never rat on your friends, and always keep your mouth shut

Wednesday, January 09, 2008

Thugs on the Wire

http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/09/what-do-real-thugs-think-of-the-wire/

Pretty interesting stuff

 

Is anyone else reading this? We still have 2 people left to vote on auction/draft. It seems as if most people are atleast not against an auction. Following MCart's idea to move one step at a time to avoid bickering and a clusterfuck of ideas, we should probably talk about how to deal with keepers/contracts etc.

 

I assume everyone knows how an auction works and if they dont its easy enough to look up ($260 at the start of the season blah blah).

 

My proposal is that we dont weight the keepers from this year and you get to keep 4, 3 1-year contracts and 1 2-year contract.  These holdover keepers have no value whatsoever in the first year and your single 2 year keeper is priced (in the 2nd year) at the average of the 20 highest priced players. You keep Arod for 2 years, year 1 is free, year 2 is say $30. 

 

Contracts are all dealt with at the end of the season so they dont effect intraseason trading and at the end of the year you keep 6 guys, 2 4-year contracts and 4 1-year contracts.  (These #s could be changed, they just seemed fairly easy to start).

 

Thats my modest proposal. Please beat me up as you see fit.

2 comments:

carter said...

Omar, you're NFL franchise tag style contracts would be pretty simple. I think that is a plus. But, say I'm keeping someone other than A-Rod--someone who has value to me, but is not a top 20 player. Would you still envision the same contract price in year two?

In any case, my preference would be that, if we are moving to an auction system, let's go all the way. Why limit the number of contracts? Or the number of years per contract? If I want to sign BJ Upton to a six year contract, why shouldn't I be allowed to? In the interest of parity? No offense to MCard, but last season showed that expected dynasties will often not pan out.

I would support some measures to help lower division teams improve in the following year, such as (a) required salary increases in long term contracts, which would reduce the incentive to keep a team together for a long period or (b) a Rule 5 style draft in which the worst three teams can select a player left unprotected by the top three teams. I am sure that others have ideas as well. The point is that we can create parity through mechanisms other than contract limits, and such alternative mechanisms are a good thing because contract limits would essentially punish owners that do well. So too would (a) and (b) above, but to a lesser extent.

And that is the crux. Contract limits have the potential to eviscerate the principle that good ownership should be rewarded. Using alternative mechanisms like those proposed above would help address the parity concern without hampering long term planning by other owners.

As a final thought, consider another impact of contract limits like those advocated by Omar. Why would anyone bid on a young player under such a system? It seems like Omar's proposal creates incentives for everyone to bid on veterans. Maybe that incentive always exists, to some extent. But if we can, wouldn't it be better to design a system in which owners can try to build their teams through multiple design strategies, all of which have at least a facial potential for success? If we allowed more long term contracts, one owners could try to win now by loading up on vets, while another could take his chances on young kids knowing that if this season doesn't pan out, at least he can keep the cream of his team for another run the next year.

ptb said...

I'm not crazy about unlimited contracts. That seems to me like a more likely avenue to dynasties than carter's one-year case study of the Cardarelli franchise. but in general, i like omar's structure and would accept it broadly.