What Happens When a Stud Gets Cut?

Check out the message board for league 184 (ottoneu.fangraphs.com/184/home). $62 Stanton got cut a couple days ago and a kind of crazy conversation has broken out. Curious what people here think!

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Seems The Gold Standard was trying to micromanage the rest of the league by making sure Stanton didn’t go for a discount price. If he would have been be focused on his own team he would have never made that announcement to the league. I’d have to agree with the commissioner’s comments, but at the same time I’d probably start the auction if Gold Standard won and then cut him. Focus on your own team and you’ll always be better off.

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I’m the commish and right now I am also the owner with the most cap space (just finished a deal that will clear another $21 putting me at $56 total). so i have probably the best shot at stanton. but I’d rather see what The Gold Standard does with his roster than bail him out with Stanton. The best case for my team is that he cuts Stanton, still has to make another cut, and Trout, Kershaw or Goldy hits the market, and I can try to add BOTH newly available pieces.

There is no way he would drop those guys, you would only be hurting yourself but not getting the points from Stanton sooner. If he signs him then drops him then you could restart the auction and he wouldn’t be able to bid. Getting one great player at a discount is reward enough no point in waiting to see what he does.

Why would he not drop other guys? Assuming no one starts an auction on Stanton (which, I admit, maybe be a difficult assumption to accept), he has to either wait a month with no ability to set his roster, make trades, bid in auctions, etc. or he has to make additional cuts. Someone might bail him out, but that person would be make a big mistake.

The only teams with the cap space to go after Stanton are not teams in the running this year, which means that they don’t care if they get points from him now or in August, as long as they get them for 2017. I think the scenario that would have to play out is an owner who is competing making a trade offer for Stanton while he is a FA, enticing someone to go after him and trade him to a competitive owner. But I THINK those owners stand to gain more by letting Brad falter than they do by adding Stanton.

From taking a quick glance at some of the teams that are higher up in the standings, I think most of them could cut enough players to be able to sign a $40-$60 Stanton and still be better off for it. I don’t know how well you know the other guys in the league but I don’t think this will play out the way you are hoping if everyone acts in their own best interests.

I don’t think I see the path you do. For example, second place team could cut Abreu, d’Arnaud, Gardner, Shields and clear $46 on top of the $10 they have, which would open up a $53 bid on Stanton, leaving him with three open roster spots and $3 to spend. He’d then need to acquire SP innings somehow. Stanton over Abreu at util would be useful, but he would also need to add an OF bat, most likely.

Third place team could cut Cutch to clear $24 on top of his $11, but that a) would not be enough cash and b) would be a lateral move if you think Cutch will put up a Cutch-like second half. So to pay for the Cutch-to-Stanton upgrade, he has to also cut another $17 in cap, so maybe he cuts mengden, travis and choo? something like that. Is that a meaningful improvement?

Fourth place could cut Tulo, Puig, Javy Baez and clear $34, taking him to $54 total. That might be the most reasonable path. But Tylo has been excellent lately and Baez looks like a great long-term piece. Maybe he cuts Kemp instead? That might make more sense. Anyway, he has a path but the improvement is far from guaranteed if he drops Tulo, and I am not convinced that he does not gain MORE by leaving the leader locked up and unable to make changes.

fifth would have to drop Bautista, Gio, Darvish…i just don’t see an easy path that is better than locking up your competition.

Update: a bottom-half team bid $54, like I did. Unclear if they intended/hoped to win or were price enforcing like I was. They cut Adam Jones, Kole Calhoun, Ethier, Nimmo, Cashner, Clay Buchholz… That might be it… That cleared the $37 they needed cleared to add the $54 Stanton. Unclear what comes next.

I’m seeing more and more leagues cut expensive players like Stanton, McCutchen, etc. Part of the reason is the fun of watching the economics play out; part of the reason is genuinely trying to see if a better valued player might fall in your lap. It’s a dangerous game that doesn’t work in every league, but it’s an interesting strategy. I know @joecatz has done it a few times with some success.

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I find that for this to be successful there need to be a few common variables:

  1. no one should have the ability to claim the player without making a cut. I’m in a league where one team has $60 open. not sure I make the cut there.
  2. It works better if there are few, if any teams, with open roster spots AND half salary available, once the player clears waivers.
  3. I always look at other teams rosters before I make this play and determine who the guys they would cut are if I owned that team to pick up the player. If I don’t LIKE any of those options, I don’t want to do it.

in the league where I cut Stanton, he was reauctioned at $43, and the one team I was hoping didn’t win did. However, I was able to add a $4 Mesoraco, $9 Wainwright, $6 TIm Anderson, $8 Yordano Ventura, $7 Kyle Lewis, $1 Hunter Renfroe, $19 Michael Brantley and a $3 Jose Reyes because of that cut, and subsequent drops that were made, and I still have $9 available. My cuts were lineup and roster filler.

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Well you can now throw a bunch of money at Gurriel.

I think this is spot on - if you’re cutting a major (high salary) player, you’re losing the right to trade them, so you essentially want to force others to cut players. Kind of a domino effect. But checking the available “funds” of your leaguemates is a major variable here.

Rules question about salary cap. Harper was cut by a team in my league at $78. He cleared waivers. I was the only team in the league with enough salary cap to meet the $39 minimum bid. I place a fair bid of $45, just to solidify my position, in case other teams made cuts, trades, etc, to loosen up salary cap, and monitored my position up until the auction close. No trades or cuts sufficient to outbid me.

Auction closed, and lo and behold, the Commissioner wins the auction with a $45 bid, which puts him at $36 over the salary cap (436), and 36 negative cash!!! What’s up with this. I posted on the chat board, and no one has said a word! How do I force the issue, or am I in a crooked league?

Edit: Now his buddy, the co-commissioner, is saying that the offending owner has an opportunity to make cuts to get under the cap limit. Is this valid? I thought you had to have the cap space to make the bid?

To add even more bullshit to the fire…Commissioner B, cut Harper, Commissioner A placed the illegal bid, and was awarded him

It is perfectly within the rules to claim or trade for a player that puts you over the cap limits. When over the cap your team is locked down so you can’t really do anything but cut until legal, so the frozen roster, along with standard rules imply that you must get legal as soon as possible. In one of my leagues we have a 48 hour rule, where the commish will get involved if a team has gone longer than 48 with an illegal roster. It is definitely AGAINST the rules to just sit with an illegal roster with cutting anyone for a long period of time.
Th big takeaway here is that you should probably not cut players anticipating the claim or auction of a player because you never really know if you’ll get them, so it’s likely you could have a temporary state of an illegal roster when you do win.

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In short it’s ok for your commish to bid $45 and win Harper even if it puts him over cap, but he MUST now get legal ASAP, either by cutting Harper or most likely lots of other players