Sim's Done

Game Date:  Mar 11 2030

Next sim:  Thursday evening.

Frank Martini...New Owner

My name is Frank and I was invited to the league through Fred.  We work at the post office together and he's had nothing but great things to say about the league and his experience.  Once he mentioned that there was a team available I jumped at the chance.  I look forward to getting to know the other players throughout my time here.

Sim's Done

Game Date:  Mar 4 2030

First week of spring training is done.

As a side note, please ignore the news item about Thomas Kerner taking control of Atlanta.  He actually is the new owner of the Norfolk (now Wilmington) franchise.  Atlanta will have a new owner soon.  The news item is a result of an error I made in setting up the new owner.

Next sim:  Monday.

Brick trades with Appalachian

Brick and Appalachian were finally able to pull a deal...
 Brick send to Appalachian 1.Roberto Norales SP ML
                                             2.Tony Lopez 1B AAA
Appalachian send to Brick 1.Gustavo Melendez SP...both GM'S failed earlier to produce a deal prior to the rule 5 draft finally get one done

Welcome To Spring Training

Game Date:  Feb 25 2030

Welcome one and all, to Spring Training of the 29th season of SDMBOOTP baseball.  Spring Training, that wonderful time of year where youngsters dream of landing a spot in the bigs, when veterans and managers dream of hoisting a trophy aloft in October and when every team, no matter how bad, carries a at least a glimmer of hope of walking away with the championship.

Next sim:  Wednesday evening.

Sim's Done (sort of)

Game Date:  Feb 22 2030

Notes:

• The schedule has been changed to balanced.
• The media revenue amounts were adjusted by the game automatically, as they are each pre-season.  I have adjusted them manually to match the formula that we voted on last year.
• The Norfolk Tides have officially moved and are now the Wilmington Atlantics
• I halted the sim a few days early to give an owner the chance to deal with a DFA situation.

Next sim (which *will* take us to Spring Training) will be on Monday night.

Schedule

Michael and I have discussed the matter.  Considering the fact that the switch was unintentional (and certainly not discussed with everyone beforehand) and that there are enough people who are not in favor of it, we will switch the schedule back to a balanced one.

I have not yet had a chance to look into the marketing budget issue.

Zev

Introducing... Me

Hello Everyone,

I've been asked to make an introductory post, so first, thank you all for the invitation. This looks like it's an active league with committed managers, so I look forward to playing with you all.

My name is Tom; I'm 48 and live in Wilmington, North Carolina. I've played OOTP the past 3-4 years, which began after a somewhat lengthy hiatus from baseball sims due to (a) having children, and (b) getting addicted to a soccer simulation game called Football Manager. If you've ever played that, you know how it gets; artery-throbbing screams at your monitor because you were 30 seconds away from getting Havant & Waterlooville promoted to the 5th division of English soccer and now you've got to slog through another offseason of convincing unemployed lorry drivers to accept part time work playing for your club just to get another shot at glory while your disgruntled team captain is demanding improvements to his outrageous $150.00/month salary and upsetting his teammates, well... that's the kind of excitement that just sucked me right into a dang vortex for the better part of 15 years. It's just hard to find that kind of quality drama anywhere else.

But baseball sims were always my first love -- first it was board games like Statis-Pro, then PC games like Micro League, Diamond Mind, High Heat, Tony LaRussa, and all that.  My favorite thing to do every year when OOTP comes out is play as the Seattle Pilots (possibly stemming from my adolescent fascination with the book Ball Four).  I have yet to make them successful, in any edition of OOTP, even after, in some cases, 10 seasons of trying.  So this crappy team I've opted to take over is right in my wheelhouse.

Anyway, my email address is thomas.kerner@gmail.com.  I am slow to ponder trade proposals, unless there's somebody involved that I already had my eye on, in which case, I will show interest, which will lead you to hesitate, and the deal will change a few times, and then it will just vaporize. Anyway, as is typically the case, I've surely said too much, but please feel free to say hello, or offer me your ten best draft picks over the next 3 seasons for Herschel Walker.

