Fictional Rosters

[WB1214]

Re: Fictional Rosters

I might have to drop out from doing the Braves, I'm going to be more busy than I thought over the next few weeks..

I will make a suggestion regarding the MLBPA situation with career statistics.

The editors need to edit the generic players on the game, as many as they can to fill it up, and then those players can be imported over generic players in the master roster. I would also lower all MLBPA players ratings, but that's just me.

[raleigh mcclure]

Re: Fictional Rosters

I might have to drop out from doing the Braves, I'm going to be more busy than I thought over the next few weeks..

I will make a suggestion regarding the MLBPA situation with career statistics.

The editors need to edit the generic players on the game, as many as they can to fill it up, and then those players can be imported over generic players in the master roster. I would also lower all MLBPA players ratings, but that's just me.

I don't understand why you're suggesting that the editors edit over as many generic players as possible. In terms of keeping the workload light for each of the editors, I think editing around thirty players per team is already a big commitment. I'm going to make sure that when I get the players from each of the editors that I import them in place of other generic players (to account for the statistics carry-over problem). There are going to be about thirty or so default minor league players left over. I wasn't going to do anything with them. Is there a reason that you think I should?

I'll take on the burden of copying over the MLBPA players with lower potential grade players. I'll keep their ratings in the range of single A or double A players, or thereabout. I think that alone will take care of the career stat carry-over problem. I'll just have to see how long it takes to copy over the MLBPA players and vary them up a little bit. It will likely have an impact on the realism of stats for Double A ball, since I'm not going to go to the trouble of creating realistic minor leaguers. So if there are people that like to play games for the lower minor leagues, they might have to contend with the "ghosts" of former MLBPA players.

[WB1214]

Re: Fictional Rosters

I don't understand why you're suggesting that the editors edit over as many generic players as possible. In terms of keeping the workload light for each of the editors, I think editing around thirty players per team is already a big commitment. I'm going to make sure that when I get the players from each of the editors that I import them in place of other generic players (to account for the statistics carry-over problem). There are going to be about thirty or so default minor league players left over. I wasn't going to do anything with them. Is there a reason that you think I should?

I'll take on the burden of copying over the MLBPA players with lower potential grade players. I'll keep their ratings in the range of single A or double A players, or thereabout. I think that alone will take care of the career stat carry-over problem. I'll just have to see how long it takes to copy over the MLBPA players and vary them up a little bit. It will likely have an impact on the realism of stats for Double A ball, since I'm not going to go to the trouble of creating realistic minor leaguers. So if there are people that like to play games for the lower minor leagues, they might have to contend with the "ghosts" of former MLBPA players.

I typed it wrong, I meant to just make the 30 or so players from generic players, not the entire farm system lol. That was my bad. I just meant that so you didn't have the stats problem, but you seem to have it figured out!

[turpintine419]

Re: Fictional Rosters

Nice glad to see I'm in. Quick question, I have a ton of free time these next few evenings, would I be jumping the gun if I dove right in minus the spreadsheet?

[MR.RANDOM]

Re: Fictional Rosters

ive already started..with faces and names for a few guys

[raleigh mcclure]

Re: Fictional Rosters

Nice glad to see I'm in. Quick question, I have a ton of free time these next few evenings, would I be jumping the gun if I dove right in minus the spreadsheet?

Turpintine,

I'm happy for your enthusiasm! From what I'm hearing from TripleThreat (have a look at his recent posts) it sounds like the spreadsheets are going to be pretty comprehensive. I'm looking forward to seeing them.

So, while there might be some practical reasons to wait, I don't want to discourage you. Plus, there are some things that the spreadsheet won't cover. I'll list some ideas for things you can safely get started on.

There is going to be plenty of room for making the appearances in just about any way you want. The only limits will be the ethnicity of the player as indicated in the spreadsheet (the name will also be a clue as to appearance). Beyond that, if you have some ideas for how some of the different kinds of players can look, you can get started with that.

I also keep mentioning the handful of players per team that we ought to feel free to take some license with. I don't mean to say that all five or so of those guys should be studs or this league will start to become top-heavy or superstar saturated. The superstars will stand out more if there is a wider spectrum of talent.

You might also want to start thinking about each of the teams you've signed up for. Do those teams acquire talent in certain ways because they play in a hitter's park or a pitcher's park? Is there a short porch to right field or left? Those sorts of things might help you make some tweaks to the spreadsheet you get from TripleThreat. Not to say that every MLB roster is ideally tailored to its stadium, but you could think about emphasizing some traits over others. So, you can begin to think about those kinds of influences that will help you evaluate the spreadsheet when you get it.

