Another "Cheating" Technique

[nevets72]

I have noticed that some owners will trade a bunch of high priced talent to a computer owned team and receive nothing in return. It is an obvious salary dump in order to stay alive. Could we find a way to prevent this?

[Steeler2509]

I can't agree that is cheating. If the computer AI is willing to take salary dumps then it is not the player's responsibility. This is a very different issue than logging in under two email accounts and stacking a team.

Seems to me that that is just smart gamesmenship based on the rules that have been implemented in the game. I agree that it should be stopped.

[playshogi]

I dump high-priced or poor prospects on computer teams. What's wrong with it? I usually get 1-3 players in exchange. At the close of my last season, I was in debt so it was trade 'em or lose 'em. At least, I got a few players. The mistake I made was trading them to a division rival and now that computer team is in first place.

[nevets72]

The problem is that going back to the human control team is NOTHING. Any real life GM who did that would be fired in a day. I do not mind if at least 1 player comes back, but a 5 for 0 trade bothers me.

[Steeler2509]

I have dumped high price players on the computer teams. If they take them, that ain't my problem.

It may be a AI problem, but it is not "cheating".

[playshogi]

As St. Louis I was in debt so I could not re-sign my players. I traded them 9 for 1 to computer team. Then, to my surprise, I was able get some of those players back immediately in exchange for some 1 point players. The computer GM wants to dump salary right after taking it on.

[kohut]

As the NYM in Fastsim 11 I believe it is (I am in Fast Sim 10 also) I chose to dump talented players in exchange for roookies who make 1 point. Its not my problem my scouting department is awesome and its finding me awesome players. Also its become apparent that the GM's just dont care anymore. I havent gotten a trade offer in about 1 week now and i was in 3 leagues and quit one today. If I am dealing talent for nothign in return I dont see how that is cheating? Baseball Mogul should make the computer smarter and have them re-sign players who are asking for a lot less in a contract. They should also not pick up players that will mess up their budget.

[skaye]

The problem I have is that the Computer GMs give away their top prospects so cheaply. I've pulled a salary dump or two in my time, but I always try and get some type of quality back. The number of times I've been able to steal great prospects for average bench players is brutal. I think the AI weighting is far too concerned with how much the player is playing in the big leagues and not enough with potential.

[triple crown]

In my opinion this is most definitely cheating.

It ruins the balance within the game, by allowing teams to sign players to long term - high priced contracts with no regard for the consequences. If that particular player isn't performing as expected just dump him on a computer team and even pick up a decent prospect in return. If thats not cheating than what is?

By not allowing the salary dump it would enhance the gaming experience by making free agent signings more discriminant. Not just sign allstars at every position and when they wear out there welcome dump them and move on to the next allstar. It would allow for my strategy in my opinion.

for example:

Lets say your a medium income team with payroll between 300 and 350 points.

Payroll is at 300 now and Rolen is available for 50 points at 7 years, but you have an up- and comer in AAA. Should you sign Rolen? (perhaps) Or do you let the Rookie 3B take over and live with his inexperience? depends on wheater or not a playoff position is possible.

Lets say you did sign Rolen, and you won the WS, but now Rolen's skills have drastically diminished. The easy thing to do is dump Rolen after 1 year and bring up the Rookie 3B next year. This is totally unrealistic. In real life you would probably be stuck with Rolen for 7 years through thick and thin. The computer dump is too easy to get rid of mistakes (you singed Rolen for 7 years your stuck with him, unless you can find another human owner willing to take him off your hands).

Therefore I think trades with computer owned teams should be disabled. Its far too easy to exploit the trades and ruins the balance within the game.

I would like to hear other people's responses, especially Clay or anyone else at Sports Mogul.

