Sim League Idea

[drgullen]

Hi everyone,

I see a lot of Dynasties, but not a lot of leagues here. I know this is a Dynasties thread, but I just meant on the site in general. I had an idea for a team management/game simulation league, so I wanted to see if there was any interest out there for this. Here's a bit of what I had in mind:

1) It would use what I consider to be one of the best mods on here -- Jim825's Total Classics 10.

2) As a member of this league, you would own an organization of 4 classic teams, but you would field only 1 of those teams, stocking it with what you consider to be the best players from within your organization. For example, let's say you owned the '75 Red Sox Organization, which also includes the '42 Browns, the 2000 Yankees and the '64 Orioles. You could decide to field the '42 Browns but "call up" Andy Petitte from the Yankees to be your #1 starter, if you wished.

3) We'd have all the general things you'd expect such as drafts, trades, transactions, injuries, etc.

4) The games themselves I would play out CPU v. CPU and record the game using Camtasia. I would then edit it into a highlight package, upload that to YouTube and include the link here in the thread so that you can see your team's highlghts. For the playoffs, I was thinking of actually uploading the entire games.

5) My thought was more of an NFL-style schedule and not a Dynasty. I was thinking perhaps an 8-team league with each team playing 10 Regular Season games which would result in a 40-game schedule. I was also thinking of having 2 four-team Divisions and then the playoffs would be single games, perhaps the 2 Division Finals and then the Championship Game.

6) There would be some intervention rules that would apply during the game as well. These would be rules that we would setup to help me guide your team during the game. Things along the lines of when to pull the starting pitcher, when to pinch hit and pinch run and with which players. If that situation came up, I would pause the game, take temporary control, make the change and then resume the game still CPU v. CPU.

There's more to it than what I've written here of course, but that's the basics of it. I would take one of the organizations, so I'd need 7 interested people out there to actually do this league with me.

Is this something people would be interested in joining?

[drgullen]

Here's an example of what one of the games might look like. Some notes:

- I pretended that I was the owner of the 1991 Minnesota Twins organization and here, I am fielding the Toronto Blue Jays. I picked a team at random to play against, in this case, the 1961 Cincinnati Reds, although for the purposes of this example, I did not change Cincinnati's roster at all. For my team, I've taken players from throughout the organization, including the 1992 Jays, the Twins, the 1965 Dodgers and the 1987 Cardinals and formed my own custom Blue Jays team.

- For starting pitchers in this league, I would follow a "Warm up at 3, Replace at 4" rule, meaning that if the starter has put himself into a 3-run deficit, I would warm up a long or middle reliever (based on who you tell me to warm up). If the deficit reached 4 runs, I would replace the starter with the reliever (provided the reliever is warmed up, of course). In all other cases, I would allow the CPU to decide when to relieve the starter. As you'll see by this clip, both starters pitched well, so there was no need for me to intervene to replace either of them.

- For pinch runners, I will manually substitute a lead runner for you, but only from the 8th inning and beyond and only provided that you have more than 1 bench player remaining. Once you are down to only one bench player, the manual interventions will stop and I let the CPU decide the rest of the game. I would also only substitute a runner if a) his speed was less than 75 and there is an available bench player with a speed rating of 75 or greater.

- For pinch hitters, I would follow an "0 for 3" rule. I will manually substitute a hitter if he is 0 for 3 with nothing to show for it. If he was productive at all, for example 0 for 3, BB (meaning he walked earlier in the game) or 0 for 3, SH (meaning he moved a baserunner along earlier), I would leave him in. I would try to substitute for a L-R or R-L favorable position for your team, based on who is available on your bench. If L-R or R-L wasn't available (say, you're facing a right-handed pitcher and all that is left on your bench are right-handed batters), you'd tell me ahead of time whether we pinch hit or not in that situation (same for L-L).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5eGvBfiL40

Specific to the above clip:

- After Koufax singled in the 8th, I substituted him for a pinch runner simply because the CPU was warming up Duane Ward. If that warm-up had not occurred, I would not have made that sub. For pinch runners, you could supply me with an ordered list of preferences or I'd always take the bench player with the highest speed rating -- your choice.

- Pinch hitters would be selected based on a priority list that you would provide me. In this case, my #1 PH is Jose Oquendo, he was available and Coleman was 0 for 3, so that's why I substituted Coleman for Oquendo.

- Pendleton would be suspended for a period of time for charging the mound. We could decide collectively what the penalty should be -- given this would be a 10-game season, I would say 3 games for a first infraction, the rest of the season for a second. You would then be required to replace Pendleton with someone else from within the organization or make a trade involving him (although the suspension would still apply to the new team).

- The situation in the 9th for the Reds is interesting and something else you'd have to decide. There's a slow runner on first base and an 0 for 3 batter up at bat and there's only 2 bench players remaining. I would always leave 1 bench player for the CPU to use for pitcher PH substitutions (this would be a no DH league, BTW). So, this means I can make one more manual substitution for the Reds -- either pinch run for Post or pinch hit for Freese -- you would tell me ahead of time how to handle such a situation. In this case, I decided to pinch run and that worked out well for Cincinnati.

- The result was a pretty good game that could have gone either way right down to the last at-bat. With any luck, the majority of the games would be close like this.

So, that's kind of how it would go with this league. I would compile a similar highlight package for all 40 Regular Season games and upload the entire game for the 3 playoff games. It'll take me some time to put together a website to handle all the transactions, so I'm thinking of a March 2013 "Spring Training" start date for the league, where each person would get one exhibition game to test their lineup, followed by an early April 2013 start to the Regular Sesaon. I was thinking of calling this the "Total Classics Sim League".

What do you think? I would need 7 people to join, otherwise it's a no go. Anyone? Bueller??

[Yankee4Life]

I can tell you put a lot of thought into this management/game simulation league thing that you want to start up and I wish you the best of luck with it because as far as I can remember in here this kind of league has never been brought up. There has been leagues in here but we haven't had any in many years.

I did read your proposed rules closely and I really don't understand some of your rules here. This is what I mean:

- For pinch hitters, I would follow an "0 for 3" rule. I will manually substitute a hitter if he is 0 for 3 with nothing to show for it. If he was productive at all, for example 0 for 3, BB (meaning he walked earlier in the game) or 0 for 3, SH (meaning he moved a baserunner along earlier), I would leave him in. I would try to substitute for a L-R or R-L favorable position for your team, based on who is available on your bench. If L-R or R-L wasn't available (say, you're facing a right-handed pitcher and all that is left on your bench are right-handed batters), you'd tell me ahead of time whether we pinch hit or not in that situation (same for L-L).

No way would I want to do that. Just because someone is 0 for 3 at the plate you will manually substitute him? Hey, I don't care if Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Jimmie Foxx, Hank Greenberg, Joe Dimaggio, Ted Williams, Ty Cobb, etc, etc, etc happen to go hitless in their first three at-bats. That can happen at any time. That doesn't mean I want to take the bat out of their hands before they get up to bat for the fourth time. Never.

- Pendleton would be suspended for a period of time for charging the mound. We could decide collectively what the penalty should be -- given this would be a 10-game season, I would say 3 games for a first infraction, the rest of the season for a second. You would then be required to replace Pendleton with someone else from within the organization or make a trade involving him (although the suspension would still apply to the new team).

This makes no sense. Sometimes when the player charges the mound in this game he gets thrown out and sometimes the pitcher does. I have seen both. No one should be suspended for this at all.

Anyways, I wish you luck.

[drgullen]

Thanks for the reply, Yankee.

To address your concerns, a lot of the rules are just guidelines that I thought of and can be completely overruled by you, the owner of your organization. If you never want to pinch hit for guys like that, that's fine. The website I'm thinking of creating for this would have a GM area where, in addition to your lineups, you can describe how you want your team handled during games. In your case, you could say no to the 0 for 3 rule and then describe when or if you want to pinch hit at all.

For the suspension thing, that was just a way I thought of to increase involvement of the people in the league. If your player acts in an unsportsmanlike way, he would get suspended for X amount of games (it could even be just 1 game perhaps) and then you'd have to think how to shuffle your lineups while your player is unavailable. Suspensions like this occur sometimes in real life MLB, so I thought I'd include them here as well just as an added challenge for the owners to deal with. If most people don't want this (as you clearly don't), we could forego this idea altogether.

Since leagues aren't popular here, this probably ain't gonna fly anyway, but I was hoping at least 7 people would be interested.

Cheers,

Glen

[Yankee4Life]

Thanks for the reply, Yankee.

To address your concerns, a lot of the rules are just guidelines that I thought of and can be completely overruled by you, the owner of your organization. If you never want to pinch hit for guys like that, that's fine. The website I'm thinking of creating for this would have a GM area where, in addition to your lineups, you can describe how you want your team handled during games. In your case, you could say no to the 0 for 3 rule and then describe when or if you want to pinch hit at all.

I understand they are just guidelines and that's fine. But that right there is my problem with leagues like this. It's like "if that happens in the game then we do this." I mean I don't think you would pinch hit for Ruth in the 8th inning even though up to that point he was 0 for 3. I want that guy and all power hitters in TC 10 to have as many at-bats in a game as possible. But at the same time there would be no problem pinch hitting for someone else in the same situation who is 0 for 3.

Since leagues aren't popular here, this probably ain't gonna fly anyway, but I was hoping at least 7 people would be interested.

I didn't say that. I just said that we have not had Mvp leagues in here in a while. These guys dabble in fantasy leagues in here.

[drgullen]

I understand they are just guidelines and that's fine. But that right there is my problem with leagues like this. It's like "if that happens in the game then we do this." I mean I don't think you would pinch hit for Ruth in the 8th inning even though up to that point he was 0 for 3. I want that guy and all power hitters in TC 10 to have as many at-bats in a game as possible. But at the same time there would be no problem pinch hitting for someone else in the same situation who is 0 for 3.

This is exactly why I said you can describe when or if you want to pinch hit at all. Please don't misunderstand me here. I don't want your impression to be that I'm going to impose my will on your team. It would be your team and you'd tell me exactly how you want it handled. Picture the GM web page like this: a bunch of yes/no options followed by a description box saying (If no, please describe). One option would be: Pinch Hit for anyone who comes to bat 0 for 3. In your case, you'd say no and then in the box, describe to me what scenarios you'd want your team to PH. You could say "just let the CPU decide" or you could give me a list of players by saying "PH only if Smith, Jones or Brown is 0 for 3". You could get ultra specific if you want and say "PH only for Smith and only if he is 0 for 4 and only if there's a RISP and only if we're down by 1 and only if there's a lefty on the bench".

I realize we would all manage our games in different ways. I personally wouldn't have a problem pinch-hitting for Ruth if he's "having an off-day" especially when you're talking about a roster like TC 10 where you're bound to have other power hitters sitting on the bench. I'd be okay with that. You clearly woudn't be. This league would accomodate both of us, I assure you.