Archive of SportingNews.com's old SOM Baseball forum

We are all pretty much aware of how Wild West the live draft leagues can be, but there are certain agreed upon boundaries for acceptable behavior.

Recently, it has come to the attention of several of us who participate in live drafts that a certain manager has been intentionally rigging his drafts so that he ends up with only one catcher, usually either Josh Gibson or Joe Mauer. The way this works is that you pick one of either Torre, Chance, or Downing, and HAL will think you have your two catchers. But actually, in the live draft you will get the most expensive cards of those players, none of which actually plays the position. You don't do anything in the waivers period, but can do all the trading you want after waivers finish. And you've got Ironman Josh/Joe.

Yes, there is a certain amount of buyer beware in the live draft leagues. This is cheating.

The manager has been called out on it, and has changed, after several days and several direct requests from us to Bernie, some of the teams for which he has done this gimmick. It's another one of these situations, where just because you can do it, doesn't mean you should be doing it. And it is certainly not fair to the rest of the managers in the league.

Recompense, Bernie?

Thank you for your very well worded summary of how one individual has cheated using iron-clad catchers.

Until last night, I never knew that type of a cheat was possible or going on. And it was by a manager who would be all over a competitor for using such a cheat scheme, but since he used it, it was legit.

Good to hear that he was called out on this scheme and he has relented.

Strato owners overall are first class citizens with outstanding integrity.

Here's how I tried to resolve this situation. I've removed any names from the following email I sent to Bernie on Thursday afternoon.

[quote:e6390c313a]Manager X has brought to my attention that Manager Y is using only one catcher in two separate live leagues. He drafted Frank Chance on one team and Downing on the other. Now it is a quirk of the live drafts that you can draft these guys as back up catchers and receive their most expensive cards which don't list them as catchers. So far no problem. All you have to do is switch them to their catcher enabled cards once waivers is over. And I know with live drafts it can be easy to forget this, as typically these guys are just drafted to meet the roster requirement that you have two catchers at all times. I've forgotten this myself at times, but upon being reminded by other league managers, I always corrected this immediately.

Yesterday, after X brought the issue to my attention, I messaged manager Y in each league. Here is one of the messages, as I also sent it to the whole league (so I would retain a copy of it).

Manager, Y,
Think you need to switch Chance cards so you have
two catchers. We can't have an indestructible
Josh terrorizing the league. LOL.

No response, no change in catchers made.

X and I agree that, in light of his failure to respond, he knows what he is doing which, quite frankly, is cheating and not just exploiting a loophole. I prefer to resolve this quietly but will take the issue to the message boards if necessary. Before I do that though I thought I would bring the matter to your attention so that you can hopefully address it more successfully than I have.

Here are the urls' for the two teams in question.
[/quote:e6390c313a]

Bernie responded and last night the two teams listed had the catcher situation corrected.

But it was brought to my attention that two more teams - same Manager Y -- are still illegal, i.e. just one catcher. So I emailed Bernie again last night. No response as yet but it generally takes about 24 hours to get a response and it's now a holiday weekend. So I'm definitely not blaming Bernie in any way on this one.

[b:e6390c313a]The other two teams still have only one catcher. So he clearly has not relented.
[/b:e6390c313a]
This is highly problematic. The rules are crystal clear, you must have two catchers at all times. It's really hard to get over the fact that even after this is brought to the manager's attention, the practice continues.

All of the other managers in these leagues have been damaged by this practice. Imagine a Josh Gibson who plays every inning of every game and will never come out.

Hopefully, TSN will deal with this matter fully in a way that satisfies the injured parties.

I'm not in any of these leagues, but it's obvious that the guy is doing it on purpose. What a douche.

And honestly, at this point I have no idea why anyone is trying to hide the guy's identity. It's one thing if it's a mistake. It's another if the guy is doing this in every live league he is in, which it sounds like he might be. I know I never would have caught this in a million years. It wouldn't even occur to me.

Who knows how many other league leagues he's doing this in where the other managers have no idea. It's time to get the word out IMO.

Especially since the one time I ever had Josh Gibson on a team I swear he was injured for around 146 games. :(

I confess to checking the live draft league I'm in for 2 C per team. :oops:

Man, you people really give me too much credit for some things it seems. I'm not nearly original enough to come up with drafting just one catcher. After I saw the same person do this with Chance a couple times and Downing another time, I figured it was time to figure out why. You know, actually pay attention to who gets drafted in a live draft and why.

The live draft is a different game and if you don't know it you should. You don't have to draft 3 pure relievers. A bigger thing is you can change players cards without penalty which can completely eliminate any injuries to those players with multiple cards or get a bigger advantage vs lefty or righty if you care to micromanage your team which I do not.

Then it seems you don't give me enough credit for other things. The first alert that I got that this was somehow a problem was two league mails I got from Petro each dated 12/28. I read them last night 12/30 and made the changes. No big conspiracy, no flipping everyone off, no contact from Bernie, no contact from three other people in a league ignore, no whatever other ********.

Quite honestly, I only really enjoy the drafts and just don't pay that close attention to the teams in season. Now I'm sufficiently disgusted that I think I'm finally done.

Don:
If I am wrong on this then apologies but,
There are 2 things that standout in your response as being untrue:

1) We've discussed this in a few live leagues before- because its been a problem with people trying to get Draft Waiver picks- and I noticed you specifically did not put in any Waiver Draft picks but made moves after; since this happened more than once, its unlikely to be an 'accident' or being about figuring out 'how to do it'

2) I believe at least one manager contacted you about this issue a few months back

...I just dont see 'someone else did it' as any possible excuse, thats just disturbing.

I realize in the legal world its all about plausible deniability, and I have respect for your abilites here, but I am honestly just slightly disappointed in the action, but really unhappy with the response. :(

LOOK- We all make mistakes, and if I truly believed its was a 'mea culpa' then my response would be VERY VERY different.

Obvious solution: Get rid of the "ironman catcher" thing, which has no basis in either the SOM rules or reality.

Oh it is not a mea culpa and will never be. When people have been doing it for over a year with nothing being said then I do it a handful of times and the sky is falling. I am more outraged and disgusted at this being an issue now and the way some of you are acting.

I have actually seen it mentioned in live draft chat without any outrage when someone else drafted Chance i.e. X is going with one catcher I see. Have never seen it mentioned in any forum for discussion until now. And apparently its not for discussion as it is simply dismissed as cheating when it is no more cheating than not drafting 3 relievers or switching player cards out during a season.