Sorry if I rambled on, but I am very passionate about the online game and hope some of these issues will be resolved soon:o

[kohut]

But the online version of Baseball Mogul will be filled with GM's who are paying to be in the league and not people who are deadbeats (boy there are lots out there now) who just join and quit leagues at will. I assume if you are paying $4.99 a month you cant just quit a league in the middle and join another.

Also in real life teams are able to buy out contracts or put them on waivers or what have you.

[dwsadowsky]

If I was paying, which I will, I certainly will quit teams. For instance I was signing up for the hourly teams, but have quit all those to go to fast sims. Also one team I really messed up and they are so far in the hole I can't get them out. I quit and started over. Why would this be different when I'm paying?
David

[nevets72]

I have seen alot of responses to my topic, but I think my initial point got lost.

I do not care if teams dump and get something back. What irks me is when teams dump players and get NOTHING back. An example:

NY Mets trade Piazza, Alfonza, and Leiter

to

Arizono for Nothing.

That is wrong!

[kohut]

There is nothing wrong with dumping players for nothing. It would be wrong if I was dealing the computer nothing and getting stars. The computer should be programmed to make teams offers which deal away these players they got for nothing and convert the talent into acquiring young players or cash.

[TGG]

Dumping players for nothing SHOULD be wrong.

At takes away from the game......

The rest of the league does suffer if a "owner" over spends one year, then lets say trades off those players to another team ( that can afford them )for nothing in return........

Because the team that gets the players not only not loss anything but also gain ( in most cases) very good players . While the team the traded the players has done nothing to improve thier team.

[kohut]

This wont be a problem when the online leagues start up because it will probably be filled with all human run teams and if THEY choose to trade another human team talent for nothing there is nothing that can be done. They are paying to be in a league so if they are trading away talent for nothing its their loss. PLUS the GM activity in these free leagues are attrocious and I dont blame them for getting to a pay league not only to generate revenuue but to stop wasting their times running leagues for deadbeats. I am in two fast sim leagues and 6 teams in each league have salaries around 30-70 points which means these GM's who have 30 point salaries are doing NOTHING beecause thats 30 players making 1 point or they just dont care. BTW I posted a GM check on the messagebboards and only got 1 reply so far.

Personally I think it would be best to go pay soon beecause the benefits of beta testing are starting to waiver over people who are not even logging onto the site and wasting their time in simulating leagues where half the GM's probably havent logged on in about 2 weeks now.

But getting back to the point of dumping players in real life you can dump players to a degree. You can put them on waivers, send them to the farm where they get a lower contract or you can give them their outright release or even buy them out.
Personally up uuntil I joint this league ive had a copy of the original baseball mogul and I have never dumped talent to a computer team althoughh I have bought players from them for cash.

[adam]

i agree with the above that the whole computer trading AI is a bit whacked. Perhaps I (or Clay or someone) could make up a few GM types based on real-life GM's...and a computer team gets one of those...

However, there are times when trading something for nothing is fair. I traded several complete non-prospects (F for average, F for range, etc) along with a decent SS to a team who had a SS hole. I wasn't dumping a lot of salary (5 pts/season for 3 years, or 15 pts) but for me, that was a fair price for the SS. In effect, I sold the SS for 15 points. (This was with a human GM, not a computer)...

The whole minor league system needs some work, because every real major league team has a replacement at some level for a hole. They have a player at AAA, at AA, etc. As a GM, could you request your scouts to look for certain positions for the upcoming year?

Also, another gripe of the day...fielding F's for range are unrealistic. If they are a F at SS, or 2b, or CF, surely they would have been switched in the minors to a less demanding position?

thanks for reading!
adam/sandon

[marc]

Teams in MLB also Dump players,


How often have you read, about a Team trading a Major league
Talent for a player in Double A, who you never hear from again.

This to me, is similar to giving a player away for nothing, but we dont have a double A league, so we give them away for nothing.



Example

Randy Myers traded from the Jays to the Padres

For Brain Loyd, A player who was in the A ball league.

