“Before reading this entry, please be sure that you have read our league rules below this entry, which will be enforced throughout the season!
I know there are probably a hundred other tips I could have published here that don’t come to mind but I at least wanted to cover some common ground, issues I have seen that come up early in every new season as rookie owners join our league. Please do read this and also listen to the other veterans in the chat forum, who will be more than glad to help you. I know it’s easy to say “hey, I’ll just manage my team as I would a real team and I know a lot about baseball so let’s get going” but take a moment to pause and consider how this game might be different than the real game. Above all, have fun and be friendly to all and you’ll get the most out of this game."
– former commish, David J.
A few tips for new players:
While it’s entirely the right of a player to “go for it now” or choose to build a team slowly and methodically over many seasons, the single-greatest source of arguments in any league can be lopsided trades. Please understand that if a trade is vetoed by a large number of players, it’s not simply a parental activity, protecting you from the bad deal. Vetoes are often done to protect the long-term good of the league in that it is possible for one team to aggressively pursue the best players of a newly-assigned team (with a rookie owner) while others are more patient, courteous and respectful, offering only fair and balanced deals that have the potential to help both teams. A new owner might realize within months that one or two deals weren’t a quick fix for the rebuilding situation he/she faces and then abandons that team at the end of the year while the rest of the league has to continue battling another team that built itself through lopsided trades with rookie owners who end up being long gone. Fortunately, it’s not as common in this league as in others and some of the biggest offenders have departed, perhaps because the league did use its voting power to veto trades in the past.
Vetoing is not necessarily a league-wide question of whether a trade helps the new owner’s team. Many times, a new owner argues that the trade is beneficial and says to the other owners ’please don’t protect me just because I’m a rookie’ and this is because they really want the deal because they need a certain commodity X. What they fail to realize is that they could have achieved even more, likely much more, than just X for the players they are trading away if they had let the entire league know that a certain player was available in a trade. The more offers you have to choose from, the more often you will find the best possible deal. To do this, if a star or potential star is being asked about in a deal, new players are encouraged to post in the chat forum that “I am being asked about Joe Smith and so I ask everyone to send official offers my way so I can choose the one I think helps my team the most.” It’s much more difficult for owners in the league to argue that a new owner is being exploited if the new owner openly said a player was available and had access to many offers, from which they chose the one that they felt was the best deal.
On that note, be wary of trades that offer several mediocre players for one star or potential star. Mediocre players, by definition, are often available easily through the waiver wire or free agency. Thus, if you are offered three players rated 70 for one player rated 80+, that can be a trade where you can often do better simply by asking in the forum if anyone would like to make offers for your 80+ rated player. It doesn’t mean that this is necessarily a bad deal but it can be worthy of further exploration to see what’s out there.
Always be sure to check a player’s contract. Sometimes, a player may look like a top talent but has extremely high contract amounts locked into their future. These sorts of acquisitions can weigh a club down to eliminate financial flexibility in future seasons.
Finally, until the annual schedule is set and you’ve also set your team budget, there’s no way for a new owner to know what the projected ratings of players are. Therefore, be VERY hesitant before discussing possible trade deals with veterans asking about players even before budgets are set. Remember, owners who are returning may remember what sort of potential such players had shown previously and they could be interested in your player for that very reason.
