A significant update to Hardball Dynasty is coming soon! The engine changes and additional changes below are finished and in testing - release date coming soon.

Engine Changes

1. Intentional walks will no longer consume any pitches thrown.
2. As regular season games enter extra innings, a ghost runner will be placed on second base to start each half inning.
3. Position players may now pitch to save bullpen arms as games enter extra innings or when the score differential is +/- 6 runs. A new trio of managerial settings are in place to provide managers with granular control of this feature. Mopup pitchers will always be prioritized over position players.
4. If a spring training game is tied after 9 innings, it will now end in a tie instead of extra innings.
5. The minimum batters faced rules are now enforced. See the official MLB rules.

Additional Changes

1. The "Edit Manager Settings" page includes a new ruleset within Pitcher Settings to determine how position players should be used as mopup pitchers.
2. The "User Settings" page includes a new "Position Optimization - Threshold" setting within the Advanced Setting grouping. This impacts position recommendations for players across all your worlds.
3. New roster size and pitcher limit rules at the big league level now match the new MLB rules. During the regular season and postseason, the ML team may have 26 players including up to 13 pitchers. During the Sept 1 roster expansion timeframe, the ML team have have 28 players including up to 14 pitchers. When a position player is demoted from the big league team, they must now only wait 10 "days". Pitchers must continue to wait 15 "days". As always, the waiting period is waived if they are being promoted due to an injury.
4. The Disabled List has been renamed the Injured List.
5. Position players can now be placed on the 10-Day or 60-Day IL whereas pitchers may be placed on the 15-Day or 60-Day IL.
6. Reactions are now available on the "World Chat" page
7. The "Free Agent Report" & "Waiver Wire" pages now allow you to include your ML players for easy comparison when making decisions on who to sign or claim.
8. An "Assistant GM" section has been added to the "Edit Rosters" page. It initially includes two features with more coming in the future.

With the exception of "Additional Changes" 4, 6 & 7, changes won't be available until your world's version is upgraded. The plan is to selectively update a very small number of worlds starting a new season so we can limit the blast radius for any bugs that slipped out the door. We will then add logic so worlds are automatically upgraded during the season rollover process.

We also wanted to provide a snapshot of other features we'll be working on next:

1. Reducing the spring training period
2. Revamping the coaching process. More specialized coordinators, no individual minor league team coaches. We'll also begin to track coaches' impact on player development and expose in coach profiles.
3. More Assistant GM features including recommended promotions, demotions, free-agent signings and trade suggestions.
4. Fixing the existing logic tied to player recovery following an injury
5. Player development 2.0 - we'll be rewriting player development to be more inline with today's MLB
6. Introducing many new player and team stats. We'll initially add logic to track and then figure out all the great ways to surface in the game.
7. We'll also be targeting a few pages to re-design (World Office, Player Profile, Prospect Profile). This will likely lead to more.

Feel free to discuss here. We do have specific channels on Discord for this, but I know not everyone is on Discord so wanted to open this up as well.

Can we NOT have the ghost runner? Or give us the option to turn it off? This has to be by far the most unpopular of the recent rule changes in MLB and I don't recall ANYONE ever asking to have it implemented here, opposed to say, injury recovery. Please, make this one rule go away.

The minimum batters faced rules are now enforced. See the official MLB rules.

What about relief pitchers with stamina of 10 or less? There are a few generated that low in this game. Their max pitch count setting would be such that it is possible for them to reach their MPC after facing only 2 batters. The MLB rule requires a minimum of 3 batters faced.
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Overall some very good and needed changes.

Second that on no ghost runner, or at least the option not to have it.

dy also makes a good point with low stamina pitchers, forget that one also, especially since HBD has never had the problem that initiated it in MLB, that is lefty/righty matchups. The specialists do not work in HBD, and coaches do not have the control to do so. So also no minimum batters faced please.

If you do end up reducing spring training games, please make sure player growth does not get reduced as a result of reduced games. It takes long enough as it is to develop players.

ghost runners are a horrible idea. this is the best baseball sim in the world by far - i'm not being a cranky old man... but wow i hate this decision. shold we also let the LA and NY teams have an extra $200m budget? ust because modern baseball has died a slow death doesn't mean we need to go down with the ship.

I may be in the minority here but the ghost runner thing is meant to save the bullpens. We've all had our pitching staff wrecked for a week by a 16-inning game. This would prevent that.

