[kq76]

I thought I'd take a couple minutes to record how we (the CBL) went about selecting our first elected all-stars. We're currently during the voting for the starters stage. Here's a sample (not the actual) ballot:

http://www.geocities.com/kq76/Sample...tar_Ballot.htm

As you can see, the ballots are fairly detailed and this post is intended to share what info I learned from the process of making them to anyone who is interested in doing the same for their league.

First, in our forum we discussed conducting an all-star game voted on by the owners. There was some interest and I was asked if I could head up the project. I then posted in the ootp forum for advice from people who have gone through the process themselves (http://www.ootpdevelopments.com/boar...threadid=39409) and ended up getting a lot of useful information, especially from Hammer via IMs. I went back to the CBL forum and posted a possible schedule for the ASG process and the following questions to my fellow CBL members:

1) Should all GMs pick a) the all-stars for the entire CBL, or b) only the all-stars for their own league?

2) Should GMs pick a) starters and backups, or b) just starters? If just starters, then last year's league champ GM can either pick the backups himself or just use those voted on by the other GMs.

3) Should a) every team have to have a representative in the ASG, or b) just whoever is best?

4) Should a) all players be eligible to be voted on or b) just a limited #?

5) (EDIT: On the ballot), should a) only those players who have played i) for batters, the most innings played per position for their team, and ii) for pitchers, based on ERA and IP, the top 3 SPs and top RP and then all players get to nominate 1 extra player of theirs, or b) some other system (please specify)? If another system, it will ultimately be up to my discretion as I will be the one forming the ballot, but I will try to take your opinions into account.

6) Would you a) be interested in the ASG being held live via chat, or b) just sim it?

7) If held live via chat, should the game a) be played out by ootp or b) last year's league champs get to play it out?

The results of which were:

1) 3-13 - GMs just pick own league.
2) 4-12 - GMs just pick starters, last year's champ picks reserves. If they don't want to, then the league presidents pick. And if they don't want to, then reserves are picked from ballots without regard for every team must have a rep rule.
3) 9-7 - Every team must have an ASG rep.
4) 11-5 - All players are eligible to be voted on. (meaning there will be write-in votes)
5) 8-1 - My system (see ASG poll thread) for determining ballots.
6) 8-2 - ASG held live.
7) 5-4 - ASG played out by ootp.

I ended up having to also ask:

8) Should a write-in be a) a mutually exclusive alternative to picking a player listed on the ballot, or b) just an extra pick. If B, should there be a max # of write-ins?

We ended up going with A. If I had thought of it earlier, I would have asked it with the other questions.

After the results, I posted the refined ASG process schedule:

Step - Real Time

1) ASG ballot formed using league stats up to previous sim (up to Jun 24 CBL Time) and released. Voting begins for starters by all GMs. - Aug 1 (asap)

2) ASG voting for starters ends. - Aug 5 (9pm EST)

3) ASG voting results for starters is released and voting for reserves by last year's league champs begins, or if they decline then by league presidents. - Aug 5 (9pm EST)

4) ASG voting for reserves ends. - Aug 7 (9pm EST)

5) ASG votes counted and ASG is ran live (ASG is Jul 10 CBL time) by Commish - Aug 7 (9:30pm EST? Chris can specify)

I then got to work figuring out how I would do the ballots. I began an html form that would become the ballots listed above, leaving room for the player tables. I then tweaked my OOTP5 Excel History Utility that uses CommishJoe's CSV Exporter to filter players based on: league, team, position they played the most at (as opposed to their listed primary position), and innings played. If I do this again, I'd add player ratings, especially defensive player ratings just because some players are all-stars more because of their defensive ability. Without these utilities I think this part would have been a nightmare. The next version of my utility will include, and try to improve on, these filter tweaks. See #5 in my questions above for a bit of an explanation on my criteria for players to be selected to the ballot.

Once the last sim was run and I got the data from the CSVs, I copied from my utility the tables into another workbook with each position/role having its own sheet. