Posted by jimt14120 on 5/15/2024 8:41:00 AM (view original):

Posted by grissom97 on 5/14/2024 11:22:00 PM (view original):
So, you're suggesting, $20M prospect max & only 2 IFA signings? Very interesting, it would keep the IFA market under control and allow more to benefit.

Yeah, think about it, you have 3 sections out of the $20.
1) A $10M contract slot
2) A $5M contract slot
3) The remaining $5M to use for the amateur draft
The caveats being you don't have to use the slotted money for IFAs, you just cannot go over the 2 slotted offer maximums. Think of it as an A and B. IFA might come through, you offer the $10M (the A), and get him. Draft comes up, you have the #3 pick and a supplemental, plus your others you want to sign, costs you another $8M. You have $2M left to bottom feed in IFA because you won't compete against the remaining A or B's. So you can offer up to one $10M contract, one $5M contract if you go $15 to $20 in prospect. Might push people into the amateur draft more heavily, more into FA market, etc.
Just a thought.

Well, you'd need to leave $6M in the prospect budget until the draft, so you may only get one of the 2 IFA's you really want to go after it but I do like the idea.

I'm just gonna drop three cents and leave:

- I've played in what I consider my main world for a long time and there are basically no rules. Things happen now and then which aren't really to my liking, and occasionally the chat blows up when someone goes too far offside. I've gotten used to it and accepted it. For awhile, I also played in another world which had stringent rules, and because of that I learned to play in the style that world demanded. Best part was, I learned things which I was able to take back to my main world which made me better.

- My main takeaway is always that no matter what kind of world you prefer, you should play in a world where the owners are in agreement of how they want things run and what the rules should be. Play with like minded owners or you will get carping, drama, and hard feelings.

- One last thing, if you run a league with hard rules, be prepared to enforce them and to have some - even if they agreed to the rules - try to object or ask for leeway. Human nature, it happens.

I wouldn't mind trying to create a world with a limit to both Player & Prospect Budget. I would propose $110M player budget. $25M prospect budget. Only 2 IFA's could be signed with a max of $15M going to any one player. The last twist would be each team would need to sign 20 of their draft picks. Think this is tough? I can only imagine what a ML team must go through in putting together a yearly budget, and what about a small market team and their balancing act.

Posted by jimt14120 on 5/14/2024 3:59:00 PM (view original):
If you're going to max the amount offered to an IFA I would max the budget line at $20M. In fact I would say you have two IFA contract slots, a $10M and a $5M, that's it, you can only offer 2 contracts, after that you use it for the amateur draft. Keeps the draft from being totally punted.

Problem with this if you pick late in the draft or maybe 2nd round pick is the highest pick you have you're not getting much. So why should I have to spend money on a draft for a backup C or a slug. Limit IFA I'm all for, maybe less tanking.

If you played in a vacuum that would be valid. Going all in without signing draft picks leads to a lack of MiL players making the minor leagues harder to run and then allowances would need to be made. This game SIM's RL baseball, picking to only use certain aspects is not realistic and is less challenging. In our world today people try to mask laziness in many ways, not running your MiL's and only focusing on the ML team is neither realistic nor good for a world.

Payroll rules aside, do any leagues in HBD have rules based upon where you play position players? Playing a DH at SS, 3B, or CF seems going extra hard at tanking.

You don't run into that as often as you did in the past. When I first started playing HBD, there was no penalty for using players out of position. Oddly you'll still get people using C's with low PC at 1B & RF, in most cases these player's offensive contributions don't compensate for the number of negative plays. At one time this was only done when someone had a dynamic bat they were trying to get into the lineup. Now it looks like some are just trying to get a bat in the lineup, the quality is of little consequence. Personally, if a person is using an extreme example of a player being used out of position, he'd have the opportunity to correct this or not be welcomed back at the end of the season.

Posted by grissom97 on 5/28/2024 12:33:00 AM (view original):
You don't run into that as often as you did in the past. When I first started playing HBD, there was no penalty for using players out of position. Oddly you'll still get people using C's with low PC at 1B & RF, in most cases these player's offensive contributions don't compensate for the number of negative plays. At one time this was only done when someone had a dynamic bat they were trying to get into the lineup. Now it looks like some are just trying to get a bat in the lineup, the quality is of little consequence. Personally, if a person is using an extreme example of a player being used out of position, he'd have the opportunity to correct this or not be welcomed back at the end of the season.

But rules are rules, and if it's not in there then you'll have to welcome him back at the end of the season.

And I've seen it plenty of times in rebuilding teams. It's an easy ploy to give up some errors and blow a game or two.

Posted by grissom97 on 5/28/2024 12:33:00 AM (view original):
You don't run into that as often as you did in the past. When I first started playing HBD, there was no penalty for using players out of position. Oddly you'll still get people using C's with low PC at 1B & RF, in most cases these player's offensive contributions don't compensate for the number of negative plays. At one time this was only done when someone had a dynamic bat they were trying to get into the lineup. Now it looks like some are just trying to get a bat in the lineup, the quality is of little consequence. Personally, if a person is using an extreme example of a player being used out of position, he'd have the opportunity to correct this or not be welcomed back at the end of the season.

