How Bad Can You Be?

We are really eyeball-deep into the drop thing now, which was never my intention.

My intention is to look through a filter at teams that, for what ever reason, while adhering to standard best practices, fail to consistently move toward more winning seasons.

There may be a simple explanation, and the simplest I can think of is that the bulk of the left side of the curve is new players. Filling out the rest of the left side and moving toward the middle are veteran teams, that for one reason or another, just did not work out in that particular league.

Player selection/card reading might be another reason, although I haven't made up my own mind one way or another on that yet. There may be other factors (discuss).

Alk, your 45 drop team that won the ring did so while maintaining 98% of your original $80 mil. Those were either trades most likely, or that opening night thing where you build a lineup for the opening day opponent and turn over the roster between 10p and 12m, before HAL starts docking you salary.

I completely agree that any one team (out of bazillions) can win a ring while making excessive drops. Statistically there will be plenty of black swans far out on the tail. It would even be fun if someone did a "Hey Mom, look at me!" post and showed us the team that won a ring in an $80 mil league with $68 mil of remaining salary. We all know it's out there.

Having said that, me, Badjam, RB, et al, are completely correct when we say how easy it is to recognize when someone is shedding salary and it's HURTING their chances to win games.

So all I'm saying, is that my particular filter for sorting out winners and losers includes a first glance at remaining salary. If you're 62-100 and have zero drops that means there's plenty more to be looked at. If you're 62-100 and you have 45 drops that shed $22 mil of salary, do you really need to know much more? Sure, maybe. That 5.32 ERA? Was it the original $5 mil SPs or was it the later $1 mil SPs responsible? Maybe we'll never know, but maybe if you were playing with an $80 mil team you would see what went wrong in a much clearer light.

All I can tell you is that in 12 years I've won something like 125 20XX Championships. I can promise you, that in probably 123 of them, I had zero drops (ie, zero shed salary). Looking at other managers' Championship teams confirms what I already know. You are more likely to see zero drops (or something like say, less than three) than you are to see some higher amount.

Why newbie advice to not shed salary has turned into some thesis on the existence of HAL's love is perplexing. Every! Always! Never! What if! Fallacious!

Really?

Managers, esp newer managers, try and hang on to your original roster as long as you can. Make trades if necessary, but do everything you can not to field a $65 mil team against my $79.97 mil team. You are likely to find that difficult.

Now, about that original question...

Why newbie advice to not shed salary has turned into some thesis on the existence of HAL's love is perplexing. Every! Always! Never! What if! Fallacious!

I would say J-Pav made it a "thesis on the existence of HAL's love" when he posted this:

I really want to say that the key variable consistently present among losing teams is shedding salary. Don't do that.

That's a a pretty clear thesis.

So all I'm saying, is that my particular filter for sorting out winners and losers includes a first glance at remaining salary. If you're 62-100 and have zero drops that means there's plenty more to be looked at. If you're 62-100 and you have 45 drops that shed $22 mil of salary, do you really need to know much more? Sure, maybe. That 5.32 ERA? Was it the original $5 mil SPs or was it the later $1 mil SPs responsible? Maybe we'll never know, but maybe if you were playing with an $80 mil team you would see what went wrong in a much clearer light.

I think everyone can agree that 45 drops and/or dropping 22 mil of salary is a bad thing. However such an extreme example of potentially beneficial manager behavior does not discredit that behavior itself. Many excellent managers--and even very good ones like myself--have judiciously shed salary and won. So, salary shedding itself still can't be automatically isolated as the cause of a team's failure.

All I can tell you is that in 12 years I've won something like 125 20XX Championships. I can promise you, that in probably 123 of them, I had zero drops (ie, zero shed salary). Looking at other managers' Championship teams confirms what I already know. You are more likely to see zero drops (or something like say, less than three) than you are to see some higher amount.

This is fine anecdotal evidence. However, all it shows is Jeff is very good at winning without shedding salary. As I have shown with some of my teams, many other managers are good at winning with (judiciously) shedding salary. So, we now know you can win without shedding salary or win with shedding it. That's all.

