Not sure where to post this so will toss it here. After I don't know how many years in NC, the Clippers organization would like to petition the commissioners office to relocate the franchise to NJ. This would have the added benefit of allowing Chappy to relocate to NC if he so desires.

That'd be fine with me @koohead

Where would New Jersey
Move I say move team to Ontario 😁 so we have 2 Canadian teams

I could
Move Florida but i don’t want to do all the team logos and uniform design

If someone wants to take on rebranding the bluefish i would move
To canadia - my native Quebec could use a team

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excellent

Posted using /giphy

I have some thoughts sitting here looking at the map: https://www.npblbaseball.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/NPBL2083-1536x1037.png

I really want to get Louisiana into the FFL South

and Illinois/Michigan/Wisconsin/Minnesota feel like they should be together

Yes we definitely have a chance to realign teams

Need to push the 3 vacancies still and could offer a relocation after a season in the league

@LT - Florida If you decide to move to Quebec, I will do logos and uniforms for your organization.

Nice!

rough thought:

FFL north
Pennsylvania
Massachusetts
Nova Scotia
New Jersey (from NC)
Michigan
Quebec (from FL)

FFL south
Louisiana
Georgia
Tennessee
Virginia
Maryland
? (from IL)

GEL plains
Utah
Colorado
Kansas
New Mexico
Minnesota
Wisconsin

GEL pacific
Hawaii
California
Nevada
Washington
Idaho
Oregon (from NJ)

I couldn't make the great lakes thing work

I’d be willing to relocate pretty much anywhere if it helps realignment somehow. Don’t see how at the moment but keep in mind when planning.

Feel like we should get the Mississippi Ravens back which is this current Kansas Storm franchise iirc (previous Kansas Storm franchise folded I think?)

looking at @yuda_va's proposed FFL South

I'd still like to have a great lakes division but I couldn't make it work here unless we want to do some other screwy things

we could do great lakes of Minnesota-Wisconsin-Michigan-Illinois-Pennsylvania-Ontario (or even Quebec at a stretch) and Atlantic of Nova Scotia-Mass-NJ-Maryland-Virginia-Georgia

Updated the map with North Carolina moving to New Jersey, Florida moving to Quebec, and New Jersey moving to TBD. With the 3 vacancies we can offer the option of relocation with NC and FL in 2085. Plenty of options for new home states too.

No easy way I guess. WI, Ill & Min natural rivals.

I guess I better start building my new stadium in NJ 🙂 I remember a few years ago there were some ground rules for park effects...we had like points to distribute...+ some here, - some there...anyone recall or have a copy of that?

By the way, with the move, the organization formerly known as the NC Clippers will be rebranding to the New Jersey Lions. Here's a sneak peak at our new main logos.

I think those ground rules might have been a reaction to a couple of owners trying to create completely absurd parks. But not sure.

Isn't California already the Lions? But other than a year notice, I don't have any restrictions along within reason.

ah. dang it. I looked, albeit briefly, and obviously missed it. OK. I'll come up with something else. not a big deal. not a big part of our brand and nothing I can't easily change.

I do love it though 😁 but sounds good!

Looking at actual history, there are (were) the Newark Bears, the Newark Eagles, the Camden Riversharks, the Somerset Patriots, and the Trenton Thunder.

yeah, honestly I almost went with Newark Bears, mainly because of the nostalgic aspect and keeping somewhat to the NPBL orig theme. let me see if I can find a good Bears logo

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Easy enough to erase the Newark

I'll bet there's a good "just the head" logo out there

(the original NPBL all had basically cartoon heads as logos, and the direction they faced told you what league they were in)

Definitely many out there.

Wait, whut?!?!?! I never knew that!

Ya that's something I love about NPBL logos

And would love to continue

Forgot the direction they faced indicated that too

well now I have a new challenge... that's cool

The updated Michigan Miracle Story

So, the gold is a secondary color I was going with..although now that I look at it, it doesn't appear anywhere on the jersey, or cap.... With or without?

I like the gold

I like it without.

yeah, leaning towards without. somewhat mono-chromatic but looking at the other logos I'm working on, mono-chromatic seems to be a theme. LOL

For what it’s worth, I like without as well.

I like both really but if I have to pick without for me too

thx for the feedback gents.

So, I've got logos, caps, jerseys, stadiums, and color codes all set to go for the rebranded organization... Shall I drop them here for league and owners review and approval?

Yeah that'd be awesome!!

I'm working on Quebec logos, caps and jerseys. Will have them by tomorrow. Hopefully. 🙂

OK, let's try this again...hopefully this time I don't duplicate already what is out there 🙂 Introducing the New Jersey Bears. Based out of the state capital, Trenton, located in Mercer County. Home park is the 31416 seat Bear Den at Waterfront Park.

Triple A team will be based out of Princeton NJ, just a 15-20 minute drive from Trenton. Home field is the 8500 seat Clarke Field.

Double A will be the New Brunswick Knights, 30 minutes north in Middlesex County. Home field is Bainton Field, seating 4553.

Single A will be moved to Upper Montclair NJ in Essex County. The Montclair Redhawks will play their home games at Tracy Jordan Stadium, a 4553 seat facility named after one of the best catchers in Clippers history.

Lastly, the Rookie Level South Brunswick Vikings will be playing their home games at the 1990 seat Koo Memorial Field in the suburb of South Brunswick (Middlesex County).

Oops..here's the color code for the Bears.

OK, here come the logos and unis for the new Quebec organization. I have not done ballparks because I know nothing about it.

LOGOS

Quebec is the ML team located in Montreal; The quebec remparts are AAA, sherbrooke is aa, val-d'or is a, and jupiter is rookie

JERSEYS:

CAPS:

SECONDARY LOGOS:

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I will do the ballparks -

yeah if anyone has the ability to build real 3d models that would be awesome. but for sim purposes I'm assuming dimensions and park factors will be enough.

thats all I am doing. ootp21 has a basic 3D park generator

I tried playing with that but couldn't figure out how to enter dimensions? I could drag fences around but that frustrated me after about 10 minutes.

looks cumbersome. the on line utility is nice, but I wish I could change the factors

without changing dimensions

Replacement logos and unis for the rookie league are coming for the Poutines which will be located in Saint-Sauveur

Here are logos and unis for quebec's saint-sauveur poutines in rookie league. Secondary logo remains asd\ above

Here are logos (primary [shown last] & secondary) and unis for quebec's saint-sauveur poutines in rookie league.

This is making me hungry

Just realized I didn't size the secondary logos properly. attaching here so that they don't blow up the HTML reports.

speaking of I think I want to make a couple tweaks to my minor-league system. How soon do you need that?

