Losing for Draft Picks

[Bad_Ash]

Does the game do anything to punish GM's that lose on purpose with miniscule payrolls and top rank farm systems. It seems to me that any GM that lost on purpose would lose his job. What would happen if a GM let all his minor league talent go for the hope of drafting more players. What player would sign a contract with a team that is a perennial loser. The type of players would be career minor leaguers, marginal talents, and amateurs. I wish I knew of a historical example of someone losing on purpose like this, but the only example I can think of is when gambling is involved(Chicago BlackSox).

I'm not sure what can be done about this, it is just disheartening to see the lack of competitiveness amongst my peers.

Badash

[db248]

i will also post the text of my reply to bad_ash here, since i thnk its a conversation worth having at in the entire mogul community:

i [the person to whom bad_ash is referring above] am using a strategy i've tested out in a previous league [fast sim 26 - as oakland] - and one employed by such teams as the islanders in hockey, the marlins, expos, etc. in baseball, even the cowboys in football. the idea is that you reduce your payroll and up your scouting and farm system. Being a lowest tier team, i could never have the best farm system in this league, unless i keep my payroll at a minimum. this allows me to develop good youngsters - who i can only afford for five years anyway. in a league previous to bad_ash's i took over an atrocious team, jettisoned payroll, had a record as bad as 30-132, but, 5 years later, am consistently profitable and over 500, and will be for some time to come. Last year I won 106 games (but not the championship), and only lost two starters. The strategy only works, if you never spend more than $15 on any one player - and then you can still only afford to do that for 4 players in your lineup. As a tier 5 team in this game I have found that this is your only option to have a competitive team. And it doesn't seem to me to be that different from the "real world." After all, would you root for a team in the real world that always finished at 500, but never threatened for the series, or for a team that could challenge for the series for 4 or five years at a time, but then had to do some rebuilding ...

also to answer a quote, bad_ash says "What player would sign a contract with a team that is a perennial loser" - Look at the islanders - they just signed peca, yashin and osgood. or, look at the marlins 2 years before they won the series ...

i think this strategy IS more extreme and effective in mogul leagues than in the real world, but the need to do it points to the extent that tier five teams are punished currently. i don't have any constructive solutions at the moment, but this IS the only solution i have found to be able to compete in any fashion with a low tier team - perhaps that just points to my lack of imagination ...

[christoph]

If you look at such teams, they typically have low payroll allowances and poor fan support. These things take a winning record to correct, so consecutive losing seasons will affect the team's ability to resign drafted players.

[db248]

with payroll limits its almost impossible to resign any drafted players worth resigning anyway, the way mogul is currently set up.

and, fan support never picks up to something which would allow a tier 5 team to move to tier 4 or 3 - there simply is no way to fill up the ballpark as oakland in this game, without reducing your ticket prices so low you would be better served by charging more and drawing less fans.

perhaps it is just that this is one of the few failings of this game - the career simulation of players is great - they get better worse, injured, etc - but franchises simply can't do that. there is no way for a team to build such fan support that they turn from a small market to a medium market team. this does not reflect 'reality" [see the indians, for example]. ultimately, this is why such extreme strategies are required for winning as a tier 5 team - if there was incentive not to drag your team into the depths because you could eventually build enough fan support to be able to use a higher payroll [up to a point of course], there would be no reason.

why is it that as tampa bay in one league i have one two straight world series, but my attendance goes down the next year, at the same prices? there is no incentive to keep playing at that point ...

[christoph]

This is why I have suggested (a) a salary cap, which would give small market teams a chance, and (b) a type of restricted free agency (like in hockey) which would give teams who drafted and developed a particular player an edge in resigning this player compared with other teams. Why should the small market teams be AAAA clubs for the big markets?

[Slugger222]

I say let him play it out, and see what happens. My objection is to people who try something, don't like the immediate results, then bail on the team. If he is willing to stick with the team to see the long term effects, then let him. That is part of what the Beta process is about.

[Schaefling]

I think one way to improve things for small and mid market teams would be to make them more effective at finding good rookies and in rookie development than large market teams. If they did not have to spend as much on farm systems to get the same results they would at least have the ability to spend more on player contracts and bid on free agents more if they so chose. Right now this option is not available.

Large markets should get less bang for the buck anyway. They should have to pay employees more (cost of living in big markets, greater salary expectations, etc.) and they should be expected to be more bureaucratically top heavy.

I also think making rookies better in general would really help. If all rookies were at least useful then small and mid market teams could be more competitive. As it stands now small and mid market teams are hurt the most by all the D and F rookies who never get any better and who aren't worth having.

In addition, if rookies were better in general, I think you would see large market teams dropping more decent rookies while pursuing top flight free agents and thereby making these players available to small and mid market teams.

[TGG]

I dug this post out from the past. It is something I really think needs to be looked at myself. I don't like caps at all, an for that matter they have hurt my teams much more then helped. It took 3 sim "years" for the twins ( a team I play) to save up 150 points an by then any large market team had 500 points maybe more saved an just out bid everyone over an over again on FA.

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Again .......
Call it a cross post or what ever you want, I tend to speak up allot with this topic.


Now I DO NOT LIKE THE IDEA OF A POINT CAP That just leads to a very boring time after awhile an to much balance sucks.


Here is a cut an paste of one of my posts from before about this idea:

One real idea :

I few of my teams that I play are small market team, Pittsburgh, Montreal. ( In RL I do not believe in doing this, but for here I really must bring it up ) Revenue sharing

I have tried different combinations, to keep "cash" coming in an "fans" in the seats, an both these two teams have had to trade away good talent to make sure that they could make "payroll" for that year an the next. I could quickly lose interest in a game that I can never get ahead in. ( I knew what I was getting into when I pick those two teams to begin with)


Maybe at the end of each year, each team puts a % of thier over all income into a league pot/bank, That way during the next season, if a team is in the red they can burrow money out of this pot ( which would have to be payed back in a set amount of time, an with a interest rate applied to it , kinda like the sim city idea)
This would also help out those other owners who desided to be dopes an rack up -1k or more.

Now in RL this makes for one of the better debates in baseball ( revenue sharing) but here for this game, I can see managers bailing on teams pretty fast because of lack of money, an if something is not done about it ,it will only be a on going problem.

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If something is not done about these teams, when this does open up to the "real" market, all the better teams will be taken right away, Yanks,Redsox, ect........ just do to the the fact that they draw an make so much more money then the other teams. after a player gets his/her small market team into dept after a while they will leave, letting the good market teams pick the computer teams apart for the talent. This will make the leagues very unbalanced an would lead me to want to quit myself after a while.

[John]

If you are a small market team that this is what you do. You can trade Jason Giambi, Adam Piatt, Tim Hudson for excellent rookies. This is only possible to do in the active leagues though. Make sure not to help a division rival! (It may haunt you down the road.):)

[takaplan]

I agree with John. By lowering your payroll and losing intentionally so you can get great rookies, you are really cheating the system and ruining the game for everyone else. I mean, who in MLB actually LOSES ON PURPOSE? They might cut their payroll to plan for the future, but still try and post a decent record.

Tom