Quote:
Originally Posted by Honolulu Blue
Suggestion
More options for the expansion draft - such as the ability to pull players off the list after having one taken, limits on players taken per team, limiting the expansion pool to one subleague, and/or defining certain players to leave out of the pool (e.g. young minor leaguers with no ML experience, 10-5 guys, etc.)
Reason
Would add to realism for historical players; adds to options and thought involved for all players.
Priority
Medium
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The only change I would make from the above is to change the priority to High, as the way the expansion draft process works currently in OOTP allows for existing teams to be unfairly looted of talent, something which the real world expansion process does not allow (more on this later).
I also want to flesh out HB's suggestion with some details. The options which should be available in the expansion draft, in order to more closely mimic the real-world expansion drafts, would include the following:
Clubs Contributing to Draft: Subleague only, Entire League
Number of Protected Players in First Round: (15-50 selectable)
Additional Number of Players Protected in Each Subsequent Round (same subleague): None, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
Additional Number of Players Protected in Each Subsequent Round (other subleague): None, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
Total Number of Players to be Chosen by Each Expansion Club: (15-50 selectable)
Below are some examples of how real MLB expansion drafts would be set up using the above options.
1968 AL Expansion Draft
Clubs Contributing to Draft: Subleague only
Number of Protected Players in First Round: 15
Additional Number of Players Protected in Each Subsequent Round (same subleague): 3
Additional Number of Players Protected in Each Subsequent Round (other subleague): N/A
Total Number of Players to be Chosen by Each Expansion Club: 30
1992 NL Expansion Draft
Clubs Contributing to Draft: Entire League
Number of Protected Players in First Round: 15
Additional Number of Players Protected in Each Subsequent Round (same subleague): 3
Additional Number of Players Protected in Each Subsequent Round (other subleague): 4
Total Number of Players to be Chosen by Each Expansion Club: 36
1997 MLB Expansion Draft
Clubs Contributing to Draft: Entire League
Number of Protected Players in First Round: 15
Additional Number of Players Protected in Each Subsequent Round (same subleague): 3
Additional Number of Players Protected in Each Subsequent Round (other subleague): 3
Total Number of Players to be Chosen by Each Expansion Club: 35
The Expansion Draft Process
As noted earlier, the way OOTP currently does the expansion process allows for an existing team to be unfairly looted of talent during the draft. This is because the game considers each round of the expansion draft to consist of a number of picks equal to the number of expansion teams. So with two expansion teams each round of the expansion draft would only consist of two selections.
This is not how the real expansion drafts work!
In real MLB expansion drafts, the number of picks made in each full round equals
the number of already existing teams in the league. The reason for this is so that every existing club loses one player in each round, thereby spreading the player losses equally amongst all the existing teams. So, if a league consisted of ten teams before expansion, then the number of picks made in each full round of the expansion draft would be ten, with that number divided equally between the number of expansion teams. The number of rounds in total for the expansion draft is determined by the total number of players to be chosen by each expansion draft team.
The best way to illustrate how the process really functions is to use an example.
Here's how it worked for in the 1997 MLB expansion draft which stocked the new Tampa Bay and Arizona ballclubs:
First, since there were 28 already existing clubs, that meant each full round of the expansion draft consisted of 28 picks, with 14 made by each expansion club. Since each expansion club would be choosing 35 players, that meant a total of 70 players would be chosen in the expansion draft. That in turn meant there were two full rounds of 28 picks and one round of 14 picks (28+28+14=70), for a total of three rounds.
In the first round, Tampa Bay went first and made its pick. The existing club which lost a player (FLO) was then removed for the rest of the round, leaving 27 clubs. Arizona had second pick and chose a player from among those 27 remaining contributing clubs. That existing team which lost a player (CLE) was then removed, leaving 26 teams. Arizona also got to pick third (the draft order was TBA-ARI-ARI-TBA for the first four selections, and then alternated after that), and did so from among the 26 available teams. The team that lost a player (BOS) was removed, leaving 25 teams contributing. Tampa Bay then made the fourth pick of the round from among those 25 teams, with that existing team losing a player (COL) removed for the rest of the round, leaving 24 contributing teams.
The rest of the first round continued on in this fashion, with an existing team being removed for the rest of the round once it had a player selected from it. When the first round ended, each expansion team had made 14 picks, for a total of 28 for the round, and each existing team had lost one player.
The second round of the draft then started, with the process working just like it did in the first round (with the one exception that the two expansion clubs alternated picks for the entire round). When the second round ended, each of the existing 28 clubs had lost a total of two players (one in each round), and each expansion club had selected 28 players (14 in each round), with an overall total of 56 players selected in the two rounds.
The third round only consisted of a total of 14 picks (7 by each expansion club), so only half the existing teams lost a third player to the expansion draft, but otherwise the process worked just like it did in the first two rounds.
When the draft was over, 70 players had been selected, 35 by each expansion club. Of the existing 28 clubs, 14 had lost three players and 14 had lost two, thus distributing the loss of players fairly equally.
This is how MLB expansion drafts work, and is really how they should work in OOTP as well.