Anatomy of a Veto

It's always been my opinion that the veto rule in fantasy should be treated with the same mixture of reverence and aversion as a nuclear bomb.  The mere threat of its terrible power keeps people from committing actions that could possibly trigger its use.  In a good league it's never needed.  Managers know that if there's even a hint of collusion, or a trade so lopsided that it drastically effects the competitive balance of the league, their trade will be vetoed, and that's never a pretty situation.  Feelings can get hurt, manager relationships damaged and even sometimes can lead to a manager leaving the league.

However, I recently ran into a trade in my 12 team 5x5 keeper roto that was unbalanced that the prospect of a veto was immediately raised.  I wanted to take advantage of the situation to use it as an example of when I feel that a veto is necessary to protect the integrity of the league.  If any of the involved parties read the article and want to respond in the comments, I welcome their counter-arguments or further justification.  The trade is as follows:

[Name Redacted] Team 1 trades:
OF Jason Kubel
RP Aroldis Chapman
RP Jason Motte
C Matt Wieters
OF Jerry Sands

Team 2 trades:
OF Corey Hart
1B Kendrys Morales
RP Heath Bell
SP Matt Latos
3B Mark Reynolds

The justification offered up by Team 2 was that he was worried about Kendrys Morales' slow return from his broken leg as well as Matt Latos' shoulder, and was looking to get younger.  In a keeper league it's often necessary for a manager to at least partially dump a season in order to re-tool for the next year, or to secure a particularly valuable keeper prospect (we keep 6 in this league, with no penalty).  This sentiment is completely defensible.  My issues, and why I feel that this trade should have been vetoed, are: 1) Team 2 is getting not only the lesser players by comparison, but also giving up the top individual player, 2) Team 2 has acknowledged that they are making the trade with no intent to compete this season, 3) Team 2 had the ability to pick all but one of the players being traded to them (Wieters, who was kept by Team 1) in the draft, and chose not to, indicating that this is an overreaction to a small sample size), 4) Team 2 has, even after this trade guts his roster, much better keeper options than any that he is receiving, and finally 5) Team 2 did not attempt to gain a better offer from any other manager in the league.  This means that not only is Team 2 making a terrible trade for the short-term, he is also failing to improve his long-term ability to compete as well, and greatly boosting Team 1's chances to win in both of those scenarios.  The other 10 teams, myself included, are now not only forced to deal with a greatly bolstered Team 1, but also had no ability to mitigate that advantage by engaging in a bidding war that could have eventually pushed the compensation value to a reasonable level.

It's easy to have the reaction that "Managers value players differently" when it comes to a trade that appears lopsided on paper, but there's more at stake when it's a keeper league.  This trade has significantly reduced the level of competitiveness of the league by concentrating top talent within a smaller number of teams.  In a league where one team already boasts Pujols, Cabrera, Kershaw, Wright, Choo and King Felix any increase in the level of talent density means that fewer and fewer teams have a chance to win each season, meaning that fewer and fewer teams will be invested.  I certainly did not, and do not suspect any collusion in the deal above, but the fact that the team losing the deal has no chance of making up that gap in later seasons (Wieters, probably the biggest piece coming back, is blocked by Buster Posey at catcher on that team, unless he chooses to play a catcher at 1B) means that Team 1 essentially traded his bench for 5 legitimate top-100 fantasy players with no long-term harm.  No one wants to play in the AL East where you're a 95 win team or you're out, and if you turn "wins" into "points" that's exactly what this type of trade will turn the league into.