Rain Delay

At the request of a team owner, I'm going to hold the next sim until Saturday night.

During that time, Michael and I will discuss the schedule issue based on the feedback on the previous post.  As always, further discussion is always welcome.

Zev

Sim's Done

Game Date:  Feb 18 2030

Signings:
Atlanta:  RP Bruce Roughly (Maui), 1y / $422k
Houston:  SP Kevin Kepner (Highland) 2y / $4.96m
Atlanta: 1B Jesus Flores (Brick) 1y / $464k
Philadelphia SP John Ryan (extension) 1y / $1.22m
Atlanta:  3B Richard Bender (Houston) 1y / $540k

Note:  When the schedule was rebuilt after realignment, the computer chose an unbalanced schedule.  Both Michael and I are inclined to keep it unless there is significant opposition.

Next sim:  Tuesday night.

Sim's Done!

Game Date:  Feb 11 2030

Signings:

Houston: 3B Butch Patton (Appalachian), 1 yr/$420K
Houston: SP Peter Payton (Houston), 1 yr/$338k
Seattle:  RP Pat Carmichael (extension) 4 yrs/$16m
Philadelphia: 1B Manuel Hidalgo (extension), 1 yr/$5m
Philadelphia: SP Spike Baez (extension), 1 yr/$3.3m
Philadelphia:  SP Ivan Gallardo (Houston), 2 yrs/$7m
Norfolk: RF Jeremy McCullough (Philadelphia) 1 yr/$406k
Atlanta: SP Jesus Garcia (Houston) 1 yr/$458k

Please note that realignment has been completed.

And, in case you missed it, please be sure to check out the plaques for our newest Hall of Famers!

Next sim:  Sunday night

New Hall of Fame Plaques

We recently celebrated the careers of four of our immortals by enshrining them in the Hall of Fame, our largest class of honorees ever.

 Their plaques are now ready to be unveiled, and so, without further ado, I present...

(click on the plaques to view them larger)

As always, you can view the plaques for all of our Hall of Famers in our Hall of Fame

Discussion: Playoff expansion

As there was no objection to re-alignment, the divisions will be altered in the next sim, with the following teams in each division (names TBA):

• Seattle, Antelope Valley, Appalachian, Highland
• Brick, Brooklyn, Mepkin Abbey, Houston
• Maui, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Norfolk

We will repeat this process in ten seasons, before the start of the 2040 season.

Now, let's talk about playoff expansion. Currently, we have four teams qualify, and with the old division structure, that almost always meant that two teams from the (old) Zotti division would qualify: Seattle and whichever team finished 2nd. I think that the new division structure will increase competition, and create new rivalries. 

As you know, we currently have two openings, the most we have ever had. Part of the reason we have openings is owner engagement. If your team isn't competitive, it's hard to remain interested. To help increase interest, I'm suggesting we expand the playoffs to a second wild card team, and have a short 1- or 3-game wild card game/series to have more teams active and in the hunt come September. Going back to last season, I posted this comment before the final sim of the regular season:

Let's visit another imaginary universe, where there are two Wild Card teams. While Maui and Antelope Valley are fighting for the division title, both are still in play for the final Wild Card spot. 

In that race, Appalachian has a four game lead with six to play, but Antelope Valley (or Maui), Shackamaxon, and even Houston are still alive as the final sim approaches. All want their chance to face Brick in the Wild Card round, but, instead, all are planning for 2030 and beyond.

If we had a second wild card team last season, half the league still had a shot at a playoff spot going into the final sim of the year.I refuse to think that's a bad thing. In the past, we've had 90+ win teams get left out of the postseason (before we had re-alignment and the Wild Card, there was a 100+ win team that was left home).

Adding a second wild card team will shake up the postseason. Here's my idea:

(In that screenshot, seeds 2 and 3 aren't shown, but they're below the Bye @ Seed #1. Both 2 and 3 would get byes and play each other in the League Championship.)

