MiniFubbles Ep. 5 - That Damned GM Rule!

[MubbleFubbles 1,203]

https://anchor.fm/mubble-fubbles/episodes/MiniFubbles-Ep--5---That-Damned-GM-Rule-e1dnt0l
 

 

Edited January 31, 2022 by MubbleFubbles

[Shindigs 1,771]

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"Spartan situation"

Went 10th overall. Basically he just told everyone that after his ELC he will go FA and cup chase. Which as of a few hours ago was still his plan. That was enough that no one picked him until 10th. He had to trade up for the 10th pick (During the draft if I understood it correctly). Because he didn't actually think he'd fall that low, just from saying he was guaranteed to not re-sign after his ELC. But when he did, he traded up for it. Which isn't actually against the rules. Since all he did was say what he was aiming to do, and what he wanted to do lines up with a lot of recreates. So nothing outlandish about that. It just happened to work out to the best possible case scenario for him.

 

This was then framed as straight tanking in the VHL gossip-sphere. Which made some people think the rule no longer existed, except it does. That's pretty much what lead to this current situation.

 

When I had only heard the gossip version of what Spartan supposedly did, it sounded pretty damning. When he outlined exactly what he did, it just comes across as getting really lucky after being truthful in stating what his plans were, and still are, for his player. As there was at least two teams that should/could have arguably drafted him before the Warsaw pick at 10th, but they just chose not to for their own reasons.

 

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"Harkat Mulds"

Yeah, he's gone IA now. So it was a fair warning. But as long as Spartan doesn't re-sign with Moscow. Which he won't, then same thing goes for what he did. And if he does re-sign with Moscow. What he did retroactively becomes actual tanking and he will get penalized for it.

 

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"Being able to auto-pick your own player with 16th overall is unfair"

I personally don't get this argument. But since it was taken out of the league I assume I'm in a minority on that one. My logic is this: If every GM has the option to do it, how is it unfair? If every GM had access to their own player (should they choose to pick it up). Doesn't that just means that every team has one GM player and one less 1st round pick every 9 seasons? Yes, that pick will be outlandishly strong for a 16th overall. But it's equally strong for all GMs. So how is that unfair? If everyone is overpowered, no one is overpowered.

 

The only real case where you could call it unfair is when a new GM is hired while their player is at a stage in their career where they will be without their own player for a very long time. There is also the case of being in a rebuild when you recreate and needing to yeet a lottery pick on yourself. But that's you own fault for not planning ahead, so that doesn't really count imo.

 

[MubbleFubbles 1,203]

2 minutes ago, Shindigs said:

I personally don't get this argument. But since it was taken out of the league I assume I'm in a minority on that one. My logic is this: If every GM has the option to do it, how is it unfair? If every GM had access to their own player (should they choose to pick it up). Doesn't that just means that every team has one GM player and one less 1st round pick every 9 seasons? Yes, that pick will be outlandishly strong for a 16th overall. But it's equally strong for all GMs. So how is that unfair? If everyone is overpowered, no one is overpowered

 

So the reason why it's considered unfair is that there's a couple of things:

 

1) It depends on where the team finished the previous season. Say my team was in the lottery, but I knew I wanted to draft my player who was 2nd overall in TPE, I could trade my way down to 16th and basically get a ton of free assets while also getting the 2nd best player in the draft. Say I'd just won the cup though, yeah I still get the 2nd best overall player, but I don't get the other free assets, basically punishing my team for doing well for no real good reason.

 

2) It's only equally strong if the GMs are capable of earning TPE at the same rate. The counter-argument there is obviously as a GM, I'd have full control of how good my player is at earning, but I don't think the league wants to tie ability to max earn into a GM's requirements. Also one of the reasons that were given for no longer having GMs tied down to teams is that some of them wanted the option to play for other teams. Again there's two kind of arguments there, one is that the GM made the choice to not play for his team so that's on them and the argument to that is that the GM's role as GM and player don't coincide anymore so shouldn't have their team be at a potential deficit by not picking their own player at #16 even when that'd be a lot better than what they'd usually get there. That's partially why I've suggested basing locking in picks around TPE level, GM's who don't want to play for their own team are free to explore other options whereas GM's who want their own give up fairer compensation to pick their own than just trading down to 16. 

