[Le Grande Orange]

Much to read and comment on, Muzamba. Let me tackle a few items that come to mind at the moment...

Originally Posted by Muzamba

Disabled List 1 Length - Simply adds a "1" to distinguish it from the 60-Day option
Disabled List 2 Length - This would allow a different length for the traditional 60-Day DL.

There's a better way to differentiate them—call them Disabled List (short-term) and Disabled List (long-term).

You didn't include an option to limit the number of players on the short-term DL. That needs to be there, since in earlier years the DL was strictly limited in the number of players that could be on it at one time (it was just two players when MLB first began using a disabled list).

Originally Posted by Muzamba

Waiver Trading Deadline Date - This allows the option to change the trading deadline for players who have cleared waivers.
Non-Waiver Trading Deadline Date - Distinguishes the non-waiver deadline from the waiver deadline

Sorry, but I don't see what the point is of the second option. It seems to me it's a misunderstanding of how the trade deadline works. You're also missing something that really ought to be there in terms of trading: interleague trading waiver restrictions. These were a part of baseball for over fifty years.

I would propose the trading options be set up thusly:

• Allow Trading. This determines whether or not players can be traded or sold from one team to another.
• Enable Trade Deadline. This determines if there will be a trade deadline in the league. This is a separate matter from whether trading is allowed or not. Without a trade deadline, players can be traded or sold to another team at any time with no restrictions. With a trade deadline, then during the off-season and during the regular season before the trade deadline players can be traded or sold without restriction; during the regular season after the trade deadline, trades/sales require the players to clear waivers first.
• Trade Deadline Date. The trade deadline date is selected here.
• Enable Interleague Trading Restrictions. This setting results in restrictions on trades/sales between the sub leagues within a league (or between separate major leagues). With this enabled, then trades/sales between sub leagues during the off-season and during the regular season before the trade deadline (if any) requires the players to clear waivers within the sub league they are leaving. During the regular season after the trade deadline, trades/sales between sub leagues requires the players to clear waivers in both sub leagues. (The point of such interleague waiver restrictions in MLB was specifically to limit the movement of players between the leagues so as to preserve the player uniqueness of each league).
• Enable Waiver-free Interleague Trading Period. This option enables a specified period during the off-season when interleague trades/sales can be conducted without waivers. The period runs from five days after the conclusion of the league's championship series up to the end of the league's winter meetings. This option is only available if the Enable Interleague Trading Restrictions option is active.
• Allow Trades with other Major Leagues. Enables trades/sales of players to other major leagues.

Originally Posted by Muzamba

Earliest Date to Trade FA Signed in Offseason - This option would prevent teams from signing a FA and trading him away in the first week of the season.

Ah, yes, Article XX(B)(6), a rule that is easy to overlook but ought to be in OOTP. By way of (extreme) nitpick, I'll point out the date should be June 16, not May 31.

Another item which is similar are the re-signing restrictions. There are two: the first states that a player released between opening day and Aug. 31 cannot be re-signed by the releasing team for thirty days. The other states that a player released between Sept. 1 and opening day of the next season cannot be re-signed by the releasing team until May 15 of the next season. You may want to consider factoring these in somewhere.

(There used to be on the books a re-signing limitation in regards to players selected in the amateur draft, but I can't find it at the moment.)

Originally Posted by Muzamba

Minor League Option Years - Currently, you only have the option whether or not to have option years. This gives you the opportunity to change the actual number of years. (Of course, it can still be disabled by setting the years to "0".)

A good addition, definitely.

But the option below it, Disable right to refuse minor league Assignment, could actually be expanded, given how it's changed over MLB's history. Major League players first got the right to refuse a minor league assignment in 1914, with the requirement being ten years' of service. In 1954 that was lowered to eight years, and in 1976 it was reduced to five seasons. So the ability to refuse a minor league assignment should include the ability to specify the number of years of service needed.

