Alright Boyz, Here We Go!!!! (OOTP 2007 release thoughts!!!)

[Markus Heinsohn]

Originally Posted by cartman

I have noticed that in the early part of the century, if a player enters free agency, they almost always retire. This happened in one sim I ran with George Herman Ruth. He became a free agent in 1925 after batting .350 with 59 homers. He retired that year.

That's pretty weird, I haven't seen this in the release version. But I'll look into it

[SirFozzie]

Hey Markus> Any chance that a patch could improve associating feeder leagues? I want to be able to take my college mod and associate it with a big league, but I can't, because you have to create the league as a feeder.. you can't create the league and THEN make it a feeder :/

[Eilim]

Looking for some advice from some people a bit more knowledgable in ootp. Basically I'm curious on how others would try and pull this off.

I plan on setting up a promotion/relegation based league based on what I've read here.

I'm looking into setting it up as three independent 10 team single sub-league, single-division leagues. Each league will have a "Junior" league, a rookie level minor system affiliated. I understand I'll have to re-affiliate the minor after each change in structure, but using a simple team naming scheme it shouldn't be too difficult.

I've set the playoffs as simple leader plus wildcard, but that is mainly to work within the conventions of the game. The leader of the league at the end of the season will be crowned "Champion" of the league, with the playoffs to determine the winner of the league "Cup", a sort of bragging rights trophy. Just wish there was a way to get more teams involved without having to use divisions.

I was thinking the "Premiere" league will be set as major league, with the Division 1 and Division 2 "leagues" being set at AAA and AA respectively. (I thought about going Major-International-AAA, but wasn't sure if the skill difference between major and international was enough for an interesting story to unfold in the universe.)

As it stands I was planning on setting it up with simple 25 man roster, disabling all the other roster based rules along with financials but ran into what could be a snag. I plan on setting up a a bunch of feeder league teams for the Premier division, so that there will be a trickle down effect of the talent through free agent pool to the other leagues as I have trading between leagues off. One thing I noticed though is that when I disabled financials I also lost the ability to select "Free agents allowed to go to other leagues" check box, not sure if thats because without financials its a given that they can, or if its now not an option. Will have to run a few tests to check it out.

Would rather not run with financials on as at this point I simply don't have enough knowledge of the system to get the right settings for the different leagues. But who knows, maybe that will change with some responses from you guys. Please be as vague or specific as you want on how you would do this, as I'm still in the early and very flexable stages of working all this out and am looking for any input I can find.

[Grunthos]

Originally Posted by Marc Duffy

Sorry Gruthos. Let me categorically refute that. Nothing has been imported from FM so it's certainly wrong to claim otherwise.

OK, Marc, my bad. Poor choice of words. The concept had been implemented in FM but was not part of Markus' series prior to his joining SI. I absolutely accept that no code has been copied from one program to the other.

[Buccaneer]

I'm still torn. I spent the past week reading through this thread, as well as think about why I play OOTP like I do. I want to get into a new career soon since baseball is upon us (finally) but I still don't know whether it will be for this version or not.

The reason that I play OOTP is to be immersed into an alternate history of the era that I love (basically the Golden Age). Unlike other games, I don't play this as an "optimization puzzle" because frankly, it (baseball, earlier versions, or whatever) is not that hard. I like to play OOTP5 because of its variance with historical players in using Lahman. So far what I have read on 2k7, with recalc on or off, I do not know if that kind of variance is still there.

But here's the main thing. Because I play OOTP as an alternate history fast-simmer, GM and managers at the time didn't have the amount of information that is available today and to have such information would be somewhat anachronistic, I think. In other words, with all of the information available in 2k7, it would be like if I went back into time with Baseball Prospectus, Bill James and internet access. That's what I finally remembered in thinking OOTP6 was "too modern" to manage 40-60s style baseball. 2k7 seems even more so because of all of the great information available to you. Somewhere in this version is my game but it will take some time to find it.

Now I know there are many options to customize what you can see and not see (as well as in setting everything up), but that's a noticeable learning curve. I think in time that'll work out because I really like how you can "watch" games, the better trade AI and many other improvements. I think this version will be great if I choose to play in an on-line league again.

I am glad that I purchased this game because I support developers that strive to make an open game, which OOTP excels at.

[Hammer755]

Originally Posted by Grunthos

OK, Marc, my bad. Poor choice of words. The concept had been implemented in FM but was not part of Markus' series prior to his joining SI. I absolutely accept that no code has been copied from one program to the other.