To me this is getting a player for nothing.
Yes, in the majors where they have minors upon minors
it is possible, that Loyd could play in MLB at some point,
but Here at Mongul land, we dont have the depth, of the system.
So I see nothing wrong with giving a player for nothing.

[nevets72]

Marc,

Granted.... BUT teams will not trade A or B Talent for a AA Lifer. Randy Meyers is old and over, that is reasonable. I do not mind dumps. I just think that certain situations are not equitable to the league. ie. Trading a "Piazza" type player for absolutely nothing. The GM would be fired before he hung up the phone. This is all I am getting at.

To perhaps make this better, perhaps a "Trade Rating" is created whereas a grade is assigned to the trades made?

Just a thought.

[kohut]

The Expos do that type of dump all the time. They dealt Delino DeShields for a no name reliever with a live arm named Pedro Martinez who they then dealt after he became the best pitcher in MLB for a youung pitcher named Carl Pavano who is injury prone and isnt even close to made up for Pedro's talent and a few other guys.

What did they get for Henry Rodriguez when he swatted 40 HR's?
What about Rondell White?
Larry Walker, Moises Alou, Marquis Grissom?

Nobodies. And all these players were in the PRIME of their career.

[marc]

For Marquis Grissom they got, Roberto Kelly, Tony trasco and
Yan (from the braves)

I thought Larry Walker went to the Rockies as a Free agent,
after the strike stopped season, (but I could be wrong)

[nevets72]

You are correct Kohut. They get "no names" who just turn out to be the next Pedro, Vlad, ect., it still does not address the 5 for 0 trade scenario. If it were 5 for 1, than a value decision can be made if the 1 has enough potential or not. I understand teams have to "reconstruct", but a 5 for 0 deal is just not right.

I am sorry to be so adament, but it ruins the structure of the league. Potentially, teams in the red can dump for a year or two onto a AI team and the AI team would be awesome, but go under really quickly. It also gives the ability for a Human owner to "correct" a dumb signing by trading to an AI team. The human owner should not get off that easy.

[gmoney41]

To Whomever up there in this long string who said "Any GM who would trade a player for nothing would be fired."

That is not true. I know the Braves traded Fred McGriff to the Devil Rays for "a player to be named". When it came time to name the player the Braves said they didn't want anyone.
They signed Andres Gallaraga after "dumping" McGriff's salary.

[christoph]

This is not cheating. In fact, seemingly unbalanced trades are becoming more and more frequent in the real sports world. Take Canadian sports teams, for example. All too often they cannot resign players they have developed and have to trade them for prospects. This has happened to the Montreal Expos on an all too regular basis (e.g. Pedro Martinez). Toronto based sports clubs are the only Canadian clubs with enough revenue to support high payrolls.

In my league, Beta 1, I traded John Rocker (16 pts), a veteran hitter (5 pts.) and two prospects to the CPU (playing TB) in return for Delino DeShields (12 pts), who I later flipped (with another veteran and a prospect) for a young pitcher earning one point. While this was a bad trade for me in the short-run, by so doing, I cleared salary room and saved cash for rebuilding my team. The players I traded were old and not likely to improve my record much. I opted for a long-term strategy that fits within the budget I can reasonably expect running a small market team.

On the other hand, the computer player picked up these players to fill certain holes. In my experience, you cannot simply dump players onto the CPU willy-nilly. The trade has to fill the CPU team's needs. Until I got this right, the CPU would not accept John Rocker, which is why I had to take on DeShields at 12 pts instead of a cheap nobody.

[baseballforlife]

The only way it's call a cheat it's when someone had take control over 1 team in the same league, so simply!

