transaction help (please)

[wlight1]

Hi, I haven't played since OOTP5 came out. I need some help with transactions. Can someone point me at an explanation or tutorial? I'm pretty familiar with the way OOTP used to work, and with the way MLB works, but I'm obviously doing something wrong in this game.

I opened the MLB quickstart and created a manager to run the Red Sox. After poking around for a while I tried to advance to Spring Training. However, in the quickstart the Sox begin with 5 players having been DFA'd. When I tried to advance, the game told me that a player's DFA time had run out and he must be assigned or released. So I went to transactions and the DFA & Waivers section. I released Mike Burns. I immediately got an email saying that the fans' reaction was terrible and overall interest decreased dramatically. My fan interest went from 100 to 96 because I released a no-name 1-star journeyman reliever?!? What am I expected to do?

I don't get it. Any help would be appreciated.

[chambertrain]

Have you noticed the player popularity on his card? It is probably a problem with the roster set over popularizing him.

[wlight1]

Originally Posted by chambertrain

Have you noticed the player popularity on his card? It is probably a problem with the roster set over popularizing him.

I mean, he's listed as "very popular" locally, but how popular could a guy like that be. Maybe that's it.

The other funny thing is, i tried to have the game sim the next week without me to see what they did & the consequences, but even when I resign my job and try to move ahead a week, it still stops the sim and tells me to fix the Red Sox DFA situation.

[Kelric]

Sometimes guys are popular for no real reason in OOTP.

For some reason Lou Merloni was a very popular utility player in his days with the Red Sox. If a player gets called up and sent back down to Triple-A too often in a short period of time, a lot of people say the guy is on the 'Lou Merloni Shuttle.' At best the man was a solid bench guy, but he was pretty popular for being a local kid with the Sox.

Just kind of have to deal with the weirdness of the fan base when you keep Popularity on. Don't forget, you can always go sign random scrub players that are popular to boost your own Fan Interest.

[injury log]

We're talking about Mike Burns here, so it's clearly a problem with the roster set- he's been given too high a popularity rating by the roster maker. Kelric is right, though- in fictional OOTP leagues, just like in real life, mediocre performers are sometimes popular with the fans.

[wlight1]

Oh yeah, I definitely get that, and I remember (and participated in) the 'Loomer' madness. I was just surprised, never having heard of this Burns character (and I'm a big-time Sox fan), he hit my popularity so hard.

My real problem, though, and what I was really trying to ask about, comes from my lack of understanding of the nature of the roster moves I'm supposed to be making. When a guy gets waived or DFA'd, I move him into that area, right, and then when the countdown expires (which means, what, nobody claimed him off waivers? If he did, he'd just disappear off my list?), I just have to release him, thereby eating his salary and potentially taking the popularity penalty? In MLB when you DFA a guy, you're supposed to Assign him within 10 days, which includes being assigned to AAA. But when I tried to move one of these guys onto the AAA roster it says I can't (even if he has options left) because he has a major league contract. Buuuut anytime you promote a guy to the Show, he automatically gets a major league minimum contract, so how do you get guys back and forth from AAA to MLB? I'm obviously not getting some part of this process.

[1998 Yankees]

It sounds like you would do really well reading Section 19 of the game manual, Roster Rules & Management. I have read through the manual twice, but I am currently reviewing that particular section for the third time as I start up a new league after having taken an OOTP hiatus for a while. I cannot stress strongly enough how helpful that section was in helping me understand the finer points of roster management. The guy who wrote that manual, BTW, was a volunteer at the time (he has since been hired by OOTP). Just remarkable.

[wlight1]

Originally Posted by 1998 Yankees

It sounds like you would do really well reading Section 19 of the game manual, Roster Rules & Management. I have read through the manual twice, but I am currently reviewing that particular section for the third time as I start up a new league after having taken an OOTP hiatus for a while. I cannot stress strongly enough how helpful that section was in helping me understand the finer points of roster management. The guy who wrote that manual, BTW, was a volunteer at the time (he has since been hired by OOTP). Just remarkable.

That'll be my first stop, thanks for the tip. I sort of figured I'd be able to pick up OOTP8 as I went along, since I played thousands of hrs of OOTP4&5 and messed around with the demo for OOTP6 (which was the first version to introduce waivers, 40-mans, etc), and am more familiar than most with MLB roster rules. Obviously not the case. I'll check out Section 19... thanks again.

[injury log]

Originally Posted by wlight1

My real problem, though, and what I was really trying to ask about, comes from my lack of understanding of the nature of the roster moves I'm supposed to be making. When a guy gets waived or DFA'd, I move him into that area, right, and then when the countdown expires (which means, what, nobody claimed him off waivers? If he did, he'd just disappear off my list?), I just have to release him, thereby eating his salary and potentially taking the popularity penalty? In MLB when you DFA a guy, you're supposed to Assign him within 10 days, which includes being assigned to AAA. But when I tried to move one of these guys onto the AAA roster it says I can't (even if he has options left) because he has a major league contract. Buuuut anytime you promote a guy to the Show, he automatically gets a major league minimum contract, so how do you get guys back and forth from AAA to MLB? I'm obviously not getting some part of this process.

No, I think you understand how this is all supposed to work, and that you've just encountered a bug that seems to have crept into the last patch of the game. In detail-

-if a guy has options remaining, you can demote and promote him as you like;

-if a guy has no options left, or if you want to get a guy off the 40-man roster, he has to go on waivers and to dfa;

-if the guy is claimed on waivers, you'll get a message informing you who claimed the player, and telling you the player is no longer in your organization. If you've set your waiver period to 3 days, if a team claims a guy you'll find out after 2 days, giving you one day to trade or remove the guy from waivers if you don't want to lose him;

-sometimes the game seems to forget that people have cleared waivers. This is the bug you seem to have encountered above. This is my best guess as to what the game is doing, but if I'm off base here, hopefully someone can correct me: I'm pretty sure it's because the game uses waiver periods (as does MLB, but for pretty different reasons). My guess is that the game uses three periods- from May 1 to July 31 (the trade deadline); from Aug 1 to the start of the offseason; and from the start of the offseason to May 1. In OOTP, the idea seems to be that if you get a guy through waivers successfully at some point during a waiver period, he's assumed to have cleared waivers for the duration of the waiver period- if you get a guy who's out of options through waivers on May 10, you'll be able to send him up and down without worrying about waivers until Aug 1, the start of the next period. At the end of a waiver period, the rolls are cleared, and everyone needs to get through waivers again, which produces the annoying situation, a bug really, that you described (quoted above). If you pass a guy through waivers on April 26, he clears waivers on April 29, but then you leave him in dfa and the waiver period changes over on May 1, he has to clear waivers again. If you try to send him to AAA, the game will tell you he can't be demoted (and if you check your waivers screen, you'll see that he is not listed as having cleared waivers). The only way to keep the guy is to put him back on the 25-man roster, then immediately put him back on waivers and dfa, wait the required 3 days for him to clear, then demote him- it will work.

This is not really how real-life waivers work, and I'm hoping the game gets things like revocable and irrevocable waivers working realistically next year.