Once again, that is simply incorrect. There were ghost players in every edition of OOTP until last year's.

[MrBug708]

Do the coaches actually improve over the course of their coaching days?

[JPhillips]

According to Markus, yes. However, in my limited simming I still haven't seen any coaches/scouts outside of MLB with any double digit ratings. (1-20 scale)

[Calis]

Couple of questions here, I just bought he game this weekend, and haven't played it since version 4 I believe it was and not too much then. Baseball is also my least knowledgeable sport.

The star rankings, these are what exactly? Sometimes it's obvious why a person is 5 stars, but a lot of times I'm seeing someone with ratings nearly the same rated 4.5 or so to a person rated 1, what does this calculate exactly? Should I even use it? I'd been using it for a quick way to gauge talent but it seems to be off.

The designated for assignment thing, what is this exactly? I keep getting stoppages in my sims to move these guys. What causes this? Is it the computer putting these guys into limbo and me having to fix it?

Lastly, I run only fictional leagues, and I just did my first expansion. What's the best bet for number of rounds in the expansion draft? I thought 25 seemed like to much, but I dropped it to I think 18 and my expansion teams were WAY too good their first seasons.

Lastly, I first started off wanting to do a small short league. 6-8 teams, and runnning a season that was 50-60 games long with smaller rosters. Is there any way to get the scheduler to spread the games out or do you have to go through and schedule everything? Seemed way too confusing for me, I just wanted to be able to spread the games out to maybe 2-3 a week instead of having my season over and done in less than two months. I just gave up on it for now.

I'm having a blast with the game so far though, pulled me in much more than the last time I tried OOTP.

[King of New York]

Originally Posted by MizzouRah

Historical simmers rejoice!!

Discovered something new tonight, sorry if I'm late to the party.

http://planetootp.com/anderson_utili...AULogoWatchDog

AULogoWatchDog is a nifty little program that runs in the background and as the years go by, it automatically updates the logos for the current teams in your league. WOW! Works perfectly!! As expansion teams come in, they will also have their current logo!

I tell you, I haven't seen mods like the ones people create for ootp since the days of High Heat baseball. Outstanding!

This utility is outstanding--thanks for mentioning it!

[Ksyrup]

Sorry in advance for the long post. I hope you find it interesting/useful...


Well, I'm having a blast simming out an alternative history with a twist, even though it's taken a turn for the unrealistic, and I ran into a bug that has caused some big issues (though there appears to be a work-around).

This weekend I went about the task of painstakingly recreating baseball in 1914, complete with the correct Federal League teams/players. I set up a dual-league universe consisting of an historical MLB league (with recalc off) with a AAA minor league and a fictional league mirroring the Federal League (with no minor league until the '40s, just the default reserve roster). With the help of internet resources (and a guy over at the OOTP boards who created some nifty logos for the FL teams), I was able to place every player on his correct FL team (for those who played for more than 1 team, I simply put them on the team for whom they played the most that year) and kept the leagues separated, in order to simulate the conditions and rosters as closely as I could. At the beginning of 1915, I again added the players to the FL who joined the FL in real life and again simmed the results.

In order to get around the fictional league creating a draft pool of fictional players, I changed the settings in the league options to limit the number of players generated to be zero. A word of warning for those who do this, though, for any reason - the game gives you a warning about possible issues sustaining your league, and I've found that at certain points in the future, the game changes this setting on you and if you're not watching, you'll end up with fictional players in your universe. I had this happen twice and immediately retired/deleted them, but it could have been disastrous if I had just simmed through 50 years without looking.

Anyway, starting in 1916, I enabled the option for allowing free agents between leagues. Since FA was still not enabled, the practical effect of this was to limit player movement between the leagues to players cut by their teams or who became minor league FAs after 6 years (I included that to facilitate some movement of the lowliest of players). Although I initially thought I would need to create a feeder league to introduce some fictional players into the FL, I found that there were enough FAs available to sustain the league, the only issue being its obvious affect on the talent level in the FL. I was OK with that, though, because I thought the idea of a lesser major league was probably the most realistic scenario I could play out. I had initially attempted to cause all MLB historic players to be placed into FA to be signed by either league, but it just didn't work. For whatever reason, the AI was not aggressive in going after FAs in that way, so I went with Plan B (or more like Plan Q at this point).

