would you say this guy is cheating?
 

Now I was always suspicious with this league I was in... the commish wins the world series with the Mariners and an amazing 120 win season. But I give him the benefit of the doubt and that he is an amazing GM, but then the latest Mariners trade happens...

Cardinals Get:

SP Joel Pineiro
MR Francisco Cordero
3B Phil Nevin

Mariners Get:

3B Albert Pujols
Minor League Chris Naverson
Cards 2004 1st rd pick

Looks like the Mariners got away with highway robbery right? Then I looked at the ratings of Joel Pineiro and Phil Nevin and they are 4 and 5 star studs. Pinero, I could see him develop into a 4 star pitcher since he is young... but Nevin is 32 years old and in Total Minors he is a 2 or 3 star player!!!

Some of these player profiles say "Won World Series With Seattle in 2003..."

http://mlb2.pc-sports.net/html/mlb2/p1718.html

But Ichrio's profile

http://mlb2.pc-sports.net/html/mlb2/p1043.html

Doesn't say anything about him being a part of the World Series team.

And I'm confused as why the profiles that do say "Won World Series With Seattle in 2003..." are printed three times, but I do know if you restore a league after the World Series it will print it multiple times like that (Yeah, I cheated on single player, heh). But cheating actual people in an online league is different than fooling a computer...

It just makes you wonder how the commish has managed to get such a loaded team with an excellent payroll of 53 million, not to mention the 4th best minor league system in the league... and a lot of players on his team look like they developed REAL GOOD AND REAL FAST. And coming off their 120 win world series championship season, its no surprise they are right back on top with a 38-7 record.

http://mlb2.pc-sports.net/html/mlb2/team13.html

What do you think... is the guy a cheater or am I just one crazy paranoid?

If what you say is true about the multiple World Series messages in the player history, than I'd certainly be very suspicious indeed.

Do you folks you AIM/ICQ/something to talk trade and such in that league.... if so... do you ever see the Cards and Mariners GM on at the same time? Talked to both at any great length? I for one can often pick up on everyone's unique IM "style" in about 5-10 mins of convo...

That being said.... commish's usually make damn fine GMs ;)

It's hard to tell. The fact that the players' history states they have won the 2003 WS three times raises a red flag to me. I wouldn't spend a lot of time trying to prove he's cheating. I would probably just leave that league and join another one. There are good ones out there that have openings.

Yeah the NLB has an opening :)

Pujols looks kind of strange. The team page shows that in 2004, he has stats of .337-7-28 for the first two months of the year. But if you look at his player page, it shows zero stats for 2004.

Guerrero looked interesting also. He was acquired for Barry Bonds and J Bunting. I hope Bunting was a superstar in the making, because I can't imagine trading a 40 yr old Bonds for a 27 yr old superstar with talent of B/G/A/B/A

Quite a team there... only one regular has AVG for hit talent, the rest are Good with several Brilliants. And the pitching is very nice. Roy Oswalt looks like a real stud but has no info on how he went from Houston to Seattle. If it was a trade, it doesn't show in the history and it couldn't be an FA signing since he's making the league minimum. And another thing I've never seen before is to have three of four starting pitchers with a rating of Brilliant talent for giving up hits.

This team should be enshrined in the hall of fame. And most are under 30 so it will be a long time before anyone dethrones him.

I think the one that would bother me the most is this one.

Saturday 2/24/2004 :

Houston: Released P Francisco Cordero.
Seattle : Free agent Francisco Cordero has been signed to a contract of $700,000 per year, for 1 years.


http://mlb2.pc-sports.net/html/mlb2/p164.html


I'm not saying that I would suspect anything, but since you asked...

Check out Cordero's history.

Wow... good eye jjd. Cordero looks like a smoking gun to me, with all those FA signings in his history. I'd be fairly convinced something was up if I was in that guy's league.

Yeah, that's a pretty good bargain when you sign him for almost 7 million only to pick him up after Houston dropped him for 10 cents on the dollar.




Calling HornsManiac...

Jason,

I read your post over at eWp...to be honest, I believe everyone here kind of said what I would have over there. There's definitely something up here...however, calling attention to it, when you can't be sure, may prove to do nothing.

One question I have to ask...did they sim 2003 or play it? I'm rather confused by their whole history, to be honest. If they simmed to 2004 and picked up there...yes, I would *definitely* be concerned, and I'd just pack up and leave.

The other thing that concerns me is the history section...what it seems like is that Seattle won in seven games...but did they really? I'm not positive how else I can explain it...but seeing three sets of awards and stats makes me wonder...

-John

Edited - Never mind

Well, thanks everyone, I posted here because I was seriously considering to leave the league and that is exactly what I'm going to do since my observations seem to be correct. I'm not even going to say anything, just stop participating I figure the rest of the GMs can pick up on this strange behavior without me trying to create a stir within the league.

And John, the 2003 season was the first season that was simmed out with human owners and the start of the league.

Well, off of about 54 million dollars, I put together a winning seattle team in the first year, and got young pitching:)

but it looks like he could be cheating, so I dont know...

I'm not saying that it couldn't be done. I'm also not saying that the guy is cheating since I don't know enough about the league. However, I'll post this link again. This is for Francisco Cordero.

It sure looks to me like something screwy is going on here.

http://mlb2.pc-sports.net/html/mlb2/p164.html


In case you don't want to look at the link, here is what Cordero's history says.



Signed as a free agent by Seattle on 1/28/2004 to a 7-year deal worth $6,500,000 per year...
Signed as a free agent by Seattle on 2/5/2004 to a 7-year deal worth $6,700,000 per year...
Signed as a free agent by Houston on 2/2/2004 to a 3-year deal worth $4,900,000 per year...
Released by Houston on 2/24/2004...
Signed as a free agent by Seattle on 2/24/2004 to a 1-year deal worth $700,000 per year...


Just some quick digging and I noticed a whole bunch of inconsistencies in the web pages. What they mean, I don't know. But if I were an owner in the league, I would certainly be asking some questions.

I know nothing about this league you are in but if you are in a league that you feel has this many concerns and an over-zealous Commissioner hell bent on winning the Championship at the expense of the well-being of the league, I'd get out.

The thing that seems odd to me is that most of the league pages have information from the prior year on them. When you proceed to next season, this information is not saved there. Something definitely happened during the off-season. Plus, looking at the league, Nevin and Cordero are still on Seattle. How is that?

My guess is the player pages haven't been updated.

Alright, I feel stupid now for overlooking the obvious. :)

Or this little tidbit from Ryan Christianson's history.


Won World Series with Seattle in 2003...
Won World Series with Seattle in 2003...
Won World Series with Seattle in 2003...
Had first career hit (double) on 4/2/2004, off John Lackey (ANA)...
Hit first career homerun on 4/13/2004, off Justin Wayne (CHA)...
[bold]Was selected to the 2004 Allstar game...[/bold]
Had first career hit on 4/1/2004, off Kevin Appier (ANA)...
Hit first career homerun on 4/1/2004, off Kevin Appier (ANA)...

http://mlb2.pc-sports.net/html/mlb2/p1718.html


The date on the standings page is 5/21/2004. That must have been one early all-star game.

He had his first career hit and home run happen twice too.

There's some simming ahead going on for sure...

Whoa, I never noticed that... I'm pretty sure that is a case of backing up the league files and then restoring the league files if a week of simming didn't go as well as you would've liked...

Anyways, like I said I'm done with this league... I'd be an idiot to stay there.