Start the league on 2009 opening day or 2009 end of season?

[nick]

I'm going to list the pros and cons of each and you guys can decide. A lot of people may be choosing their new teams based on what they look like after the trade deadline, so I want everyone's feel on what would work best for them. If we decide to go with the beginning of 2009 I won't have a problem with people switching teams again. I know that could potentially change some things.


If we start in 2009, the file would begin on opening day of 2009. I would allow you guys to point out anything that the OOTPdevs missed before a certain cut-off date, i.e. March 1st (I don't know what day we'd actually use, it would just be there to keep people from requesting Matt Holliday for Brett Wallace for instance, or any trades that occured well into the start yr). The default rosters are very solid, though I can't say for sure whether they got every little thing as of opening day. I don't know if I'd let people have a say in any potential rating changes that needed to be made, but if you saw something that was entirely off (i.e. Mark Reynolds' power being low, which it was when I downloaded the game anyway) you could point it out and I would use my judgement to fix it. If I let things get too specific, I'm afraid it would be abused and players that need not editting would get requests to be editted, etc... but moving along...

Pros:
- Less initial roster work
- Less chance of me having an OCD-related meltdown in the process of roster work
- We can begin the league much sooner
- I can have a temp. site up very soon
- I would still edit the 2009 ammy draft, and could focus more on it much more than I would be able to if we sim to the end of the 2009 season
- The first season for some of us on a new format will probably be trial & error anyway, and I'm sure there will be a lot of trades so the framework for a 2010 season might not even matter much anyway

Cons:
- Obviously the rosters won't be up to date
- Completely changes the outlook of some teams' rosters, i.e. Cleveland, White Sox, or St. Louis, as players like Lee, Holliday & Peavy wouldn't have moved around yet
- Might be harder to attract people from outside the site unless we have something different to offer, and starting with the default OOTP10 file might not be of much interest to people who have done it before and are in other leagues already
- Chance that some players who broke out in a major way this year don't replicate it a second time around in the game (i.e. the Garrett Jones types, I guess)

Or we can start in the 2009 offseason, which is what I had been planning to be honest. This will require much more extensive roster editting, and there is no guarantee that when all is said and done the file even resembles anything that occured in the real-life 2009 MLB season.

Pros:
- I would update the player movement (as in cuts, trades, signings, etc.) to close to perfect as I can get it, as that is something that is 100% neccesary if we begin in the offseason
- I would update ratings more extensively, probably out of neccesity more than anything (due to drop-offs and gains of talent from when I sim forward, some that may have not made sense)
- Might be more interesting to the outside eye, as the league might possibly be more current than others' starting up
- People won't have to switch teams for a hundreth time, which is always possible if we go with the default '09 rosters

Cons:
- Even looking at things from an optimistic standpoint, I wouldn't finish editting the rosters until mid-October probably
- The draft wouldn't be as extensive in order to preserve time
- Temp site won't be up for a little bit longer, since it won't be a good picture of the final product and not worth putting out there
- I can't replicate real stats or really keep track of every single rating that needs to be fixed or every single injury, so even if I get 60% of things down there's still going to be a good chunk that's incomplete because I'm a human, and not a machine
- It would just take much longer and slow things down in general



I'll be honest, I'd rather begin on opening day and focus more on fixing or adding any prospects that were missed, and making an accurate and real draft class. I've been tinkering with stuff on my current test file, and if we update to the offseason it might take a really long time and still come out bland. I can't even come close to replicating the 2009 season and how it has played out. Fact of the matter is I could take the next month to edit to the offseason but I'm afraid it still would feel incomplete, atleast for my standards.

Up to you guys though. If everyone had their heart set on begining in the 2009 offseason/2010 regular season, I will try my best to fix the rosters up. If enough people are cool with beginning in 2009, I'll get a site up real quickly and everyone can see their teams right away and if anything major has been missed or messed up, help me figure it out and fix it.

[Kingdom]

Stats aside cause I really could care less what a player puts up during 2009 if you simmed ahead, so as long as we have a chance to re-sign people (i.e. if I'm the cubs, I want to be able to try and resign Harden if he's someone worth resigning). If that's the case, I'm all for that, I just assumed we would just skip to 2010 and free agency would be another cluster ****. My only problem with simming ahead, people are going to die that shouldn't be dead by the end of 2009 (in reality) and it'll be impossible for you to keep track of all the major bumps and bruises. I would turn off injuries, that may help a good bit.

So I'm for sim to end of 2009.

[Slyder]

Whichever is easier for you.

But I would rather limit my "These guys MUST GO" block to Willy Baker i mean Willy Tavares and Co Co Cordero.

[Halladay_is_God]

I would like to the end of 2009 but thats only because I wouldn't have to deal with BJ Ryan

[nick]

Just because this doesn't fit the criteria of the first post, but I want people to read it, I'm going to put it in a reply...

