Penalizing Losers

In response to my post yesterday about the use of salary caps, Tom says his league is toying with the idea of a salary floor.

In addition to a cap, a salary floor has also been brought up in our league. In one of our recent shady deals (I won't bore you with details), the recipient of the big players would not have been affected by a $375 cap, but the Dumper was left with a salary of about $130. I guess the dumper could go out and pickup some random stiff for $70 in FAAB... Any thoughts on whether this would be a helpful addition to a cap, or is it needlessly complicated?

I would agree that one problem with the salary floor is FAAB. Free agent bids are intuitively limited by a salary cap, preventing another team from adding a ton of talent through both dump trades and free agent signings. However, it is true that a team could simply FAAB someone at a ridiculous price and then just meet the floor. You could try to institute a rule where a team that dumps can only apply X amount of salary to a FAABed player, but I agree that then you are indeed needlessly complicating the issue.

The larger issue here is whether or not you should penalize teams playing for next year, particularly teams that wind up finishing at the bottom of the standings. My answer is that you shouldn't. Here's why.

In leagues that use salary caps, I've noticed that teams playing for this year almost always have a handful of freezes for next year. This is because it is next to impossible to dump all of the talent you have and stay within the salary cap. This doesn't make these teams automatic contenders, but it does often put them in reach of the top third of the league the next year with a good auction.

That leaves a two-tiered class of dumping teams. The first class are almost always the favorites. They manage their rosters well, actively use their FAAB throughout the season, and simply pay attention to what is going on. Typically, these teams are also more likely to share the wealth and squeeze as much out of the contenders as they can.

The second tier of teams are the ones that wind up with next to nothing for next year, even though they did pack it in. They might have a team with very low salaried players, but don't seem to understand that while having a $2 Esteban German is nice, they're not going to win without a $20 Grady Sizemore as well. These teams often get trapped in a cycle of dumping year in and year out. Once every four or five years, these owners might get lucky and crack the top four, but they never win. In my experience, these owners quit after 3-5 years, figuring that the game is too difficult and they'll never win.

Getting back to the issue of the salary floor, I don't think it matters how low a team's salary is. What matters is how a team is put together for next year. Teams that dump and finish 8th are more likely to win next year than teams that dump and finish last. Within the subclass of teams that are playing for next year, the 8th place team has more talent, and will likely generate more points the following year, than the 12th place team.

The challenge comes because the weaker owner is more likely to damage a league and ruin a pennant race with a lopsided trade than the stronger owner. It is little consolation to you if that owner finishes last and will never win. He has still destroyed your season, and you still want to kill him.

If you really want to exact revenge on these owners I'd suggest penalties that apply next year. Examples of these penalties include but are not limited to:

• Fewer freezes for teams that finish in the bottom third of the league.
• Less auction money for teams that finish last.
• A financial penalty for teams that finish last.

There are other examples. The idea is to make it harder for bad teams to contend next year.

However, I have played long enough to see that the best punishment for these teams is their repeated failure. The best rule I could think of is an automatic ejection for teams that fail to finish in the top four for five years running. There are two problems with this type of "solution", though.

First, it isn't necessarily fair to kick an owner out who pays his dues and isn't actively colluding with another owner. Second, though, I've noticed a separate phenomenon: owners who fail to finish in the money for long stretches of time aren't necessarily dumping year after year after year.

In fact, these teams often don't dump, thus perpetuating the cycle of failure due to inaction rather than playing for the future. I'm not sure how you penalize these teams. They often start out in 10th or 11th to start the season, then finish anywhere between 5th and 7th as the teams above them (wisely) give up and play for the following season. You can argue that teams that never dump aren't part of the problem, but you could also argue that it's better for the health of a league to have a team at least try to build his team for next year than to simply do nothing.