I disagree with your argument Rob, on two levels.

First, trades should only be blocked if there is a clear indication of fraud (two teams really being run to build only one of them up) or back-scratching going on (a deal in league A is balanced out by a deal in league B). It isn't to keep competitive balance. As is often the case, sometimes a trade is unbalanced in terms of talent but is balanced in terms of team need. If Mike insists on reviewing trades he needs to be sure he is talking about the right stats and at least looks at the rosters before he blocks.

Second, while I appreciate that people want to defend Mike, he isn't doing this as a charity - we are his paying customers, and while maybe this hasn't become the sustainable business he might have hoped for, at the same time he should be getting revenue of around $2,000 a year per league, and that's assuming only 16 active, paying owners. Since the last game update (2-3 years ago?), what have the revenues been - $200,000 or more?

This is either a community or a business. When people have offered to run abandoned teams, or police trades themselves, or suggest changes to the game engine or improvements to the stats, they have not been taken up on their offers, presumably because Mike wants to keep control of his business. But when people complain about lack of updates, poor communication, delays and so on, the reponse is normally that this is a community, and we need to give them some slack.

You can't have it both ways.