For the first 15-20 years, both leagues played out fairly well. For some reason, I had an explosion of offense in the early 20s (in 1 year in the MLB, 4 guys hit .400!), but I think that was just random and not necessarily tied to my league set up. The FL was functioning in a neat and, quite frankly, realistic fashion. It was basically made up of 4 types of players: (1) the original FL players from 1914 and 1915, until they retired; (2) young players who were cut by MLB teams in their teens or early 20s; (3) guys from between 26-32 years old who were career minor leaguers, career part-timers, or vets on an early downswing; and (4)good/great vets, some even stars, who were seemingly past their prime and ready for retirement. Invariably, once these guys got to the FL, their careers picked up, thanks to the lower level of competition. It was pretty cool to watch.

It was fun, and not entirely unrealistic, until a certain event occurred in the early 30s. For some reason, not one but TWO teams decided to pass on some dude named Hank Greenberg. The Tigers and Athletics both signed and cut him during spring training, and the Brooklyn Tip Tops of the FL picked him up. He fucking shattered the league, as you might imagine. This wasn't a future HoFer on the north side of 30, this was a great player at 20. He regularly hit in the .400s or high .300s, routinely smacking 60-90 HRs a year, driving in upwards of 180-230 runs a year. He's still active, still winning Triple Crowns, and headed for 1,100 career HRs. So he kinda screwed up the realism of the league, but I left him in there just because. A similar thing happened on a smaller scale with Hal Trosky, who has been putting up insane average and HR numbers as well, but not quite to the level of Greenberg. He had 3000 hits by age 28, btw. Dude is treating the league like his own 5th grade whiffle ball tournament.

So I get into the 40s and decide to add a minor league system for the FL based in Florida. Little did I know that I triggered a bug related to staff salaries. By the mid 40s, I noticed that one team was signing every decent FA in sight and winning the league going away every year, so I decided to investigate. Turns out they had a small advantage - their staff salary was showing as a negative billion-plus dollars (yes, that's -1,000,000,000), which somehow was turned into a positive net worth of that much, minus a couple hundred thousand of other expenses. So while the other teams in the league were all running $100K-$400K deficits, this team was running around with a Steinbrenner/Gates combo owner. Turns out there's a work-around for this bug, but keep an eye out for it if you expand to include a minor league.

So that's where I am now, at around 1947, I think. I'm going to keep going and hope that another future HoFer doesn't fall into the league at an early age. Once FA occurs in the 70s, though, it should be interesting to see what the added player movement does to both leagues' talent level. I've enjoyed watching the careers play out like this.

[Swaggs]

Ksyrup, that is similar to my one big complaint with the league I have been running: Players are traded or sign FA contracts between leagues too often.

I have no problem if your universe is set up to include somewhat parallel "top" leagues, as mine is with my fictional US-based league and the Japanese-based league, but I have guys getting traded to the Puerto Rican winter league and the Korean league.

[MizzouRah]

Originally Posted by King of New York

This utility is outstanding--thanks for mentioning it!

No problem!

[Ksyrup]

Originally Posted by Swaggs

Ksyrup, that is similar to my one big complaint with the league I have been running: Players are traded or sign FA contracts between leagues too often.

I have no problem if your universe is set up to include somewhat parallel "top" leagues, as mine is with my fictional US-based league and the Japanese-based league, but I have guys getting traded to the Puerto Rican winter league and the Korean league.

That's easy to stop, though, since you can disable FA movement between leagues and, if you want, trades between leagues. I'm not sure they sign any more between leagues than they do intra-league, since trade frequency is a global option. I have mine set to low, btw. I assume the AI sees no difference between the leagues and trades at the same rate with out of league teams as it does in its own league.

In my league, I have disabled trading between leagues completely, as I don't think it is realistic (at least not for what I want), but I do allow FA between the leagues, and it's been realistic. But I don't have true FA enabled yet, and when I do, I expect to see quite a bit of movement between the leagues (look at the NFL/USFL, for example).

[LionsFan10]

Originally Posted by King of New York

This utility is outstanding--thanks for mentioning it!

How do you install this program? I'm positive I have .NET Framework 2.0 but when I download the setup it downloads an app that when I double click, says "the application is missing required files"

Never mind, I guess I should read a little closer. He explained it.