So, do what seems right to you. I think as long as we each keep in mind those two principles--keeping the league consistent while also keeping it fun--that ought to help guide you through whatever decisions you make.

It sounded like TripleThreat was going to be finished soon, though I also know that his schedule just got busier today. Hopefully, the suggestions above will help keep you busy until we get the sheets.

[raleigh mcclure]

Re: Fictional Rosters

Maybe I should add that we ought to keep the conversation going while we make players. Now that most of the early issues have been settled, the conversation here can begin to revolve around ideas for certain players, if someone wants to call dibs on some famous player from the fictional baseball universe, they can do that here.

We can bounce ideas off of each other. Also, this can be a way to make sure that we're being consistent with others' efforts. For example, if I've just created a player but I'm not sure if I went overboard, this might be a good place to say, "Hey, I just created a catcher for the Marlins that is 100 at everything. What do you guys think?" You'll probably get some pretty quick feedback. Between working off the spreadsheets and keeping the dialogue open, we can probably manage to all stay on the same page.

[turpintine419]

Re: Fictional Rosters

10-4 raleigh, I am very excited for this and got some excellent ideas for those guys we take liberty with. I do have a Couple of Superstar types in mind. My creative juices are flowing on this one. I'm not sure if you are aware of the textsim Total Extreme Warfare 2010(there is a review of the game on this site), but I relate this fictional world to the CornellVerse in a twisted way, and would possiby like to name some of my players after some of my faves(real names obviously, so there won't be any people named Antman, so i ask Could we possibly take Liberty to names as well to give the team a bit more flavor?

[raleigh mcclure]

Re: Fictional Rosters

10-4 raleigh, I am very excited for this and got some excellent ideas for those guys we take liberty with. I do have a Couple of Superstar types in mind. My creative juices are flowing on this one. I'm not sure if you are aware of the textsim Total Extreme Warfare 2010(there is a review of the game on this site), but I relate this fictional world to the CornellVerse in a twisted way, and would possiby like to name some of my players after some of my faves(real names obviously, so there won't be any people named Antman, so i ask Could we possibly take Liberty to names as well to give the team a bit more flavor?

Your question is similar to BoSoxPujol's question a couple pages ago. The name thing is a bit tough. I probably didn't go into great depth when I answered him, but maybe I'll try to lay out what I see as some of the relevant points.

I think if you're talking about naming a few of the guys that you take liberties with (we need a shorthand way of referring to them, how about "editor's choice" players, or something?), that's not a problem at all. If you were going to name them "Antman" that might be a little strange.

I think the biggest reason to not get carried away with themed naming at this stage is that we want the fictional roster to be as open and flexible as possible for anyone that wants to download it. Part of that means that I don't want people to download this roster and think that this was the product of some strange in-group conversation or something. Also, if someone downloads this and doesn't like some of the names, it's much easier for them to change a handful of names per team than it would be to rename the whole league because they didn't like the themed name idea.

Also, there are several competing themes to choose from. I like TripleThreat's idea of riffing off of the team name or the team location. The Seattle Mariner's were going to be grunge singers, the Nationals would be named after famous Americans and ex-Presidents, etc. On the other hand, BoSox had the idea of following the model from Ken Griffey Baseball. All of the names for those teams similarly revolved around themes, but those themes weren't connected to real MLB team names. What I'm getting at is there are several different ways to go about a themed name project and each one works great on it's own, but if we're all doing something different this league might start to look like some weird and hokey hodgepodge of ideas.

I think it makes much more sense to finish a basic working roster with, more or less, realistic sounding names (even if a few of them are made up, or are players such as "Paste", or players based on you or someone you know). Then, this master roster can inspire any number of spin off rosters each with a different angle on the themed names. Does that make sense?

So, again, if you're talking about some names here or there that make this fun for you, go right ahead. I say let's hold off on anything overly ambitious though.

[turpintine419]

Re: Fictional Rosters

Gotcha

and no Antman, that was my idea of getting too extreme. But 1 I am thinking of would be Rich Money being a star in New York for example, or Tommy Cornell being a legendary all arounder. (You can google those names and you will see my attachment to it). But going along the line of themed names also, example would be maybe a father/son combo in boston of John Adams and Quincy Adams(former presidents bothe from the Boston area).

Also the shortname for players we take liberties with could be copyrights.