Originally Posted by Muzamba

Draft Order - This gives you the option of having either the traditional "Worst-to-Best Record" order for each round, a "Serpentine" (1-2-3-3-2-1) order, or a totally "Random" order.

There are two additional options which can go here. One is to allow either an order which is reverse order of the regular season standings only (what MLB does); the other is to also factor in the post-season results in the order. That is, the World Series winner would pick last, the World Series loser would pick second-to-last, the League Championship Series losers would be the next third- and fourth-to-last to pick, and so on.

The second option is whether the amateur draft selections proceed by reverse record alternating by league (how it worked before 2005) or whether the selections proceed by reverse record without regard to league (how it works from 2005 onwards).

Originally Posted by Muzamba

Enable Extended Spring Training - This option allows players recovering from injury to get more conditioning before joining the major league team at the beginning of the regular season.

I did some research on this and other aspects of spring training, and the extended spring training is, I think, more interesting that what you've laid out.

The primary purpose of extended spring training is to provide something to do for those minor league players who are slotted to participate in the short season leagues. All of a major league club's minor league players report to spring training. They are generally divided into four groups, roughly corresponding to the four full-length season teams. The result is that there are about 160-200 players competing for 98 roster spots. As spring training goes along, the rosters are gradually worked out for the four full-length season minor league teams. Those players who didn't make those full-season rosters are thus assigned to the short-season clubs, but since those don't begin play until mid-June, the players are sent to extended spring training.

Extended spring training, as its name implies, is a continuation of spring training. Clubs hold instructional lessons, practices, and play a schedule of games against other clubs (though the games are largely informal). Sometimes players are advanced from EST to the Low-A full-season club, either as an injury replacement or take the place of a player who is demoted to EST. On occasion a major league player may be sent to EST for injury rehabilitation.

In OOTP terms, EST would allow the short-season league players to gain additional development time and to keep in shape and reduce the 'rust' which would otherwise accumulate from waiting around for the short-season leagues to start. Since there'd be a schedule of extended spring training games, one could keep track of players' peformances and advance deserving players to the full-season minor league club while perhaps demoting players who are struggling. This sort of EST would give the OOTP user an additional way to monitor and channel the progress and development of their player talent.

Originally Posted by Muzamba

Number of Interleague Games per Team - The greatest benefit with this option would be for all the leagues out there who don't have the same limited relationship between sub-leagues that MLB does. (Since my fictional leagues tend to have East/West sub-leagues, I personally prefer to have a more balanced number of intraleague and interleague games.) [*]Interleague Format - This options would let you control how interleague rivals are determined. The options would be: "Alternate Between Each Division" (e.g. NL East teams would play AL East teams one year, AL Central the next, AL West the next, then back to AL East the next), "Play Same Division Each Year" (e.g. NL East always plays AL East), or "Random Opponents", which should be pretty much self-explanatory..[*]Schedule Interleague Series 1 & 2 for..." - Gives you the opportunity to have interleague series played around specific occasions, like the Memorial Day and/or Independence Day holidays in the US. [*]Always Schedule Games vs. Top Interleague Rival - Checking this option would allow certain teams from opposite sub-leagues to play each other every season, like the Mets and Yankees, Angels and Dodgers, Cubs and White Sox, or any number of interstate rivals.

Those are all well and good, but in all honestly, I strongly doubt the OOTP schedule generator will ever be anywhere near that robust. Those are some very intricate and complicated factors you've included. I'd say those options can realistically be left out.

Originally Posted by Muzamba

ASG Format - This could be either the traditional "Sub League vs. Sub League" format or the "League Nation vs. International" (players from the league's base country against players from the rest of the world).

The minor leagues have had a host of other ASG formats. These have included:

• The team leading the league as of a specified date playing an All-Star team made up of players from the rest of the teams in the league
• The league's All-Star team playing a Major League club
• One All-Star team is composed of the AL affiliates in the league while the other team is composed of players from the NL affiliates
• For leagues with only one division or an odd number of divisions, the league is divided into two geographical regions (e.g. east and west) and each All-Star squad is made up of players from one of the regions

Originally Posted by Muzamba

ASG DH Rule - Allows you to choose between "Always Use DH", "Only Use in DH-League Stadiums", "Use DH Every Other Year", or "Never Use DH".

