On the MWR... again!

by 9:53 PM 0 comments
Sorry guys, had a busy weekend and wanted to respond to this discussion but just haven't had a chance until now. I've re-written this multiple times now to try to be as succinct as possible, but there's lots of good thoughts here, so tough to keep it short!

First of all, real-life commitments are a legitimate obstacle to full HBD participation - I know I've wanted to be more proactive as commissioner puiblicly tracking the MWR and things like that, but I changed jobs a year ago and my time for HBD has diminished more than I'd like. A couple seasons ago I missed budgeting, much less alerting other owners to their MWR status! So it's a goal of mine to get back into the habit of doing that, and think of this as a "my bad" and I'll try to do better.

As to bcp's question of why this MWR assessment has come up when the league seems to be fairly healthy... I'd like to first give a little background on why I personally think the MWR is important, and what I think its purpose is. First off, I think our Minimum Win Requirement is too often thought of as an "anti-tanking rule". Its purpose is to maintain a league-wide competitive balance, and to be agnostic as to owner intent. It is important because competition has been the culture of this league, at least since I've been a member, and frankly an HBD league without competition is not one I'm interested in being in. I LIKE seeing rebuilding teams trying to win at the end of the season to make the MWR, I LIKE seeing an owner like Zeus try to make some late season trades because he's worried he'll miss the MWR. The MWR is about making our league more engaged and competitive from top to bottom.

So why are we talking about it? I know for me, as recruiting has gotten more and more difficult, removal of owners has evolved from a punishment that impacts only the offending owner, to a punishment that impacts both the offending owner and the league itself. When it was easy to quickly find a good replacement owner for a non-competitive franchise, expulsion was fine. Now that it is imperative to have as few openings as possible, I think the punishment needs to be reviewed.

With that said, I am not in favor of removing or relaxing our MWR standards. I agree with schnoogens about his statement about 50 wins, and would point out that WiS actually has fair play guidelines with their own MWR, stating (among other items) "it's no more difficult to field a healthy team that can win 50 games than it is to field a team that can win 30 games," and an owner can be expelled for having a "Major League team expected winning percentage of less than .250 for at least 80 games of the regular season". A .250 expected win rate would result in 40.5 games won for the entire seasons, so even in public leagues if you are on pace for 40.5 for half a season you can be expelled. I don't think 55 wins is unreasonable given these bare-minimum guidelines WiS enforces.

This game is difficult, especially for new owners or abused franchises. But I think the point of our MWR is to establish a reasonable competitive standard to shoot for. If that means as a new owner you can't dabble in IFA right away, or if you inherit some bad contracts you can't boost your scouting budgets right away, that's part of the game. That said, if new owners have some advice for me or other veterans in the league for how we can help them avoid accidental pitfalls, I'm all ears - in my experience, and as Cheezy pointed out, it's very difficult to strike that balance between letting an owner run the team how they want to, and micro-managing every move.

In summary: sorry I haven't notified owners in danger of the MWR consistently, I'll try to do better; I think punishment for MWR violations need to change/get creative; I'd like suggestions for helping new/struggling owners; but also 55 wins isn't a hard standard to meet; when in doubt, spend an extra $10m on 2 year contracts for veterans.

Pajammies

Developer

Commissioner of the fakest fake baseball league on the planet: Plumpy Rules!!!!111

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