Important Issue re: Marietta Reliever

During Spring Training this year, one of Marietta's excellent relievers, John Tozier was reported to have sustained a season-ending injury. Nate even referenced this in his post-Spring Training email to the league. However, Tozier did not show up as injured in the league file before the first sim and has, consequently, pitched (and pitched well) in six games since then.

There are, as often is the case in life, two possible explanations. One is that this occurred by happenstance as a result of a bug in the game. Bugs in the game that do weird things are nothing new to seasoned OOTP players. The other stems from the fact that Nate is simultaneously the commissioner, the person who ran the spring training sim, and the owner of Marietta.

I am not coming out and accusing Nate of misconduct. But, this was brought to my attention and Nate and I both recognize that it's the kind of thing that could look bad. And, as I hope Nate and I have tried to make clear, we want this league to succeed and that requires that the commissioners be free from any kind of suspicion or belief that the results are being manipulated. That is why, when I realized last season that I had inadvertently grabbed a free agent reliever before other players had the chance to sign him, I immediately released the reliever (taking the minimal salary hit) and refused to pick him back up despite the fact that my bullpen was abjectly awful.

Where do we go from here? I see two principle options. First, we go in and, using SuperCommissioner powers, re-injure Tozier for the rest of the season. Second, we let it go and let him keep playing.

So, this is how I propose to handle it. Please DO NOT comment in response to this blog post. Instead, send me an email with your thoughts about how to proceed. Both the identities of who responds and their responses will be confidential, both from Nate and from the other owners. Once I get a sense for whether this is something that troubles the league owners, I'll make the decision about how to proceed. Nate has already agreed in advance that he would agree to re-injuring the player if it's the best course of action.

Thanks.