What is the general opinion on maintaining your minor league system? I personally think it is important, not only for the well being of your own prospects, but for the league as a whole. If HBD is to be a realistic sim of ML baseball, that would include keeping your minors in good working order. However, in both of my leagues lately, there are quite a few owners who are allowing their MiLs to fall apart, with many 0% pitchers and football-like scores. One owner has a record of 17-215 in the minors LoA thru AAA. WIS will not take any action against owners like this unless it is occuring at the ML leveI. I can't imagine it's a great selling point for a league that has owners who are only paying attention to their ML team while letting the rest of their system go to the dogs.

Agreed. It takes minimal effort

In Mantle, we are implementing a "maintaining your minor leagues" rule, effective in the upcoming season.  Violation could result in removal from the world at the end of the season.

I like beating those clowns 34-2 , allowing my minor leaguers to really stroke their egos and pad their stats.  If they can't be bothered by tending to their minors, thats their 24.95 loss.

The guys who don't look after the minors also tend to be the guys who are trying to cheat the system at the ML level too.  They run the bare minimum in all the minors not caring about stamina and the like and then run a 30 to 40 million dollar payroll for a few seasons to load up on IFA's and first round draftpicks, then they are dominant for a few seasons and start again.  It's crap.  They should be jetisoned as soon as possible, unless then can prove they have been working to fix the problems (ie swaping rested pitchers to inactive and activating rested guys, accuiring minor leage FA's to fill in spots and signing tryout pitchers to give the better guys time to rest.

When owners do that it really ****** me off, that people are that lazy or underhanded.  It takes 5 to 10 minutes to run through your lineups and pitching staffs each daily period.

Most "maintain your minors" rules are horseshit.   People get their panties all wadded up over 0(0) pitching.  Guess what?  Crap TC pitchers suck at 0% and 100%.  As long as the games are simming, I couldn't care less.   That said, I do think there's something to maintaining your minors.   If your ERA is 11.37 and the level average is 5.21, you're doing something wrong.  It probably has nothing to so with your pitching.  You probably have 4 LF, 5 1B and 4 C on your roster.   Do something about that.   At least pretend you care because I've found that when a long-term owner suddenly leaves a world, he has f'd his minors nine ways to Sunday and the next guy has a mess to clean up.

Posted by MikeT23 on 5/27/2011 1:58:00 PM (view original):
Most "maintain your minors" rules are horseshit.   People get their panties all wadded up over 0(0) pitching.  Guess what?  Crap TC pitchers suck at 0% and 100%.  As long as the games are simming, I couldn't care less.   That said, I do think there's something to maintaining your minors.   If your ERA is 11.37 and the level average is 5.21, you're doing something wrong.  It probably has nothing to so with your pitching.  You probably have 4 LF, 5 1B and 4 C on your roster.   Do something about that.   At least pretend you care because I've found that when a long-term owner suddenly leaves a world, he has f'd his minors nine ways to Sunday and the next guy has a mess to clean up.

+1, to both of the core points here.  As a commish, there are bigger fish to fry than enforcing minor league maintenance rules.

And tbarket, I have found in my experience that most guys that neglect their minors are not "tankers," but guys that run huge ML payrolls, because if you have an investment in any prospects at all you have to maintain your minors enough to make sure those prospects don't get hurt.  Either that or just completely neglectful owners. 

I almost took over a team awhile back that managed not to  win a single AAA game all season. Tho' I didn't want to get involved in the mess I thought it  deserved some kind of special recognition.

It's an incredibly difficult and arduous process to get WifS to remove someone from your world, so I'd be interested to see if someone's had someone removed for "not maintaining their minors."  You'd have to have someone say, "I'm not maintaining my minors and I don't care."  Concrete, objective rules with no exceptions are the way to go.

it's really not that hard.

you make sure preseason you have enough players in every level - then add some extra and inactivate them.

then let the sim put people on the dl and change lineups if needed.

the only real big changes i make in season are to make sure guys i want to get abs get them, or to promote guys (and demote to fill open positions)...

Posted by dedelman on 5/27/2011 2:39:00 PM (view original):

Posted by MikeT23 on 5/27/2011 1:58:00 PM (view original):
Most "maintain your minors" rules are horseshit.   People get their panties all wadded up over 0(0) pitching.  Guess what?  Crap TC pitchers suck at 0% and 100%.  As long as the games are simming, I couldn't care less.   That said, I do think there's something to maintaining your minors.   If your ERA is 11.37 and the level average is 5.21, you're doing something wrong.  It probably has nothing to so with your pitching.  You probably have 4 LF, 5 1B and 4 C on your roster.   Do something about that.   At least pretend you care because I've found that when a long-term owner suddenly leaves a world, he has f'd his minors nine ways to Sunday and the next guy has a mess to clean up.

+1, to both of the core points here.  As a commish, there are bigger fish to fry than enforcing minor league maintenance rules.

And tbarket, I have found in my experience that most guys that neglect their minors are not "tankers," but guys that run huge ML payrolls, because if you have an investment in any prospects at all you have to maintain your minors enough to make sure those prospects don't get hurt.  Either that or just completely neglectful owners. 

I agree.  I considered that after I made my post.  I would add another, the guy who is maximizing his prospect budget and running his minors at the bare requirements.  Not illegal, but still not in the spirit of the game.