understand what you are voting for

man, fuck having a job that doesn't let me be on the internet. now everyone's voted.

i love democracy and everything, but i'm worried that people are voting to send the troops into iraq because they attacked us on 9/11. i understand the sexy simplicity of ben's idea, but it simply wouldn't work as advertised.

>Think that Francisco Liriano is the next Santana?

'cept the problem is that no one could ever keep a player like liriano, unless they were seriously uninterested in winning. it works like this:

crafty draft strategist (mike carter) sizes up his team. he gets to keep 3 guys for free. understanding that he's essentially just being asked to draft his #1, #2 and #3 round guy from a smaller pool, he correctly elects to pick the three best guys on his team from last year:

pujols, jake peavy, and billy wagner

guy who likes twins a lot (me or ben) picks his long term dudes:

liriano, zach duke and jason bay

result: mike carter's already sewn up the league, and the season hasn't even started.

bottom line: if the pick compensation system is 'just set them aside and start the draft', you're essentially starting the draft in the 4th round. so the ONLY guys you'd EVER get to keep in ben's world are round 1-3 guys. no one gets to keep any phillies infielders in this universe, at least not if they plan on winning. THAT SUCKS.

use a slightly more advanced pick compensation system (my proposal), and you could elect to keep either studs or mid-range guys. keep studs, you lose stud-round picks. keep mid-rangers, lose mid-range picks. simple as can be.

omar's objection (we'd argue about it too much) is a red herring: that's why we'd settle on a valuation system now. as to "does the universe collapse upon itself if someone tries to keep two guys that end the year valued #3"? i would imagine not. you would either have the person just give up their next highest or lowest pick.

how it would work again: at the end of the year, we'd have yahoo spit out the rank (according to our stats) of all the dudes in our league. divide that number by 10 (for 10 players per round) and you have the pick compensation number. only problem: guys that got hurt or entered mid-year (their stats being artificially low b/c of plate appearances). solution: we'd agree to something like, 'anyone who played in less than 75% of the season is valued according to the espn preseason rankings.'

i'll defer to the majority if that's actually what people want... but understand you voted for a system where you don't get to keep any of the players you like.