inevitability of solo league success?

[1998 Yankees]

Originally Posted by Charlie Hough

Actually, there were a number of managers who also handled player personnel in the early decades of baseball. The most prevalent was Connie Mack of the Philadelphia Athletics. He handled all aspects of baseball operations, and he even became the owner of the franchise in 1936. He was a manager/owner/GM from 1936-1950.

John McGraw of the New York Giants was another example. He became part-owner of the Giants in 1919 and was manager/owner/GM until 1932.

In a way, OOTPBB is a throwback to those early baseball roots, where it was fairly common for a manager to have total control over baseball operations. It's unrealistic for contemporary leagues, but it's a realistic option for historical play. However, you can always have the AI serve as the GM and stick to being a field manager.

Hey, never mind all that. Welcome back! Haven't seen you in a dog's age.

[DavidWatts]

that is why I love this game and this website. Charlie, I did not know that. I still have no interest in gm duties. I understand why most people love that aspect of the game, it simply is not for me. I love this game for the fact that we all play it differently.

[Long_Long_Name]

Originally Posted by DavidWatts

that is why I love this game and this website. Charlie, I did not know that. I still have no interest in gm duties. I understand why most people love that aspect of the game, it simply is not for me. I love this game for the fact that we all play it differently.

if you and I were roommates, we could run a team together - I'd run all the GM duties, and once I'd be done, you could come by, tweak the lineups and play the games. And, over dinner, one could hear us yell "Why the hell are you starting Baker at short instead of Sibieski?" followed by "Well if you didn't want Baker to start, maybe you shouldn't have given him 4.5 millions a year for the next three years, geez".

...whatever

[ctorg]

Originally Posted by akw4572

An easy way to eliminate that. Have the computer draft for you, and sign free agents for you. That makes you on par with every other computer GM, and you are just a manager.

See, while solutions like this work for a lot of people, I can't use them. I like to be the one making the decisions. I don't want the AI signing players. It takes away so much of the personal touch.

I constantly struggle with the game being too easy in some respects, because I don't like using house rules or having to force things to make them more challenging. As it is, I often find myself taking on a secondary team that I will build up and make difficult to beat just so that I have a worthy opponent.

Playing with talent only is a good option, but for some reason I don't seem to enjoy the game as much without the ratings - it's like I don't know the players as well.

I'm sure the AI will improve in the future, but I doubt it will ever be as good as a human, at least not until it develops the ability to learn from its mistakes, which is many years away I'm sure.

[CBL-Commish]

Originally Posted by Charlie Hough

Actually, there were a number of managers who also handled player personnel in the early decades of baseball. The most prevalent was Connie Mack of the Philadelphia Athletics. He handled all aspects of baseball operations, and he even became the owner of the franchise in 1936. He was a manager/owner/GM from 1936-1950.

John McGraw of the New York Giants was another example. He became part-owner of the Giants in 1919 and was manager/owner/GM until 1932.

In a way, OOTPBB is a throwback to those early baseball roots, where it was fairly common for a manager to have total control over baseball operations. It's unrealistic for contemporary leagues, but it's a realistic option for historical play. However, you can always have the AI serve as the GM and stick to being a field manager.

There wasn't even a job title of "General Manager" until quite late in the development of the sport. Until at least the 1920s part of the job description for field manager included what you'd think of as a GM today. Most teams had an owner and a manager with nothing in between.

For example, Ned Hanlon's career progression went: player, player-manager, manager, part owner/manager. Almost from the moment he was hired as Orioles' field manager in 1893 he was orchestrating trades and player acquisitions. By the late 1890s he'd bought into the team and helped mastermind the merger of the Orioles with the Brooklyn Bridegrooms.

[1998 Yankees]

Originally Posted by ctorg

As it is, I often find myself taking on a secondary team that I will build up and make difficult to beat just so that I have a worthy opponent.

This is an interesting idea. Not that the rest of what you said is not, but this piques my curiosity as a solo player. You can manage a second team at the same time as your primary team, no? You can have more than one human manager in the game, you just have to log in as one at a time. Why not do so and manage more than one team, competing against yourself? Only house rule: no trading with yourself unless you can be objective. (Would that even be possible, trading-wise? Propose a trade to your alter ego, log off, log on as him, and either accept or shout to yourself "NO WAY"?)

[ctorg]

Originally Posted by 1998 Yankees

This is an interesting idea. Not that the rest of what you said is not, but this piques my curiosity as a solo player. You can manage a second team at the same time as your primary team, no? You can have more than one human manager in the game, you just have to log in as one at a time. Why not do so and manage more than one team, competing against yourself? Only house rule: no trading with yourself unless you can be objective. (Would that even be possible, trading-wise? Propose a trade to your alter ego, log off, log on as him, and either accept or shout to yourself "NO WAY"?)

I have mostly done this halfway. In almost all circumstances, I only use the "Act As" to act on the other team's behalf. So they can still act for themselves, but I take control and make a lot of moves, including free agent signings, for them. I will sometimes even withdraw offers the AI made to free agents if I think they will hurt the team.

