In the title I'm using retard in its original meaning of slowing down, of course.

How can fire sells be discouraged fairly and reasonably? In our keeper league we keep three players one round ahead of where they were drafted the year before for a maximum of three years.
This year, for whatever reason, there has been a rash of fire sales, some illogical and some reasonable. I can admit to starting the trend after starting 2-6, in 9th place, and looking at several of my top players struggling with injuries, I posted a message saying I was interested in trading away anybody on my team for high draft picks. I wound up grabbing two first round picks, a second round pick, a fourth round pick, and a fifth round pick, leaving me with ten picks in the first five rounds next year (and obviously not many picks after that).

Since then, three other teams have posted interest in having a firesale including the 4th and 5th place teams... People saw me accumulate what looks like a killer draft setup for next year and they wanted to repeat. Obviously not many high picks are left at this point, but three more trades involving high draft picks have been made this week, two of them on the deadline. People are starting to grumble that trades like Calvin Johnson and a 20th round pick for Josh Gordon and a 2nd round pick are going to unbalance the league and that if every team not in the top 3 or 4 is trying to firesale that whichever contender gets to them first has a massive advantage.

How can a mass firesale be handled fairly? When I got rid of my stars, I got decent players in return. I had to trade some pretty solid draft picks in exchange instead of tossing out my last few picks, but I feel like that made the trades more fair. Seeing the 4th place team offering up a fire sale saying, "it may look like i have a good team but i really dont" (top 4 teams make the playoffs so this is a playoff team saying this as he tries to fire sale) makes me pretty wary. i dont want to see the league get to where people are dumping their team at midweason if they dnt theyll be in first place. One or two firesale-type trades every now and then won't kill a league, but I can see multiple deals every year doing so.

Has anyone run into this problem and come up with a creative solution? I don't want to ban fire sales because that's impossible to fairly enforce and I'm a small government kind of guy. I don't know that I'd feel comfortable limiting the number of picks that can be traded, either. Is there a legitimate way to discourage mass suicide fire sales while still being fair? Nobody wants the Miami Marlins, but nobody wants Kim Jon-Il, either.

That is definitely the struggle of keeper leagues in a nutshell, especially with draft picks now involved in the trading process.

Honestly, don't have any great suggestions. Would make the soft suggestion of expanding keepers to where people could pick between 3 and up to a maximum of maybe 6. Could reduce certain players being fodder for this time of year.

Other suggestions that are more how to calm people than to fix things. One would be to remind people of a trade they hadn't liked in the past which actually worked out the opposite of what was expected. One of those surefire trades that ended up being a bust for the clearcut winner. The second thing i'd do is to remind people of league integrity; without it, there's no league. Third and final, I'd remind everyone that in the end, it's just a game but a game is only fun when it's fair; like a race, if the person who was already in 1st took a shortcut off the defined track, the runners behind him will eventually just stop running with him.

In the end, you've got a sticky situation on hand but the fact is unless there's collusion, you can't fully step in and deny the trades without drawing a line. I'd mention the info above and hope people take it into consideration.

Thanks Sky, that's about as good as advice as I could hope for.

Thankfully nobody is completely pissed off or livid or anything right now, a few managers are just starting to get irritated and I can see the animosity growing over the off-season if it isn't at least partially addressed now. The argument is more of a, "When I traded my high round pick for A.J. Green I included a respectable WR in Malcolm Floyd and now you're throwing Josh Gordon away to snag Calvin Johnson? I don't care how it evens out next season, you're in a playoff race with me this season" right now as opposed to the classic, "THIS LEAGUE IS BULLS%@#$ I'M DROPPING ALL OF MY PLAYERS AND QUITTING". Since we know each other I don't think it'll come to the latter, but I won't take that for granted, lol.

I definitely like the idea of reminding people that trades don't always turn out as badly as they might seem; I have the perfect trade in mind from two years ago that went through endless debate when it happened and it turned out to be pretty even by the end of the year.

Yeah, one of those situations where I wish I had a great suggestion but the reality is 'hope everyone keeps a nominal sense of decency in thinking about what they're doing not just for their team but for the league.' And if not, F THIS LEAGUE, I'M OUTTA HERE...I keed. Hope it doesn't get crazy on ya!

Haha, yeah, everyone ought to want to keep the league stable and competitive because we've gone three straight years with the same people and we're all either related to each other or have known each other our whole lives. I might say "F THIS LEAGUE, I'M NOT GONNA COMMISH ANYMORE" though, if anyone gets mad everyone expects me to immediately step in and fix it and that's not always easy.

I think that's why I like RCL's so much.

Yeah, I'm good HS friends with the Commish from my main keeper league. When things get bad, I always remind him I'm merely bitching to him because he and I think similarly in terms of fantasy sports and the idea of value and not because I want him to fix things as the Commish. It's a tough job, having been one a few times for public leagues when people get rude/shitty, it's really hard to keep it even while making sure everyone still enjoys themselves.

Of course, if you go all Cartman on them and say screw you guys, I'm goin home I wouldn't blame you

Agree about the once a year leagues and yet there's something special about keepers. It's nice drafting Jimmy Graham late in 2011...but then you get forced to draft him in the second round the next year unless it's a keeper. Anyways, hope the trade season blows over and people get back to enjoying the damn game for ya.

The Cartman response is always a great one! And yeah, I get a call or a text over pretty much everything that happens in the league, and because all trade protests have to be publicly posted and explained I don't understand why people go through me instead of responding to each other. Maybe they're taking the same approach as you and are just talking it over with me because we think similarly, but it definitely doesn't seem that way in some instances.
The good thing is that we get together on a regular basis and always wind up talking sports, which usually fixes any pent up anger in people. We set a league record by making 6 trades in one day when 5 of us went to a Braves game this summer; we can't help talking about it! I just don't like the negative talking.

That's really all that matters. As long as everyone can go back to enjoying it at some point, that's what makes it worthwhile.