[kohut]

I dont know how anyone can be in a regular league. What is the year of the league? 2002? Thank goodness for Chef Boyardi and Fast Sim's

[Particleman]

I think computer trading would be fine if the computer would just take into account salary as one of the issues in the trade. I've turned down trades with Humans numerous times stating that I am not willing or unable to pay the high salary. If computers would take their budget into account when trading, it would solve much of the problem. My fear was that when you did this, it would just spur on more people to grab a hold of 2 teams via 2 accounts and do the trade by force when the computer refused. This is why it's also important to have human commissioners to stop cheating like this once computer trading is fixed.

[Slugger222]

The only way to stop a person from making unfair trades is to halt it before the trade is made.

The most fair way that I've seen, in the various on line games that I'm in, is to have a waiting period, and allow the other owners to veto the trade.

Or, have a commissioner who will have veto power.

I'm not sure how well that would work in a fast sim type of game, but it's the only way that I can see to force equal trades fairly.

I think that what ever is programmed, someone will find a way around.:(

[bballwiz]

I don't think it is cheating, but it is a bit unrealistic for somebody to trade say a griffey for nothing in return. but somettimes the computer will reject the trade but thats only when the computer has a high payroll.

[hwt1313]

Sometimes you just have to dump a big contract to make room for others. I'm sure the Mets would trade Robin Ventura and a couple million dollars for a six pack and a hooker in order to free up the $ and position for a future free agent like Scott Rolen.

[Slugger222]

Unfortunately, this game does not have a waver wire which you can hang a player out on to see if anyone will bite, and take his salery off of your hands.

The best you can do is buy out his contract - which is not always possible, and certainly not desireable if you can find a sucker computer opponent to trade his large salery away to....

I think that no trades should be for nothing. We've already had some posts from people who have mistakently made 'something for nothing' trades when they wanted something back from the computer.

Having a prohibition would prevent those mistakes.

At least some $$$$ should trade hands.

[hwt1313]

But sometimes there are trades for virtually nothing. Perhaps a player is traded for a young minor leaguer with no hope of making it. This game does not have a Rookie League, A, AA, or even a full AAA. Again, the Mets would probably give Ventura AND cash for nothing. And don't forget that a minor leage player was once actually traded for a box of baseballs. Great ego boost.

[dturkenk]

I think a waiver wire would be a great idea if it wouldn't be too tough to code. I don't see a need to implement all the rules about having certain players clear waivers before being sent to the minors, but the basic idea of allowing teams to clear salary or pick up players through waivers is a good one.

It would also allow for trades after the deadline which is nice, although I guess it might be tough to pick a length of time a player must be on waivers before the trade can go through, especially in FastSim leagues

Right now it might open up some other cheating opportunities, when a player controls two teams, but really no more than trading does.

What does everyone think?

[dturkenk]

my favorite trades are when players are traded for themselves... which has happened a few times I think

[hwt1313]

I have heard of a couple of players who were traded for "a player to be named later." After the season, they were just sent back to their original teams. I guess somebody wanted to lease a pennant.

[kohut]

Waiver Wire could be done by dealing the palyer away for nothing.

[dturkenk]

There's two things having an actual waiver wire would improve on I think.

1. From the claiming team's perspective - you see a list of all players that teams are willing to "trade for nothing" rather than hoping to be the lucky GM offered the deal. Also it benefits the teams with a lower record, since they have the right of refusal on each player.

2. You can drop the salary after the Trading Deadline, which a trade for nothing doesn't allow.

[mikeh5]

I love the idea of a waiver wire. This would be a great enhancement to the game and would add to the realism. However, to make it work like it does in the majors (where a team that holds the player can pull him back at any time) might be complicated to add in.

[sdrocks]

I've done this when i take over a new team that had too many high priced players. No human teams would take them so I had no choice but to dump them on the computer teams. I think the real problem is that there are too many good players. At least too many good offensive players. The demand just isn't there.

[williethebasset]

I think that there should be GM's that trade. I am always trying to trade to a computer but it is rejected. There should be a patch. (Like in the solo version) That gets you trade offers. i have only made ONE trade witha computer. I own 3 teams and have been playing from the start.