Though I usually don't, I will sometimes let myself trade with this other team since it is still controlled by the AI and the AI still has a say over the team transactions. Obviously I won't try to rip off this team because I am trying to build them up. I will only allow a trade if I think it is mutually beneficial. For instance, I was controlling Brooklyn in one league and took secondary control of New York. New York was a cellar dweller team with a guy who had a $33 million multiyear contract playing first and eating a lot of resources. I had Brooklyn, a top-notch team trying for a championship, trade some top prospects and serviceable major league talent for the guy. The prospects took off and became top players, helping New York rise over the next few years until there was an almost-yearly Subway Series that made for some fun.

There are other ways of doing this, like taking over another team fully, which I've tried, but that can be too cumbersome.

[zekester91]

Originally Posted by idle_dreams73

Has anyone had any success in setting up a solo league where their managerial results were more realistic (albeit less glamorous)? What do others recommend?

Is it necessarily the case that a human player will always be superior to AI?

I think keeping your trades down and doing a expantion draft every few years, with 25 or 30 man protection list. This helps keep your team from being stacked with talent as the new teams will raid 6 or 7 of your top non-protected players and can help balance out the league. Granted these new teams take a few years to take off but it helps keep your managerial results from getting out of hand as you can't really stack too many talented players.

[thbroman]

Just to add my

I like having a dynasty, defined as a team that makes it into the playoffs about 40% of the time (I have a 24-team, 1970-style setup) and wins the WS about 10-20% of the time. I do not find it too easy to maintain that level of success, esp if I require FA compensations and if I do not trade a player who is showing the potential for declining ratings. Like ctorg I like playing with ratings on, but in the case where their potential shows a decline, I apply my one and only house rule of not trading that guy away. I eat the rest of the guy's contract and then let him go if his stats are no longer any good.

Let me amplify on this a bit. I have a small-market team, and one of the good things about this game is that market size grows only very slowly. That is good, because it means that even when I have a successful team it cannot afford to keep all of the stars on its roster. So I lose some superstars and although this gives me some extra amateur picks, they don't all pan to become as good as the guys I lost. What this means is that my teams tend to go through 5-10 year cycles, where I have a bunch of div championships and perhaps a WS title or two, and then things fall apart a little until I can develop enough players to start over. I find that quite fun. I am sure that I am not the most astute GM in OOTP-land (and my on-line league record confirms it! ), but I must say that it keeps me interested.

[falkonisback]

You want to make the game more challenging?? Here's how I do it...Change your default free agency setting from 6 years to 4 years. Then lower your budget to sign players and pick a few teams and make their budgets alot higher than yours so that its easier for them to sign top notch free agents and your left with what's left, that is of course, if you have any money to sign free agents.

It seems to work for me. I have my team to where I'm winning 100 games every year, but my team always falls apart in the playoffs. I'm actually frustrated that I can't win the Championship 2 or 3 years in a row...LOL.

By the way, my team does have the highest budget in the league (by about 5 mil)...so if I'd lower it, i'd really be in trouble. Maybe I just suck at the game, but to me, that would be a great place to start to make it more challenging.

[highandoutside]

I just place a salary cap on myself.

[darkcloud4579]

I think that you can do different things to prevent yourself from dominating from trying to pull a '06 Marlins situation where you run the worst team and try to win with them. Or if you're running a good team, turn up injuries to "High" one year, to see how well you cope with lots of injuries to your otherwise good team, etc.

Or turn off ratings and use stats as your sole method of player evaluation.

There are so many options it's dizzying, so it's not as if it's like playing Madden or some console game where it can legitimately get boring after playing it a while. OOTP gives you infintely more control over what you want to do.

[endgame]

Just completed my first year player draft. I don't think this qualifies as a house rule; more along the lines of management style. What I did, after receiving all of my scouting reports from the pool, was to collectively unite the assessments in a spreadsheet - rating each pick with their pick selection and assigning 'not selected' with a rating of 100. This established a go-forward draft-list in descending order of my scout team's preferences and I, being the benevolent GM I am, conceded to adhere to these selections.

Bad news was, I was the 47th pick out of 48 teams. Good news was (if you can call it that) the first three picks scratched top picks off the list, but it wasn't until the 12th pick that additional picks were being eliminated. It appeared some of my picks were going to still available into the next two to three rounds. Of course this resulted in a quick discussion with my scouting staff about "Why in the hell are these other teams selecting players that are not even on your radar?!*$"

Long story short, I was able to secure a pick from my selection list (which numbered about 30) as far as the eighth round before I had to physically start examining potential candidates that had not received priority looks. The result is we took the majority of what we wanted, settled for lower picks than we might have hoped for, but - IMHO - relied almost solely on the talent of our staff than on my specific whim or predilection and I'm good with the rationale behind that, regardless if the best players may have 'gotten away'.