C's with huge bats are the most likely player to drop in drafts. I've won most of my championships with C's in RF simply because I'll oftentimes have 4+ C's with huge bats that I can platoon between C, DH, and RF. As long as the arm strength is there you don't get penalized too heavily on defense. I think it's usually about 30 combined negative plays and errors over the course of the season. I'll take a bad play every 5 or 6 games when it comes with a .900 - 1.000 OPS

Posted by brianplath on 5/28/2024 11:45:00 AM (view original):

Posted by grissom97 on 5/28/2024 12:33:00 AM (view original):
You don't run into that as often as you did in the past. When I first started playing HBD, there was no penalty for using players out of position. Oddly you'll still get people using C's with low PC at 1B & RF, in most cases these player's offensive contributions don't compensate for the number of negative plays. At one time this was only done when someone had a dynamic bat they were trying to get into the lineup. Now it looks like some are just trying to get a bat in the lineup, the quality is of little consequence. Personally, if a person is using an extreme example of a player being used out of position, he'd have the opportunity to correct this or not be welcomed back at the end of the season.

C's with huge bats are the most likely player to drop in drafts. I've won most of my championships with C's in RF simply because I'll oftentimes have 4+ C's with huge bats that I can platoon between C, DH, and RF. As long as the arm strength is there you don't get penalized too heavily on defense. I think it's usually about 30 combined negative plays and errors over the course of the season. I'll take a bad play every 5 or 6 games when it comes with a .900 - 1.000 OPS

Agree that it's about 25-30 (-) plays and errors. That's about 23-28 runs, which is a lot unless the guy has a genuinely big, 900+ OPS bat as brianplath indicates. I think most guys who play a catcher in RF who are rebuilding get less offense than that... but I don't think it's a quiet way to intentionally lose games but instead a misunderstanding of the magnitude of the defensive damage and how much offense you need to offset that.

For HBD I don't disagree that if the bat is good enough, the player makes up the difference at the plate that he looses in the field; but we are talking about two different things. Plugging in a solid bat DH at RF is nothing compared to playing a .700 OPS in CF who sets the single season record for errors in just 71 games. In another 90 or so games they played an .900 OPS DH in CF, who would have set the single season record for errors except for the other DH/C that played less games the same season. If people are talking ideal league where people aren't spending more than $20/25M on an IFA; I was just saying I think it warrants the discussion about position players. How many innings did Carlton Fisk, Mike Piazza, Joe Mauer, or Johnny Bench combine for outside of C or 1B? I've seen it at SS and 3B by certain owners as well. Just seems bad faith in the league.

Can you completely eliminate tanking? No, sadly those that choose to figure out ways to get away with it spend a lot of time working the system. Seems like a waste of time to me, that could be better spent on building a team in a legit manner. A person doesn't have to be invited back, there are many worlds for people to spend their money, admin has always been more concerned with owners adhering to the fair play rules during an active season. In between seasons is the time to remove problems and to add rules. In the case of rules being added, it allows people the time to choose to stay and follow the rules or leave for a world that has rules they prefer to play by.

Posted by minihouston on 5/10/2024 5:03:00 PM (view original):
Dumb question, but how do you prevent someone from spending $25,000,100 on a prospect? I suppose when they sign, if it gets posted in the headlines you'd see it; otherwise it gets rounded down to $25M everywhere else right? Would $100 even sway where the person signs? What about $300 or anything else that still round down?
Also, what happens when someone breaks one of those rules, are they removed from the league? Given a verbal warning to not do it again?
Just curious and thanks!

In one league I was in there was a penalty for going over the limit. For your 1st draft pick the following year you were not allowed to make him an offer. So, you basically lose your 1st round DP the following year.

Personally, I'd like to see a budget "pool". I know people don't like the RL argument, but teams have a lot more freedom to spend their money anywhere.

I'm sure there are some drawbacks, but I'd like to see a) teams able to move scouting budgets around without limitation at the start of each season and b) teams who miss out in FA able to spend that money on IFA more easily.

You could realistically have a $140M player budget in anticipation of signing top FA and miss out on all the ones you're targeting. At that point, you should have the freedom to either spend that money on more mid-range FA, or on IFAs, without a penalty for reallocating it.

So to recap:

1) Allocate scouting/medical/training budgets at the start of a season as you see fit, regardless of where they were the previous season (at very least, new owners should be able to do this. I know you have the choice to reset to 10 or work off the previous owner's budgets, but it should be full freedom to set them how you want).

2) Have a FA/IFA budget that you can spend interchangeably without a penalty for moving that money around.

3) Have a prospect budget that's just for draft prospects.