Suggestions: Drafts

[Honolulu Blue]

Suggestion
Dispersal draft when teams are contracted/deleted

Reason
Leagues have contracted before in MLB's pre-history and had dispersal drafts. Contraction was on the table a few years ago, and perhaps they would have had a dispersal draft then. And it's something that may still happen.

Priority
Low

[Eddie Paxil]

Suggestion:

Allow two leagues to draft from one pool of players. Based on the contract offered the player decides who to sign with.

Reason:

As an example, I have been working on a 1915 Federal League file. If I set up a draft using historical rookies they can draft from the same pool of players, but the players aren't common. The player will exist in both leagues as two separate players. This kills the idea of trying to see if you can compete with the MLB.

Priority:
Medium

[ms2002]

Suggestion
Add some concise reports on each player like OOTP6. Add "project role," college/high school statistics (for leagues without feeders), and pros/cons for each player (including health history - i.e. "has history of problems with elbow").

Reason
It aids a GM in making decisions, adds more depth and just generally makes the draft more exciting. It is especially important to know a player's health history as this is pretty important when making these decisions and it is realistic.

Priority
Medium.

[ms2002]

Suggestion
Make teams more likely to draft players from their area. It shouldn't be drastic, but there should be a slight preference.

Reason
In real-life, this definitely plays a factor. Look at the Houston Astros or the Seattle Mariners - both both teams draft players mainly from their area.

Priority
Medium.

[Kivlehan]

Suggestion

Simple way to create prospects to be imported into future drafts. For example, I may want to create a list of sons of major leaguers or other athletes to be imported into the draft when they are respectively 18 years old. Nikolai Bonds, Trey Griffey, Brooklyn Beckham, Dustin Baker, whatever. Feature should allow you to allow them to generate randomly in terms of position, potential skill level, etc or pre-select it. Should include a way to add their birth date or birth year so that it knows when to import the player into the draft.

Reason

Makes "future" seasons seem more real since a good number of MLB players are the sons of former MLB players and/or other athletes.

Priority

Low.

[Le Grande Orange]

Originally Posted by Honolulu Blue

Suggestion
More options for the expansion draft - such as the ability to pull players off the list after having one taken, limits on players taken per team, limiting the expansion pool to one subleague, and/or defining certain players to leave out of the pool (e.g. young minor leaguers with no ML experience, 10-5 guys, etc.)

Reason
Would add to realism for historical players; adds to options and thought involved for all players.

Priority
Medium

The only change I would make from the above is to change the priority to High, as the way the expansion draft process works currently in OOTP allows for existing teams to be unfairly looted of talent, something which the real world expansion process does not allow (more on this later).

I also want to flesh out HB's suggestion with some details. The options which should be available in the expansion draft, in order to more closely mimic the real-world expansion drafts, would include the following:

Clubs Contributing to Draft: Subleague only, Entire League
Number of Protected Players in First Round: (15-50 selectable)
Additional Number of Players Protected in Each Subsequent Round (same subleague): None, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
Additional Number of Players Protected in Each Subsequent Round (other subleague): None, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
Total Number of Players to be Chosen by Each Expansion Club: (15-50 selectable)

Below are some examples of how real MLB expansion drafts would be set up using the above options.

1968 AL Expansion Draft

Clubs Contributing to Draft: Subleague only
Number of Protected Players in First Round: 15
Additional Number of Players Protected in Each Subsequent Round (same subleague): 3
Additional Number of Players Protected in Each Subsequent Round (other subleague): N/A
Total Number of Players to be Chosen by Each Expansion Club: 30

1992 NL Expansion Draft

Clubs Contributing to Draft: Entire League
Number of Protected Players in First Round: 15
Additional Number of Players Protected in Each Subsequent Round (same subleague): 3
Additional Number of Players Protected in Each Subsequent Round (other subleague): 4
Total Number of Players to be Chosen by Each Expansion Club: 36

1997 MLB Expansion Draft

Clubs Contributing to Draft: Entire League
Number of Protected Players in First Round: 15
Additional Number of Players Protected in Each Subsequent Round (same subleague): 3
Additional Number of Players Protected in Each Subsequent Round (other subleague): 3
Total Number of Players to be Chosen by Each Expansion Club: 35


The Expansion Draft Process

As noted earlier, the way OOTP currently does the expansion process allows for an existing team to be unfairly looted of talent during the draft. This is because the game considers each round of the expansion draft to consist of a number of picks equal to the number of expansion teams. So with two expansion teams each round of the expansion draft would only consist of two selections. This is not how the real expansion drafts work!

In real MLB expansion drafts, the number of picks made in each full round equals the number of already existing teams in the league. The reason for this is so that every existing club loses one player in each round, thereby spreading the player losses equally amongst all the existing teams. So, if a league consisted of ten teams before expansion, then the number of picks made in each full round of the expansion draft would be ten, with that number divided equally between the number of expansion teams. The number of rounds in total for the expansion draft is determined by the total number of players to be chosen by each expansion draft team.

