How long has RotoUmpire been around?
This service started as simply the “Fantasy Baseball Commish Service” way back in the year 2000 with one customer. There was no similar commercial service in the market at that time, and we’ve managed to outlive several. We’ve grown significantly since those humble beginnings and over the past 18 years we’ve helped hundreds of commissioners and leagues stay fair. The RotoUmpire began servicing fantasy football leagues in 2017.
What are the top 10 reasons to use the RotoUmpire service?
1. Your league consistently loses owners from year to year thanks to “unfair trading.”
2. Your league has caught people colluding and trust between owners is at a low-point.
3. You have an owner or owners who complain about every trade made.
4. You have several trade regulation methods implemented but extremely imbalanced trades still somehow get through.
5. Your league is ultra-competitive.
6. You’re an extremely fair commissioner but you still get headaches from owners who question your impartiality.
7. You use a committee but you or your league has learned that it’s still possible for collective biased opinions to win through.
8. You’re in a competitive league not using the service and want to see if a trade is fair or not (either already made by other owners or one you’re thinking of making).
9. Your league message boards or e-mails are filled with accusations and complaints instead of trade offers and trash talk.
10. You’ve tried other services and now want to use the oldest and best.
How
fast does my league get a recommendation on a disputed trade?
All resolutions from the RotoUmpire are guaranteed within 72 hours. Most resolutions are returned within 24 to 48 hours. Our EXPRESS service guarantees a resolution within 24 hours.
What
is an incident?
An incident is a disputed trade or some other issue that your league needs some guidance with.
What
if we don't like your decision?
Keep in mind that though we perform statistical analysis and take many factors into consideration, there is no "magic formula" that tells us if a trade is fair or not. By necessity, our decisions are almost entirely based on our opinions as students of the game and as long-time fantasy veterans, and the final decision is usually a collaboration of several of our experts. You may or may not agree with our opinions and analysis - it's happened before. Because it is our opinion based on the facts available, nothing that we could hear or read after the decision will change our minds on the subject. (Note: Of course, since this is a completely manual resolution, errors in interpretation can happen. If we make an error in terms of players or scoring categories or any other specific league rule, we will be more than happy to reanalyze the deal at no extra charge to you to correct our error.) Much like an umpire in real baseball calling balls and strikes, we at RotoUmpire are just telling you how we see it. And, just like said umpire, we won't change our call. Just about every trade sent to us is going to have one party that does not like our decision. A couple of times, we've had several owners in a league not like our decision. But our job is not to make every owner in a league happy - it's simply to call deals as we see them to the benefit of the entire league - not the benefit or happiness of individual owners.
How can our league best use your service?
Please keep in mind that most leagues use our service because they are having problems keeping the peace. In some cases, the commissioner uses RotoUmpire on his or her own to help be impartial. In other cases, a league vote will send a deal to our service. In yet other cases, one protest is enough for a deal to be sent to RotoUmpire.
Some of our leagues have adopted this payment method as a way to use RotoUmpire: If a trade is protested by someone in the league and the trade is upheld, then the protester should pay for the incident. If the trade is overturned, then the teams involved in the trade pay for the RotoUmpire fees. This seems to have had a good effect on the leagues in which this payment plan is used (The threat of a monetary penalty acts as a deterrent for both lopsided deals and frivolous protests and the RotoUmpire can benefit your league without necessarily costing a dime) and we recommend other leagues adopting this as well.
Are
just player stats used to determine if a trade is fair?
No! Many factors are considered when deeming whether or not a certain trade is fair. The players' current performance as well as their performance over the past few seasons is evaluated. Player salaries play a large role if your league is a keeper league. League standings are also considered, especially if a team at the top of the league is dealing with one at the bottom. Also considered are things like injury history, potential playing time for the rest of the season and anything else that may possibly affect the deal are taken into consideration. The bottom line is that the opinions of our experts are used in combination with all of these facts to result in a recommendation for the good of your league..
How does the Express service work?
If using our express service, a resolution is guaranteed within 24 hours, but the express service will cost one additional incident from your account. Other than that, express incidents get the same detailed attention as all other incidents we review.
Does
the RotoUmpire Service resolve disputes other than trades?
Absolutely! The RotoUmpire Service is designed to resolve ANY disputes in your league. While the majority of problems we deal with involve trades, other problems regarding rule interpretations or any other issues can be submitted to the RotoUmpire for a recommendation. Basically, whenever an important decision needs to be made in your league and you need an unbiased ruling, we'll be there.
My league uses some non-standard rules, can the RotoUmpire help with our specific rules?
When you sign up for our service, we have dozens of settings that you supply that give us all the information we need to make a ruling for your customized league rules. Different scoring categories, keeper rules and plenty of other options are available for your choosing.
Are
contracts and player salaries factored into the recommendations?
Absolutely. All keeper information is considered while we evaluate all trades. When you sign up for our service, you select a "dump trade philosophy" that your league wants to use. Based on the "dump trade philosophy" your league chooses, different deals will be rated differently.
What
are the different ratings given to each trade recommendation?