[Shindigs 1,771]

9 hours ago, MubbleFubbles said:

1) It depends on where the team finished the previous season. Say my team was in the lottery, but I knew I wanted to draft my player who was 2nd overall in TPE, I could trade my way down to 16th and basically get a ton of free assets while also getting the 2nd best player in the draft. Say I'd just won the cup though, yeah I still get the 2nd best overall player, but I don't get the other free assets, basically punishing my team for doing well for no real good reason.

I just assumed the other GMs wouldn't go for that. If you know that GM "has" to trade down. That should make them get much lesser returns on that trade, because the trade partner knows it's a forced trade. Kinda like how when a NHL player demands a trade. You never get full value because all the other GMs know you have to move them, even if they give you lowball offers. But if that didn't actually happen in practice. Then yeah, I see the issue.

 

9 hours ago, MubbleFubbles said:

2) It's only equally strong if the GMs are capable of earning TPE at the same rate. The counter-argument there is obviously as a GM, I'd have full control of how good my player is at earning, but I don't think the league wants to tie ability to max earn into a GM's requirements. Also one of the reasons that were given for no longer having GMs tied down to teams is that some of them wanted the option to play for other teams. Again there's two kind of arguments there, one is that the GM made the choice to not play for his team so that's on them and the argument to that is that the GM's role as GM and player don't coincide anymore so shouldn't have their team be at a potential deficit by not picking their own player at #16 even when that'd be a lot better than what they'd usually get there. That's partially why I've suggested basing locking in picks around TPE level, GM's who don't want to play for their own team are free to explore other options whereas GM's who want their own give up fairer compensation to pick their own than just trading down to 16. 

I still don't see that as unfair though. It's not like GM players are unicorns that are inherently better than all other players. It's just that the GM has full control of that player, which makes it inherently better. If they choose to not actually use that single strength. That's not unfair, that's their choice. Being able to choose to do something sub optimal isn't inherently unfair. Besides in today's meta choosing not to max earn beyond your first few seasons as a GM player may very well be the optimal thing to do regardless. Meta being what it is.

 

I guess it's also very dependent on the draft depth. If we look at our draft, the guys going around 16th are pretty much all max earners. So assuming they stay like that, it's not like the actual TPE earning is different by any significant margin. So I may have my point of view skewed by my perspective being that of a pretty deep draft. If you were dealing with an anemic draft, and traded down to 16th, while also trading out of that draft for picks in later drafts. Then I'd agree that it is starting to become pretty problematic.

 

I'll admit it was getting pretty late and I was zoning out by the time you got to your solution. So I'll likely need to re listen to that at some point.

[JardyB10 4,835]

Honestly it baffles me how far Spartan dropped just from saying he isn’t guaranteed to re-sign. I said the exact same thing! But I still went 4th overall coming off a period of inactivity. I get that a good amount of people like to go the loyalty route, and that’s good and all. But NO other team picking in the Top 10 was confident enough that they’d be a Cup contender/favourite in 3 seasons? Damn

[Shindigs 1,771]

19 hours ago, JardyB10 said:

Honestly it baffles me how far Spartan dropped just from saying he isn’t guaranteed to re-sign. I said the exact same thing! But I still went 4th overall coming off a period of inactivity. I get that a good amount of people like to go the loyalty route, and that’s good and all. But NO other team picking in the Top 10 was confident enough that they’d be a Cup contender/favourite in 3 seasons? Damn

Yeah, it surprised him too. I think two teams ahead were contenders. But maybe they just figured they'd let him draft himself to be all nice and stuff? idk. Well he's in Helsinki now, so RIP.