For me, there's a certain type of player I like and usually the horrible teams I choose for rebuilds don't have very many of those players.  Usually they're stocked with 1B/LF types who are way past their prime.  Move out the old so there's room for new.

Even good teams (or team more accurately depending on how you feel about my very first team) I've taken over don't usually have exactly the type of player and more importantly contracts I'm liking.  I think there's only one player on my Fargo team in world Mattingly that was there when I took over.  It was a first place team at the time and has remained one, but I moved pretty much everyone.

I also like to take over teams that are already terrible. There's nothing I love more than inheriting a team with the first overall pick. I've only taken over a winning team one time, and that was when I had about 2 weeks experience with this game, so that team collapsed due to my incompetence, and not because of any plan.

But I think I understand the "tear it down" mentality, and I'd say there are two motivations for it. First, it's much more fun to put together a winning team yourself than it is to inherit one that's already got the key players in place (as Barack Obama once said: "you didn't build that!").

Second, there's a ton of uncreative players in this game who genuinely seem to think they have to destroy everything and tank for four seasons in order to build a perennial winner. I think many of them are Astros fans, but I can't prove it. Some of them genuinely seem to think they're being original or clever, and they've stumbled onto some sort of master plan. Others are just copying the model that leads many other tankers to success.


But damn, it's annoying when you're 40 games into a season and three people are already saying "this team is worse than I thought, Lol. Every veteran is available!"

3 factors for why you perceive this, at least.
1) Owners tend not to leave contending franchises
2) Owners like their own kinds of players, and are not likely by chance to find them on a roster they just took over (agreeing with gdmetz here).
3) Forum bias-- no one gets on the Forum and says, "hey, I just took over this team that's ready to win with the personnel it has, what should I do?"

That said, when I post a forum for the world I commish and summarize available franchises, I get takers pretty quickly for the ones that I think are ready to win, and the new owners of those franchises don't make a ton of trades initially.  I think tearing down is not as prevalent as you think it is.

Everyone feels like they are smarter then everyone else and they know how to properly build a championship team.

I know I'm not at smart as everyone else. I lucked into this gem of a team a season ago
http://www.whatifsports.com/HBD/Pages/Popups/FranchiseProfile.aspx?fid=4035
First year, I didn't sign, trade for or even promote any players, the team ran itself. I could have done the same this year but I got a trade for a starting pitcher (John Feng) I just couldn't turn down. I don't see myself touching this team in any major way for the next 5-7 seasons.

It doesn't happen in the two worlds I commish because, if you tear it down too much, you get 1-2 seasons before you miss the MWR.   But, in Foxx, we have a back to back WS winner that was left behind.    An owner entered the world, took the team and announced "I've never had a payroll this high.  I'm going to have to make a lot of trades!!" then left an hour later.   Another owner took and just announced "Total rebuild".   

The team is expensive and old.  But it's also pretty good as it was built by an alias before his missed a couple of weeks and was replaced(along with his "friend" who disappeared the same day).   Obviously, anyone would like to move old, expensive players for young, cheap players.   But, if I thought I had a run left in it(and it looks like it does), I'd start my "total rebuild" next year.

And, yeah, it's pretty prevalent.   I'll peak at world chats where I've been, that had a ton of openings or those with a commish in one of my worlds.   Almost all of them have the "every veteran available" post in the first week.

When I started back up on HBD many many years ago I was young and stupid (now I'm just old and stupid)

http://www.whatifsports.com/HBD/Pages/Popups/FranchiseProfile.aspx?fid=1729

If you look back at my San Diego team at seasons 17 and 18 you'll see the disaster that was me as a new GM. I thought HOF'er and perennial MVP Alex Shin was too expensive at $20 million (Why would any player be worth that much?!?!) So I tried trading him. When that didn't work I refused to pick up his option and let someone else have him for 5 years at $10 mill a season as he continued to have an ops over 1.000. Decided my closer was a waste on a rebuild team so I traded him for a useless LF and a 2B that should have never made the big leagues.

Needless to say, HBD is very very very unforgiving on inexperienced and stupid owners. I wish I could go back in time and give myself a slap in the face for all the stupidity I caused myself those first few years.

I haven't seen as much as anyone else here, but I have one observation about veteran owners:  everyone wants to be ahead of the aging curve of their franchise.  It almost seems to me that when a team gets to its top, owners are quick to bail when it feels like "it's time"... even if they haven't actually won anything yet.  Because they want to be into the rebuild cycle before the NEXT guy decides to get into HIS.

I suspect that, as the guys earlier said, most available teams are abandoned when they hit a point where the owner doesn't want to go through with the painful teardown.  He'd rather pick up something at the bottom and start with nothing on the books.  So I wonder, how prevalent is it that an owner sticks with a franchise through multiple life cycles?  Or do most guys in this game world hop?

Most available teams are doghsit... Everybody has a different way they like to build their teams.. Lots of these worlds are very lucky to fill due to the horrible teams that are left open each season..  There is probably 100 crap teams that need to be impoded for every 1 good team that opens up.. 

Posted by MikeT23 on 3/13/2015 1:52:00 PM (view original):

Here's one I won't forget:

I won my division in Joey Belle(dead and gone) 8 seasons in a row by an average of 20 games.   I got bored so I moved on   reggiedeal took my team, did nothing and won the WS in S9.   His post in the WC was "Thanks.  I missed most of the pre-season so I wasn't able to put my mark on the team."   He tore it down the next season and won about 70 games.  

That was my first really noticable "Tear it down" moment.   There was nothing to tear down.   The team was awesome.

Yeah, 80 wins would have taken that division. I lost 100+ the first 10 seasons and never finished last.

That can't be right. How is it possible to lose 100+ games for 10 consecutive seasons?

Even if you're trying to tank, there's not much point in doing it beyond 4-5 seasons; by that time even the most inept player should have enough mega-prospects to start winning.

FWIW, I'm not talking about taking a team that won 58 games and "tearing it down".   There's nothing to be torn down(my Hamilton and Happy Jack teams were ****).    I'm talking about taking an 85-95 win team and blowing it up when adding 2-3 players might put it over the top. 

article, that was the early days of HBD.  Some of us caught on quick, others did not.   If you made a few bad moves early, you were screwed.   There was no forum to reference because we were still learning.   Anyone saying "This is how it works" in the first half dozen seasons was probably full of ****.   There just wasn't enough data to make definitive statements.

It's the mentality I've seen before, that I also don't understand. Team looks like a .500 team and decides to trade their best players and start over. I think people forget that playoffs are very often a crapshoot. If your goal is to win a championship, the biggest step is to get in the playoffs. If you have a team that looks like its a .500 team, that team could easily become a 87 win team without trying too hard. No good reason to tear it down. Tearing it down with the idea that you'll be a 95 win team in 3 seasons is the wrong idea.