For years I've run my Twelve Random Pages theme, aka the Baker's Dozen, with each owner having to build a roster from pages randomly generated on www.baseball-reference.com. It's a challenge because it gets people outside their comfort zones, having to use players they've never considered before instead of old reliables, and having to resort to entirely different roster strategies because of the talent pool they're assigned.
However, last year, the random feature at baseball-reference started spitting out predominantly box scores after an upgrade, and we found that building a roster from close to a dozen box scores was just too much information. I have been playing around with a fix, and here it is: the new version of the league will generate SIX random pages for each owner, who will then choose four players from each "page" for their squad, plus a wild card 25th man of their own choosing from the entire universe of eligible players.
The most common result of the random page generator now are the box scores that go back to 1913, which come up around 70% of the time. When you get a box score, you'll be obliged to take any four players who played in that game - no twisting.
The rest of the time, you could get any sort of result: players from an all-star game, pitching leaders from a season or a franchise, leaders in any statistical category, players from a certain college, etc. Most of these are pretty self-explanatory: you take four players listed on the page. If you get a player page, you have to roster that player, and any three of his teammates from the season you choose for him. If you draw a really odd page, I'll make the ground rules for you as it comes up.
One aspect of the league is that sometimes your page will include players who didn't have a season eligible for the SIM: for example, cup-of-coffee players who happened to play in the game you're assigned, or even Negro League Hall of Famers. I love that the league includes guys like this, but last time around my rules for this were too liberal, so that the more such players you could find to use, the better your chances. "Non-sim players" will still be eligible this go-around, but if you decide to use them you will roster a 200k player as a place-holder, and then the AAA player who will replace them for the season is whoever I deem to be the most similar substitute who has a sim season. [Generally, that will be a way-below-average AAA player with fewer than 100 PA or 40 IP, but not if you draw a Negro League HoF player.]
Are you confused? Here's a sample draw:
1. Tigers @ Yankees 8/1/1943 2nd game of doubleheader
2. Royals @ Devil Rays 8/9/2003
3. Marlins @ Diamondbacks 8/22/2012 1st game of doubleheader
4. 2000 Red Sox batting gamelog - page actually lists the opposing starting pitchers vs. the Red Sox for every game that season, so you would choose four of those pitchers
5. Red Sox @ Rangers 6/8/1973
6. OF Charlie Manuel 1969-75
I prefer smaller salary caps for this league, so that the teams with the better random draws don't have a huge advantage. For this season, I thought I would make the cap equal to the highest-salaried team in my random draw ... that was the 1943 Yankees, with a team total salary of almost $82 million. [Be glad I didn't use the 1973 Rangers ... they barely had $50 million in SIM payroll.] So, $82 million it is.
Other rules:
No waiver wire or trading. Injuries off.
No DH.
No whining about your draw! If you don't draw good pitchers, put together an awesome lineup, and try to win the way the Red Sox used to :)
Your home stadium must be the venue from one of your box scores.
Any more questions? Feel free to ask here. And please sign up. Building a team this way is a lot of fun, in a hair-pulling sort of way sometimes, but it should be easier with the $82m.
Oh, and whoever is the first to sign up can also generate six random pages for my team. Be kind to me!
Owner list: eman7400, Belsea, Rattlers, ybjsports, Pzzaman001, Cicero, razorclams, specsman, sevenfifty5, kentol, jfranco77, newarkwilder, vilefileman, jkorn, willclark, reddtrain, burningcouch, redcped, mars2010, gwhouse, finn2030, polymerguy, midknight
5/5/2018 4:25 PM (edited)