Stop using the 2011 CBA rules -
Eliminate Type A and B Free Agents
Add Amateur Draft and International FA spending cap.
Add qualifying offers for departing free agents.
Probably a few more if I thought about it.

Among the benefits would be to disincentivize tanking of 10-30 million player budgets. The main benefit would be using the current rules and not the 2011 rules.

Posted by ttnorm on 8/13/2026 9:09:00 AM (view original):
Stop using the 2011 CBA rules -
Eliminate Type A and B Free Agents
Add Amateur Draft and International FA spending cap.
Add qualifying offers for departing free agents.
Probably a few more if I thought about it.

Among the benefits would be to disincentivize tanking of 10-30 million player budgets. The main benefit would be using the current rules and not the 2011 rules.

This is in the plans, but the CBA expires on 12/1/26. We'll see what the new CBA looks like and most likely incorporate those changes.

Honestly what I like about HBD is that it's not 1:1 with MLB. If we're going to make it a 1:1 sim then we need to start by reducing worlds from 32 to 30 teams. Otherwise HBD being it's own unique thing is a feature not a bug, imo.

That said, it would be nice if worlds have the option to implement a lot of these things. Ghost runner, definitely. CBA changes, etc.

I will add that it would be nice if the recovery effects of placing guys on the disabled list would be explored before making changes to the number of days. Placing minor leaguers on the 7 day DL never has any effect. There has been plenty of discussion about how much/little effect placing a major leaguer on the 15-day DL has. I worry that placing a player on the new 10-day DL will also have zero recovery effect. If that's going to be the case I'd rather just keep it at 15 days.

Alternately, if the intention is for DL trips that aren't 60-days to have little to no recovery effect and effectively just open a roster spot, then please be transparent about that and communicate it to the player base.

To that end, a long-standing issue with this site and game has been a lack of transparency and communication with the player base. I'm glad that we have a list of what you're planning to work on but it would be nice to have had the list of what is about to be implemented brought forward ahead of time so we could provide feedback proactively instead of reactively.

I really love the instinct towards action and transparency here. Having said that, I agree that I’d prefer the ghost runner not be implemented or at least be optional. It wouldn’t be a dealbreaker for me or anything but yeah I’d rather not have it. If we do add it, please at least track MLB and be sure not to use it in playoffs.

Also, if “on/off” options for rules are going to be available, is there anyway to add a poll tool to the world chat? As a commissioner id love to be able to easily see what the majority wanted to do on things like DH and ghost runner.

Posted by alleyviper on 8/13/2026 10:15:00 AM (view original):
I will add that it would be nice if the recovery effects of placing guys on the disabled list would be explored before making changes to the number of days. Placing minor leaguers on the 7 day DL never has any effect. There has been plenty of discussion about how much/little effect placing a major leaguer on the 15-day DL has. I worry that placing a player on the new 10-day DL will also have zero recovery effect. If that's going to be the case I'd rather just keep it at 15 days.

Alternately, if the intention is for DL trips that aren't 60-days to have little to no recovery effect and effectively just open a roster spot, then please be transparent about that and communicate it to the player base.

To that end, a long-standing issue with this site and game has been a lack of transparency and communication with the player base. I'm glad that we have a list of what you're planning to work on but it would be nice to have had the list of what is about to be implemented brought forward ahead of time so we could provide feedback proactively instead of reactively.

I understand not everyone is in Discord, but as of this morning there are 515 users in the HBD server with multiple channels dedicated specifically to feedback and conversation about updates. We did publish a list of ideas and had some good back and forth with the community.

These are updated MLB rules and we're implementing them as a complete set. Picking and choosing which rules from which era to apply creates a patchwork of inconsistencies that's harder to manage and harder to explain. I understand any change is hard and longtime users are comfortable with how things have always worked - but attracting new users to a platform with outdated rules and an outdated UI is an uphill battle we can't keep fighting. We are going to explore giving worlds the option to stay on the current ruleset - but that's a conversation for another day. I do like the idea of being able to toggle rules on/off similar to how we've incorporated the Universal DH. I think the world chat reactions will help to act as sort of a polling place for these things.

On the injury recovery question - you're identifying something we're already planning to fix. The recovery system is being updated specifically because which IL you place a player on should not impact their recovery time. That mechanic has been gamed for years and we know it. The IL changes in this update were about matching current MLB roster rules - the recovery logic is a separate issue and it's on the list.