Gibbers v. the Darrell Dynasty League
The vote was as close as possible but the majority of DDL members decided that they no longer want Gibbers to be in the league. I reached out to Gibbers and informed him of this roughly 34 hours ago.
I want to take a moment to address the rationale for this unprecedented action.
There is no question in my mind that Gibbers was NOT colluding with jaysblue. Obviously there was a long track record of Gibbers giving jaysblue very favourable trades, but I think this was simply caused by jaysblue knowing how to most effectively communicate with Gibbers. For posterity, these are some of the trades between them:
August 2017: Zack Cozart to JB for Tulo, Steckenrider, and two late picks. Tulo likely was an addition to the trade after the fact to appease dissenters.
July 2017: Roberto Osuna to JB for Luke Weaver, 3 MiLB picks, and 2 waiver picks.
February 2016: Shelby Miller to JB for 3 MiLB picks.
March 2015: Starling Marte to JB for Heaney, Odorizzi, 1 MiLB pick.
June 2014: Buster Posey and Hutch to JB for Profar, Myers, Jhoulys Chacin.
Everybody makes bad trades. Taken individually these are largely palatable, but taken as group the trend is a bit uncomfortable. Gibbers made other bad trades with different owners (examples: Kyle Hendricks to me for two draft picks, Kelvin Herrera to Dinger for Andrew Chafin) so collusion seems out of the question, but there probably isn’t a more persistent example of one owner shuffling talent to another specific owner for lesser pieces in the league’s history. Possibly Boxy to me, but we'd have to do the math.
Jaysblue’s effectiveness at communicating with Gibbers highlights the main issue that rose to the surface in my reading of the situation: a frustration of the social relationship between Gibbers and the rest of the league. It’s clear that for a handful of reasons, over time, a good chunk of league owners lost any comfort in communication with Gibbers and/or they no longer enjoyed playing fantasy baseball with him. There could have been various reasons for this; most are speculation. Gibbers has displayed a somewhat abrasive personality at times, and his jokes about colluding with jaysblue didn’t sit well with people. His ostensible lack of desire to compete slowly grew very frustrating, evidenced by his obsession with trading all mature MLB assets, even those in their mid 20s, and habit for collecting an obscene and tactically ridiculous amount of draft picks. Perhaps some owners just want a more competitive league.
Regardless of each owner’s specific reasons, the vote was called and the results satisfied our voting rules for effecting a significant change to the league.
I want to stress that this situation absolutely has nothing to do with jaysblue, who is one of the most competitive members of the league, and should not reflect negatively on him whatsoever.
We need to thank Gibbers for being an active owner in the DDL for all these years. I hope this doesn’t bug him too much. It’s just fantasy baseball after all.
We can probably find our replacement by referencing the processes for replacing North and Min earlier this year. I forget who the runner-up candidates were.