Hello everyone, I'm going to go ahead and give making dynasty posts a shot for my Patriot Baseball League, or PBL, which means it unfortunately shares an acronym with another American professional "sport" that's more ignored than a beggar in New York City.
Just in case you missed my blathering in the general forum, the PBL is comprised of 50 teams, each with four levels of minors. Each organization represents a state of the United States. The PBL is divided into two conferences, East and West. Each conference has three divisions: the West has the Pacific, Mountain, and Heartland divisions; the East has the Midwest, South, and New England divisions. (I'm aware of the irony of "Midwest" being in the East, but that's the country for you: the Midwest US is about a quarter of the way from the east coast.) I use standard MLB rules for everything else, including playoffs, trades, and so on.
One variance to my rules -- the change that makes my league extremely sadistic and hilarious -- is that revenue sharing is off, there's no salary cap, and there's no real limit to how much cash teams can have in reserve. This will lead to some insanely bloated contracts early, but I'm going to avoid changing numbers manually because I want to see the "invisible hand of the market" in action and fix things after they get out of control. (And yes, I'm aware of the irony of seeing something invisible as well. My post apparently is full of irony today.)
We started things off with a totally empty roster. Then I filled the rookie league six times, releasing them all between fills. I intended to hold the inaugural draft with nothing but kids under 24, but apparently the game had other ideas. When it came time for the draft, suddenly a bunch of different players were created without my command. I couldn't figure out how (if it's even possible) to stop the game from creating them, so I just gave up went with it.
At that point I turned off commish mode and took the first job offering me the highest level of play, except for New Jersey, for personal reasons. The job I took was for the Sitka Moose, the Single-A team of the Alaskan team.
So the season came and went. After several misfired starts, ironing out issues, re-assigning logos (that is, state flags), and finally getting the game to behave itself, we've played through the first season. In the majors, the first winner of the Patriot Series was...
Hawaii did damn well for placing second. I commanded the draft order to be in order of when the states joined the union, so Hawaii got last pick for each draft round. Theoretically that means they would have ended up with the worst players in the league, but they went 92-70, placing second in their division and winning the wildcard race for the Western Conference. They'll probably be a threat in the coming years.
Meanwhile, how did I do in Sitka? We'll let this screenshot tell the tale...
Ha! I have to say I enjoy it when a game is a little blunt with its feedback. The only way that could have been better is if the pop-up box continued with something like, "Seriously, just give up. Go take up quilting or something, and stay away from baseball. You stink."
Nowhere to go but up from here. Unless I somehow manage to score a 1 or 2 that is, but I'm... I'm better than that. I'm sure of it. I think.