Removing players from FA pool

Latham · Post by **Latham** » Sat Oct 27, 2007 6:41 am

Greg,

Now that we are in the off season I was hoping we could address the issue of removing players from the FA pool. Personally I don't believe players should be removed from the pool, except in extreme situations (collusion or healthy elite player ). I think we need to have a uniform standard for removing players that everyone can reference. The issue seems to come up for closers more than any other position. I have seen a bad closer removed from a league (Jose Mesa in NY 2005) just because he is good in 1 category. The team that dropped him in this instance had a big lead in saves and was able to pick up a needed starter, while the teams chasing were prevented from picking Mesa up and helping make up ground on team that dropped him (seems to reward team that drops him). This is just an example from my NY league in 2005, but this past season you chose to leave Todd Jones in FA pool (which was correct choice IMO). Last season we had teams calling for players to be removed from pool seemingly most weeks after drop lists were posted. Hopefully we can get some uniform standard before next season and not leave each case to a judgement call. Thanks

Randy

Spyhunter · Post by **Spyhunter** » Sun Oct 28, 2007 3:40 am

Originally posted by Latham:

Greg,

Now that we are in the off season I was hoping we could address the issue of removing players from the FA pool. Personally I don't believe players should be removed from the pool, except in extreme situations (collusion or healthy elite player ). I think we need to have a uniform standard for removing players that everyone can reference. The issue seems to come up for closers more than any other position. I have seen a bad closer removed from a league (Jose Mesa in NY 2005) just because he is good in 1 category. The team that dropped him in this instance had a big lead in saves and was able to pick up a needed starter, while the teams chasing were prevented from picking Mesa up and helping make up ground on team that dropped him (seems to reward team that drops him). This is just an example from my NY league in 2005, but this past season you chose to leave Todd Jones in FA pool (which was correct choice IMO). Last season we had teams calling for players to be removed from pool seemingly most weeks after drop lists were posted. Hopefully we can get some uniform standard before next season and not leave each case to a judgement call. Thanks

Randy Randy,

I don't know how you do this without lots of commissioner judgement, but I do agree with your point that this becomes an advantage for the dropper. They can get ahead in a category (typically steals or saves), then they can drop the player and free up slot, meanwhile, no one can make them pay for dropping the player by picking them up.

A couple of thoughts:

1. ESPN handles this by making the player 'undroppable' which I like because it forces the player who got the advantage of the player to continue to have to use a bench slot.

2. Another approach might be to make the final 6-8 weeks less restrictive in terms of taking player out of the player pool

Those are my best 2 ideas, any others?

Spy

Greg Ambrosius · Post by **Greg Ambrosius** » Sun Oct 28, 2007 5:29 am

Nobody was taken out of the free agent pool in the NFBC last year. When we do take players out of free agent pools we do it to ensure the integrity of the overall contest (i.e. a star player was dropped in only one league).

We'll consider all proposals, but in many respects this will always contain some subjective decisions on our part or the "drop" lists will continually change each week, creating even more work and confusion all around. Hopefully we'll have another year like last year where no players needed to be removed.

Spyhunter · Post by **Spyhunter** » Sun Oct 28, 2007 2:38 pm

Greg, what ever happenend when crazytown dumped ryan braun?