The chart below describes how your league's "dump trade philosophy"
factors into our recommendation:
The following is a general description of the criteria for the ratings each trade
will receive once an incident is submitted. Based on a combination of the rating
given and
the
league
stance on dump trades, the trade will be recommended to Pass or Fail.
| Rating |
Description |
Who Should Use This Rating? |
| 1 |
The worst possible trade in terms of equity. There is almost nothing good to say about this for either the current season or future seasons. A deal of this level might warrant further league investigation as collusion. |
|
| 2 |
A very bad deal where one team is getting a very large edge. |
A league would want to select this rating if they want to allow nearly every deal to be passed. Selecting this rating will prevent deals that are only the most blatantly lopsided and/or collusional. |
| 3 |
A bad deal where one team is getting a large edge. 3 and 4 ratings are, for the average league, the difference between a pass and a fail recommendation. It is usually a tough sell to make a case for the team getting the short end of the stick. |
A league would want to select this rating if they want to give owners a lot of leeway to get a steal that might have some impact on league balance, while curtailing most of the really bad and/or collusional deals. |
| 4 |
A not-so-good deal where one team is getting a sizeable edge. A trade rated a 4 usually involves a decent-sized difference, but the return package for the short-end team is not perceived as enough to tip the scales of league balance too heavily. |
A league would want to select this rating if they want to give owners a little leeway to get a steal that doesn't have a major impact on league balance, while curtailing most of the really bad and/or collusional deals. |
| 5 |
A good deal where the sides are relatively equal, but one team is still getting a slight edge. |
A league would want to select this rating if they want to restrict all but the most fair dump type deals and most non-dump deals. |
| 6 |
A perfectly even trade. Less than 3% of all deals submitted last season were deemed perfectly even. |
A league would want to select this if they want to restrict almost all trading, and only let the most equitable deals pass. |
For example, if a league determines that they want all trades of rating 4
or higher to be passed, any trade that we rate a 4, 5 or 6 will come with a
recommendation that the trade be allowed to stand. If we rate any trade as
a 1, 2 or 3, we will recommend that the trade not be allowed to stand.
Why are the services considered 'unbiased'?
The RotoUmpire staff has no affiliation with any individual owner in your league and we have no interest in which team wins your league. No matter how fair your league commissioner is, some owner will consider his or her rulings as biased and unfair. That aspect is completely eliminated by using our services.
Who are these "experts" that recommend trade solutions?
Our main two experts are Scott Pisani and Robert Burghardt. Each has been playing rotisserie/fantasy baseball (and football) since 1988. Mr. Pisani has placed in at least one league in every single season, with the pinnacle of winning all five leagues he participated in during a single season. He has been a regular contributor to the TG Fantasy Baseball site, including a one-year stint as the "Roto-Sherpa", and has had articles featured on other fantasy sites. Mr. Burghardt is the creator and owner of the TG Fantasy Baseball web site, which he has run since it was created as a tiny Geocities site in 1994. Mr. Burghardt has participated in numerous
expert leagues including CBS Sportsline's Writers league, PROFL and Fantasy Sports R Us National League. Each has turned his respective 30+ years of fantasy experience to the benefit of the RotoUmpire customers.
When a trade dispute is entered, what kind of response is given?
The recommendations provided are not a simple yes and no answer. We evaluate the deal thoroughly and provide complete opinions on all players involved in the deal as well as the thought process involved in reaching a recommendation. Here's a sample.
How many trades do you recommend being overturned?
While we don't set a quota or number of trades that we overturn, it has been our experience that more than half of all deals sent to us are recommended to stand.
Why aren't dump Trades in the pro sports a good justification for dump trades in fantasy?
Reviewing as many trades as we have over the years, we've heard countless arguments why a trade should be considered fair. One that comes up from time to time is the argument that a major league team made a trade of similar return, perhaps even involving the exact people, and thus it should be fair.
Despite what may happen in real life, we have a long-standing rule of thumb when it comes to fantasy baseball and football - an unproven minor leaguer or rookie with no immediate path to the majors or immediate football value has far less value than an active, contributing player. There's a lot of justification for this school of
thought. Especially considering guys who are several years from the majors, there is so much that can happen that can lower a player's value. He can get hurt, for baseball players, the major league club could make moves that block his path, his football coach could fall out of favor with him, he could get traded into a worse situation, he can simply not acclimate to higher levels of play, etc.
Why aren't major league teams concerned about this? Well, first off, they have the luxury of actually controlling the fate of that player they are acquiring. Of course they can't control injuries - but if they want that player to make the major leagues, he makes the major leagues - whenever they want him to. They most often actually have a strategy then can enact concerning that player when they acquire him that will maximize their investment. Fantasy teams have no such ability - owners are at the mercy of the players major league club.
Another justification for major league dump trades is finances. Even these trades undergo close scrutiny from the commissioners office, but profit and loss is a fact of life for an actual business. The only financial loss in a fantasy league is not winning. There are no actual day to day business expenses, and not winning is a fact for over 75% of most
league participants. So if a fantasy team dumps a bunch of high salary players for some cheap players, they get absolutely no guaranteed benefit back. It's not like they can immediately start turning a profit from the decreased expenses. Sure, it's a move that could perhaps turn a theoretical profit a year or two down the line, but there is nothing close to a guarantee it will be so.
That's not to say that there's never an argument for a dump trade to be fair in fantasy. We will often consider blue-chip prospects or rookies - usually the consensus top 3 or 4 prospects in the minor leagues, who are relatively
close to the majors or the highly touted football rookies - to have value near or at that of a currently contributing
player. In some cases, especially if they call up and dominate, higher. But this exception applies to a very small minority of minor leaguers and rookies in any given season.
The bottom line remains - Only an active, productive player can help you win your league. With just about any minor leaguer, there's no guarantee how active or how productive he will be - and that uncertainty increases exponentially the further away he is from the bigs. Fantasy Sports are a form of gambling, so we don't mind seeing a bit of a gamble
now and then when a trade is made - but far too often we're seeing sure things for huge risks being exchanged, and more often than not, depending on the league settings, that will get squashed.
If you have any questions about this service, please feel free to contact us.