Just before we start the 2084 season so you have a week probably

I think some of the logos in the NC/NJ system need to be resized. See https://statsplus.net/npbl/reports/news/html/players/player_13952.html

Yikes thanks for the heads up

np, just doing my usual “let’s check in on the guy I traded last season to see how he developed” routine

ya...that's why I had to resize the secondary logos above. I realized I blowed up the HTML reports last time. 🙂

We'll need to decide where to relocate the New Jersey Shore as a league (unless we can get it filled this season soonish). Looking at the NPBL map with NC moving to NJ, and FL moving to QB, it looks like the best options for the Shore to move to are:

1. Oregon


2. Arizona


3. Texas


4. Mississippi


5. Florida


6. Kentucky


7. North Carolina


8. Ohio


9. New York

I say moving them to New York

I'd vote against putting them in Mississippi or Alabama due to the rookie league being there

I don't think it matters if they overlap with the NYSL as much

I'd kind of like to see Louisiana in the FFL South (but I'd defer to @cbj-blaze on that. Or figure out how to do a great lakes-centric division even if it means doing something screwy with the FFL South all going to the GEL (or vice versa)

ok this is a strange configuration but I kind of like it. Hear me out

Northeast

1. New Brunswick Nova Scotia


2. Quebec


3. Massachusetts


4. Pennsylvania


5. New Jersey


6. Maryland

Pacific

1. Hawaii


2. Washington


3. California


4. Nevada


5. Idaho


6. Utah

Great Lakes & Plains

1. Minnesota


2. Wisconsin


3. Michigan


4. Illinois


5. (old New Jersey) - Iowa or Missouri?


6. Kansas

Sun Belt

1. Virginia


2. Tennessee


3. Georgia


4. Louisiana


5. New Mexico


6. Colorado

New Brunswick = Nova Scotia?

yeah whatever maritime @x24rocks has. 😜

That could work for sure. Texas could work in that scenario for the Shore as well. Missouri or Iowa are fine too.

yeah could do Texas to the Sun Belt and Colorado in Lakes/Plains

Ya true

Denver's right at the edge of the mountains basically

ok now back to setting up my ST roster since that has a much earlier deadline

In your scenario, then we'd group the Pacific and Great Lakes/Plains divisions together and then the Northeast and Sun Belt divisions?

I could see it either way

could do like a northern league of NE and GL/P and a south/west league of Pacific and Sun Belt

alternately, we could try to avoid having teams move between leagues as the top priority, in which case I would not try this alignment

instead just stick the Shore someplace that they'd fit in the FFL South

Didn't even think about a horizontal split but that's an option too. I'm fine with whatever we all choose honestly.

Have we had any relocations or realignment since 2048 when NPBL moved back to the 4 divisions of 6 teams from the 2 leagues of 12 teams?

Ohio moved to Nova Scotia

...sometime

and Kentucy to Georgia

but I don't think any realignments

Okay ya that's what I was remembering and finding digging through StatsLab and Catobase plus the Forum

GEL hasn't changed in a very long time

looks like contraction was between 2042 and 43

I might have looked wrong but I thought it was between 43 and 44

Yes you're right

June 2011

An idea on trying to fill our 3 current vacancies... I could step away as a GM of Kansas and we could contract 4 teams (KS, NJ, GA, IL) then go with 20 teams in 2085. Wouldn't be my preference but I would have to believe it is going to be hard to fill all 3 vacancies. Any thoughts?

I've posted about our vacancies today on OOTP boards, my other league's Slacks, StatsPlus slack, Reddit, and Twitter so we'll see what interest comes from that. I just know how hard it is to fill vacancies here and AFBL.

Will be tough to fill OOTP20 vacancies, I think. What would happen to contracted team's players?

In this potential scenario, probably like NPBL did in the past with the players going into a FA pool and the 20 teams having a FA Draft.

Ideally 24 teams is where I'd like to be at here (and AFBL) but that seems to be tough with our specific setup and 20 seems more feasible long-term

I'm not sure if being on OOTP21 would help but getting all 3 vacancies filled seems like a challenge regardless

i think we should stay at 24 until we try filling the teams with the newest version of the game

maybe target updating to 22 next spring

so it’s very fresh

That is an option. We typically can get a full calendar year done in like 2.5 months so that would put us at roughly the 2087 season for Spring 2021 and OOTP22.

i don’t mind the concept of contraction if necessary but it feels extreme if you have to give up your team

I honestly don't have a ton of time to dedicate to my team and find myself CPU'ing things more than I should so might be good for me to move away from GM duties as it is. If there is interest to fill the 3 spots and quickly, I'm more than happy to keep being a GM.

Might be a win-win if we do decide to go this direction

I really dislike having CPU orgs and having 3 isn't any fun (can't trade with them, that many less people voting/conversing). This could give us some peace of mind knowing we have a full league of 20 active GMs.

I do like planning on OOTP22 for NPBL (and AFBL) and then we can judge interest from there.

If you go down to 20 then you have one fewer team voting and trading than you do now. I don’t like cpu teams either but I would vote to not contract yet.

How long has it been since every team had a gm?

There's been vacancies here in NPBL for quite some time. Not sure when the last time it was at capacity.

Ideally in the next few days/weeks, I get some interest from my various posts and this doesn't matter.

Would filling one, you keep your team, and contract 2 be an option?

other than having uneven # of teams (11) in each league... could do 10 and 12 too I suppose.

Good question on if 22 would work. I'm not sure in terms of scheduling?

I think we’d have to do 10 and 12

OOTP must be able to handle that b/c for a long time the NL and AL had 12 and 14, and people sim historical seasons

That'd be my guess too

When is my franchise moving? after ST?

man, where have I been? Moving Louisiana to the south makes sense to me. time for a change.

Saw that...worries me though because I read that as the AI will accept any trade as long as there are offers. So after a few trades, those CPU teams will be absolute garbage. Now if the AI will reject trades, even if there is only 1, then I'm all for it.

That's not something I'd like to see in our league tbh. It's too easy to manipulate the CPU in trading imo. Pushing to get our last 2 vacancies filled.

yeah I'd rather let that feature get a little more road testing by other leagues. 😉

With the 3 pending relocations (FL > QB, NJ > FL, NC > NJ) we need to decide on how to realign.

I'm sure what @yuda_va (I think) had proposed is now hidden so definitely make suggestions.

Here's how I propose the divisions to group teams geographically as much as possible but not set on this proposal at all.

GEL West
Hawaii Kula Sox
Washington Griffins
Idaho Spuds
California Lions
Nevada Jacks
Utah Scorpions

GEL East
Colorado Rams
New Mexico Dukes
Kansas Storm
Minnesota Wolves
Wisconsin Lumberjacks
Illinois Jethawks

FFL North
Quebec Citadelles
Nova Scotia Fisherman
Michigan Militia
Massachusetts Patriots
Pennsylvania Freedom
New Jersey Bears

FFL South
Maryland Admirals
Virginia Grays
Tennessee Hounds
Georgia Generals
Louisiana Blaze
Florida Flamingos

Wow GEL East. I like it.

Can you switch the standings so the GEL shows up on the left and the FFL shows up on right to match where they are on map? Brain cramp issue. 🙈

May I suggest GEL Midwest?

Or Central? East just doesn't fit

Only other suggestion I would have is to go with GEL North (Minnesota, Washington, Idaho, Illinois, Wisconsin, Kansas) and GEL South (Hawaii, California, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico)

ok here's the update of what I'd put together previously:

Northeast

1. Nova Scotia


2. Quebec


3. Massachusetts


4. Pennsylvania


5. New Jersey


6. Maryland

1. Virginia


2. Tennessee


3. Georgia


4. Louisiana


5. Florida


6. New Mexico

1. Minnesota


2. Wisconsin


3. Michigan


4. Illinois


5. Kansas


6. Colorado

1. Hawaii


2. Washington


3. California


4. Nevada


5. Idaho


6. Utah

it basically swaps 3 teams: Maryland in the North instead of the Sough; Michigan in the Great Lakes/Plains instead of FFL, New Mexico in the FFL South (which I don't much like but there's not a better place to put them)

I guess you could shake up which divisions are with which (so like South & Pacific as one league) but that feels like a big departure from what we've historically done

I could move to Texas or somewhere else more eastern if we realign as @yuda_va suggests. Open to anything.

