Starting a new franchise in The Winter

[Bgrd1080]

How do ypu guys handle starting new franchises this time of year? Use updated rosters? Opening Day rosters? Trade deadline rosters?
This time of year with guys signing always gets me wanting to hop on the sticks again but not sure where to begin. I like realism but idk.

[DavisAC12]

Starting a new franchise in The Winter

Apologies for my post, I didn’t realize this was MLB thread and thought it was a Madden post.

To answer your question, I always do opening day for MLB because so much gets skewed with trade deadline sellers and buyers in baseball. Much more balanced to start with original rosters, then you can make trades as you see fit.

If it helps, we did a full equipment roster that should be in the vault with opening day rosters!

[ChaseB]

Re: Starting a new franchise in The Winter

If someone does the work for me, I will do post FA rosters, but otherwise I think starting clean is my general style with Day 1 rosters.

[JoshC1977]

Re: Starting a new franchise in The Winter

I honestly will always prefer opening day versions of rosters. The later in the year the roster comes out, the wonkier the ratings get - which will usually cause wonky issues within the franchise.

This year in particular, the early rosters did a fantastic job stretching-out defensive ratings and I think it helped the gameplay. While I can't say that I've done any sort of 'deep dive' (I'm still playing the franchise I started in April), it does look like those defensive ratings got boosted (holistically) later in the cycle.

[LegendKillerOne]

Re: Starting a new franchise in The Winter

I actually never got far this year in my franchise due to many reasons.

I am not likely to buy the new version of MLB the show when it comes out unless they have major franchise overhaul which I am not expecting. So Right now I took a Ridin roster from a few months back he did around July or August (Mainly it has all the Korean and Japan players that are all being signed now in it. And I basically setup 30 team control and each day I go in and match the transactions that happening in MLB right now (Well to a degree i could only max Ohtani at 350 million) And once the rosters are all full enough that it will let me start playing (Some are in the area of 70 to 80 guys without enough pitchers yet to be legal) I will start the season with 100% accurate rosters.

[TripleCrown]

Re: Starting a new franchise in The Winter

I started a new Franchise with latest Full Minors v2 ( post trade deadline).

I set all profiles to my SIM profile (all AUTO and slider Trade = 0) . I sim it until end of July.

I then pick a team I want and play full month of August-September. Since I like to play all games & all pitches, I find it more encouraging ( with the game time I have) to finish a season and jump to actual post-season period.

[Bgrd1080]

Re: Starting a new franchise in The Winter

These are all great ideas. The ridin rosters with the international players available intrigues me. But so does running with Opening Day rosters too and a fresh restart without worry of rating issues.
But no idea who I want to start with. Like to keep it realistic and track my progress. Guardians would be fun but I'd constantly have to let everyone go like Naylor brothers and Bieber. Maybe a Royals franchise to use Witt but again money rarely used. Gotta find a steady balance of fun prospects and a team that will spend a little bit of money.