New Season Coming Up. Discuss League Policy!

We've got a grand total of five players returning from last year and they are:

TWOLEFTTHUMBS (who wants the Phillies)
Smoo_boy (has not staked a claim to a team yet)
bravemule (has not staked a claim to a team yet)
freedumbxx (who wants the Braves)
H8ff0000 (who wants the Yankees)

I was thinking of going to full on recruiting mode to round out our league. Before i do though I have some questions for you all as I had a good time with you all in the league last year and was wondering what your thoughts are on these points of consideration.

1.) What teams do you want Smoo and mule? Let me know as I am going to recruit and let people pick their teams as they sign up for the league. That way they don't bail just because they don't get their team of choice and if I'm careful about how I recruit won't have to do it again. So let me know and I'll reserve a team for you.

2.) I think we should NOT use the fantasy draft at least for the season we play this year. What about trying to go with 30 teams (if I can find that many) and using the real rosters???? The fact that you can trade players now in online season mode kinda changes everything. Injuries are also a factor if we choose them to be. Rosters have been expanded from 25 players to 40 players so you will really get a chance to manage the hell out of your team. Prospects will be a key factor and successive seasons (either this year or next year become more realistic if we find a good bunch of managers) rather than starting over from scratch. Ideally...this league will be run so well that hopefully we have people begging to be part of it long term rather than us shopping for members.

3.) If we don't have fantasy draft then it makes it easier for us to start the season...I just activate when we're set rather than getting delayed by personal schedules and the limitations of the PS3 draft system that we encountered last year???

4.) Smoo...based on what I've given you to think about...what are your thoughts on the Yahoo mirror league??? Can you think of a way it would work??? Do you wanna put that on hold til 2011? The fact that you'll now have a full 40 man roster, trades, Injuries and rotations to manage will that be enough work for you on its own. Don't forget I'm fully hoping that you will help mod this board if you're up for it.

5.) I'm thinking of setting the league up for Legend difficulty. It's the highest but I've already played it about 80% of the time so far on the new version and it seems to be not really any harder than All-Star or HOF...more realistic and I don't want the League turning into a Home Run Derby if we get a few guys in the league that never go outside. What are your thoughts? It kind of levels the playing field in a way and controls some of the variables.

6.) Let me know where you stand on these issues and if you're still up for it guys. Thanks and hoping you are all ready for what will be a great season.

I like the idea of a non-draft league, but how will free agency work? If there are 8 teams picked, does everyone else get dumped into a free agency pool? How are players claimed? That could be a strange free-for-all, or maybe those players just dissolve all together. I have no idea. Trades definitely make things interesting as well. What happens when the league ends? I heard something about leagues continuing through multiple "seasons." Is this how it works? So many questions!

I have not tried legend difficulty on online mode yet. As far as home run derby goes, I think adjusting sliders can help. There are plenty of awkward errors in Veteran mode, how does fielding get affected on higher levels?

I have no prob not doing a draft either..although I LOVE doing it and prefer it...but I don't mind doing the regular teams from this year either. I really have to do some thinking though, b/c I am a die hard Braves fan and would want the Braves if I was playing with the regular team. I could care less if I was the Braves if we draft..I would take the Giants, O's, or who else knows who.

I kinda feel like I got the ball rolling with you this year hitting you up about the league...I had no idea I had to "stake claim to a team" before we even had owners. Plus, I thought we would draft like last year and if that was the case, I just pick based on uniforms, stadium, etc.

Let me know what you guys think. It's not the end of the world...but I am a big Braves guy. If I can't run with ATL, I'll have to decide between, StL, SF, TB, Sea, BMore, or Dodgers, brewers.

I'll claim the Cubbies. My strategy of big ballpark and flyball pitchers didn't work very well last year. I like the idea of a small league with dedicated mgrs as opposed to a big league with lots of no shows. In the case of a small league, drafting though it has it's downsides, is still a rush. I also can understand the "keep your MLB team players only" method. Even if all we had were 6 dedicated teams, I think that would be enough to pull off a draft type league. If I were voting, I'd vote for a draft. I don't think a league with 30 actual teams would fly, just because peeps would lose interest. A small league of just us with our actual teams and some free agent rules would probably work well.

that's enough smoo rambling for now.

Off to the store to line the game devs pockets with moolah.........

Let's get a few Spring Games in.

Smaller is definitely better. I'd prefer 8 teams over 6, but 6 would still be fun and a good way to get started. 30 would just be silly.

I think it'd work better if we had even AL and NL teams, and split the divisions evenly. Just a thought, not a necessity.

hey guys, i'd like to come back if you will have me. I'd vote for a draft and would like to claim the Indians. Also, i'll have to go back and add all of you guys to the friends list again...had a bit of a problem and you all got deleted. But don't worry, I dumped her and it won't happen again.

