Anybody else tired of the same old recycled progressive league ideas but also don't want to do a league that will absolutely kill you to keep track of it be it as the commish tracking rosters or as a team owner researching available players in order to draft?

I thought I would start a thread where we can all share ideas on new progressive league concepts.  For those ideas that seem to have the legs to maybe take off....hopefully this thread will also provide a place to flesh out all the particulars.

I just joined this interested progressive league that incorporates randomness into how players perform each year:

http://www.whatifsports.com/forums/Posts.aspx?TopicID=451618&TopicsTimeframe=30

Has anyone done something like this before?

I had the idea a while ago of a progressive league in which you got your new players from WAA rookies each year.  Each year you would get a set of maybe 18/20 real name prospects and at the end of the year you could keep any of the names you chose and begin at your choice of their real seasons.  It almost filled, but the main objection was that players would not exclusive--anybody who got a Pedro or Jeter or Hornsby would each be able to keep them. 

I have since worked out a solution to that problem.  It would work like a pick 6 league.  Any players that were chosen by 2 or more teams would be blacklisted and no one would get them.  Only the players that you chose that were not claimed by another team could go forward.  This type of league would incorporate randomness and also lessen the burden of research on each owner and the burden on the commish. 

I could try to revive this idea if there were enough interest.

I'm still waitlisting for my Page-A-Day Progressive league that has the rookie draft classes based on randomly selected dates of birth. We're in season 4 right now and are coming up on season the season 5 draft and it's working out as a very realistic progressive so far. Our average league salary is around $72 million for the first four seasons.

Because of the limited player pool, you have to use your bench, players who are supposed to be all-stars play like it, some lesser known players are doing really well, everyone has different strategies and there are no set draft strategies due to the randomness of the rookie draft as you never know what positions or players are coming.

Thread to join the waitlist: http://www.whatifsports.com/forums/Posts.aspx?ForumID=502&TopicID=436124

Posted by ddprime on 5/10/2012 8:24:00 AM (view original):
I just joined this interested progressive league that incorporates randomness into how players perform each year:

http://www.whatifsports.com/forums/Posts.aspx?TopicID=451618&TopicsTimeframe=30

Has anyone done something like this before?

I'm curious to see how this goes. I'm signed up too. We only need 6 owners to make this a go.

Posted by ddprime on 5/10/2012 8:24:00 AM (view original):
I just joined this interested progressive league that incorporates randomness into how players perform each year:

http://www.whatifsports.com/forums/Posts.aspx?TopicID=451618&TopicsTimeframe=30

Has anyone done something like this before?

Currently there are 2 leagues, that I know of, running with the randomness concept. Cheno5's URAPP(Ultimate Random as Possible Progressive) and my ORP(Once Random Progressive).

The URAPP uses players from the entire WIS database, has Free Agency, IR and a random draw each season of every season in a players career.

The ORP uses players from 1950 to current day and you get a random draw of any season that a player played. You only get to use a season once then it is off-the-board so eventually you use up all of a players seasons. We also have a random draw for 4 seasons to draft new players and for alignment each year.

How about an "alphabet" progressive.  Could have 20-24 teams, all have to have players last names start with their letter.  Players first choice in draft determines their letter (ie Babe Ruth goes first, all players on that team have to have last names starting with "R").  Next season worst record drafts first etc.

Some letter would be combined: eg. I, Q, U, X, Z would be tough to fill - could also use first names (eg. Xavier Nady or Quilvio Veras, Ichiro etc.).  Could go with 20 teams and combine I-J, Q-R, U-V, W-X, Y-Z.

I've played around with this making up teams -- would be competitive.  Ideally also a cap to keep it fair eg. 120 M. 

I've often wanted to try a Franchise Progressive.
16 teams. Everyone takes a different Franchise starting with the 16 original Franchises. You can use anyone from the entire history of your Franchise.
You could have everyone start with rookie seasons or maybe do a random draw of a season for each player, otherwise the first few years no one is going to need too many new draftees if their original players are still progressing from their rookie season.
Next season and each season thereafter randomly draw a Franchise that hasn't been used to draft new players from. This would take 14 seasons to use up the remaining Franchises. Once you have all of the Franchises used up, start over drawing 1 from the 16 originals again and repeat for as long as you want to run the league. There would be a few players that had long careers that would get drafted a 2nd time before their first gig was over but you could have a rule that the same team couldn't draft them if you didn't want clones. Would probably need a Cap to keep it even.

Maybe do 16 Original Franchises based upon one of their World Series years, then progress those players from that point.  New players could be drafted as long as it was a rookie season for that Franchise but could come from any year.  Could even keep 15-20 players from the World Series team, then the rest would be rookies from that franchise.......would need a cap though.

Could call it "Original Franchise Rookie Progressive"   (or "PROF" ?)

Posted by bheid408 on 5/12/2012 12:03:00 PM (view original):
I've often wanted to try a Franchise Progressive.
16 teams. Everyone takes a different Franchise starting with the 16 original Franchises. You can use anyone from the entire history of your Franchise.
You could have everyone start with rookie seasons or maybe do a random draw of a season for each player, otherwise the first few years no one is going to need too many new draftees if their original players are still progressing from their rookie season.
Next season and each season thereafter randomly draw a Franchise that hasn't been used to draft new players from. This would take 14 seasons to use up the remaining Franchises. Once you have all of the Franchises used up, start over drawing 1 from the 16 originals again and repeat for as long as you want to run the league. There would be a few players that had long careers that would get drafted a 2nd time before their first gig was over but you could have a rule that the same team couldn't draft them if you didn't want clones. Would probably need a Cap to keep it even.

genemock started an original 16 franchise league. It lasted about 6 seasons before he disappeared without a word and it died. I think he's back but he never re-started the league.

Thanks for all the ideas so far guys.......several interesting concepts.  The progressive league that I would like to do more than any other is a Real Salary Cap League.  We all know that real life salaries don't always match up with real value and doing a salary cap league where the WIS salary is used is very realistic.  

I know many have probably kicked around the idea of using real life salaries, but I think I may have found a way to implement it without killing the commish trying to keep up with it.  I found a database on a baseball website where you could search player salaries for any player, any year etc.  I was able to copy and paste player salaries by season from 1990-2009.  It isn't a complete or perfect list as mid-season call-ups were mostly if not completely omitted and traded players were in the database twice at 2 salary levels.

That said, I think a league could be formed and tracked without too much extra work on the commish over and above the normal workload.  My thinking is prior to the start of the initial draft, a year by year complete salary listing would be posted in the forums as well the option of emailing the excel spreadsheet to anyone who wants it.  Once everyone has access to the salary database and has had time to research, then the initial draft would be conducted.

The cap would be set based on the average salary for that season and would rise over time to keep pace with salary inflation.  Since I have already compiled that information it would simply be a matter of creating a formula and applying it for all seasons.  All that would be laid out in advance so owners would know the impact of a player's future salary on their salary cap.

Since each player's current and future salary would be posted in the forums, when an owner posts his keepers for the next season he would be required to post the salary for each keeper and show what his total salary is prior to the draft.  Then once the draft starts, each owner would need to include with each pick what his updated salary is.....for example, if a team's salary prior to the start of the draft is $25.432 million and his first pick is John Doe P (1.143M), then he would need to post:  

John Doe, P  $1.143M
Updated Salary = $26.575M


A twist on this version would be rather than have a hard salary cap, allow owners to "buy" additional payroll capacity by submitting GC's that would go into a pool and be distributed back to the owners based on success.  Distributing GC's back could be done on a yearly basis or possibly every 1/2 decade or so based on combined success over that period of time.

Another idea I've had that incorporates some randomness into it is everybody drafts a team of players who have at least 10 consecutive seasons in WIS.  Then a random draw between 0-9 will be held.  Whatever number comes up is the last # in each player season that must be used.  For example, if you drafted Albert Pujols and choose 2001-10, then if #5 was the random draw then your first season you'd have to use his 2005 season.  If the 2nd season was # 9, you would have to use his 2009 season that year.  I think it would be best if two separate #'s are drawn....one for pitchers and another for hitters.  That way you can't stack your entire roster for 1 or 2 great seasons b/c your hitters and pitchers will be from 2 separate seasons.

You could even make a rule that any given # could be used up to twice to make sure that the randomness factor lasted all 10 seasons.  Wouldn't it suck to have Babe Ruth 1921-30 and never get to use his '21 or '27 season?  By the same token, if your division rival had Ruth wouldn't it be nice to know that the WIS Gods screwed him out of Ruth's best two seasons!!!

This could also be such that each owner drafts a "core" group of 20 players who have 10 consecutive seasons and then once the specific # is drawn, then a 5 round mini-draft could be held prior to the start of each season to fill in the PA/IP gaps that each team may have.

Posted by neabaseball on 5/14/2012 11:05:00 PM (view original):
Another idea I've had that incorporates some randomness into it is everybody drafts a team of players who have at least 10 consecutive seasons in WIS.  Then a random draw between 0-9 will be held.  Whatever number comes up is the last # in each player season that must be used.  For example, if you drafted Albert Pujols and choose 2001-10, then if #5 was the random draw then your first season you'd have to use his 2005 season.  If the 2nd season was # 9, you would have to use his 2009 season that year.  I think it would be best if two separate #'s are drawn....one for pitchers and another for hitters.  That way you can't stack your entire roster for 1 or 2 great seasons b/c your hitters and pitchers will be from 2 separate seasons.

You could even make a rule that any given # could be used up to twice to make sure that the randomness factor lasted all 10 seasons.  Wouldn't it suck to have Babe Ruth 1921-30 and never get to use his '21 or '27 season?  By the same token, if your division rival had Ruth wouldn't it be nice to know that the WIS Gods screwed him out of Ruth's best two seasons!!!

This could also be such that each owner drafts a "core" group of 20 players who have 10 consecutive seasons and then once the specific # is drawn, then a 5 round mini-draft could be held prior to the start of each season to fill in the PA/IP gaps that each team may have.

My ORP league is somewhat similar to this except we use all of a players seasons. For example, John Doe plays from 1991 to 1997, at the start of the season you get a random draw of '91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97.  If you get '95 that is the season you use for that year.  Next season you get another random draw of the same seasons except for '95. Once drawn it is off-the-board. Maybe it is '91 then that season is used up and so on....

Posted by bheid408 on 5/12/2012 12:03:00 PM (view original):
I've often wanted to try a Franchise Progressive.
16 teams. Everyone takes a different Franchise starting with the 16 original Franchises. You can use anyone from the entire history of your Franchise.
You could have everyone start with rookie seasons or maybe do a random draw of a season for each player, otherwise the first few years no one is going to need too many new draftees if their original players are still progressing from their rookie season.
Next season and each season thereafter randomly draw a Franchise that hasn't been used to draft new players from. This would take 14 seasons to use up the remaining Franchises. Once you have all of the Franchises used up, start over drawing 1 from the 16 originals again and repeat for as long as you want to run the league. There would be a few players that had long careers that would get drafted a 2nd time before their first gig was over but you could have a rule that the same team couldn't draft them if you didn't want clones. Would probably need a Cap to keep it even.

dsphalinger had a league like this, was a lot of fun!  

I believe he even had a 24 team league.  It was fun because with my Atlanta franchise, I could pick from the Boston Beaneaters, Boston Braves, Milwaukee Braves....etc -