[raleigh mcclure]

Re: Fictional Rosters

Count of Potential Grades, or, a Refresher Course in Statistics (for me )

TripleThreat,

I tallied up the number of grades for the American League. Since the two leagues ought to be balanced, you can use these figure for both leagues. Obviously, you'll have to increase the numbers a bit for the NL since there are two more teams to account for. I found the total (roughly, since I did quick counts), the average per team, and the range of each grade per team. I also counted the most frequently occurring value, but I can't remember the term (it might be getting into standard deviation stuff, but it's been so long I have no idea!). Those figures mostly resembled the averages, so I'm omitting them. Plus, I can't imagine a few extra A's or B's in any direction will break the roster. So, here are the figures for the potential grades for the roster:

A's:
Total (for the AL): 150
Average (per team): 11
Range (per team): 5 to 11

B's:
Total (for the AL): 257
Average (per team): 18
Range (per team): 13 to 23

C's:
Total (for the AL): 276
Average (per team): 20
Range (per team): 15 to 28

I counted up the D's and F's too, but the only significant thing I found was that the number of F's per team is around 8. Everyone else is a D.

That information probably will only be somewhat useful without knowing how many of those A's and B's were pitchers/position players, so below are the tallies for pitchers. To save me the work, I hope you'll just figure the remainder are to be spread among the position players. Here they are:

A's (Pitchers):
Total (for the AL): 84
Average (per team): 6
Range (per team): 3 to 9

B's (Pitchers):
Total (for the AL): 159
Average (per team): 11
Range (per team): 9 to 14

C's (Pitchers):
Total (for the AL): 163
Average (per team): 12
Range (per team): 7 to 25

Now, on that last one, 25 is an outlier. The second highest total was 15. So the range is really more like 7 to 15. The Blue Jays were the team with 25 C-rated pitchers.

I hope this info helps. I'll reference this tally when I'm reviewing the final master roster just to make sure we're close. This info might be a bit tough to use, since we're only editing about 30 players and some of these potential grades belong to prospects that we won't be editing. So, take these numbers for what they are. If you have any questions, feel free to ask and I can try to supplement these numbers with some idea for how many grades you should be concerning yourself with. But I'm hoping you won't ask me to.

Now I'm going to get started sinking the MLBPA players into minor league obscurity with D and F rankings. Though it's beginning to dawn on me that I have a few long nights ahead of me, since I'll have to enter names and tweak appearances and rankings (albeit in a slipshod manner, since they won't matter that much) for all of those players. I'll try to finish this in the next week or two. Hopefully by then some of the editors will have begun to send me their players.

Thanks TripleThreat!

[Splitter77]

Re: Fictional Rosters

this will be the best roster update ever. This will totally turn the franchise mode around for me.

[raleigh mcclure]

Re: Fictional Rosters

this will be the best roster update ever. This will totally turn the franchise mode around for me.

Watch what you say or you'll find yourself volunteering for a division!

Just kidding (though we're still looking for volunteers ) Boy, these smileys are addicting .

Thanks for the encouragement!

[TripleThreat1973]

Re: Fictional Rosters

I did this same thing for HighHeat 2003, and for Tony2 (which had a GM challenge that I ran for 33 seasons).

What I found was that I didn't need to continually buy the next version and was having a blast playing multiple seasons (even if it took a few years). You can also continue playing through the winter, as you don;t have to wait for the "new rosters". Plus, each person's franchise will take on its own existence. You can also play a fictional and realistic franchises at the same time, if you want.

Player Names ...

I would suggest/request that the first/generic roster has non-themed generic names, so that everyone/anyone that downloads it can go off and do their own thing. Changing names is a very quick process, and people can do whatever the heck they want.

Team Names ...

The teams are currently numbered (1-30, Free Agents on Team #31). The teams also have "power rankings". What I did was go through baseball history (thanks baseball-reference) and give each team 5 points for winning the world series, 3 points for "losing" the WS, and 1 point for making it to the playoffs (but not the WS). I'm getting ready to add it all up (you might be surprised, especially at the Pirates), and see where they rank. Then we could just line up the power rankings with the "history points" and have the team names assigned. Then, again, each person could do whatever they wanted with the downloaded roster, and it wouldn't take long to make a "speed team", "power pitcher team", "Slugger Team", "Control Pitcher & Defense team" or just fantasy draft and get down with yo bad self.

I'll post the results tomorrow. If nothing else, it could be a history lesson.

Raleigh, AFAIC, this is your baby, you make all the final decisions. But, I do think a "generic roster" initially gives people the freedom to do just about anything they want, and to have a unique experience. There's nothing that would prevent someone from making "themed names" or "team types" rosters from these, and uploading them to vault, and then we could all have various types of fictional rosters.

Editing names is, by far, the least time consuming process ... so is moving players around.

[MR.RANDOM]

Re: Fictional Rosters

so will triple threat send a spreadsheet of the four teams or will he post it here?