It's nice that 2 or 3 people who play HBD like it the way it is.
My guess is they don't travel often. Certainly not to different countries or time zones. They have jobs that are highly repetitive and lack a lot of personnel or financial responsibility. They're probably not students. They don't have young children or much else in the area of family commitments or responsibilities. Etc, etc.
Online gaming has never been more popular. Baseball has never been more popular. HBD struggles.
That leads me to the obvious conclusion that a lot is wrong with HBD.
Unnecessary rigid time windows within which things must be done and/or other actions can't be done is one of those things.
I have no doubt many people who can check off two or more things on the list above have left HBD because they have been unable to log in budget day. Or arb day. Or missed an FA because of the poorly designed bidding system. Or gotten crap coaches because coach hiring is just a bad idea all around.
If you're busy, why play a game that's hardwired to work against you? Especially when there are so many games that are not.
These are people who have money and, if HBD was less rigid and more customer friendly, the time and interest to GM several teams.
HBD currently rewards Mike. He's can be in front of an online device with nothing but time on his hands 16+ hours a day. A life that allows you to log into HBD every 4 hours is more important than knowing baseball or HBD strategy. Mike got here years ago and because he puts in so much time, is in 2 words that are just ******* awesome.
And good for Mike. Sadly, we can't all be Mike. Thing is, there clearly aren't enough Mikes. There are hundreds of thousands of people who both love playing games and love baseball. Too bad WIS doesn't invest very much in bringing them to and keeping them playing HBD.