Thank you, I will. Don't worry, I was not offended, and yes, I am probably reproducing the mistakes a lot of other people made long ago. Right now I have divided my teams into three kinds:
1) The first bunch, when I created teams from enthusiasm without knowing what strategies worked or were disastrous in WIS and these are all around 100 games into their seasons, burning and crashing. I nurtured them with love when I realized their inevitable destiny, got them some decent pitching or a better hitter on the WW, or in a couple cases gutted them to use them for experiments, and as I said before, I am not going to make it a habit to let teams run on their own, but there is not much left to do for these - I check them every few days, occasionally rest a pitcher, but they pretty much lose every day.
which was the incentive to create the second tier of teams that I am actively managing daily
2) The second bunch. Partly, it was pride as the guy says in "Pulp Fiction" messing with my head. Sitting around watching 6-7 teams lose every day, way back in last, having learned a lot but unable to use it for around 2 months was not my way of doing things. So I created a new set of teams designed specifically for different parks, using what some people here had taught me about how to use advanced stats, what worked, etc. These are all right around .500 which for me means that at least I learned to build competitive teams. Three or four might contend, though it is early in the season, (ca. 50 games so far give or take) and these are the ones I am managing closely. One has been winning a lot, but is in a league with a very strong div. leader and a wildcard race leader with a strong record. My one effort at building a pitching/defense team with a pitchers' park but using mostly modern pitchers is tied for first right now at 20-17.
3) Theme league teams, which, as probably for many WIS players, is something you are not interested in at first. But eventually you get tired of Joss/Raines etc. and as a practical exercise in learning started experimenting with drafting teams for different themes that I thought were interesting or clever.
Except that then two things happened: first, some of the teams seemed good and I liked them and so instead of just the exercise while I waited for my second round OL teams to complete their seasons, I popped the theme team into a league thinking it would sit there for a few weeks and by then round one teams would be finished with the season and round two teams would be into the last 1/3 of theirs. Mostly that is true but one or two leagues filled faster than expected; second there is almost what I would call a movement I noticed, where a lot of people, myself included started being interested in seeing more "ordinary" players and fewer superstars, and a bunch of leagues with various methods of trying to capture that interest sprung up (Average Joe, Below Average Joe, Balanced Team, Unsung Heroes, No Hall of Fame, and my own Wider Rotation and Platoon) and I found these to be a lot of fun, much more than the nth version of OL teams.
So I ended up with a lot of teams and at least one league I started. phew. I will slow down though, now, as I think I have gotten most of it out of my system. Drafting is too much fun, very addicting- but I have started just fiddling, without leagues, playing with how high I can get OBP for one team, then dissolving them, (taking notes though), or with SLG, or with whether I can do away with a starting rotation/bullpen split altogether (in radical sociology we call this "abolishing the division of labor") and getting pitchers with 100-200 IP each down the line - which is how I got the idea for the Wider rotation league, that and experimenting with whether I could maximize the positions played by all position players and thereby cut PAs to a minimum and try to maximize value in a different way (that last part didn't work, but everyone is having fun so far setting up teams with platoons and position-by-committee in the league).
It has also been an unusually slow time for other projects in life, so at some point I won't be able to keep doing this, and will have to settle on 2,3, 4 active teams at a time like everyone learns to do. But I have fewer courses this year to teach, just finished the first draft of a long book and can't look at it to edit it yet for a while, and finished translating another from Italian. So a lot of things that had, and will again have me working late into the night and on weekends are slowed down for a couple of months, and I am indulging myself. When busier work schedules hit I will have to cut back on creating new teams.
But I appreciate your desire and commitment to be sure of the kind of owners you are getting into an already successful league and I promise that with the exception of that first round which are now fading to embers in their late (non-) pennant races, I will be actively engaged with all my other teams and leagues, esp. theme leagues, since the personal relationships among owners in these are important.
What's the plan for when we run out of available teams in Occupation?