Continuing my series on some of the trading principles and issues from my high stakes league, the next trade by two teams literally set off an avalanche that threatens the league’s future. There will be a few posts on the various shady deals

So, after my last deal, the comings and going on my roster looked like this:

Gone: Stephen Drew, Tim Lincecum, Brian McCann, BJ Upton, Zack Greinke, Taylor Tankersley

Coming: Francisco Rodriguez, David Ortiz, Cliff Floyd, Matt Morris, Brad Lidge, Brad Hennessey. I left Cuddyer out because I started the year with him.

It is an 11 team league, with 7 hitting categories (BA and OBP are combined and counted double) and 5 pitching categories (ERA and WHIP and Saves are double). The maximum point total then is 176 in each league, or 352 overall. I have never seen a team over 300; last years champ was in the 260 range, and this is a pretty standard point total for the winner. At the time of this collusive trade I had 290 points, give or take (this was two months ago, right now I have 281).

Here is the deal:
Team A trades: Derek Lowe 20 s2, Derrek Lee 26 s1, Willy Taveras 7 s1, John Lackey 14 L1, Victor Martinez 24 s3, Jose Lopez 4 s1.

Team B trades: Chase Utley 13 L2, Ryan Freel 18 s3, Cha Baek 0L9, Robby Cano 19 s2, Ross Gload 0 L9, and Matt Garza 9 s3.

I have posted here before about the trade posting rule we have in our league. When the trade was posted, Team A announced that it would not accept counter offers for any smaller part of the deal, namely for any individual player or group of players.

If you read the prior post you will see that counteroffers, once accepted by an owner, prevent the owner from accepting the original deal that was countered.

Given the tight trading restrictions we have, it was not possible at the time for for any other contending team to counter offer the entire deal. We have a tight salary cap and salary minimum, and because of earlier trades the other contenders couldn’t do it. Nevertheless there was no lack of trying.

The key to my opinion that the trade was collusive is that both owners were smart enough to know exactly what they were doing. They knew that no team could make a viable counteroffer for the entire deal.

Moreover, Team A further announced that he had a “busy” work schedule and would have limited time to talk about counter offers. One owner was so incensed about this alleged unavailability that he asked the commissioner to extend the trade window for another 48 hours.

I will have a lot more to say about this, as well as some other trade pipelines that existed in the league. As a relative newcomer to the league (this is my third year), I have no allies that are so close to me in the league that I would even be able to establish a trade pipeline even if I so desired. As far as I am concerned though it is cheating to do a “pipeline” deal.

Here is my prima facie case of cheating:

1. Team A was out of it.

2. The two owners are co-owners together in another high stakes league.

3. Both owners are former champs of this league, so they obviously know what they are doing.

4. Team B was in a tight race for third place at the time, and there are 4 teams that cash. There were four teams in a dogpile for second, all within 10 points of each other.

5. Because of contract status and salary, only Utley and Gload were keepers and possibly Cano for Team B. Freel was hurt at the time of the trade. Baek is a “keeper” only because he can be kept but he has little value. On the other hand, of the players this “dumping” team was trading, Lowe, Victor Martinez and Jose Lopez were keepers. Plus Team A could keep Lee or Lackey for one more year by increasing their salary by 10. This is a rule we have that allows an owner to keep a valuable players whose long term contract is expiring; you can keep them for one more year by adding ten to their salary.

6. On its face the talent going back and forth is nowhere near even.

7. Obviously better counter offers were made for individual players in the deal were rejected. For example I offered Tom Gorzelanny and James Shields or Sergio Mitre for Tavares and Lopez, where Gorzelanny, Mitre and Shields were all terrific keepers at less than $10 for the next two years at least. So, even if Utley and Cano were his targets, he STILL could have gotten them; all he had to do was trade me Tavares, and obviously Team B, being his best pal, isn’t going to back out over Tavares.

8. Team A asked me only to email him with counters. I said that since he was allegedly in a time crunch, I would post a few counter offers and he could just “accept” any that were sufficient for him according to our trade posting rule. He declined this offer. I took this to mean he didn’t want the league to know what counters were out there.

More on the machinations later. Suffice it to say that I knew full well that my counter offers wouldn’t be accepted. I purposely made overpaying counter offers just to prove that collusion existed.

This trade set off an avalanche of counter moves by other owners that now seriously threaten the league’s existence. After this collusive trade the following happened, all of which I will discuss in the coming week or so. I was not involved in any of these dealings, so I am somewhat unbiased in my allegations:
1. Multiple teams traded over twenty players in two weeks, and not just to multiple teams. That is, two teams traded twenty players back and forth to each other. This includes Teams A and B, not surprisingly.

2. Some teams made huge trades of multiple players with trade back agreements after the season. This is outright bald cheating in my opinion. A trade back is simply a trade where Team X will trade players to Team Y and Team Y agrees to return those players to Team X after the season is over. As far as I am concerned, these trades should be subject to the strictest scrutiny in the offseason. No one will know for sure that a “trade back” deal is made unless it is inadvertently revealed, or if another owner blows the whistle. So all the commissioner can do is review the attempted offseason trade back with very tough scrutiny.

3. A few owners conspired, in a deal for Hunter Pence, to prevent another owner (Team C) from meeting a time limit for posting counter offers. This was done on purpose and was explicitly addressed by the owners involved. It was a blatant attempt to screw one owner for personal reasons.

4. Team C announced his intention to quit the league, as the victim of the conspiracy above.

5. Team A above announced his putative intent to quit. Good riddance as far as I am concerned, though I doubt it will come to pass.

Did I mention that the trade was made while Team A and B were at a Mets game together?

One more data point on the collusion issue: in a deal the week before I was negotiating a deal with another owner, and Team A was involved. I had a long discussion with Team A about Felix Hernandez and we reached an agreement to make a deal. Within five minutes of it being posted, the owner of Team C called me and we posted a better offer, knocking Team A off the clock.

When I tried to counter just for Tavares and Lopez, Team A essentially told me that he was unhappy about being knocked off the clock so quickly in the Felix Hernandez deal, and without mentioning names, said that he and Team B were upset about some of the other trades that happened in the league. I understood this to mean that Team A and Team B were in a “we’ll show them” mentality.

This made it clear to me that the trade was collusive. Those readers who aspire to sharpen their fantasy games to play in high stakes leagues ha
ve to realize that there are issues like this virtually every year, and when big money is at stake tempers can flare. This season is by far the most egregious example I have ever seen of nefarious dealings in my 20 years of fantasy baseball.

Nevertheless, dealing with high stakes means dealing with shark infested waters. Is it worth it? I am not sure, but I can tell you that if my team is knocked off by a cheater, (the difference between second and first is more than most leagues’ entire prize pools) I will not be pleased, to put it lightly.

Obviously I will have a lot more to say on this. I hope it will be interesting reading.

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