/CHA trade. There were 2 top-notch SP's and a draft pick sent to CHA in exchange for 3 young SP prospects. That's a rare find in any league. From CHA's perspective, why risk the "future" with a lead in the AL? He gets a boost for a playoff run this year and knows that, with the wheel draft, he can try to replace those young pitchers down the road without skipping too much of a beat. From SF perspective, he now has a projected 1-2-3 rotation that should contend for a playoff spot in 5 years. There are still windows of competing and some strategy to getting all of your starters in the prime of their career at the same time.
2) System 5 vs. 3 is a little tricky. The top 1-2 prospects in system 5 actually get MORE development than standard system 3. Prospects 3-4-5 get similar to full development, and 6-7 get close enough that they can be viably developed. You don't really get to work 15 minor leaguers to full development, but with the top slots getting more developed it results in more superstars league-wide and a slightly high variance from the best of the best to the league-average tiers. The wider variance between the best players and "league average" means that there are some more stellar single seasons and individual players can be exceptionally valuable, but it also means that if you can get a team full of guys in the top 5 of their position, you can compete indefinitely.
3) The effect of numbers on trades is the thing that I dislike the most about them and why I am the most pleased about going to letters. There is a degree of certainty to knowing the numerical grade of a player that reduces player movement, IMO. This early season flurry of activity has been primarily us expansion teams trying desperately to get balanced rosters. Some of us are a mess!
1) Regarding rebuilding/contending ... this is still going to be slightly cyclical. Look at the SF/CHA trade. There were 2 top-notch SP's and a draft pick sent to CHA in exchange for 3 young SP prospects. That's a rare find in any league. From CHA's perspective, why risk the "future" with a lead in the AL? He gets a boost for a playoff run this year and knows that, with the wheel draft, he can try to replace those young pitchers down the road without skipping too much of a beat. From SF perspective, he now has a projected 1-2-3 rotation that should contend for a playoff spot in 5 years. There are still windows of competing and some strategy to getting all of your starters in the prime of their career at the same time.
2) System 5 vs. 3 is a little tricky. The top 1-2 prospects in system 5 actually get MORE development than standard system 3. Prospects 3-4-5 get similar to full development, and 6-7 get close enough that they can be viably developed. You don't really get to work 15 minor leaguers to full development, but with the top slots getting more developed it results in more superstars league-wide and a slightly high variance from the best of the best to the league-average tiers. The wider variance between the best players and "league average" means that there are some more stellar single seasons and individual players can be exceptionally valuable, but it also means that if you can get a team full of guys in the top 5 of their position, you can compete indefinitely.
3) The effect of numbers on trades is the thing that I dislike the most about them and why I am the most pleased about going to letters. There is a degree of certainty to knowing the numerical grade of a player that reduces player movement, IMO. This early season flurry of activity has been primarily us expansion teams trying desperately to get balanced rosters. Some of us are a mess!
Re: Thoughts
I find that there's some good trade talk as teams fall out of contention, and try to get value for their vets before they decline. There are still mini-rebuilds and teams in re-tooling years, so those teams will sell of their older players, or look to buy vets to fill holes as they come out of their re-tooling effort.MDorf wrote: ↑Sun Jun 09, 2019 4:37 pm I just wanted some feedback from the owners who have been in the league. I know there has been somewhat of a flurry of trades with all the new owners, but I am guessing there isn't a lot of trading overall in the league without the rebuild cycle. What is the reason for the system 5 development instead of system 3? In the end, I guess it doesn't matter too much. Everyone is on equal footing, but it will take some adjusting on what a playoff team looks like to me when building.
In regards to system 5, I think we just kept it because it's a good balance between not having enough talent, and having too much talent like system 3 tends to produce. For me it's the best system in that regard.
Re: Thoughts
Maybe it was because there were so many owners leaving, but there were only 18 trades in the previous 10 seasons.
Re: Thoughts
That was the reason. We basically had 7 owners.
The Cincy owner never showed up after buying into the lague, the old SF owner never came back after the previous term, and the old BRO owner was only really active for a few years into that last term. The old NYN owner was never really active. For many many terms I've had to fix his roster between him not checking his teams for weeks at a time.
Re: Thoughts
Not to start a debate but I just dont agree with this. When you know the exact numbers you know exactly who you want to go after and what you're willing to give up, and both sides will know this so the value of offers should be closer to equal and easier to negotiate and work out a deal than it would be if neither side knew or only one side knew.
I guess maybe if almost everyone was always trying to basically screw people over by offering guys super low in their grades, enough people would accept bad deals in the long run that maybe more deals would go down with letters than with numbers. But other than that i just dont see how letters would have increased movement over numbers. And that is just not a very fun way to play, to always be having to worry about dodging land mine offers, or to constantly try to catch someone with your own to be able to optimally run your team.
The low amount of trades recently was 100% just barely having any active owners, so the playoff teams had no competition and no need to make many trades and teams maybe trying to fight for the playoffs had noone to trade with to be able to do it. I think the nature of the wheel can definitely reduce player movement as its possible to compete without trading all that much, but i dont think numbers has anything to do with it.