The main reason I'm extra cautious of everyone getting a team they like, people staying active, and the league running to the tune of the real MLB (since that is the type of league we're going with, an MLB-based sim), is because I know we'll need a few heads from the outside to join and help make this thing successful. I realize if I wanted to contract, 24 teams would be easy to fill and probably help the league run better in the early going either way. This would allow us to keep a core of S3F-users, which is what I want in a league more than anything (since leagues are just more fun when everyone knows eachother and gets along-- I've been in leagues where everyone acts like a robot, atleast how I looked at it, and they just aren't as fun. I like that we all have personality here, even if that comes with flaws as OOTP GMs... we aren't all just random stiffs with _____GM in our screen names).

But if we contract down to 24, what's the point in jumping to a new format and starting over anyway? I firmly believe I could cut TPSL to 20 or 24 teams and keep it successful on this forum for many more seasons to come, if we were to do it that way. I just see no point in starting in 10 if we're cutting down.

And rant about outsiders and outside leagues occasionally being dull aside, we will need to attract interest from other forums to field a full league. It was always possible in the past with TPSL, and for the most part we stayed at 30, even if some teams were shuffling GMs. Over its course I'm sure we had over 60 different people in there, Texas alone probably had close to 10 GMs alone, and more than that if you count BuckFoston running them 5 different times.

One of the main reasons it got so hard to refill TPSL is because our core was quitting, leaving or disappearing (guys like Browntown, perf, Crazy, Witlon, theo to an extent, Mckain and Waruv in the early going or as a fill-in GM in waruvs case.. etc.. all really solid people to have in a league at one time or another) while the site activity was decreasing. One day there just wasn't a place to pluck a new guy from when a spot opened up. Then one spot became two spots, three, four... you get the point. Even if you fill one, you're still in a hole, and in the time it takes to find 3 more GMs the new guy has already quit usually.

Making a point to this rant, with the main site being rejuvenated and renamed to BS, hopefully appearing in more search engines and rebuilding its own base as a forum in the next few months, I hope that we will be able to keep the league at 30 teams in the longrun, but in the early going it is going to be tough unless we find people from the outside to sign-up and fill a few teams.
Hopefully they like the site and league long enough to stick around and mesh with us, but I'm sure some sign-ups will quit early or just disappear. It happens in every league, some people aren't good at committing to things.

I'm also hopeful the forums as a whole will start to regain their activity soon, and assuming they do that will also help the league stay full. I just really want to make sure if we do this OOTP10 league, we do it the right way, because as far as I'm concerned if we're going to have to contract eventually to keep things competitive anyway, we should just use the current file and do it with the guys we already have. That being said, I think we're all cool people and if we can find some others to join and get this thing to 30, they'll hopefully feel the same way and it'll all work out.

Done babbling though.

[nick]

Stats aside cause I really could care less what a player puts up during 2009 if you simmed ahead, so as long as we have a chance to re-sign people (i.e. if I'm the cubs, I want to be able to try and resign Harden if he's someone worth resigning). If that's the case, I'm all for that, I just assumed we would just skip to 2010 and free agency would be another cluster ****. My only problem with simming ahead, people are going to die that shouldn't be dead by the end of 2009 (in reality) and it'll be impossible for you to keep track of all the major bumps and bruises. I would turn off injuries, that may help a good bit.

So I'm for sim to end of 2009.

I can dig that... if that were the case though, do I still enter trades that occured throughout 2009? Do I make call-ups? ROTY contenders or players who lost their elligibility, i.e. Coughlan for example, do you guys care if they're elligible in 2010 for ROTY again? There's no way I can manage every single team and make sure all the players who played in 2010 (or key ones anyway) get playing time, atleast not in a realistic timeframe to begin this league. I'm just thinking if I sim ahead to the end of the year, it'll look crappy and a bunch of players lose talent anyway, which would mean I have a shitload of editting even AFTER entering everything before we can begin. I can turn injuries off though, it could help, and there's also an option that says "NO PLAYER DEVELOPMENT" but I'm not sure if that just halts development or if it stops development AND regression. If it's the latter, that might help a lot too...

[BrewerBall13]

I'd rather start at the end of 2009, because Victor Martinez is kind of key to the future of the Red Sox and I would really like him in the middle of my line-up...plus that would also leave me a little time to try to re-sign Jason Bay (if we were allowed some time to make decisions with players that will be FAs at the end of the 2009 season) and keep the core of the team together.

That being said, I'm not going to be an @$$hole (I know, shocking haha) and throw a huge hissy fit if it doesn't end up that way. Just stating my preference...

[nick]

If you guys want to start at the end of 2009, that's fine. While I do kinda prefer starting at the beginning, that was only because I figured you guys would rather start sooner than later and I know if we start at the end of 2009, some things will be imperfect by default. I could halt before we roll over, maybe/hopefully that no progression option will halt regression too... and I could turn off injuries entirely. I would have to find a way to get key rookies who are losing their elligibility, i.e. Happ, Wells, McGehee and Coughlan into the lineups somehow though... I don't care how the stats turn out myself, but I thought some people might.

