Cutline Bidding On Mazara & Mallex Smith

[Greg Ambrosius]

There is a separate thread asking about our first FAAB bidding on Monday night that saw Nomar Mazara and Mallex Smith removed from the player pool before FAAB ran. Here's the question and the explanation:

Greg you need to address the mazara situation. Once he was added to the free agent page and bids were accepted by the free agent page then it should have been a done deal that he was included in the bid process. People were placing bids on him all over the place including me. I didn't bid high enough on him for it to affect my other bids but others (see other thread) had to reduce other bids to be able to bid on mazara. That's not right. If he wasn't eligible to be picked up he shouldn't have been listed on the FA page and the site shouldn't have accepted bids on him.

Per our rules Mazara and Mallex Smith were not eligible to be picked up in FAAB in any league this week. They made their Major League debuts after 7 am ET on Sunday and thus were not eligible to be picked up in the Cutline leagues.

This is the first time we have run FAAB on two separate days and admittedly it is causing more trouble than expected. We are using the same player pool for different contests, so when we run FAAB on Sunday night we need to close off Cutline FAAB bidding to make sure there are no issues. And when we open up FAAB bidding on Monday morning for all leagues the Cutline FAAB repopulates with this week's available players. That's how Mazara and Smith were added on Monday.

I did not see this until Monday evening and quickly reached out to IT to rectify the situation. We could not have Mazara and Smith in the player pool when our rules clearly stated that they were ineligible to be bid on. It would have been unfair to add players well after the FAAB deadline. It was something that was finished just before FAAB ran as we weren't sure if we could even remove the players or not. I made the decision to remove them and to run FAAB.

Again, they were both added on Monday when they shouldn't have been eligible to be bid on. It's our fault for having them populated, but we had to remove them per our rules. Going forward we will lock all FAAB until the Cutline is run that Monday night so that this doesn't happen again. It will delay FAAB bidding on other leagues for a day in early June, but at least we won't have this situation again.

I know it affected any thread that players had with Mazara or Smith in it. EVERYONE was affected by this decision. I felt we had to adhere to the rules and have the correct players in the free agent pool last night. I apologize for the confusion, but having two separate days for FAAB makes sense and also makes it more difficult with so many different contests running on different timelines. Sorry for the confusion.

[Rainiers]

Going forward we will lock all FAAB until the Cutline is run that Monday night so that this doesn't happen again. It will delay FAAB bidding on other leagues for a day in early June, but at least we won't have this situation again.

Greg,

This a good solution that will allow folks in the Pacific Time Zone to get back some Prime-Time (7PM-10PM) access to the FAAB Cutline bid pages. We are already squeezed out of Monday night, but this will get us back in on Sunday night. Not having access for the two evenings prior to bid opening is really unfair to those of us that bought into the ten-game plan. The bid forms take over a half hour to do right, so you are looking at 6-9 hours for a guy like me with 12 teams. So we need time, and to take away our last two evenings is too much. So kudos for solving half that equity problem.

But I'm just worried you are exchanging one problem for another. Won't delaying FAAB in other leagues upset their ability to have teams insert new players in time for Monday's games?

[Greg Ambrosius]

Going forward we will lock all FAAB until the Cutline is run that Monday night so that this doesn't happen again. It will delay FAAB bidding on other leagues for a day in early June, but at least we won't have this situation again.

Greg,

This a good solution that will allow folks in the Pacific Time Zone to get back some Prime-Time (7PM-10PM) access to the FAAB Cutline bid pages. We are already squeezed out of Monday night, but this will get us back in on Sunday night. Not having access for the two evenings prior to bid opening is really unfair to those of us that bought into the ten-game plan. The bid forms take over a half hour to do right, so you are looking at 6-9 hours for a guy like me with 12 teams. So we need time, and to take away our last two evenings is too much. So kudos for solving half that equity problem.

But I'm just worried you are exchanging one problem for another. Won't delaying FAAB in other leagues upset their ability to have teams insert new players in time for Monday's games?

No, all other leagues will have FAAB run on Sunday night and those players will be on their teams to insert into their Starting Lineups on Sunday night or Monday. FAAB lists just wouldn't open that week until Monday night after Cutline FAAB is run. We might be able to solve this issue without going that way, but that's one possible solution. NFBC owners would still have Monday night-Sunday night to set their FAAB bids if we went this route.