I’d kind of like to become the Alabama Iron or Alabama Ironmongers.

I'm all for it

I'd be fine with it too although we do have our Rookie Leagues divided into Mississippi and Alabama divisions. Not sure if that's a problem but if NM did want to move to either AL or TX, the other state could house the one conference of Rookie League.

I'd be 👍 to move my team from Alabama to Texas.

Whatever the league wants to do honestly

would be a good nod to another original franchise that had to be contracted

we've got the NYSL for NY, rookie league in Mississippi

afaik there was never an Alabama franchise. We just stuck the other rookie league there because.

I feel like this is the perfect time to shift how we want going forward with the 3 other relocations. It'll set a nice path and direction for the league going forward.

Well, just let me know and I can get to work on uniforms etc if I am moving to Alabama.

I think you get to pick.

Almost nobody cares where their RL teams are.

I like the idea of shifting the Alabama RL teams over to Texas (or all in Mississippi) if you do want to relocate to Alabama @jeff_alabama

I've always enjoyed having a team in Little Rock or Arkansas nicknamed the Diamonds (only diamond mine in the U.S. is there). But I don't want to move.

also this state park: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crater_of_Diamonds_State_Park

Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/)

Crater of Diamonds State Park

Crater of Diamonds State Park is a 911-acre (369 ha) Arkansas state park in Pike County, Arkansas, in the United States. The park features a 37.5-acre (15.2 ha) plowed field, the world's only diamond-bearing site accessible to the public. Diamonds have continuously been discovered in the field since 1906, including the Strawn-Wagner Diamond. The site became a state park in 1972 after the Arkansas Department of Parks and Tourism purchased the site from the Arkansas Diamond Company and Ozark Diamond Mines Corporation, who had operated the site as a tourist attraction previously.

Original URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crater_of_Diamonds_State_Park

(this ends my tangent)

I've learned my something new for today now haha

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more you know

Posted using /giphy

I do like this alignment for next season. Any objections?

John Yuda (VA) (https://npbl.slack.com/team/U09KS814Y)

<p>Northeast<br>1. Nova Scotia<br>2. Quebec<br>3. Massachusetts<br>4. Pennsylvania<br>5. New Jersey<br>6. Maryland<br>South<br>1. Virginia<br>2. Tennessee<br>3. Georgia<br>4. Louisiana<br>5. Florida<br>6. New Mexico<br>Great Lakes &amp; Plains<br>1. Minnesota<br>2. Wisconsin<br>3. Michigan<br>4. Illinois<br>5. Kansas<br>6. Colorado<br>Pacific<br>1. Hawaii<br>2. Washington<br>3. California<br>4. Nevada<br>5. Idaho<br>6. Utah<br></p>

Slack Conversation

I'm going to approve a same season offseason relocation for the New Mexico Dukes to move east to become the Alabama Iron. @jeff_alabama will be working on logos and such over the next few days so we can have an official new graphics pack download with our now 4 relocations.

I plan to move forward with this alignment unless anyone has any objections/suggestions before we continue

Northeast
1. Nova Scotia
2. Quebec (formerly FL)
3. Massachusetts
4. Pennsylvania
5. New Jersey (formerly NC)
6. Maryland
South
1. Virginia
2. Tennessee
3. Georgia
4. Louisiana
5. Florida (formerly NJ)
6. Alabama (formerly NM)

Great Lakes & Plains (maybe Midwest or Central.. TBD)
1. Minnesota
2. Wisconsin
3. Michigan
4. Illinois
5. Kansas
6. Colorado
Pacific
1. Hawaii
2. Washington
3. California
4. Nevada
5. Idaho
6. Utah

I’ll figure out where to move my minor league club.

I would like to get the Rookie League teams that are currently in Alabama either Mississippi with the others or move over to Texas. Not for the 2085 season since that's too quick but for the 2086 season. Time to give the now Alabama Iron (NM Dukes) to build their new home state fan base 🙂.

my vote is Texas but I'm good with the group decision

That would be my preference as well

Texans works i Can name my rookie league team the crybabies

Would it make more sense to send the Rookie leagues to like the Caribbean and or like Mexico, so you dont have to worry about teams moving into those places?

No I want to keep the Rookie League in Mississippi (and Texas). We won't be expanding past 24 I can safely say.

Good idea however. Maybe we can add a Caribbean league in some fashion in the future 🙂

a caribbean winter league would be hot tho

that would go well with the New York Summer League 🤔

I mean in my ideal world there’d be a summer league we could send prospects to but that’s a lot of work

so just a second indy league — maybe with a maximum age of like 25 — would be interesting

NYSL has some young guys but also a lot of old vets

That's actually what I envisioned at some point for AFBL as well. I like the idea of a winter indy league for younger guys

strongly considering the Amarillo Armadillos.

I've updated the NPBL map for 2086 to reflect the vacancies

Related.. we still have some Rookie League teams in Alabama that I'd like to either move to Mississippi to join the rest of the teams currently here or shift them to Texas potentially. Either way is fine with me but might be easiest to move everyone into Mississippi?

I prefer Texas but whatever. MS is fine.

What if we did Mexico/Central America or something? Is the choice for Mississippi because less likely someone chooses that for their team?

IIRC we have the Rookie League in Mississippi to honor the former Ravens franchise but I don't remember for certain. I'd like to have the teams in Rookie League playing in a state without a NPBL franchise.

yeah - it's even called the Rigs Rookie League. The Mississippi franchise was one of the great early ones but was ultimately lost to contraction.

(Rigs being the owner in question)

Texas came up as it's another state that had a longtime (and original) franchise

doesn't mean they have to stay there, of course. but that's why we put it there

(I think Alabama was just the state next door to Mississippi at the time)

has alabama moved?

The current Kansas Storm franchise is actually the former Ravens franchise. The previous Storm franchise was contracted at one point too.

Alabama moved from New Mexico

but its still next to mississippi right>? (and yes a fuck you is an appropriate response)

😆

no, that's a good one

Iirc when I came back to NPBL as an expansion team in Georgia then moved it back to Kansas to bring that the Storm branding

Idaho was in Connecticut for the first decade or so. Virginia spent roughly the first 20 years in DC.

@yuda_va have you been in the entire time?>

no

@wis-gm and @koohead may be our only original owners left?

how many real years is that?