[DanGarion]

Originally Posted by Ksyrup

So I get into the 40s and decide to add a minor league system for the FL based in Florida. Little did I know that I triggered a bug related to staff salaries. By the mid 40s, I noticed that one team was signing every decent FA in sight and winning the league going away every year, so I decided to investigate. Turns out they had a small advantage - their staff salary was showing as a negative billion-plus dollars (yes, that's -1,000,000,000), which somehow was turned into a positive net worth of that much, minus a couple hundred thousand of other expenses. So while the other teams in the league were all running $100K-$400K deficits, this team was running around with a Steinbrenner/Gates combo owner. Turns out there's a work-around for this bug, but keep an eye out for it if you expand to include a minor league.

That's pretty cool that the team took advantage of the issue to become dominant.

[Ksyrup]

I guess that's the positive spin to put on it...!

[DanGarion]

Originally Posted by Ksyrup

I guess that's the positive spin to put on it...!

Well compared to some older versions of OOTP that you would see these teams with tons of cash and they wouldn't make deals to get the big FAs and then you see teams that have no money making offers they could never support.

[Ksyrup]

Yeah, in that respect, I'm seeing the AI making smart decisions based on need. For example, I was following the career of a particular CF and noticed that he had retired in the middle of the year. So I looked at the remaining roster and there was another part-time CFer and a legit starting CF that the AI went out and traded for about 2 months earlier, replacing the guy I was following and sending him to the bench. That prompted his mid-season retirement, I suppose.

[Buccaneer]

I think what I am going to do is similar to an advice given at ootp boards for OOTP5/6 players having a harder time getting into this new version. I am going to start a OOTP5 career like I always do but keep track of the setup, stages, screens and reports that I do and then try to do the same thing in OOTP2007 (adding in new features as desired). I know right off in comparing the gameplay, I don't like the overloaded sim screen (the one you watch while simming a month or whatever length) and prefer watching the standings and league leaders screen that we had in 5/6. I also know I don't like the new Roster Report and prefer the one in 5/6. What I don't know is how customizable these are. I do know that when it comes times to do FA, extensions and trades, OOTP2007 will offer a better experience.

[Grunthos]

Originally Posted by Hammer755

Once again, that is simply incorrect. There were ghost players in every edition of OOTP until last year's.

Weird. I played OOTP 5 and 6 fairly extensively. Either my memory has really gone to pot, or we're talking about two different things.

*shrugs*

[KWhit]

Originally Posted by Grunthos

Weird. I played OOTP 5 and 6 fairly extensively. Either my memory has really gone to pot, or we're talking about two different things.

*shrugs*

Your memory has gone to pot. There were ghost players in every version I have ever played.

[twothree]

I love the depth and flexibility of what you can do with your league in this game. My current fictional setup includes three independent major leagues each with an attached AAA league and a college feeder league playing using modern era rules. All leagues have one division of ten teams. And I manually promote and demote teams (and their affiliated minor league team) between my major leagues after each season.

Each major league plays a 162 game schedule, each minor league plays a 108 game schedule, and each feeder league plays a 54 game schedule. This keeps the schedules very balanced when using the default 3 game series since each league has ten teams. The top two teams in each league have a championship playoff. The feeder leagues play a 3 game championship series and the minor leagues play a 5 game championship series. This allows for the college feeder leagues to finish their playoffs before the drafts take place (June 15th), and allows for the minor leagues to finish their playoffs before the major leagues expand their rosters on the 1st of September.

Two of the major leagues (the Lower Baseball League and the Middle Baseball League) have a 7 game championship series with the winners getting promoted up to the next higher class of major league. I also promote the affiliated minor league teams of each championship team no matter where they finished in their league, so that all major league teams keep the same minor league team and players. The 10th place team in each major league and its affiliated minor league team get demoted to the next lower class league. And the 10th place team along with its minor affiliate in the Lower Baseball League gets moved to a new city. My other major league, the Upper Baseball League plays a 9 game championship series to determine the true champion of my fictional universe.

I had a few quirks at the beginning of the league. In the first year there was not enough 22 year old players in the feeder leagues to make the draft last 5 rounds, but every year after I have had enough players. Also, in the first year the champion of the Middle Baseball League went on to be the Upper Baseball League champion the next three years. And, the first champion of the Lower Baseball league won the Middle Baseball League championship the next year.