Cubs
Phillies
Braves

Yankees
Indians
and either BAL, SEA, TB....

Smoo_boy wrote:

Cubs
Phillies
Braves

Yankees
Indians
and either BAL, SEA, TB....

I like it! Its good for a draft league. In a non draft league, the last team should probably be Seattle.

I too would prefer draft....guess I could take either SF in the NL or Bmore if I had to take AL...

Okay so what about this based on the discussion to this point:

American League

Yankees - H8ff0000
Indians - punksk8r1313
Orioles - TWOLEFTTHUMBS

National League

Cubs - Smoo_boy
Braves - freedumbxx
Giants - GovtMule420

Do we stop at that or do we want to add a couple of teams to get us to eight? Six is small but we all kinda have a sense based on previous experience that this should be very doable. Maybe it makes sense to just start with 6...make sure we get the season played and then we can always tweak settings and look at expansion??? By then the hype around the new game will have died down so anyone looking to join an established league at that point is likely legitimately wanting to be part and we won't run as high a risk of being deserted like we were by clubkid, td etc... last year. I haven't heard back from ben or nucks so I'm assuming they are out.

I think the draft will work with a small league like this.

I'll mess around with the league setup interface and experiment with series length and # of games but it should be very manageable. I'm looking forward to getting back to playing you guys...Played a couple online games today and some of the stupid crap was driving me nuts. Junkballers, throwing it nowhere near the plate, criticism of me cuz I wasn't lobbing it right down the middle. ARRRGHHHHHHH! Annoying.

In terms of difficulty...veteran is the default online...then it goes All-Star, HOFer, Legend. Rookie comes lower than veteran. Is it safe to say that All-Star is the happy medium??? Would you be okay with setting league difficulty to All-Star???

Another thing that we need to discuss is Guess Pitch. My personal preference would be that it would be off. Your thoughts?

Keep the discussion going guys...this is great. I have to leave town this Friday...I'll be back next Friday. (My brother-in-law is getting hitched in Jamaica) But there is a 75% chance I'll have some form of internet from down there...fingers crossed anyways. I got a lot of work to do to prepare for draft season.

Ideally I would like to send out league invites before I leave...then when I get back I will hopefully find all slots in the league full and organized as above...then I will just activate the league. Once I activate the league we will be drafting within the next 7 days...so if I activate March 20 (Saturday) we will be drafting anywhere from Sunday March 21 at night to Saturday March 27th.

I'm busy on Tuesday March 23 at 10 PM (so is Smoo) but the rest could work that week. What about Thursday 25th/Friday 26th /Saturday 27th at 10 PM EST?????? for the draft. I just need to know which day we will draft before I set up the league because like last year I can only pick day of the week and time of day. Not a specific date.

Saturday the 27th, 10pm est works for me for a draft.
I vote for guess pitch turned off.

6 teams would be a good way to start.
I'm thinking 3 game series, 2x divisional and 1x non divisional? It'll be a good starter season. We can figure out how trades and free agency and all that works. By the time we're done, we'll probably have found other people we can invite for a deeper round 2.

sounds good to me.

Im down for most draft slots.

I agree. Good place to start. I'm flexible on drafts as I will queue if I have to. I think I can even easily adapt Yahoo to it. May not match exactly on schedule, but who cares? Big rule over there will be your Yahoo roster is the same as your PS3 roster.

I'll do all the legwork at Yahoo for anyone interested. Need a minimum of 4 to keep that flying. I'll set everyone's roster after our PS3 draft. All anyone really need do for that is sign up. ID # 157962, password: theshowrules

Got my copy today. I'm definitely at the Carlos Silva stage of Spring Training.

I'll probably be on sometime Tues evening 8 EST+ if anyone wants to throw down a Split Squad game.

freedumbxx and I had an entertaining game Tues night. My pitching was pretty bad, beaned him several times. We played on All-Star and it seemed fine to me. I don't know if it was traffic or if it was new, but the ball seemed to behave differently as it approached the plate. Seemed to have a "rise" effect on the fastball or something. Not something bad, just something different. No matter how the game plays out, it always seems entertaining and fun. freedumbxx can still hit........

I'll probably be on again Wed pm 8 ESTish. I've got a lot of work to do......

I'd like to do a game where the first four innings is nothing but fastballs down the middle so we can work on defense and basestealing, then go 5 innings legit to work on everything. Anyone down with that? Meet me on the fields tonight.

just signed up for smoo's fantasy league on yahoo. might be fun. see if your players are better virtually or in real life.

punksk8r1313 wrote:

just signed up for smoo's fantasy league on yahoo. might be fun. see if your players are better virtually or in real life.

I just signed up for it too...not sure how it will all work but if it can be done at all Smoo is the guy for the job. Will be lots of fun. With my skills so far my players are destined to perform better in reality...

Currently mired in an 1 for 22 slump to kick off my Road To The Show campaign