I joined just in time for the awful 2011 draft

Catobase has the old first stuff from the early years

league started in 2000 I believe, which is why that was the first year in-game

I joined in 2004, I think

wow

we used to keep track of who came when - https://www.npblbaseball.com/forum/index.php?topic=3027.0

not that it matters much

(note that that list was last updated in 2013)

it's neat. I join for the 2061 season. not sure what real year that was

Ya I've had to dig through season general threads to piece together history haha

unfortunately one of the more-recent versions of the game seems to have introduced a bug that blew away a lot of managerial records

because this is not helpful: https://npblbaseball.com/npbl/reports/news/html/history/league_100_all_managers_index.html

lol

Im in a league on 21, and 21 is hot garbage

the scouting feature blows

how does it try to do scouting?

you have to tell your scout who to scout

(I've mostly turned off scouting in every version of the game for years at this point)

ugh

why would you want to do that?

but then you get 1000000 emails every week

please don't make my games so realistic they feel like work

and whats worse is that say you have very low familiarity with a draft prospect, so you scout him 4-5 times to get to very high

then a few sims later the report is old and it goes back to average or whatever

which over time makes sense, but not seemlingly as quickly as it happens

but so far I have found that the players don't go from 2 star to 4 or vice versa due to increased scouting

so basically in my leagues in 21 I just don't bother.

I ignore it in my online league since we have high accuracy on, but it’s made my solo league a pain

i can see it being cool (if you are into that level of minutia) but its overwhelming and to do it right would take a ton of time

maybe they have this but I havent found it - is there an auto scout function?

Not in the way you think

They have a function, that if you are looking for a player

You can put the exact type of player you want

at first all i did was line up the very low to very high. and scout the low guys.

And he will go and find them to report on them

so you can say find me 2nd basemen and he goes?

Ya, but you want to be more specific, so like 2B that has 5 contact and 7 Defense

And between ages 18-27

ah ok - thats too much work for me

Totally

I can see where that could possibly be useful in a universe with a lot of independent leagues or something

and it could be useful for international free agents.

i think the concept makes sense, but its tedious

There is automatic scouting, but you can fine-tune it by setting priorities (which you don’t have to do very often). And you can request reports on players you want scouted more quickly. If you use shortlists etc it cuts much of the work out of requesting repeated reports on specific groups of players.

Once you get a routine going it’s not that bad, for me anyway. The number of emails you get is very annoying though. Would be nice if you could filter them out.

scouting is horrible. Just horrible

Apart from the mechanics of the scouting I don’t care for the idea of assigning a visible accuracy level to individual reports. I wish they would have spent the time on developing the written portions of scouting reports. Adding variety to the comments and having the depth, detail and quality of the written reports reflect your scouts ability and number of times the player has been scouted. And maybe reflect the scouts personality somehow.

I suppose it’s v1 of expanded scouting. With any luck they can develop it out and make it a lot better.

True

That’s the hope

I like that they have scouting in the game but it ruins the enjoy ability of my solo game so I turn it off Yeah Makes it a little bit easier obviously but my Solo league is for fun And It’s still fun

Sometimes you don’t get the eventual awesome improvement without seeming to step backwards first.

I'm cynical about things like scouting getting much attention post-acquisition but I guess we can hope.

I turned scouting on recently because I wanted some kind of differentiator during the draft. I would task my scout with scouting draft prospects outside of the top 30 or so. the middle and bottom of drafts is just a pile of 25-35 potential-rated players and my hope is my scout can separate the good poo from the bad poo. I'm only 2 seasons in with Scouting enabled (after having it off since OOTP18 I think)...so jury is definitely still out. Yes, tons of email. but I do like the fact that the draft pool has for the most part a High scouting accuracy.

Any last thoughts/preferences on either moving teams in the Alabama League of Rigs Rookie League into Mississippi or moving them into Texas?

Last item I can think of to handle before getting out of Preseason.

NPBL Commish (https://npbl.slack.com/team/U011X8U55PG)

<p>Related.. we still have some Rookie League teams in Alabama that I'd like to either move to Mississippi to join the rest of the teams currently here or shift them to Texas potentially. Either way is fine with me but might be easiest to move everyone into Mississippi?</p>

Slack Conversation

do what is the easiest

Yeah whatever’s easiest for you. Pick a state, let the game auto-assign locations, people can rebrand next season if they want.

(Texas is probably slightly easier b/c then we’ll know we won’t have any collision with the league already in MS)

Yeah I'm likely going the Texas route. Not sure Mississippi could handle 12 more teams either 😉

Unfortunately Jason messaged me that he'll need to step away from the league due to time available with work. This will leave us with vacancies with:

1. Washington


2. Utah (after the playoffs 😞)


3. Nevada

I mean, I’d rather not contract, but I agree that we’ll have a hard time attracting three new owners when we’re a version behind (almost two full versions)

Is it worth limping through a season not full and then if it’s worth upgrading to 22 (23? Whatever the coming one is) maybe we can capitalize?

Looks like OOTP 22 comes out March 26 which would be probably 2088 season at the earliest if 22 isn't buggy or anything

I don’t even know if we’ll want to upgrade. If it’s junked up with pay-to-win stuff from the new owners I might rather just stay (or I guess migrate to 21, which doesn’t have much in the way of new features but might be supported a bit longer)

Also true

¯_(ツ)_/¯

Have they announced features yet?

for 22

64 bit only thing for sure I have read so far.

The only way we can get this game into 22 is we will have to convert the file to 21 then when 22 comes out we input it from 21 to 22

That the only issue we will have

Yeah we’ve done that regularly (we’ve been on an every-other-version cadence for a while)

Yup that's the only step but I have every version usually with another league I'm in updating for new versions when available.

21 scouting sucks

Stay on 20

I read that they are going to roll out new features in March.

I understand it’s harder to find people in 20 as 22 comes out, but being an OSA only league and the way scouting works, I think 21 would make it harder with the weird scouting accuracy

At some point we will have to upgrade right?

Or we could go back to 6.5

Didn't even have to buy the game back then unless you were commish; you could participate in online leauges using the demo since it didn't require advancing days lol

A contraction draft would be FUN haha

I’m up first if we do that!!!

Wait you can’t turn off the scouting system in 21+?

That's what I was wondering. Renders OSA accurate

I mean I’m happy to stay in 20 unless it becomes a problem keeping the league full. I find it unlikely there will be many (any?) features enticing to old-school online leagues

They already told us we won’t be supported in OOTP Go

My top preference is to stay at 24 teams. Upgrading versions may help us do that, but we've faced this before in the NPBL and upgrading doesn't always work. With uncertainties surrounding versions > 20, I wouldn't rush into that.

I prefer staying at 24 teams over contraction enough so that... If that means playing with CPU-controlled teams, I'm okay with that.

You can definitely turn off scouting in 21 FYI

You can turn off scouting in every version I have played every version but OOTP 10. Personally I really hope we do move to 22 because I would really like that lol I usually always have an extra license when my dad’s on a beta team Be happy to loan somebody, Personally I like having more teams and I hope we can fill them if we move but I guess contradiction has to be talked about

Just to have a H2H for tied regular season records for GEL vs FFL teams, what are your thoughts on adding interleague play to the NPBL schedule?

I'm for limited interleague play.

Same

Agree with Jeff and Alex..maybe 15 gms max or whatever is easiest to implement?

It'd likely be a single series or something similar to AFBL was my thinking if we would add interleague

Lock me in against the jet hawks please

So I vote we lock out the players and never pay them! Oh wait, we don’t pay them now

Current 162-game schedule config:

• 18 games (9H/9A) versus the 5 other teams in your own division


• 12 games (6H/9A) versus the 6 teams in the other division in your league


• 0 games versus teams in the other league

• 12 games (6H/6A) versus the 5 other teams in your own division


• 11 games (5-6H/5-6A) versus the 6 teams in the other division in your league


• 3 games (rotating H/A each year) versus the 12 teams in other league

I like both radical options

I'll be the odd man out and say I kind of like not having interleague. but i'm not necessarily opposed to it either.