I have been thinking about starting over and allowing the top two teams to get promoted. I have also been thinking that instead of just moving the 10th place team in the Lower Baseball League to a new city, I might start deleting the team and let all of those players go to the free agent pool, and then create a new "expansion" team each year in the Lower Baseball League.

[Young Drachma]

Originally Posted by SirFozzie

Hey Markus> Any chance that a patch could improve associating feeder leagues? I want to be able to take my college mod and associate it with a big league, but I can't, because you have to create the league as a feeder.. you can't create the league and THEN make it a feeder :/

You can do that. You just have to click under the name of the league to change the affiliation of the league

[BigPapi]

Originally Posted by Ksyrup

I tend to draw the line at "need an advanced degree in mathematics" in order to get something to work as my definition of whether a feature works. Unlike setting up a fictional or historical league, where the financial and historical modifiers and player creation functions works reasonably well without much tweaking at all, the feeder league set up takes hours of work and many test leagues to get right.

I'd like to have a large league set up, but it's like there's too many moving parts for it all to fit together properly. I'd rather focus on playing the game, and if others want to go through the work to figure this all out, I'll gladly reconsider using this set up in the future.

I agree with this- I have a spent a TON of time on the correct PCM's for a 128 team NCAA and 240 team HS feeder league- and it's working pretty well right now (I sim 10 years in to see the effects of the draft pool on the league)- but the point is- this shouldn't be neccesary. It seems inconceivable to me that nobody considered that a feeder league might be ten teams- or it might be 300 teams- and that some sort of adjustment in ratios of talent would have to be made to accomadate these differences (for the same size league the teams are feeding to). With no modifications to the PCM's- I am seeing several 4 and 5 star players PER TEAM- regardless of feeder leagues size...Not good- and I don't think many people are going to want to play with this - and they shouldn't have to...Hopefully this will be addressed

[BigPapi]

Originally Posted by Dark Cloud

You can do that. You just have to click under the name of the league to change the affiliation of the league

Nope, you can't- you are talking about league affiliation- he's talking about a feeder league. Once a league is designated as MLB, international, college, HS, etc.- it can be affiliated with another league- but cannot be changed to a feeder league.

Furthermore, you cannot create a feeder league as a template without associating it with the league to be fed- or put another way- you cannot creaate a feeder league template, and then expect to import that feeder league into an MLB type univers and use it as a feeder league...Which sort of defeats the purpose I think. You have to create the feeder league WITH the fed league together as a template.

[LionsFan10]

Do you get two licenses with this game? I'm assuming you do, but just figured I'd ask.

[Ksyrup]

Originally Posted by LionsFan10

Do you get two licenses with this game? I'm assuming you do, but just figured I'd ask.

Yes.

[Ksyrup]

As a PSA, I thought I'd mention that the staff salary bug I posted about previously appears to be connected to adding a minor league at some point after you initially create your league. Apparently there's something screwy with the salaries of one or more minor league coaches/scouts, and you end up with negative billions of dollars in salary, which somehow translates to that much money as cash on hand.

So, until this is fixed, if you intend to create a minor league for your major league(s), do it when you create the league and don't wait until later.

[Ksyrup]

BTW, thanks to the salary bug and an annoying tendency for the game to auto-adjust my draft rules to sneak some fictional players into my league when I didn't want them, I'm going to be starting my Federal League universe all over. Luckily, I've got the 1914 setup saved as a template, so the only issue will be stopping in 1915 to add the players who joined the FL that year. So this time, if by chance I see another Hank Greenberg join the league, I think I'll kindly send him back where he belongs. As long as they're not sure-fire HoFers, I think I'll let them stick around, though.

There's also been a good discussion over there about the AI's tendency to seemingly completely ignore stats in its evaluation of players (mainly pitchers is what some of us have found), or if not completely ignore stats, allow a small ratings dip to determine whether to release or demote players. Several of us have noticed the AI releasing or demoting guys who've pitched well the year before for no reason other than maybe a 1 or 2 point dip in Stuff rating. So you'll end up with a 20-game winner in 1945 suddenly in the FA market or sitting in AAA for a few years, and if injuries or what-not require that he come back up, he again pitches pretty well. Someone ran a test with ratings set to '10' and the stats settings taking up the other 90% of the evaluation criteria and it was still happening pretty frequently, causing us to believe the game isn't taking stats into account in making moves like it should be.

[twothree]

Originally Posted by twothree

I have been thinking about starting over and allowing the top two teams to get promoted. I have also been thinking that instead of just moving the 10th place team in the Lower Baseball League to a new city, I might start deleting the team and let all of those players go to the free agent pool, and then create a new "expansion" team each year in the Lower Baseball League.

Looks like I have to delete both the 9th and 10th place team. And then I can use the built in team expansion function, since you have to expand by an even number of team. I can accept that.

Plus I have decided to expand my league structure since everything seems to be going well in my tests. Now I am going to try every league being one sub-league of two divisions (5 teams in each division). One top major league, then two middle major leagues below that, each one promoting/demoting into one of the divisions. Then four lower major leagues below that, each major league still having one affiliated AAA minor league and one college feeder league.

This will allow me to set the country for some of the other major leagues to something else. So, eventually teams from other countries will make it into the top league with most players being from that country. However, when they do get to the top league, their team will be drafting players from the country of my top league, which I don't really want, but I will have to accept. Guess I will have to bump the foreign percentage of players of my top league to maybe 80 or 90 percent.

[Young Drachma]

Originally Posted by BigPapi

Nope, you can't- you are talking about league affiliation- he's talking about a feeder league. Once a league is designated as MLB, international, college, HS, etc.- it can be affiliated with another league- but cannot be changed to a feeder league.

Furthermore, you cannot create a feeder league as a template without associating it with the league to be fed- or put another way- you cannot creaate a feeder league template, and then expect to import that feeder league into an MLB type univers and use it as a feeder league...Which sort of defeats the purpose I think. You have to create the feeder league WITH the fed league together as a template.

Well then, I guess they ought to fix that, huh?

[MizzouRah]

Rule 5 draft is broken for historical leagues. Markus has fixed it for the patch though. (Thanks MizzouRah) lol

[BigPapi]

Originally Posted by Ksyrup

Also, this game desperately needs the ability to make changes to players on a multi-player basis - in other words, if I want to delete a group of players, or say dump the draft class into the free agent pool, I shouldn't have to do this player-by-player. The only global setting like this is for rosters, to dump all players into the free agent pool, and for free agents, to delete them all. Otherwise, you have to make changes to each player individually, and it's a pain in the butt.

I know in the league options screen- depending on what league you have selected you can delete players fro that league ONLY. For example- in my MLB universe set-up- I have cretaed and deleted players both from my college and HS feeder league separately from each other and kept the rosters intact for the other leagues...Although if you delete players from your MLB universe I am pretty sure you also delete all minor leaguers as well....Not exactly what you were looking for- but pretty handy when messing with different PCM's and seeing what kind of draft class is produced. (just reemeber to go into the appropriate league's free agents screen and delete all the free agents once you release them!)

It would be nice to be able to selectively highlight and delete players, though...and it would also be nice to perform global edits on players without having to dump the players to an excel file...Maybe next year.

[Ksyrup]

Originally Posted by BigPapi

It would be nice to be able to selectively highlight and delete players, though...and it would also be nice to perform global edits on players without having to dump the players to an excel file...Maybe next year.

That's what I'm talking about.

[korme]

Minor bug with players turning into managers.

Mordecai Brown turned into a bench coach in 1928.
In 1929, a second iteration of the man known as Three Finger was made into a pitching coach.

So I have two Mordecai "Three Finger" Browns as coaches. I tried to edit one and change the name, but it still has the link to his former player profile and original name. Gah!

[Ksyrup]

Try adding a finger to one of them.

I bet you can do that in Maximum Football.

[bhlloy]

So what is the deal with the MLB rosters? As I understand it certain people were given the game early to get the rosters ready for release, then they were ready but the guy releasing them was doing some last minute tweaking, then sent them as a storm was moving in, turned his computer off and left for a week's business trip. They were promised Monday, now it is Tuesday and no rosters. I was wondering if any of the FOF insiders had any update?

Either way it doesn't work out great for SI - there has to be a small customer segment that either won't buy the game without real rosters or are going to put the game down pretty soon once the hoopla surrounding opening day wears off. Never mind that EHM with a much smaller fanbase manages to afford the real NHL rosters.

[DanGarion]

Originally Posted by bhlloy

Never mind that EHM with a much smaller fanbase manages to afford the real NHL rosters.

I can bet you that NHL rosters are a LOT cheaper them MLB ones.

[Critch]

Originally Posted by dangarion

Well compared to some older versions of OOTP that you would see these teams with tons of cash and they wouldn't make deals to get the big FAs and then you see teams that have no money making offers they could never support.

