[IBL] idea for a new protest process

[Brent Cunningham]

I wouldn't go as far as saying no protests will happen, but I do believe
that the collateral system will result in close to zero protests ever
happening, which potentially is worse for the league than what the system
is designed to prevent.  My first reaction to seeing Sean's suggestion was
"well, I'm not going to risk a 2nd round pick, so I'm not going to protest
anything", not "I'll talk to 4 other owners and see if they agree with
me".  The intent may be great, but the application of the system, I think,
would produce different results in practice.

As far as the negative comments toward the review board - there is no place
for retaliatory emails and insults to board members.  Let's keep in mind
that the review board is a set of *volunteers* that care enough about the
league to offer to sit on a board that is often maligned for its rulings.
As we can see by Chris' reaction, this kind of thing has the potential to
ruin the review board system if people don't want to be a part of it
because of retaliation/insults.

My opinion about protests is that no trade should be protested unless there
is obvious collusion.  Despite all of us thinking that we are geniuses,
none of us really know what may happen with players in the future.
Hindsight is 20/20 as they say, so we can look back and make judgments
about trades now because we have more complete information with which to do
so.

I remember a certain Melvin Upton trade that was protested when I was on
the review board, and we all know how that turned out...if I had it to do
over again, I would not have voted to uphold the protest; I was probably
influenced by the input of the other review board members at the time
instead of basing it on my analysis of the trade and the input of the teams
involved.

We don't all think alike as far as trade value, that's for certain, so
maybe for a protest to move to review there should be a certain number of
owners that have to protest.  That of course would require the absence of
apathy and timely decisions from all owners, but it would solve the "lowest
threshold" issue.  As far as #2, I mentioned above that I think a
collateral system would result in low/no protests ever happening;
personally I don't believe teams should be potentially punished with draft
pick loss for protesting.  A system that requires a certain number of
owners to protest would also solve #3, as each could be required as part of
the protest to submit reasoning, thus preventing "tuning out".

I'm glad to see such a lively discussion though, and I'd encourage others
to voice their opinions.

-Brent





Thanks,

Brent Cunningham
Owner/Manager
Gettysburg Generals Baseball Club

On Wed, May 3, 2017 at 2:00 AM, Larry Selleck via Members <
members at lists.ibl.org> wrote:

> Hello,
>
> Could someone please indicate how many protests there have been in the
> past season (checking how much of an issue this actually is)?  What is
> proposed below would pretty much stop all protests, except in the case of
> the most extreme cases (i.e. Kershaw for a #5).  If that is the goal, then
> wouldn't it be easier to simply outlaw protests?  The argument that most
> trades happen between experienced managers is a very popular one so why not
> just leave it to whomever can negotiate the better deal?
>
> The other consequence is that to gather enough teams to join in a protest
> would effectively require the protest to be a public forum, which would
> flood our emails with more petty personal attacks (there were no personal
> attacks in the instance of a recent protest, but it has happened in the
> past) by managers who feel slighted because someone had a different opinion
> ... and if that was the case, then why not put a protested trade up to
> league vote, requiring a minimum number of teams to participate to be a
> forum (half or 2/3) and then a % pass to uphold ... probably too time
> consuming, but an option.
>
> Larry
>
>
> ------------------------------
> *From:* Russell Peltz via Members <members at lists.ibl.org>
> *To:* Matt Sivertson <mattsivertson at gmail.com>; Sean Sweda <sweda at ibl.org>
>
> *Cc:* IBL Members <members at lists.ibl.org>
> *Sent:* Tuesday, 2 May 2017, 22:16
> *Subject:* Re: [IBL] idea for a new protest process
>
> I would welcome any ideas to improving the review process, and I like
> Sean's ideas.
>
> We used to have terrible arguments all the time about teams tanking games
> for draft position, and we implemented a good system that solved the
> problem.  I think we could do the same thing with the trade protest system.
>
> Also, there isn't anything in the Constitution about what threshold of
> imbalance a deal needs to meet to be overturned.  We could add some
> guidelines.
>
> -Rusty
>
>
>
> On Tuesday, May 2, 2017, 1:52:55 PM PDT, Matt Sivertson <
> mattsivertson at gmail.com> wrote:
> I think something like this would be useful as well, and I like the idea
> of the collateral going down when more owners are involved. One other thing
> I'd like to see is more formalized guidance to the review board about how
> to evaluate these trades and what should constitute a trade worthy of being
> overturned.  I might be mistaken but I don't think we have any formal
> criteria for that and it's pretty much just if the board wants to overturn
> it they do, and if they don't then they don't.
>
> On Tue, May 2, 2017 at 1:25 PM, Sean Sweda <sweda at ibl.org> wrote:
>
> Every time we have one of these I think to myself -- "we really need a
> better system".  I'm a firm believer that a league like this must have a
> mechanism to overturn significantly imbalanced trades, given that the
> consequences of these deals are magnified enormously due to perpetual
> ownership of players.  I understand that some will disagree, but let's
> table that for now and posit that if a protest mechanism is a necessary
> evil how could it work better?
>
> The primary area of concern I see is the means by which a protest is
> registered:
>
> 1) Any protest system relies on a filtering mechanism by which the owners
> of the league look at a deal and make a determination about the level of
> imbalance.  Additionally, some may decide that even though a trade is
> imbalanced that the parts that are moving are inconsequential enough that
> it does not merit a protest.  We only require one team to register a
> protest, which means whoever has the lowest threshold is making the
> determination.
>
> 2) Another problem is that there's no downside to being the protesting
> team, so long as you don't particularly care if you're irritating the two
> owners who made the deal.  The protesting team doesn't pay any price if
> their filter for imbalanced trades is lower than the consensus.
>
> 3) Finally, once one team triggers a protest the other teams that also
> believed the trade to be imbalanced tend to tune out.  Therefore it is
> never clear to either the trading teams or the Review Board whether there's
> a widespread consensus that the trade is imbalanced.
>
>
> Idea for an improvement, addressing the above:
>
> Require teams to post collateral in order to protest.  Lower the amount of
> collateral required per-team as more teams join the protest.  If the
> protest is upheld the protesting team(s) get back their collateral, if the
> trade is upheld they lose the collateral.
>
> example:
> if 1 team protests a deal they must put up a 2nd round pick
> if 2 teams protest a deal they must each put up a 3rd round pick
> if 3 teams protest a deal they must each put up a 4rd round pick
> if 4 teams protest a deal they must each put up a 5rd round pick
> etc.
>
> If a team does not have the required round pick they can post a pick one
> round earlier in the following draft (e.g. if I don't have MCM#2 2018 I can
> substitute MCM#1 2019)
>
>
> What does this do?  It puts the burden on the owner with the lowest
> threshold to find other people who are in agreement.  It should also
> establish a significance level for trade protests, as nobody is going to
> want to risk losing picks of higher value than the players/picks actually
> involved in the trade.  Finally, this system encourages consensus and I
> believe the resolution process would be much less painful if both the
> trading teams and the Review Board knew that a large number of people were
> in agreement.
>
>
> I'm sure there are other issues with the protest system that could be
> improved, this just jumped out at me as a re-alignment of incentives that
> would be a big improvement.
>
> Sean
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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