With this change, the three division winners would qualify, and the next two best teams would play a 1- or 3-game play-in game/series to qualify for the League Championship, and the right to get stomped by (most likely) Seattle in that round. This would reward the division winners by giving them a short break (to rest their players, and setup their playoff rotation), and add an exciting win-or-die game or series. For the purposes of this screenshot, I made it a 1-1-1 best of three series, but a one-game play-in is also an option. We can even have a three game series where seed 4 hosts all three games against seed 5, really stacking the odds against a possible 80-win team that squeaks in to seed #5.

There will be more competition, and more competitive teams later in the season each year.

I have tested this configuration in a test league, and it works well. Sometimes the Wild Card winner gets on a roll and wins it all, but usually they don't. The three division winners get an extra couple of days as a reward, and then the second round will have the #1 seed play the wild card team (regardless of what division they came from).

I can think of one downside to this: player development. Last season, had my team been eliminated in mid-to-late August, so I decided to play some prospects in September to give them a taste of the majors. Had my team been in the hunt for a playoff spot, I might not have let a prospect like Jesus Mejia start 14 games in September. Still, that's a good problem to have, I think.

What do you think? Should we add a second Wild Card team, and, if so, should the Wild Card round be a three-game series, or a single play-in game?

Sim's Done

Game Date: Feb 4 2030

Don't forget to adjust your scouting budgets during the pre-season!

Next sim:  Thursday night.

Name change

With the start of the 2030 season, and the beginning of the fourth decade in our league, young thirteen-year-old Madeleine Weintraub, marketing director of the team that has called the Delaware Valley home for the past eleven seasons, has issued a statement:

"The team formerly known as the Alaska Kodiaks, Stockholm Sluggers, Mighty Manatees of Florida Baseball Club, South Bay Scorpions, Los Angeles Scorpions, and Shackamaxon Lenape is now to be known as the Philadelphia Hornets.

"Talking with my friends at middle school, and they know about our team, with our dreamy ace starter Alejandro Baez, and totally hot slugger Benjamin Anderson, but they can't pronounce the name, and it gets misspelled all the time."

The team's name change is effective immediately, and Ms Weintraub and the rest of the marketing team will be working hard (after completing their homework, of course) on new branding and marketing ideas for the upcoming season.

Sim's Done! Welcome to the Pre-Season

Game Date:  Jan 28 2030

Next sim:  Tuesday night.

Sim's Done

Game Date:  Jan 25 2030

First of all, thank you to Michael for running the last few sims.  It is greatly appreciated.

I cut this sim a bit short to stop before the pre-season.  Next sim will be Sunday.

Sim's Done

Game Date: January 21, 2030

Signing: Atlanta signed 2B Pedro Campos (Houston) - 1 year / $710,000

Next Sim: Thursday night. This will take us to the start of the preseason.

I'm hoping to implement the re-alignment plan when the preseason starts, unless there's a strong objection. No one in any comment thread has objected to the plan, so I'm hoping that we can start shaking up the divisions every decade.

Next discussion topic I'll raise (on Thursday or Friday) will be playoff expansion.

Sim's Done -- Four enter the Hall of Fame

Game Date: January 14, 2030

League News: Four players, headlined by outfielder Brian Frison (97.3% of the vote in his first year) and 1B Luis Jeon (91.2% in his first year), were elected to the SDMB League Hall of Fame in this sim. Others receiving at least 75% of the vote include starter John Okane and closer Timothy Vallejo, both inducted in their second season of eligibility.

No other player received more than 50% of the vote.

Signings:

• Atlanta signed C Chet Brown (Antelope Valley) - 1 year / $520,000
• Atlanta signed RP Ray Lewis (Baltimore by way of Houston) - 1 year / $630,000
• Atlanta re-signed 3B Greg Osborne - 1 year / $600,000
• Seattle signed SS Miguel Martinez (Mepkin Abbey) - 1 year / $650,000
• Atlanta signed SP Bill Mobley (Houston) - 1 year / 350,000
• Houston re-signed SP Adam Harrison - 1 year / $492,000

Next Sim: Wednesday night. The preseason is almost here!