I've been messing around with a league built from Icy's Major League template, trying to use the market size and fan loyalty to mirror a MLB where big market teams win and small market don't quite so much.

I set up the league from the template then set the market sizes as appropriate ranging from 12 (the Yankees) through 10 (second level big markets, like the Red Sox, Dodgers, and Cubs), 8 and 6 for middling teams, down to 4 for the likes of Tampa Bay. After that I simmed the inaugural draft with the AI making all the picks, then set the market sizes again. The AI seems to reset the market size and fan loyalty based on the salaries of the players drafted by each team, so I had to redo the setup. D'oh.

I then simmed through 15 years to get some history. The first couple of years it was the teams that drafted well who did well naturally enough, but by season 3 or 4 the big market teams were rising to the top as they started to use their financial muscle to nab the best free agents. By round about season 6 the league had settled into it's rhythm. Boston, St Louis, the Cubs, Atlanta, the Dodgers, the Mets, Philadelphia are all virtually perennial challengers for playoff spots, but a couple of smaller market teams still challenge. Florida in particular seem to have mastered challenging with young players from their minors before trading them on for a new generation of prospects. Tampa Bay and Pittsburgh have stunk pretty much every year since the early draft-driven success (Pittsburgh won the World Series in season 2).

The one team that doesn't fit the pattern is the Yankees. They haven't reached the playoffs in 10 seasons, haven't finished higher than 3rd in the last 6. The final season I simmed they finished in 4th, 35 games behind the Red Sox, all this despite the Yankees having by far the highest salary in the league. The Yankees were around 160mil, nobody else broke 125mil. 160mil salary + 4th in the division = 50mil loss for a single season, Mr Steinbrenner would not be happy.

I've checked out the Yankees roster and their problem is that they like to give big contracts to old guys, particularly pitchers. They've got some 36 year olds earning 10mil a year while turning in eras over 5, they've even got a 41 year old starter who's still got three more years of 17mil a year (though he's still pretty good so it's not his fault yet). Their minors are fairly barren too, so things aren't getting better for them any time soon.

So there you have it, the AI does seem to be good enough that it can take advantage of having cash to spend, but it can still make a total hash of trying to outspend the opposition.

[DaddyTorgo]

Originally Posted by Critch

I've checked out the Yankees roster and their problem is that they like to give big contracts to old guys, particularly pitchers. They've got some 36 year olds earning 10mil a year while turning in eras over 5, they've even got a 41 year old starter who's still got three more years of 17mil a year (though he's still pretty good so it's not his fault yet). Their minors are fairly barren too, so things aren't getting better for them any time soon.

sounds pretty realistic to me

[Ksyrup]

No kidding. That's pretty funny. Apparently the Brian Cashman Intervention is a feature for OOTP2008.

[Oilers9911]

Originally Posted by Ksyrup

It was fun, and not entirely unrealistic, until a certain event occurred in the early 30s. For some reason, not one but TWO teams decided to pass on some dude named Hank Greenberg.

I can understand you looking twice at the circumstances that led to Hank Greenberg being passed on twice and signing with the FL. However, this is where you have to put it out of your mind that you even know who Hank Greenberg was. You know and I know that was a stupid move but in revisionists history like you are writing with your game maybe nobody knew Hank Greenberg. Maybe there were other reasons for him being passed on. I would just accept it as "the way it was" and not worry too much about it.

[Ksyrup]

Originally Posted by Oilers9911

I can understand you looking twice at the circumstances that led to Hank Greenberg being passed on twice and signing with the FL. However, this is where you have to put it out of your mind that you even know who Hank Greenberg was. You know and I know that was a stupid move but in revisionists history like you are writing with your game maybe nobody knew Hank Greenberg. Maybe there were other reasons for him being passed on. I would just accept it as "the way it was" and not worry too much about it.

Oh, I agree, and before I started I was kinda looking forward to things like this happening, but when it happened, it threw the league way out of balance since he became so much better than the talent level in the league. It turned into a joke, really.

I imagine if something like that were to really happen, and the FL was considered a "minor major league," inferior to the MLB, the player would probably have sued for free agency and we'd have had Curt Flood decades before he happened. In fact, that might not be a bad way to write the history of the leagues if this happens again. I'm starting this league over, and if I see someone like this completely abusing the league to absurd levels (like, one year he hit .459 with 93 HR and 234 RBIs), maybe I'll use that as an opportunity to introduce a limited form of FA into the leagues and send him back to where he belongs. We'll see.

