i just don't get why fifield is telling us this now

thanks for waiting ray though we will be taking Michael Taylor anyway.

I haven't thought about this a ton, and I'm open to reasoning why I'm wrong, but right now it doesn't bother me. It's unethical like taking advantage of a pitcher who tips his pitches, i.e. just taking advantage of a situation. And not to turn this into a Leave it to Beaver episode, but I respect the way he just came forward and admitted it out of nowhere. I think the most honest thing to do would have been to explain the loophole in a post, and leave it at that. I'm sure we would have accepted that as a limitation to the software, and people would avoided multiple max bids. Not to force yet another simile, but it's like when a player tips his cards: I tell him, once. After that, I'm using it. But I don't strongly disagree with anyone who doesn't think they need to say anything at all.

Small punishment, if any, IMO. Fifield has been a good owner so far.

Here's my issue:

When I envisioned this league, I thought it would be a fun league among a community of 2p2ers to have a dynasty format and compete "on the merits" of fantasy baseball. I never imagined anyone would engage in any sort of angle-shooting or exploitation. It's a $100 fun league, not a serious biz $1000 high stakes league (although I think you'd never find anyone doing something like this in the HSNL or MTT leagues).

I can't imagine anyone as part of the league (well I guess I can now) finding such an exploit and not telling us. It is our inaugural year and we were all feeling our way. We were using new software and trying to make things as smoothly as possible. Exit, Pecota and I put as much effort as we could with our busy schedules.

The rules make it clear you aren't to exploit anything that looks like a "loophole." This is clearly a software glitch, no more and no less. It artificially inflated salaries and set the tone for the rest of the draft. Anyone who thinks this didn't have an effect in setting an equilibrium price point in a market economy should talk to me about econ sometime: it definitely did.

I just think fantasy baseball should be decided based on who is the best fantasy baseball player, not who can find the most glitches in a piece of new software we used for convenience's sake because IRL is busy.

I'm really disappointed not only because it materially affected play and the rest of the auction in the league, but moreso because it went against everything I was trying to do when I made this league. I guess I take it kind of personally because this league is my "baby," and something I've been thinking about putting together for years. I never thought it would go smoothly, but I also never thought I'd have to guard myself against angleshooting and exploitation, especially here on 2p2. I felt kinda gross even putting a clause about that in our constitution, but I'm a life nit and never completely trust anything. This is why I was wary about taking people in the league who I didn't know and/or who weren't established members of the community, but I disregarded that and opened it to everyone.

That's all for now. Let me know what you think.

It should be noted he only admitted it publicly after I asked him to. But I do give him credit for coming forward with it, even if it was, initially, privately. However, he is not remorseful and his PMs to me made that clear. If he thought what he did was wrong or against the rules, I would feel differently. But he doesn't.

Karak,

Nice post. I agree with mostly everything you said, except the emo overtone.

The reason I'm making a big deal out of this is because THIS IS NOT THE TONE I want the league to follow in the future. Fear of angleshooting, exploits, software glitches and cheating should NOT be on our minds. Openness, fairness and equity should be on our minds. If anyone disagrees, please let me know.

Totally agree with this.

also now I feel a bit prophetic for calling fifield a $1 bid bitch back in chat a while back rather then a bit remorseful

i mean this probably cost us around 2% of our cap, which I still don't understand how it exactly works (nutshot did you figure that out) but I know I would've loved to have $15-20 back during the auction.

Fair enough about the admission, we'll give a little less credit for that. I'm not sure I totally agree with what you've written above though: we want the league to be fair, and honest, but we also want it to be competitive. If I'm negotiating a trade, I might pretend to be more attached to one of my players than I really am, and I might even say that there's more interest in his services than there really is. A bit dishonest, but part of the game. I would sometimes bid on players in the auction as much because I wanted the current high bidder to pay more as out of my own interest in the player.

Fifield's transgression is a step above these, but he didn't go out of his way to "cheat", and could have assumed that we all knew, or should have. I mean, it was a software glitch, but one with equal opportunity. I just don't see it as quite as nefarious an act as you're making it out to be. I see it as playing competitively, not dishonestly.