Managers, esp newer managers, try and hang on to your original roster as long as you can. Make trades if necessary, but do everything you can not to field a $65 mil team against my $79.97 mil team. You are likely to find that difficult.

I would definitely agree with this. As I noted above, we all agree excessive shedding salary is bad. However, we have also seen that learning how to judiciously shed salary is part of a beginning players' learning curve towards becoming a good one.

The main thing new managers should remember is you just spent probably around three days analyzing and adjusting your team during preseason. Strat is all about math. If you mathematically came up with an efficient team, don't just blow it up because you start out 7-14 or something like that. You need to give the dice probabilities enough time to eliminate anomalies. Sure, you can make a move or two, especially if some inept manager dumped a guy that you know is reliable. However, I am always slow to second guess my days of evaluating my team during preseason.

I can't relate to a situation that would have me change out 14 players or so during a season. Sure, people have shown where they won anyway but how did you get it so wrong during the preseason that you would change over half of your team?

Understood that this is the 20xx forum and 98% of my teams are in the ATG player set. Could it be that more adjustments are the norm in the individual year player sets?

or that opening night thing where you build a lineup for the opening day opponent and turn over the roster between 10p and 12m, before HAL starts docking you salary.

this why i don't post being accused of something I never even heard of. should never have gotten involved with you yahoo's

I can't relate to a situation that would have me change out 14 players or so during a season. Sure, people have shown where they won anyway but how did you get it so wrong during the preseason that you would change over half of your team?

If you have never gotten a team wrong in the preseason before, you have my utmost admiration as a manager. Most of us mortals have...

Sometimes your players aren't a good mix, sometimes you need to shed many players to get the money for expensive ones. The most important thing is, bad managers stay still with bad teams; good managers make moves to turn them into winning ones. I usually don't make 13 moves in a 80m/20xx season, but the moves I made led to a Championship, so I clearly made good ones.

My rules for moves is different for every quality team. If my team is dominating, I don't make a move until they prove they're not actually dominant. If my team is very good, but still not in first, then I see where it could use fixing and if I can get it harmlessly. If my team is bombing, then all rules go out the window. Also, I also show patience with a team until it no longer merits patience.

Badjam,

Taking it one step further, in analyzing some of my very best teams, I came to realize that nearly every single one of them goes through something like a 5-15 streak over the course of the season. Many, many, many times it happens late in the season when I have a huge lead on the division. I would not even notice, because I'm usually spending all my time on the other teams. But in looking for it in hindsight, that losing streak is almost always present.

What if those were the first 20 games?

I might have jettisoned a 95 win team 20 games into the season.

Me and Riggo used to joke that HAL would deal us those opening records a little too frequently. It was like HAL was testing your resolve. When you can withstand the pain and humility without so much as a second thought about it, you move up a level. No question.

This may lead back to your confidence in card reading (player selection).

I can't relate to a situation that would have me change out 14 players or so during a season. Sure, people have shown where they won anyway but how did you get it so wrong during the preseason that you would change over half of your team?

100% spot on. Target destroyed.

Thx!

For Alk,

Were you able to actually trade (almost) all of those drops?? That's a lot of trades!

Hope you were joking about the "accusation" thing. No intention to say you did anything wrong. The validity of that trick is a completely different discussion. I have never done it myself, and while I kinda sorta frown upon it, it's just gaming the game and it's certainly allowed.

Total apologies on my part if you took that as some veiled attack. I just could not come up with some other way to explain it - never seen anything like that before!

no problem yes I was joking. looking back at the team I traded for Posey before season started, only trade. You were right most of the moves were for backups. That team winning was solo thanks to Posey.

100% spot on. Target destroyed.

J-Pav actually just said "target destroyed." I find the lad more endearing with every post...

Whew!

Thx Alk!

100% spot on. Target destroyed.

J-Pav actually just said "target destroyed." I find the lad more endearing with every post...

I don't know even know what he means.