I also prefer not having interleague but I don't feel so strongly about it to make it difficult

I think we should consider 27-man rosters during the playoffs. 😜

^ if you haven't weighed in

I am option 3 and am happy either way (just to show percentage of members weighing in isn't as low as poll may make it look).

I haven't voted yet, and don't have a huge preference, but can I hear some arguments to keep pitchers batting? It's one thing if we played each of our games out on on own, but to have the computer decide when to pinch hit....

There is no good reason in fake baseball to have pitchers hitting

So about that DH

Seems pretty split

I'd be for it if we have a couple of seasons to plan for it.

Add it in ‘94 instead of ‘92 and I'd vote for it.

I'm down. Pitchers suck at hitting. And this league needs more offense.

yeah if it's a bit further out in the future I'd change my vote as well

among other things I think it actually makes roster construction a little more challenging, at least if you are inclined to platoon, because it's one fewer bench bat (and possibly one more guy who needs a platoon partner)

Get off my lawn

[ MESSAGE TEXT EMPTY ]

I'm off, I'm off. lol

Besides just being curmudgeonly, I'll share my thought process.
First off, it does have to do with my preference in real baseball, where I dislike the DH. The in-game strategy adds a lot that I like. My stereotypical view of a DH is the fat slob who has no agility, but doesn't have to because he can swing a bat really hard. But it makes sense for teams to carry this "athlete" on their roster because of the DH rule.
y0da55 makes a good point that we don't play out each of the games. But I don't think that takes away all of the in-game strategy components because there are settings for hook/pinch hitting that affect the in-game aspect for NPBL.
Also, I think there are some hidden advantages to be had that again add more strategy to the game. Such as: a pitcher with a bit of hitting ability raises his value. Who are you carrying on your roster in place of Mr. Fat Slob?
But mainly I guess it's still the curmudgeonly principle of the thing: I dislike the DH. "I believe in the soul ... the small of a woman's back, the hanging curveball, high fiber, good scotch, that the novels of Susan Sontag are self-indulgent, overrated crap. I believe Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. I believe there ought to be a constitutional amendment outlawing Astroturf and the designated hitter." - Crash Davis (Kevin Costner) in Bull Durham (1988)

yeah I really dislike it in real baseball and am pretty bummed by recent events to that end

Good reminder. I need to revisit this and anything else for league improvements and future planning.

Continuing my pursuit of the DH.

Let's do it

I’m in 🎅

DH works for me.

I would support the DH

Personally as a GM, I like the DH especially in OOTP. I know there's been enough in this league in the past that did not want to add the DH. Happy to poll the league to see where we stand currently.

Seems like now with all the upcoming changes would be a good time to see if we want this too.

I created a poll on the DH and NPBL if you can vote

Originally I voted 2, but I think if anyone selects 3 we should not add it.

We should probably decide this before Contraction Draft.

Well we should add a 4th option that says if we don’t add it it will cause issues with participation in the league then..

Good point.

I kind of like having differences between the afbl and npbl though. We’re already losing four teams and the different playoff structure. If we add dh the only thing left will be the lack of minor league roster limits here.

If it's not unanimous, probably won't change it honestly

Well the poll was always pointless then. But oh well

Idk, that means one person has a bigger vote than 19 others

Depends on the purpose of the poll and what threshold needs to be met to be passed. Nothing wrong with a vote that requires a unanimous result, or a 67% vote or a simple majority or whatever else. The purpose and threshold should be made clear up front though 😀.

Are there league bylaws somewhere? I thought I knew AFBL has some, but wasn’t sure here?

There are 8 teams left needed to vote in the actual poll. Let’s see where the votes land. Just don’t think 1 persons vote should mean more than 10+ people.

Jeff if you agree with Tim, vote that way.

If you haven’t voiced your opinion please vote

The afbl rules are here (I think the npbl version would be similar but the link for it is dead.): https://afblbaseball.com/files/docs/AFBLRules.html

This vote is something that is important enough that we should hear from everybody before deciding anything.

I understood the poll above to be a gauge of opinion, not the final decision as what to do.

Fair enough. The wording on the poll questions don't totally line up with where I'm at.

I voted three but none of the answers really fits what I think either. Which is that I lean against it but its not a make-or-break issue for me.

If it is a make-or-break issue for someone then I don't think it should be added. Everyone joined knowing there was no dh so I don't see how it would be a make-or-break issue for those who want to add it.

Apologies if the wording was unclear. I just don't want to lose anyone based on a change like this.

Just to clarify where I am at..."potentially cause an issue" doesn't necessarily mean that I'm out. I'll never be in favor of the DH, so answers 1 & 2 are out. So, I guess the wording on answer 3 is okay with the literal meaning of "causes an issue". It does cause an issue. It's just that it seems to intimate I'd be leaving, and that's not true. At least not right now because I want to see how what I've built continues to fare.

Hope that makes sense. I felt like answers 2 and 3 left a lot of gray area in between. I'm at around a 2.8.

That makes sense. Well if you’re not leaving…haha.

If we do it I hope we do it with a bit of a delay to allow for adjusting signing/drafting strategies.

How many years do you need to find a hitter better than your pitchers to plug in a DH hole?

Seems to be for Jeff.

I’m just here so I won’t get fined

It’s not a big deal. Just something I’d like. Without a dh I’ve ignored guys that can hit but can’t field. Would be nice to get some in the system.

Another reason why the DH isn't sitting right with me in this league...
This is the National Pasttime Baseball League. It's got the historical, old-fashioned vibe within. It's like strategies are up-to-date (no 2-3 man pitching staffs), but the setup is constant. It's Founding Fathers and Great Explorers. It's the fact that the guy you draft is yours until you say he isn't. There's no free agency or Rule 5. It has a 50's/60's feel.

I’m somewhere between a 2 and a 3 myself on the DH

(Can somebody summarize the other changes for me? They’re lost in the back scroll)

It was a poll to see where people stood in regards to the DH and NPBL

I think we'll need to table the DH talk for 2093 and revisit it in the future. There's not enough of a consensus to me to make a change.

I'm a fan of it in OOTP but I also agree that this league has been setup like Tim mentioned to have the old-school vibe.

FWIW, to those people who are saying I ended up with a override veto power... I read the poll to say 9 for and 7 against (with jeff_alabama's vote which currently isn't placed).

Yeah sorry I couldn’t figure out where (or if) to vote and now it’s been tabled anyway. Again I think it was just a poll to determine general feelings of the league about dh, not a final decision. Talk about someone having a veto doesn’t even make sense when you’re just asking for opinions.

To be fair 10 supported it with Washington included above the poll. 3 didn’t even vote yet we’ve already made a decision. You and Jeff are true only two very passionate about no DH. So yea it sure feels like your two opinions matter more than our 10..

I only see two people passionate FOR the DH as well.

With 7 votes against, there can be no qualified majority regardless of what the last few vote. There could be a simple majority, but every major change to any league I've ever seen requires a 2/3 majority.
And jeff's point about the poll being a litmus test of general feelings is a good point.

Whatever you and Jeff need to tell yourselves. The rest of us appreciate you allowing us to particpate in your league.

There's not enough of a consensus to me to make a change and it would cause issues in my opinion based on the talks so far

What are the rules for determining how the draft is ran?

Do we need each state legislatures approval and a 3/4th majority of the senate?

Less concerned about the dh and more concerned about strormarming a change in the draft that clearly clearly benefits one specific team

I'd rather pick 20’qnd have pick 20 and 21 than pick 16 for examples

Wouldn't you?

Isn't that the same as fantasy football logic? Either pick 1-4 or pick 10?

I'm not going to please everyone. We're going to do a Serpentine draft order and do 8 or 10 rounds.

So we're doing what mass wants without asking the rest of the league?

Lol no man

I've been battling and researching this decision for weeks and it's really frustrating to see all the bickering to be honest

We'll because you as commissioner are allowed to tell me what the rules are. No one else has that right

Serpentine order seems the most fair to me

That's great. You looked into it and made a call. No problem

So to recap, no DH (for the upcoming season), serpentine draft (order TBD)..right. I lost track..thanks!

Correct

Do you mind deciding how, in the future, we will make rule changes and what the threshold is for them?

Whatever that may be.

Yes will do along added to the league rules. I don't foresee the DH being added in the future but definitely should have voting stipulations written down for any league decision votes that require more than just the Commish.

Is there a working link to the league rules? The one in StatsPlus returns an error.

I should have it saved locally somewhere. Iirc it's outdated but I'll resolve that

one thought on DH for when the discussion comes back up -- I, at least, would be open to having one DH league and one non-DH league. (Granted, this might require a big realignment but I'm sure we could make it work)

I’ll just share that my opinion is I would like to see more offense much more than simply having a DH. I don’t really think a DH will get us significantly closer to what I have in my head, but my Yes vote is solely for a potential league - wide offensive boost.

Outside of that I do not have an opinion on DH vs no DH

For me there seem to be so many good hitters who can’t field and just waste away. It’s fake baseball where we are not making the in game decisions. Sure we can move some sliders around but ultimately the AI does the heavy lifting. I’d prefer pitchers don’t hit.

Has anyone paid attention to how ballpark factors have changed over the years? Have they become less hitter friendly?

There is some data on ballparks in StatsLab, but it looks like historical data is only there for about 5 years.
Screen shot shows my ballpark (obviously something weird with 2060 Louisiana). I can't say I really understand these park effect numbers. Nothing about the ballpark itself has changed.

With now 20 teams, there's the detail of our playoff structure. Just a quick discussion now and I can poll later but should we keep 4 wildcards or move to just 2 wildcards with 1 less playoff round?

I’m fine either way but probably lean leaving it with 4. Similar to MLB, I think having additional opportunities to make the playoffs is good. Keeps more teams motivated throughout the year, possibly impacts how many teams are buying/selling at the deadline. But either way not an issue I’m overly passionate about

Additional question: are we decreasing the number of rounds in the draft? With AFBL being 8 rounds for 20 teams. Wasn’t sure if that’s a move here too.

I agree with Brett-Utah. While it's a little crazy to have easily over half the league make the playoffs, following the games on RTS is one of the most fun aspects.

Regarding draft. 8 rounds is fine, or 10. I don't have a preference really. What I would like to see is if we could generate x+2 rounds of players and then draft x rounds. Doing that just seems to keep up the talent level overall.

^I agree with Mass. Indifferent on number of rounds, but would love the pool to be 2 rounds worth larger than whatever we settle on

Agree with @Brett- Utah

Playoffs Structure: I'm fine with keeping with 6 teams (2 division winners plus 4 wildcards) or moving to 4 teams (2 division winners plus 2 wildcards).

Draft Length: I'm indifferent here as well with staying with 10 rounds or dropping to 8 rounds. I will double check but I'm pretty certain we already have an extra 2 rounds of players generated (might be 1 will confirm).

Interleague? Another item I wanted to pulse the league was about interleague play. Right now, GEL and FFL don't play each other during the season. Is that something to continue with or introduce a series with everyone?

Interleague would be fun. 1 series against all 10 teams? It would help settle ties when it comes to draft order.

AFBL uses this custom schedule setup with 20 teams an interleague for reference:

# 18 games against 4 other teams in division (9H/9A)
# 12 games against 5 other teams in subleague (6H/6A)
# 3 games against each team of other subleague (3H or 3A)

I'm quite sure in the past 5 years or so when it comes my turn in the last round the pool is down to 15 players or so. Which is 10 rounds plus the international entries. But check the settings to be sure.

Any chance to make a small tweak to the league modifiers to nudge more offense into the game?

I think we should see how the contraction draft affects things before changing modifiers.

That's fine too. I wanted to throw it out there for thoughts.
I don't believe I've ever changed the modifiers, and I'm not sure how sensitive they are. But given this huge dip in offense right now, I believe it's something to consider.

hey...Can we add an Indy league based in, oh, I don't know, Japan maybe? And call it the Nippon Professional Baseball League? 🤣

Yea npbl sadly is removed out of 23

want to bring this to everyone before we start 2094

Playoff Structure:

• Current plan is to just keep the same number of playoff teams (division winners, four wildcards, byes for division winners in 1st round) unless we want to change for this coming season


• Options:

1. keep status quo


2. decrease to two wildcards, eliminate 1 round of playoffs


3. move to one division of 10 teams with 1 division winner and 3 or 4 wildcards

• I did discover that there are only 12 rounds of players generated for our 12 round draft


• Options:

1. reduce to 8 or 10 rounds


2. keep 12 rounds but increase generated players to 2 extra rounds worth of players

• No change for the coming season


• Would like to poll league to see how everyone feels to introduce interleague to the NPBL schedule potentially in 2095 or beyond


• Addition of interleague would provide a H2H option for season record ties for draft order between a FFL and GEL team

Playoffs: Keep status quo
Draft: reduce to 10, generate enough for 12
Interleague: yes

Playoffs: status quo
Draft: 8 rounds with players for 10
Interleague: yes

I would say the same as koo
Playoffs: Keep status quo
Draft: reduce to 10, generate enough for 12
Interleague: yes

By the way, it looks like the draft pool for 2094 is already created.

Playoffs: Keep status quo
Draft: reduce to 10, generate enough for 12
Interleague: yes beginning this year

Agree w Brett

Agree with Brett

Seems like the opinion so far is:

1. Playoffs: Keep status quo


2. Draft length: reduce to 10, generate enough for 12


3. Interleague: yes (right away for 2094)

Any chance we can go to 7-day sims so we can use 7-day lineups if we want?

For regular season

I'm not opposed to that honestly just to keep it consistent with AFBL plus like mentioned using 7-day lineups

Playoffs: Keep status quo
Draft: reduce to 10, generate enough for 12
Interleague: yes

My vote on playoffs is keep it larger; we wound up with the expanded playoffs because too many teams went on autopilot by the all star break if the playoff field was too small. (Yes I know I’ve been on autopilot a lot lately)

I say 10+2 rounds for the draft

Yes on inter league

Yeah I like the AFBL sim structure if people are good with that

I'm am good with - Playoffs keep as is, Draft is 10 rounds, and Inter League is a yes

@NPBL Commish Is there are a poll or are we just collecting replies from the feed?

Collecting replies currently

Tracking and thanks @NPBL Commish:

Playoff as is
Draft to 10 rds
No to inter-league

For the upcoming playoffs opening Wildcard Series round, do we want to keep it at 7-games or reduce this series to 3 or 5 games potentially?

Keep at seven. Short series are too…short

Anyone in favor of roster limits for minors? There are a few minor league teams that have some huge numbers.

Three rookie teams have over 90 players (according to statsplus, I haven’t looked at rosters yet). How about just limiting it to 50.

I am always mixed on this. In my opinion, it is a detriment to development when teams do this (for their own team). The extra players are not typically prospects... with many being 25+ year old 1-2 star players eating up playing time that would have gone to some 19 or 20 year old. These aren't players I might otherwise be signing to make my system better. It might be an eyesore on the Stats+ report... but what would it be fixing? I would be in favor of a cap if there was a shortage of bodies for my farm... but that has not been the case in my opinion.

I'd be in favor of some limit even if higher than I have in AFBL. I think it can help with available FAs too.

The reason I checked the numbers is I was trying to figure out why the FA pool is so rotten all the time. Granted the quality probably wouldn’t rise for potential MLs but it’s a struggle to find anyone with even minor league potential most of the time in the FA pool.

Can we look at making the minor league IL 7 days instead of 10? To match AFBL?

The plan is to upgrade to OOTP24 after we conclude the playoffs.

If you haven't gotten a copy of it yet, it is currently 50% off making it $20. Note that you can install a single license on two systems.

If this is an issue for you, let me know so we can figure something out. Thanks guys!

I’m for DH now if we decide to vote on it.

Let’s do it!

As a franchise that has fallen on hard times (euphemism for I Suck) I appreciate watching everyone compete to not just win but sometimes just to get into the playoffs. For that I wonder if there is a way to reward teams for not sucking... IRL success means better marketing opportunities and TV deals and ticket sales and blah blah but those things don't exist in the NPBL so we need some other way to reward those franchises for wanting to be good every year. Maybe a supplemental draft pick at the end of round 1 or 2? Maybe it's tiered so that teams that make the playoffs get a supplemental 3rd rounder while the two teams making the series get first rounders? Just an idea

I'd be curious of everyone's thoughts on potentially adding some minor league roster limits (max roster size, age limits, etc)? I don't believe we have anything in place currently.

I'm all about it! Forcing up or out will get those guys opportunities elsewhere if they are blocked

In favor 100%.

I’m down with that too

I'm very much in favor too

I think it sounds good, but would like to hear the details on what age limits. I'm a little sentimental towards old players who I'd prefer they retire. I don't want to cut a player like this, so they stay around in my minors until they get the hint. Would that sort of thing be prohibited? Or, no age limit for AAA?

As an example in AFBL, we have..

• AFBL: none


• AAA: none


• AA: 30 years old


• A: 27 years old


• RL: 24 years old

and roster size limits of..

• AFBL: 26


• AAA: 35


• AA: 35


• A: 35


• RL: 35


• IC: 50

Definitely just an example but it seems to do well to avoid minor league levels to get 60-90 players like in NPBL

👍

First glance... I try to self-impose similar roster limits. My "house rules" are 33 at all levels except RL is 40. I could work with these.
Something else I do is keep a veteran or two at the lower levels who are great character guys and\or leaders. If I have to give that up, I'm not heart broken.

Playing in AFBL too, I like the age limits but I would suggest bumping the minors roster limits to 37 for example just to have a couple of pitchers/backup SS/CF more. Just a thought though

I'm open to ideas for sure. I definitely understand that thought!

The suggested limits are good with me. In my offline fictional leagues I play with 35 player limits in the minors and rarely run into problems...pitching gets a bit scarce sometimes but that's more a problem with the lack of pitching talent than a roster size issue (IMHO).

I’m in favor of roster limits

Thoughts on implementing minor league roster and age limits this off season? @NPBL Commish

I'm in on that!

i have no real preference on that. Either way works for me.

Yes definitely something I think would benefit the league to encourage player movement

Does that mean we’re doing it? Or do we need to vote on it?

I'll put up a poll this weekend but yeah that'd be my preference to avoid minor league teams with like 60-100 players

Total Votes: 9
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Sender: NPBL Commish | 🔓 Responses: Non-Anonymous | *🕤 Closed: *

Why the push for age limits? I understand the reasoning for roster sizes, but why shouldn't I be able to I keep whoever I want in whatever level I want?

My theory would be players deserve a shot if there's a major league spot open elsewhere after 30 years old

Kind of like the rule five draft

Also, I am only pro roster limits if they are bigger than 25 or 26. I'd love 35-40

I'd be thinking in the 35-50 range for roster size limits

I just don't know how age limits would work (I don't play with them in my own league). Say we cap AAA at 30 yo, can I not put a 31 yo in that league if he is returning from injury? Or if I have an extra guy or two in case of injuries?

Usually AAA does not have an age limit

AA is 30 years old in AFBL believe

Got it. I think I'm still against it (sometimes I've put older catchers in AA), but am much more amenable to it.

In my opinion age limits help with player progression in the lower levels of the minors, you can't have a 30+ year old player dominate the rookie league for example

We could also do pro years instead of age

I like both age and roster limits because it forces me to make decisions about how to construct my minors. No limits leads to no even moderately hard decisions. Roster limits above 35 start to feel less and less challenging.

Plus with limits each player that you keep is more relevant. And the ones you don’t keep have a chance to be relevant elsewhere.

I think 50 would only be for the rookie league?

At 50 I feel like the manager doesn't do a good enough job rotating everyone

But I guess that is personal preference

Yeah 50 is a lot

Could we build in more games with lots of doubleheaders and a compressed schedule for rookies?

Maybe it's too crazy

But the roster limit for rookie league would have to be more than for the other levels? We have 10 guys coming in via the draft plus the IC players every year and many of the players need 1+ year in the rookie league

I'm good with 35 at every level

Or we could do Rookie A and Rookie B

That way, 50+ guys keep playing time

@Aleksi_Minnesota how has rookie limit of 35 worked for you in the afbl? I find even when we have 8 draftees coming in I usually end up signing a couple FAs to fill out my rookie roster. With promotions and cuts and age-outs it usually works out pretty well.

Pretty well, would prefer it to be around 40 myself here

@Aleksi_Minnesota re age limits... but why do we need to make a rule about it? If you have a 30yo dominating and not developing other players, that's fine. I'll develop my guys and have a fitter farm system for that.

I meant it in a way that I could have a bunch of 30yo players dominating vs 17yo players for other teams who will struggle against my veterans and possibly not develop well. Struggling to write my thoughts, English isn't my first language😄

No worries. I guess my point is, why do the other leagues need to be "Fair"? All of this is in hopes of winning the NPBL title. And this is all about degrees anyways. I am adamantly opposed to an age limit of say 20 at the rookie league level, but am much less opposed to it being 24 or 25. I just don't see a great reason to put age limits.

For a better experience in my opinion. I think afbl has the age limit at 24 for the rookie league

I'm more of a service time limit as opposed to age limit person for minors

I'll hold on anything for the 2101 season but I do think we should continue to chat about getting some sort of checks in place for our minor league levels to try to encourage some player movement. Even if its just a roster size without pursuing age limits.

