Dr.Publix wrote:tcochran wrote:willmurr24 wrote:Virgil Vasquez SP Pitt
Pick rejected as against the league rules:
11) There are no specific rules against "roster dumping." Owners no longer in a pennant race can use their best judgment in determining the makeup of their team, provided that all general roster size limits are met.
However, it is expected that all owners will act in the best interests of the game.
I don't see why this pick is illegal. There are already a bunch of bad .5 guys on rosters in this league. Granted all of those guys have better cards in the future, but I don't see how taking a guy like Vasquez is somehow detrimental to the league.
I am not going to be competitive in '09 so I will be continuing to target guys with bad cards this year, looking specifically for guys who can help in the future of course. But the reality is that I'm not going to have room on my roster to keep all of them after this season so I don't see why it makes a difference if I take a .5 guy (I.e. Chris Young the pitcher) who has a decent future card but I drop him anyway after the season (because he has no card in '10 and I don't have room to carry him until '14) or take a .5 guy whose only card is '09 (I.e. Virgil Vasquez) and then drop him after the season (because he has no card in '10). The results to the rest of the league are the same: I'd be using a .5 starter in '09.
Anyway, sorry. Just my two cents. I don't really care if you let willmurr keep Vasquez or not. It just seems odd to me that it's somehow an illegal pick, but say, Juan Castro, who was taken in the 3rd round and has a.79 card in '09 and a .5 card in '10, is perfectly fine
It is perfectly true there is no rule explicitly forbidding a pick like that -- so I can drop my objection and simply label the question a subjective one.
I agree with Dr.P that folks often pick for the future, even if a player has a poor card now. In fact, I'm hopeful that I have built a competitive team for at least the 2009-2011 seasons in that way. Indeed, perhaps I should welcome willmurr's attempt to guarantee the #1 pick in the next draft, since we'll be playing in the same division. My guys will win even more games because of that!
From a league viability question, I am concerned, though, if willmurr's last 7 picks will have a total salary of $3.5 million in 2009 with no future value after that. In the past, I've seen managers dig a hole so deep that they eventually decided they could never climb out of it. After one manager abandoned a team, for example, we had to stage a brownfield reclamation project with special incentives in order to entice anyone to take over the team.
I will cancel my objection, with hopes that willmurr will continue to work with this team he is burying and then resurrect it in the future!