[USML Announce] USML Rules Voting

[Richard E. Robbins]

On February 9, 2004, SpringKerb at aol.com wrote:

> 
> I think C implicates lowering the cap (due to less FAAB inflation) rather
> than raising the floor.  As it is, we provide $40 more "headroom" with our
> cap ($360 v. $260) than the downside flexibility we provide with our floor
> ($200 v. $260).
> 
> 200 is actually a pretty tight floor already.  Take, for example, a team
> forced to dump when one or two stars are out for the year with injury or
> traded to the NL.  You could be at the floor already, without even dumping. 
> Then you can't do anything at all.  That would simply encourage owners to
> check out of the league completely for the year.  I'd much prefer to have
> someone active and dumping, than have them completely inactive because the
> rules have put them in a straight jacket.
> 
> Mark

There are just too many scenarios where we can argue that adjusting the cap or floor one way or another makes or doesn't make sense.  

I am confident that for any adjustment that we come up with, it will be relatively easy to concoct a situation where the adjustment proves to be ill-advised.  

This will get too messy very fast.

Our rules are too complicated as it is.

Again, that is why I think that alternative A is the way to go.  It should address the FAAB related problems in a relatively elegant fashion.

I recognize that some owners are critical of the FAAB process generally because the salaries produced through it are not necessarily equivalent to draft day dollars.  

I also suspect that there may be owners who think that allowing mobile FAAB dollars is really a bad idea and that that change in conjunction with a rule that tends to reduce FAAB salaries would be even worse.  

Even though I proposed mobile FAAB dollars because I think it would be fun to play with that rule change, I think that how we go about fixing the asterisk player issue is more significant.

Accordingly, I would be willing to switch my vote on allowing FAAB dollar trades (assuming that would result in that proposal not being adopted) if someone will switch a vote from alternative C to alternative A (assuming that that would result in that alternative being adopted).

-- Rich