The best way to illustrate how the process really functions is to use an example.

Here's how it worked for in the 1997 MLB expansion draft which stocked the new Tampa Bay and Arizona ballclubs:

First, since there were 28 already existing clubs, that meant each full round of the expansion draft consisted of 28 picks, with 14 made by each expansion club. Since each expansion club would be choosing 35 players, that meant a total of 70 players would be chosen in the expansion draft. That in turn meant there were two full rounds of 28 picks and one round of 14 picks (28+28+14=70), for a total of three rounds.

In the first round, Tampa Bay went first and made its pick. The existing club which lost a player (FLO) was then removed for the rest of the round, leaving 27 clubs. Arizona had second pick and chose a player from among those 27 remaining contributing clubs. That existing team which lost a player (CLE) was then removed, leaving 26 teams. Arizona also got to pick third (the draft order was TBA-ARI-ARI-TBA for the first four selections, and then alternated after that), and did so from among the 26 available teams. The team that lost a player (BOS) was removed, leaving 25 teams contributing. Tampa Bay then made the fourth pick of the round from among those 25 teams, with that existing team losing a player (COL) removed for the rest of the round, leaving 24 contributing teams.

The rest of the first round continued on in this fashion, with an existing team being removed for the rest of the round once it had a player selected from it. When the first round ended, each expansion team had made 14 picks, for a total of 28 for the round, and each existing team had lost one player.

The second round of the draft then started, with the process working just like it did in the first round (with the one exception that the two expansion clubs alternated picks for the entire round). When the second round ended, each of the existing 28 clubs had lost a total of two players (one in each round), and each expansion club had selected 28 players (14 in each round), with an overall total of 56 players selected in the two rounds.

The third round only consisted of a total of 14 picks (7 by each expansion club), so only half the existing teams lost a third player to the expansion draft, but otherwise the process worked just like it did in the first two rounds.

When the draft was over, 70 players had been selected, 35 by each expansion club. Of the existing 28 clubs, 14 had lost three players and 14 had lost two, thus distributing the loss of players fairly equally.


This is how MLB expansion drafts work, and is really how they should work in OOTP as well.

[Raidergoo]

Processed

[Dr. P.R. Park III]

Suggestion:

Allow there to be "customizable" drafts...with different options and/or preferences, thus creating things as "Waiver Drafts" or "Free Agent" drafts...this element would add another level to historical replay buffs, and another dimension to a pure fictional universe. Also, allow the user to configure the preferences for the drafts, ultimately creating an insane amount of combinations.

Priority:
Insanely high

[Raidergoo]

Suggestion
On the draft pool page, make the write to disk function save a CSV file instead of a HTML file

Reason
Easier to get into XLS, plus if you really want an HTML page you can click open report, then click open in external web browser.

Priority
HIGH

[Raidergoo]

Suggestion
Improve the draft using latest research. It shows that the biggest difference in the draft pool is the difference between the #1 and #2 picks of the first round.

Reason
Improved accuracy in modelling the game.

Priority
HIGH

[beorn]

Suggestion
On the "Draft order and rules" screen, number the picks.

Reason
Many leagues need to adjust draft order due to their own rules, sandwich picks, etc. It is a killer to go back and forth copying to a screen where the slots are not numbered.

Priority
Medium -- but so easy to implement

[bailey]

Suggestion: This is for online leagues that conducts its draft via forum. Once the draft pool is revealed add a screen that allows the player to do 2 things: 1) remove from the pool those players claimed by other teams via forum posting 2) allow the individual player to make his pick(s) once the draft pool is revealed. When the commissioner receives the import he receives a report of which team claimed which player. This allows the commissioner to compare at a glance this report and the forum postings that everyone made the correct pick as well as allow the commissioner a chance to fix mistakes or make picks for teams that missed posting.

Reason: Saves a lot of input work for the commissioner.

Priority: HIGH

[snarl_jones]

Suggestion
Allow players to be sorted and excluded according to the ratings of personality traits when drafting: intelligence, work ethic, greed, etc.

Reason
Allows owners to find players with little talent but the potential to improve through hard work

Priority
Medium

[CobaltJays]

Suggestion

Have the log of the inaugural draft available in the team's history section.

Reason

As far as I know, it's not possible to access the log of the inaugural draft after the league's first season. It would be nice to go back and look at it several years later.

Priority

Medium

[Raidergoo]

Processed

[murmur13]

Suggestion

Ability to have multiple drafts in one season from different pools of players (e.g. one high-school only draft, one college only draft, etc...)

Reason

Reflects the current draft setup in NPB (one HS draft, and one college/industrial league draft)

Priority

Medium

[Raidergoo]

All suggestions in this thread have been collected.