Inactive Leagues: Why Wait?

[Questdog]

For those of you who have been clamoring for the ability to have inactive leagues and sub-leagues, there is no reason to continue the ruckus: they are possible right now.

All you have to do is create the league or sub-league that you want to start out inactive with 2 teams in it. After creation, you can then safely edit your league structure, deleting the divisions they were in.

There are a few rules, however:

1) Spring Training must be off.

2) Inactive Leagues and/or Leagues with inactive Sub-Leagues must have playoffs disabled.

3) In order for your Inaugural Draft to function properly, you must have the same number of Major League teams after restructuring the setup as prior AND each Major League team must have the same minor league setup as it had at initial creation (at least, I'm 100% certain you can't ADD minor league teams to them before the draft. Not certain if you can have fewer. It doesn't have to be the exact same AAA team that it had at creation, it just has to have one, if you set it as having one during league setup.)


Here's an example:

I want to start my Universe in 1876 and have it follow actual ML history, growing and shrinking as the years pass. In 1876, there was only the National League with 8 teams.

So to start off, I create a Fictional Major League with 2 sub-leagues, 1 Division each. Sub-League 1 has 6 teams, Sub-League 2 has 2 teams. Sub-League 1 will be the National League; Sub-League 2 will be inactive until the American Association forms and will eventually become the American League

Even though it's not historically accurate, I want each team to have a full minor league system every year, but I don't want any unaffiliated teams.

So I'll need 8 teams at each Minor League Level for this first year, but I need to make enough leagues, so that I can eventually have all the current minor leagues going at full speed.

I add 3 AAA leagues, each with 1 sub-league, the first with 4 teams, the other two with 2 teams each. (This is the Pacific Coast League, International League, and American Association.) I'm careful to have only 8 AAA teams total in all 3 leagues. If you have more than you plan on using, you'll end up with the game generating a bunch of fictional players that will all end up in your FA pool.

I make sure each AAA team is affiliated to a Major League team and each Major League team has an affiliate.

Repeat for the other Minor League Levels (BTW, I like to use the Short A level as A ball, with the A level being my High A and the Rookie level being Rookie ball and Short Season A ball combined.)

For each Minor League that has only 2 teams in it, I make sure the schedule is set to 0 games. I turn off Spring Training in the Major League and disable playoffs in all leagues. (You could keep it active in each of the Minor Leagues that will have teams in it after all is said and done, but in 1876 they didn't do that...) I set all the other stuff to my liking (Financials and league Modifiers, etc.).

Start the game!

After I get control back from the computer, I go to game setup and select my major league. I go to Edit League Structure and move the 2 teams from Sub-League 2 to Sub-League 1 and delete the empty division in Sub-League two. I generate a new schedule. (You will get an error message about a missing array, but holding down the ESC key for a few seconds makes it disappear and the schedule is safely completed.)

Now, I go to each Minor League that I want depopulated and I delete their divisions, erasing the teams (You can't move a team from one league to another). Since the schedule was set to 0 games, I don't need to generate a new one.

Then I go to the Minor leagues that will operate this season and add teams to each one to get them full and generate new schedules. I go to "Names and Affiliations" to make sure each team is linked to a Major League team and that no Major League team is left out.

Once that's done, I can advance a day and have my Inaugural Draft. I recheck to make sure the Affiliations are all correct, because if they're not, I'm toast. (Make sure you save your league before advancing to the Inaugural Draft. That way, if you forgot a team somewhere, you can go back and fix it.)

Happy Simming!

When it comes time to expand, you just add the teams, generate schedules and go!

One problem with expansion/contraction, is that you can't edit your league structure until the first day of pre-season. That's after all the free agents have signed, so your expansion teams won't have much grain to glean. Also, when you contract, the players released never seem to sign with anyone until the NEXT off-season. You can get around this by adding your expansion teams the Year BEFORE they come online (Just don't generate new schedules and they won't play any games. Be aware, however, that the game will sometimes give awards to players on those teams). And you can manually release all the players from teams that are bowing out of the league (make sure to set their cash to a very negative figure so they won't resign anyone good.)

I think that about covers it...

Next project: I have a workaround in the works for not being able to change your name.dat file after creation. I like my player names to be era sensitive....

[Questdog]

One item I failed to mention: The All-Star game should be disabled in any and all inactive leagues or sub-leagues...

[Vris]

History is unaffected by all this?

[Zitofan75]

Intriguing. I'll try this when I get home from work ...

[Questdog]

History is fine. A cool thing about this game is that it keeps a complete record of all the defunct teams.

[andymac]

You know what would be really cool...a quickstart with your setup in the first post. *hint hint* .

Nice find Questdog!!

[Questdog]

Originally Posted by andymac

You know what would be really cool...a quickstart with your setup in the first post. *hint hint* .

Nice find Questdog!!

I don't know that that would be very useful; you could only see the after results, not how to get there...

[andymac]

Originally Posted by Questdog

I don't know that that would be very useful; you could only see the after results, not how to get there...

Well, an 1871 start with all of the leagues included and all the inactive onces setup up to be inactive would be a great help for someone wanting to start a fictional historical league I would think. They take a lot of time to set up. Of course, I am not implying you should do it or anything, was just stating it would be nice for the community to have one .

[Questdog]

Major League baseball didn't start until 1876. All these left-wing radical history revisionists who suggest otherwise are only try to puff up their self-importance by trying to make themselves the ones "in the know".

But really, modern baseball, as we know it, dates from 1893 when they moved the pitcher back from softball distance to baseball distance. (Wonder what the function of those mounds were before the change? )

Anyways, I always start my leagues at 1876 and I do a lot of funky stuff to 'em. You'd have to run your league just the way I do, to use it.

I'll try to set a vanilla one up sometime, though it's a big chore...

[andymac]

Originally Posted by Questdog

I'll try to set a vanilla one up sometime, though it's a big chore...

Definitely a big chore and you have done more than enough work already. I didn't mean to get the discussion going towards a quickstart, my apologies for that.


Anyway, thanks very much for the info on how to do this...great work!

[Questdog]

Originally Posted by Questdog

History is fine. A cool thing about this game is that it keeps a complete record of all the defunct teams.

There is one thing about the History you should understand. The game tracks the history of each sub-league, regardless of what you name it. So that, in the example I posted, the American Association of the 1880's will share the same sub-league as the American League of post-1901 and therefore the game will keep their history as if they were the same league, sharing records, etc.

You could get around this by making the American Association its own stand alone league (or not creating it), but then you couldn't play a Championship Series between them and the National League, as, in fact, they did....

[Questdog]

Originally Posted by Questdog

You could get around this by making the American Association its own stand alone league (or not creating it), but then you couldn't play a Championship Series between them and the National League, as, in fact, they did....

Also, if you made the American Association its own separate league, stats compiled therein would not be considered a part of a player's major league record....

[Carplos]

Originally Posted by Questdog

Also, if you made the American Association its own separate league, stats compiled therein would not be considered a part of a player's major league record....

If you set it as a "Major League" they would. Unless you mean for actual MLB records and the like.