The MLB and PAL-A What If Fictional/Historical League, setup question (can I do this?)...

[Claymore]

Alien Nation - Pick a historical year, release all players to FA and then kill all the free agents. Now fill all the teams with fictional players. Now, make sure that you have import historical players on and each year, you will get real players coming into the league as rookies. Eventually, the real guys will take over the league. It is quite interesting. A variation is to set the player creation factors to produce a lousy league.

After reading this I thought back to my what if 1995 MLB decided to field the replacement players option league, with the players union spinning off and creating a second league of their own. Basically, I would create two leagues, one with the all the MLB teams and fictional players (with a sprinkling of the replacement listed players listed for the opening day roster that later make it to the big leagues, such as Rick Reed and Cory Liddle), and another league with fictional teams and real players.

What I wanted to ask is if I set the game up to import rookies, can I choose to have them appear across both leagues (some appearing in the Major Leagues, with others appearing in the Player's Association owned league), or must they all import strickly into 1 league or the other?

Thanks!

[ctorg]

Unless there's an unspoken of change in 2007, the only way to do this is to customize the databases. You would basically need to create two new versions of Lahman and manually delete players from either one or the other. Then set MLB to import from version A and the players league to import from version B. You wouldn't need to change the batting and pitching files or anything, just delete players from the master.csv file.

It's a lot of work and you'd have to decide who would end up where ahead of time, but it is possible to do things this way. I'm also not sure if 2007 will let you mix the real players with fictional ones, as I'm sure you'd want to do.

[robster1225]

Hmm, this is a tough one.
You are saying that you want all the MLB players to show up in a fictional league, and all the MLB teams to have fictional players? Maybe you could do this a little easier than mentioned above. Change the team names in one of the Lahman databases, and use that to import your rookies to your fictional league. Then in the MLB, do an import (with full history if you want) from the original Lahman, but turn off the option to import historical rookies. Then release all players, delete them, and fill all teams with fictional players. That might work, if I understand what you are trying to do.

[The Wolf]

Could you generate a really long list of fictional first and last names and then use them to replace the names in all of the Lahman data base components? Or is that just a crazy idea?

[toddgregory]

Couldn't you do this:
-Set up historical league from database
-Create a fictional league as well.
-Change the names of the teams in each league to reflect what you want (basically swap and rename/relocate the historic teams with fictional teams in the historical league and put the original historic team names/locations in the fictional league.)
-Then run with it.

Theoretically, your real players would import into the league that now contains fictional team names and the game would create fictional players for the teams that now have historic team names.

To me this accomplishes what you want as you would have real players playing on fictional teams and fictional players on real teams.

The real replacement players (scabs) you would want to add could be imported manually from the database.

I have done similar setups myself as I begin in 1901 and then change team names as I wish (adding some fictional ones) and it seems to work.

[Claymore]

Originally Posted by ctorg

It's a lot of work and you'd have to decide who would end up where ahead of time, but it is possible to do things this way. I'm also not sure if 2007 will let you mix the real players with fictional ones, as I'm sure you'd want to do.

The road to release indicated that you could set up a ficitional league but still import real rookies, so i hope you can mix the two.

[Claymore]

Originally Posted by robster1225

Hmm, this is a tough one.
You are saying that you want all the MLB players to show up in a fictional league, and all the MLB teams to have fictional players? Maybe you could do this a little easier than mentioned above. Change the team names in one of the Lahman databases, and use that to import your rookies to your fictional league. Then in the MLB, do an import (with full history if you want) from the original Lahman, but turn off the option to import historical rookies. Then release all players, delete them, and fill all teams with fictional players. That might work, if I understand what you are trying to do.

I intend on have a draft for the players, I dont expect them to end up on the same teams. What I do what to do is spread a draft pool over 2 leagues, so when it imports real life rookies, they can be drafted by either league, just not one. Is that possible?

[No Pepper]

I'm not sure if its possible within the game for 2 leagues to share the same draft pool, especially if you have some importation of players. However, if the Players' Association were to form it's own league, you'd better believe it that the owners and the union would take great strides securing their own pools of draft eligible players.

This might work for a common draft: MLB has the amateur draft importing rookies from Lahman during both leagues' preseason. The PA as a whole does not have a draft, they'd much rather have free agency. Perhaps the bottom half of teams in each league's previous year standings gets "moved" into the MLB league (top teams out) and gets included for the draft. After the draft of real rookies is done, move the teams back to their respective leagues and begin the season. Upper half teams of both leagues then would enter a bidding war for undrafted free agents, which would include your fictional players. Or you could draft fictional players and sign real players.

I'm not sure if the draft can be lumped into the preseason and still be "preseason" so you could move your teams to accomplish this.

[Claymore]

Originally Posted by No Pepper

I'm not sure if its possible within the game for 2 leagues to share the same draft pool, especially if you have some importation of players. \

Canm anyone confirm or deny if you can have 2 leagues share the same draft pool (i.e. I want to be able to import Lahman rookies into 2 separate leagues).

[Claymore]

Originally Posted by Claymore

Canm anyone confirm or deny if you can have 2 leagues share the same draft pool (i.e. I want to be able to import Lahman rookies into 2 separate leagues).

Just a quick bump (Markus...anybody...)

[Claymore]

Originally Posted by Claymore

Canm anyone confirm or deny if you can have 2 leagues share the same draft pool (i.e. I want to be able to import Lahman rookies into 2 separate leagues).

Anyone???

[No Pepper]

Not a confirmation from Markus but I think reliable, if you haven't seen it:
Drafts

[The Wolf]

Originally Posted by Claymore

Anyone???

I have been told that you can't do that, but don't confuse me with a reliable source.

[The Wolf]

Dola, Claymore, is that Earl Weaver Baseball in your avatar?

[disposableheros]

Originally Posted by Claymore

Can anyone confirm or deny if you can have 2 leagues share the same draft pool (i.e. I want to be able to import Lahman rookies into 2 separate leagues).

Originally Posted by No Pepper

Not a confirmation from Markus but I think reliable, if you haven't seen it:
Drafts

the above post is correct.

if you set them up as subleagues, yes. if you set them up as leagues, no.

[Claymore]

Originally Posted by The Wolf

Dola, Claymore, is that Earl Weaver Baseball in your avatar?

Oh yeah! Favorite Baseballl game of all-time. It's the Amiga version, which I owned.

[Claymore]

Originally Posted by disposableheros

the above post is correct.

if you set them up as subleagues, yes. if you set them up as leagues, no.

That kind of sucks a bit. Oh well, thanks for confirming!

[The Wolf]

Originally Posted by Claymore

Oh yeah! Favorite Baseballl game of all-time. It's the Amiga version, which I owned.

Even more favorite than OOTP?

[Claymore]

Originally Posted by The Wolf

Even more favorite than OOTP?

Yes, simply because it was my first, and it took years (well decades) for other games to surpass it (and in some areas, such as stadium generation, have yet to be surpased).

[Curtis]

Originally Posted by The Wolf

Even more favorite than OOTP?

I can see that. Longball (as we modified it) is still my favorite, and it's thirty years out of date. If I could find someone to play Longball with me, I'd be out of OOTP in a heartbeat.