I will spare you from the discussion that is occurring in the AFBL thread for discussion items like this, but this league has the same issue as AFBL
See the offense change between the last 2 seasons.

image.png

This was a shock change, but we really needed some shift towards the offense.

Once again, it’s just part of the risk we take moving OOTP years.

Not sure what you mean. As we were making the change to OOTP25, there was warning that offense may increase. This probably went further than expected, but what can you do about that? When the MLB lowered the mound in 1969, they couldn't be sure how much of an effect there would be.

This is the equivalent of allowing metal bats

I'm not sure what you are saying should have been different or what we should do now?

We went up by 50 points. Here's what happened in the early 70s in MLB

image.png

I'm not in the AFBL, so I don't know what the discussion there has been

We need to investigate why this happened and attempt to resolve it

only commish has power to look at the settings

should open the 24 file and compare to the 25 file and post screen shots.

My guess is lots of stuff changed

Then we need to either put it back the way it was because teams are built on that and vote on league settings changes. I dont think its a good practice to just change everything so radically without warning

I'm okay with looking at the setting to see what's different. What we do with it can then be discussed.
I disagree with the "without warning" comments. We'd talked for a long time about how we wanted a shift towards more offense, and I feel like it was known with the change to v25 that it could be coming. The degree to which it happened was a surprise.

@Larry Link - Michigan he didn’t change things on the back end, I think the ratings had to settle after the changeover.

I just thought it was interesting, wasn’t advocating for a change.

We will all adjust as needed.

Might be two of the busiest weeks this and last week sorry all.

So have a little bit tonight and it looks like OOTP did adjust the modifiers in the "Stats & AI" section of the league settings. For comparison, looks like all of these modifiers were at 1.000 (Baserunning XB% was at 40, middle of the range). These screenshots are the major league, NPBL. The other leagues look to have their modifiers adjusted on us.

Not sure how/why this happened for this conversion compared to previous version upgrades.

My vote is to reset the modifiers all back to 1.000 where they were in OOTP24 based on my old OOTP install.

Any thoughts? Obviously I don't want to just change things without communicating with the league or impacting the league as a whole. Thanks everyone.

image.png

image.png

I’m good with resetting everything to 1.000

I looked in a fictional league I created, and the numbers are pretty crazy too . How did these affect things? Did they change player ratings or just simulated outcomes?

Maybe no one knows

I'm not really certain but was doing some research this weekend and found these

https://wiki.ootpdevelopments.com/index.php?title=OOTP_Baseball:Screens_and_Menus/League_Menu/League_Settings/Stats_and_AI#League_Tota[…]d_Modifiers

https://forums.ootpdevelopments.com/showthread.php?t=356811

I’ll take a look!

I trust your judgement as I’m not smart enough to understand what all this means.

Fine with whatever is decided

When you import from 24 to 25 there is a prompt that asks if you want the engine to auto-adjust league modifiers because of the underlying engine changes. Assuming you said yes, that is likely what changed those from the 1.000's that you had in 24. These totals are "supposed" to adjust the modifiers so that the league totals that you put in are achieved with the league talent currently active. The engine changed significantly between 24 and 25, hence this new import process. Since you have the 24 save you can reimport to see what I'm referring to. An interesting test would be to say 'no' to that auto adjust and sim the season and see what kind of results you get before deciding to reset everything to 1.000

I gotta say, I kind of liked the offense last season. It was kind of crazy, but some of my hitters were finally hitting where I thought they ought to be hitting when I drafted them. On the other hand, my pitching staff is still traumatized. Most of them want to play right field this coming season. If there was a middle ground, that would be nice. (change half the settings? or change all the settings half way?) But I'm good with whatever we go with.

Hey all,

I forgot about the likely needed reduction in Wildcard teams from 4 per league to either 2 or 3 per league. I think going to only 2 Wildcard teams is the route to go so there are 4 playoff teams per league (instead of 6 teams per league) but want to poll the league.

I’m in different. Has it really impacted the playoffs? Has a 5 or 6 in either division won it all recently?

I do not think we should make a change for 2103 mid season.

This would be for a future season if at all. I'm curious if there's been a successful 5 or 6 seed in NPBL.

I’m fine with this difference in the NPBL, but wouldn’t object if people want to make the change

Not very much success from 5/6 seeds since contraction (2093).

• Idaho 2099 - 6 seed won it all


• Colorado 2094 - 4 seed, but tied with the 5 seed. Lost in final

If I counted correctly, its 9 years, with 18 teams making the finals since contraction. One true 5/6 seed among those 18.

I think it does keep me and potentially other teams interested deeper into the season in a questionable year.

Agree it does keep most teams engaged until the very end...which is fun. But I am kind of a purest and not a fan of the NBA/NHL format where more than half of the league makes the post-season...if there were a vote I'd vote for contracting the playoffs. but that said would not be upset or even annoyed if we leave it.

If reducing the number of wild card teams from 4 to 3 per league means that the #1 seed gets a bye for the first round and the wild card round would be 2vs5 and 3vs4 I would be in favor of that. A kind of a compromise between keeping teams engaged and reducing the number of playoff teams by 2 per league

Another random item.. do we know the reasoning behind having the separate AAA leagues instead of combined like AA, A, RL?

Hey all. If you know of anyone that would be interested in our league. Please send them my way. We have 3 vacancies to fill otherwise it might be worth discussing Contraction by 2 (or 4) teams to get to 18 (or 16) total teams.

Vacant Team(s): Virginia, Michigan, Washington

As we prepare to start the Offseason, question if anyone is interested in moving their ownership to one of the vacant franchises?

Virginia, Michigan, Washington, Alabama

Might have someone from @Aleksi_Minnesota's Reddit post. I need to reach out to them. We're going to be in a paused period while we try to fill our vacancies or decide next actions. If you have not voted for Season Awards or HOF yet, please do so. Thanks for the patience guys!

Would we get more interest if we switched to 26? I don’t mind either way. And I’m sure it’s a lot of work, but if we’ll pick up a few in the transition, might be worth it?

Maybe? I have 26 but also want to be mindful of folks that expect the traditional every other pattern we've typically done.

I'm hopeful we can find 3 others (need to reach out back to the Reddit post contact) but also its a crazy work/life week. Thanks for the patience guys!

I got a friend! I think he’s gonna take over Kentucky

oh yay!

just AFBL?

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For OOTP26, I think we can plan on it for the following season in 2105 which should allow the typical World Series timing sale for folks to purchase it that have not yet.

For the NPBL vacancies, I'm leaning strongly towards relegation/contraction that would move our open teams down into an Independent League not yet created (similar to the UBL in AFBL) and continue with 16 franchises. In this scenario, we'd conduct a FA draft of the impacted teams. I am just not confident in getting our league to capacity given the struggles we (and others in online OOTP world) have had. Thanks guys!

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Just to clarify my response on owning OOTP26...I own it but do not have a preference one way or the other for whether we should upgrade. 🙂

We'll plan to reduce the number of Playoffs Wildcard teams to 2 teams from 4 teams per league. This will eliminate the need of a round in the playoffs as well.

We will keep the divisions as they are post relegation as each division is losing one team.

Reminder in you don't have OOTP26 yet, it is 50% off now for the Autumn/Playoffs sale.

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