And again, I think he should have said something, but I'm not so disappointed that he didn't. It would have been gentlemanly to say something. But there's a space in between cricket and dirty pool, and that's where this lies.

lol at assuming we all knew, if we did we clearly would've stopped putting higher max bids on our own guys we were currently winning

Leveraging interest in trades is a part of baseball and a part of fantasy baseball.

Using a glitch in software or in the market is not. Do you think if a real MLB team, due to a glitch in, say, Blackberries, discovered a way to secretly observe all free agent tenders to players and didn't report it but instead abused it, baseball would go "oh well! just using their competitive edge! everyone else could have seen it too! good for them!"

Really?

always assume no on this question

It just makes me think twice about a person who would exploit something like this in a fun community league and chalk it up to "competition" without a second thought or a moment's hesitation (ffield made it quite clear doing this did NOT bother him in the slightest bit). This isn't cutthroat high stakes poker.

Am I going to have to meticulously police every team now to make sure no one is cheating on the cap or abusing their player options up and down? I was really hoping we could do a lot of this stuff on the honor system, since our league software won't allow us to enforce it automatically, but clearly any glitch that we can't oversee or police is fair game, right? I mean that's the precedent this sets.

Actually, in response to your last question (which might have been rhetorical), yeah, actually. I think that is how they'd respond, without the hyperbole you've thrown in. I certainly have no basis on which to say though.

I don't know man, I don't have much more to add. Yes it's worse than the bluffing/bidding up examples that I gave. Just not that much worse.

Tango has that 0-100 scale for ethical transgressions, which I think accurately reflects how people see things like this. Dock Ellis doing acid was like, a 5, and racial segregation was a 95 (or around there). I don't have a big list of fantasy baseball transgressions to compare to, but I think what's happened here is about a 25. If you make a trade that bumps you over the cap by $1 and you notice (but don't say anything) and Karak doesn't, that's a 60. Lying about offers from other teams, that's a 10. That's about the scale I'm on.

Also, it's worth pointing out that this is not at all my reaction, nor what I'm proposing is an apposite reaction.

This is where i fall on the issue.

If any action is demanded be taken - I think fixing the affected players contracts is as far as I'd go. The only reason I'd even want to do that is because a couple of players got really inflated (Pujols and Crawford) and I can't justify only correcting some. Correcting none would also be fine with me.


Another_Rack is up, and primetime sent me his pick(s) but said he can't check the thread today - so we won't be getting and update from him.

I see a couple possible solutions short of explusion:

1) Figure out the three (or more or less, depending on what makes sense) teams that fifield hurt the most and make him give those teams draft picks in this draft (e.g. 3rd rounder to team hurt the most, 4th rounder to team hurt 2nd most, etc.).

2) Make fifield give those teams his cap space (so, e.g. take away $24 of caps space from fifield and give $8 each to the three teams).

It is funny, I do recall saying in auction chat that it really does seem like fifield hacked the site and knew everyone's bids, and he laughed it off and then got a lot less obvious about exploting it.

Karak,
It's clear I've tarnished the league in your opinion, but I really wish you wouldn't consider it that way.

Please stop calling it a software glitch. It wasn't a malfunction, it was a clear property of the site's system, available for anyone to see and understand, and many did understand the immediate implication. I was just aware, took the time to figure out a new site, and didn't share the rewards.
It's not in my nature to constantly look out for the best interests of other people, but I actually did this time, for next year.

I don't think we'll be seeing eye to eye on this, so I just ask for your acceptance of my team in your league. I clearly want to be here.
Thanks

I remember this clearly - You said that there were some suspicious bidding histories and that he may have hacked the system, but that you were drunk and you didnt know for sure. I brushed it off and said "LOL REALLY DOUBT HES DOING ANYTHING LIKE THAT". then like 5 mintues later Fifield came in, read that chat and got really mad saying something about people accusing him of cheating - making it sound like it was ridiciulous - spamming in all caps - then when i told him what happened he just said "lol oh oim drunk too"

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i don't support taking his players, or even directly impacting his cap. We can fix the caps of the teams he affected though ( it was almost entirely contained to 5 teams. Primetime, Pecota, Thunder, Karak, nutshot)

I think my preferences are:

Take away some of fifield's draft picks > take away some of his cap > do nothing > expulsion

RE-AUCTION