It'd probably be better for the league to begin at the end of 2009, but it's going to be a little bit before we actually start everything in that case, and I probably can't spend as much time editting the draft as I'd have otherwise. Maybe I can still get a temp site up if this is the case, but the file I'd be uploading won't look anything like what the final product winds up to be is what I'd be afraid of.

If other people would still rather begin at the end of 2009, I could just let everyone take over and handle extensions/arby/etc before it rolled over I guess. I'll have to investigate and see if there's an easier way to keep ratings and stuff in place though... otherwise I'll have a lot of players I'll have to wind up fixing I'm afraid.

[Kingdom]

I don't think it's a big deal if and as well they should, Coughlan or Happ or etc. are decent or good. Same with stats. And every other award. I think I'm like Brewerball, I'd much rather have ___ than anything else. Guess since I'm the yankees, it's not a big deal since they sat on their ass this trade deadline. But for Boston or St. Louis or Philly, it's a big deal since Lee, Holliday and Martinez are all-star caliber players.

And so forth. I would think there's somewhere you can import a file of real life amateur picks to make things that much easier. Perhaps that's something to look into, to save you that much work. Oriolemagic, anything like that exist for new OOTPs? I think it would be great cause the 2009 draft was a deep class.

[nick]

I don't think there's anything to import from. I mean, there's a lehman's database or something that I always hear people refference, but I have no idea how to use it or if it's something I could access for free or what. I don't know if it automatically imports or if it's something I use as a refference. I'm kind of clueless on it all.

Editting in the OOTP game itself is much easier though, and I don't feel like it would take very long to edit the 2009 draft to make it respectable. I had planned on aiming for around 10 rounds deep of ammys, and just including the key guys (i.e. if the draft in the game only goes 12 rounds say, and someone in real life was picked closer to the 20th round due to signability concerns but is better talent than the spot they landed in would imply, I could just slide them into the team's top-12 picks in place of someone if needed). But if we're going to sim to the end of the year, I'll need to start editting the draft immediately and don't know how much time I can put into that while staying on base and aiming to get to the end of the 2009 season. I'm gonna see who is already in the database and about how many players would need to be added. Maybe I'll shoot for closer to 6 or 7 rounds worth of players, we'll see. I'd like to atleast do 6.

[Porter]

Im more for the end off 2009 because of the Bill Hall and development of Ryan Roland-Smith and the younger players on the M's.

[Providence A's]

End of 2009 for new prospects, draft, progression of specs (Anderson, Carter, etc.)...if it's going to start this year, then end of 2009 makes sense. If it's not going to start until 2010, then start of 2010 would make sense. Basically, wherever we are in real life should be where we start IMHO.

[OrioleMagic]

Some thoughts... Before we even discuss when we begin simming with the rosterset, we should really analyze the league format.

OOTP 2010 allows for a very deep minors system with the standard being 5 minor league teams, AAA, AA, two A ball teams, and a rookie short season team. OOTP 2010 also has international markets/leagues.

When I ask for a "more robust" league, I am looking for something a little more advanced than your standard 6.5 league, yet not overly complicated. To do this we need 2/3 of the league GMs to be at least moderately active. I mean checking the league and giving it attention at least once every other day. Ideally, more!

Off the top of my head, I would like a full MLB set up with 3 or 4 minor league affiliates. I would like a Asian league and a Hispanic (Cuba, Venezuala, etc) league on auto that we can track players and select from. I would like to be able to go to AT LEAST 2/3 of the GMs and get a reasonable interaction from regarding trades. I don't want to scout someone elses minors and find a 25 year old in Single A when his ratings and stats show he clearly should have been promoted to AA 3 years ago and should at least be in AAA right now. When this happens, sometimes the player becomes a project and his value is less definitive than it should be.

With that said, can we realistically expect to bring 5-8 new GMs to this league? If so, how soon? Also if so, will they last or will they be 1 or 2 season wonders like some? I said this before, when I look at the current listing of projected GMs, I question the activity of several that are already there! I know in the end, this is just OOTP and it really doesn't matter in the grand scheme of life, but for me it is stress relief and a great escape into the baseball world that I love.

Regarding importing draft picks... I will post a thread at the OOTP boards asking this question and the question about the OSA ratings vs the franchise scout ratings...

I really would rather create an elite league with less GMs and make people wait on a waiting list for a slot to play in a league that they feel privileged to play in. It would be easier on the Commish and more interactive. A contraction draft would be exciting.

With that said, IF we can import real-life players, we will be ahead of MLB in no time, so this is unrealistic. In 3 months we should be in 2011 or 2012 and drafting fictional players anyway. So, I vote for starting at the beginning of 2009 and trusting Nick to make this rosterset as appetizing as possible. VMart will be gone in 2-3 seasons anyway and another Javier "The Mustache" Barbosa will be the cornerstone of a franchise. After all, this is not MLB once we start simming.

[Kingdom]

Hey now, the Mustache can neverrrrr be replicated.

[OrioleMagic]

Understood, but if you disagree with my position, I'd love to hear logical counter argument. I have yet to see results in the form of new GMs.