These options should also apply to DH use in the World Series (or the league's equivalent).

Originally Posted by Muzamba

Count Tiebreaker Stats in Season Totals - Whether a player's stats that are accumulated in a 1-game tiebreaker at the end of the season count toward regular season or (if unchecked) the postseason.

Tiebreaking games are and have always been considered part of the regular season, so I think the inclusion of this option is unnecessary.

Originally Posted by Muzamba

Average Annual Merchandising Revenue - This helps to determine how much merchandising revenue is normally generated by teams in your league, which largely depends on the market size of your league's teams and the number of star players on their rosters. [*]Generate Revenue from Other Sources - With this option, teams have control over things like stadium construction/renovation, team relocation, the sale of naming rights, the awarding of broadcasting rights, the sale of advertising space in their stadiums, and "commercials" that are "broadcast" during play-by-play.

The subject of revising OOTP's financial system is an enormous one, so I'm only going to touch upon a few things here briefly.

OOTP greatly overstates the importance of merchadising revenue. In reality, merchandising only accounts for a relatively small portion of a club's revenue. The five main areas of revenue for a club are: (1) ticket sales; (2) stadium revenue (e.g. luxury suites, concessions, parking, stadium naming rights, etc.); (3) national revenue (primarily the national broadcasting contracts but also national-level merchandising); (4) local media revenue (e.g. the local broadcasting contracts); and (5) merchandising (defined here as also including advertising, promotions, and sponsorships). These are the income streams which need to be detailed and the average values specified.

National revenue is usually split equally between all the teams in the league. However, it might be interesting to add an option whereby the national revenue could be split unequally, in a method similar to that used by the Premier League. That would mean 60% of the money is split equally, 20% is assigned as merit pay (e.g. the beter a club's record the more money it gets), and 20% is assigned based on the relative prestige of the teams (to emulate how the more prestigious teams are the ones more often seen in national broadcasts).


In terms of revenue sharing, there can be addtional options. Revenue sharing can either be done on an individual element basis or on a composite league-wide basis. Additionally, the individual elements can either be shared separately or pooled. Here's what that all means:

Individual elements means you select the revenue item to be share individually. These individual elements are ticket sales and local media. For each the percentage to be shared can be set. The next choice is to decide whether these items are shared separately or pooled. Separately shared means only the actual visiting clubs to that home team will get the allotted portion of the shared revenue generated by that home team for that game. Pooled means that specified shared portion is collected from each team from each game and put into a league pool which at season's end is divided equally amongst all the member clubs in the league.

When revenue sharing is selected to be done on a composite, league-wide basis, it means that the total local revenue for each club is determined (there is no separate sharing of the individual types of revenue streams) and the specified percentage is collected into a league pool which is then split equally amongst all the clubs in the league. (This is essentially what MLB does now.)

Originally Posted by Muzamba

HONORS (Because this is a new screen, items refer to the "Award Names Setup" and "Hall of Fame Requirements for Automatic Induction" sections originally located on the NAMES & AFFILIATIONS and discontinued OPTIONS screens, respectively. These two sub-categories have been renamed simply "Awards" and "Hall of Fame".)

One potential selectable item that is sort of related to the above is that of determining the minimum level necessary to be a qualifer for a league leader. While MLB uses 3.1 PA per game for hitters and 1.0 IP per game pitchers, the minor leagues use 2.7 PA and 0.8 IP. It might be nice to have the option to specify what the minimums are for each league in order to be a league leader qualifier.

A similar item is that of rookie qualification. That underwent some changes over the years, so it might be good to be able to choose for a league what the rookie qualifications are (this might be especially useful for short-season leagues).


And that's it for now...