[albionmoonlight]

Originally Posted by Ksyrup

Oh, I agree, and before I started I was kinda looking forward to things like this happening, but when it happened, it threw the league way out of balance since he became so much better than the talent level in the league. It turned into a joke, really.

I imagine if something like that were to really happen, and the FL was considered a "minor major league," inferior to the MLB, the player would probably have sued for free agency and we'd have had Curt Flood decades before he happened. In fact, that might not be a bad way to write the history of the leagues if this happens again. I'm starting this league over, and if I see someone like this completely abusing the league to absurd levels (like, one year he hit .459 with 93 HR and 234 RBIs), maybe I'll use that as an opportunity to introduce a limited form of FA into the leagues and send him back to where he belongs. We'll see.

IRL he'd make for great barstool discussion to this day. You would have the "Hank Greenberg is the greatest player to ever play baseball" crowd, and you would have the "Hank Greenberg put up cartoon numbers in a joke league and would have been nothing more than a good to very good player in the Major Leagues" crowd.

It might even have ended up being one of those issues that defined the kind of person you were as a fan.

[Ksyrup]

True. Of course, none of that matters today, since the barstool discussion is "this would have been a great discussion to have, except the league became corrupted by a couple of bugs so I started over."

We'll see if I get so lucky this time around. I did have a few other good players, like Hal Trosky for example, who put up several 60 HR seasons, but no one of the stature of Greenberg. That might have been lightning in a bottle.

[BigPapi]

Originally Posted by bhlloy

So what is the deal with the MLB rosters? As I understand it certain people were given the game early to get the rosters ready for release, then they were ready but the guy releasing them was doing some last minute tweaking, then sent them as a storm was moving in, turned his computer off and left for a week's business trip. They were promised Monday, now it is Tuesday and no rosters. I was wondering if any of the FOF insiders had any update?

Either way it doesn't work out great for SI - there has to be a small customer segment that either won't buy the game without real rosters or are going to put the game down pretty soon once the hoopla surrounding opening day wears off. Never mind that EHM with a much smaller fanbase manages to afford the real NHL rosters.

The guy who was helping finish them up for Erich (who did 99 .9% of the gruntwork) promised the initial version (on several occasions) for March 25th- that was 10 days ago now. He said the "full" release was coming opening day- April 2- but he apparently left for business on the morning of the 26th- thinking he had uploaded the roster back to Erich the previous night. He said he didn't take the rosters to work on his trip because he "needed a break"- which is cool- but he isn't retuning until today- according to him....So my question is, how was he planning an opening day release when he wasn't comng back into town until two days after that- and he didn't bring the rosters with him to work on (forget about the fact that he was away for business)...Whatever.

What's ridiculous is he's now whining about all the "hard work" he put in and how ungrateful people are when he advertised for the world that he was releasing the rosters in a thread on the main OOTP board- and repeatedly promised their "imminent release"...What a joke....Talk about disengenuous. This isn't any different than the high school slut showing up for a Friday night party dressed in pasties and acting disgusted and incredulous at all the lewd stares she receives.

Don't misunderstand- I appreciate all the hard work put in for these rosters- but poor Erich's gotta be regretting letting this clown turn this situtation into a joke.

[Ksyrup]

His name's not Daivd by any chance, is it?

[Ksyrup]

I'm having sign-and-release issues in the second go-around with my Federal League universe. During spring training, a block of guys will get repeatedly signed and released by every team in the league, multiple times.

And on a related note, it's the Hank Greenberg story, Take Two...

I'm in 1924, and who shows up on an FL team's roster - Lou Gehrig! That's right, the Iron Horse himself. but the bigger issue than him getting signed by an FL team is the fact that he must have had theworst spring training in the history of baseball, because not only did the Yankees cut him, but then the Senators, White Sox, Braves, Tigers, Yankees (again!), Cubs, Athletics, Reds, Braves (again!), and Senators (again!) all passed on him as well. And all of this occurred between March 17th and April 1, until the Baltimore Terrapins signed him and kept him. Even I've never been rejected that many times!

[Ksyrup]

So this time, Greenberg was released 4 times before signing with the Yankees. Which is OK, since they lost Gehrig to the FL.