This thread will chronicle my attempt to bring a once proud franchise, the Utah Scorpions, back into relevance.
The Scorpions are part of the long running National Pastime Baseball League, there are one or two other NPBL dynasty threads on this forum so make sure to check those out as well.
The league is fictional with no financials, so you have to build through drafts and trades. It is entering the 2037 season with 28 teams, 14 in each league. The Founding Fathers League is based in the eastern U.S. and the Great Explorers League in the western U.S. Each league has two divisions of 7 teams each. The Scorpions are members of the GEL West, by far the toughest division in the league. Just to give you an idea, last season the California Lions finished 102-60, only good for 3rd place in the division!
The league use to have only the top two teams of each division make the playoffs, for the 2033 season however it was changed to the top 8 teams of each league in a Stanley Cup finals type playoffs.
Sims are usually 10 days each and on Monday-Wednesday-Friday. Tomorrow (Monday) is the first Spring Training sim.
Team History
In 2000, the NPBL's inaugural season a team called the Montana Warriors took the GEL flag, losing the first National Cup Series (our championship series) to the Pennsylvania Locomotives 4 games to 0. After an 85-win 2001 campaign the Warriors disbanded and all players were assigned to a new expansion franchise, the Utah Scorpions.
In their first season in 2002 Utah won the GEL North with 93 wins, in 2003 Utah beat the Maryland Admirals to take their first championship. In 2007 they came back and beat the North Carolina Clippers and became the first team in NPBL history to win multiple titles. As of 2037, they have yet to win another title.
Utah was up and down for many years, they had a great run 2028-2031 in which they won as many as 113 games (2031) with no fewer wins than 102 (2028) and won 4 straight GEL West titles. However despite two GEL Championships during that time in 2029 and 2031 then Scorpions couldn't get the win in the National Cup championship series.
However, starting in 2034 the team took a downward swing. They went 62-100 that season, before falling even more in 2035 with 44-118 record which was the second worse in franchise history since 2023 when they went 39-123(!).
Then I took over. Utah was ownerless so I stepped up and took over the operations of the franchise, hoping to restore Utah to their former glory. In my first year in the front office Utah improved by 14 wins to 58-104. Now in 2037 I continue my goal of putting the sting back in the Scorpions!
Links
NPBL Reports
A great written account of the league's history