[USML Announce] USML Rules Voting - Winick's Vote

[JHWinick at aol.com]

In a message dated 2/7/2004 7:59:21 AM Central Standard Time, 
MBBlocker at aol.com writes:
1.  Permit trading of FAAB Dollars

2.  Count statistics of players traded to the NL

3.  Creation fix proposals

   a.  E-bay bidding proposal

   b.  Skinny FAAB proposal (reduction of FAAB budgets to $20)

   c.  Players acquired throug FAAB cannot be asterisk players
1.    Yes
2.    No
3.    A

Although I'm enjoying the Blocker/Robbins debate, I think there is a critical 
point that has been missed by both.  There are two objectives that need to be 
achieved in correcting last year's debacle.  Both Mark and Rich have focused 
on the problem associated with artificial "asterisk" players.  They have both 
missed the second issue which is artificial inflation of salaries to avoid the 
salary floor.  It seems to me that the second objective is no less important 
than the first.

As much as I appreciate the simplicity of option c, it does not address the 
problem with dumping teams bidding up valueless players to absurd salaries to 
allow them to dump beyond that which the rule was designed to permit.  For this 
reason, I cannot support option C.  If you want an example of the problems 
that artificially inflated salaries create, just calculate the "true" value of 
the players that were on the Riptorns active roster at the end of last year.  
It should be clear to you that they effectively wrote the salary floor out of 
constitution.

So, the only way to address last year's problems in their entirety is to 
adopt option a or b.  I support option A because it addresses both of the problems 
with the least amount of unintended negative impact.  I share Mark's concern 
that ebay bidding means that some players will be assigned salaries that are 
less than what they otherwise would have been.  On the other hand, that really 
is the nature of a perfect market.  Bottom line, though is that I am less 
concerned about that problem than I am with the additional complexity associated 
with the skinny FAAB rule and more importantly, the fact that the skinny FAAB 
rule adversely impacts the salary cap by allowing teams near the top of the cap 
to spend far more on FAAB acquisitions than they would otherwise be allowed.

I do want to raise a couple of additional topics, as well.  These are most 
properly categorized as clarifications, rather than rules changes.  First, if 
the league votes to continue to disallow the trading of FAAB dollars, then the 
rules should be clarified to provide that FAAB dollars can only be retrieved by 
the owner of a player that is traded out of the league AT THE TIME THE PLAYER 
IS TRADED OUT OF THE LEAGUE.  To allow otherwise is to sanction an exception 
to an otherwise explicit rule.

Second, the constitution has established a compensation system for instances 
where a team loses a player to the other league.  This somewhat ambiguous rule 
has apparently been interpreted to compensate a team if his player is traded 
to the NL, but no compensation is awarded if a player is waived or released 
and is picked up by an NL team after a period of time during which the player 
wasn't on any ML roster.  Since the intent of the rule is to compensate a team 
for losing a player to the other league, I propose that the rule be clarified 
to allow compensation to any team that loses a player that ultimately ends up 
on an NL roster.  I don't see any reason for treating a player that ultimately 
ends up out of the league any differently than one who does so immediately.  
With respect to my prior clarification, I would provide that the proposal be 
modified to allow retrieval of FAAB compensation only at the time that they 
player is either traded out of the league or is added to an NL roster.

Jeff W.
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