Could use some unbiased opinions on a league matter

[SouthSideRyan]

My league has a 5 round prospect draft after the major league drafting rounds. The prospects are the property of the team who drafts them, but not on their active rosters until the owner chooses to add them. We have a posting on the league site of each team's prospects.

 

A month or so ago, a guy picked up Braun off FA. A few days back the commisioner realized he goofed on updating the prospect lists on the league site and that Braun was drafted in the prospect round, and never should've been able to be picked up as a FA. The owner who picked up Braun off FA argues that he deserves some form of compensation because he made corresponding moves/non-moves due to Braun's presence on his roster.

 

Moves he's made since picking up Braun

 

Traded Ordonez, Daric Barton, and Carlos Gonzalez for Homer Bailey and a 20th round pick.

 

Added:

Chad Billingsley

Jeremy Accardo

Carlos Gomez

 

Dropped:

Jason Varitek

Joe Smith

Joakim Soria

 

Your thoughts?

[Rob]

Well it's fairly obvious he didn't make any moves explicitly because of the situation, but he does have a legitimate gripe that he made non-moves because he had Braun.

 

I think you should probably poll your league owners to see if anybody made any offers involving a 3B that he passed on because he liked Braun.

[B]

That sucks. I say get a new commish.

[SouthSideRyan]

Well it's fairly obvious he didn't make any moves explicitly because of the situation, but he does have a legitimate gripe that he made non-moves because he had Braun.

 

I think you should probably poll your league owners to see if anybody made any offers involving a 3B that he passed on because he liked Braun.

 

Unlikely that anyone was offering him a 3B because he already has David Wright as well. My initial thought after reviewing his transactions were that he traded Ordonez because Braun could fill the UTIL spot, but that's unlikely as that trade happened just a few days after Braun was picked up, and it'd be pretty dumb to count on Braun to fill that spot the rest of the year based on such a small sample size.

 

That and he already brought up that trade as a reason for why he should get compensation, but he phrased in the sense that he gave up Barton in it since he had settled on Braun and Billy Butler as his Corner IFs. I'm still failing to see how Braun affects Daric Barton in any way though.(We don't use Corner IF as a position)

[cheapseats]

Well it's fairly obvious he didn't make any moves explicitly because of the situation, but he does have a legitimate gripe that he made non-moves because he had Braun.

 

I think you should probably poll your league owners to see if anybody made any offers involving a 3B that he passed on because he liked Braun.

 

Unlikely that anyone was offering him a 3B because he already has David Wright as well. My initial thought after reviewing his transactions were that he traded Ordonez because Braun could fill the UTIL spot, but that's unlikely as that trade happened just a few days after Braun was picked up, and it'd be pretty dumb to count on Braun to fill that spot the rest of the year based on such a small sample size.

 

Yes, that would be dumb, but it would not be dumb to count on Braun because PECOTA projected him to be one of the best hitters in baseball this year.

[Tracer Bullet]

That sucks, but he should only get compensation if he gives up all the stats he got from Braun for the past month. If it's a H2H league, you're probably not going to go back and delete Braun's stats from his team and refigure the results of those matchups, or in roto, reduce his totals for the year by what he got from Braun. So he got a benefit for the last month or so that he shouldn't have received. If you give him compensation on top of that, it's a windfall for him.

 

My question is - where was the team that drafted Braun during all of this? If I had the rights to a prospect like Braun on my team and saw that another team had signed him as a FA, I'd have been all over it within minutes of finding out (emailing the commish or the league, posting a message on the league board, etc). How did this take a month to come to light?

 

If it were up to me, I'd apologize to the guy if he made moves based on thinking Braun was available, but tell him the stats he got from Braun that he wasn't entitled to are more than fair compensation.

[SouthSideRyan]

As you could guess, the guy who drafted Braun as his prospect is horrible at fantasy baseball.

 

I argued exactly what you said GR, that his compensation was that he got free Ryan Braun for a month. If he had traded David Wright, I would be a lot more willing to give him some compensation, or force the trade to be reversed.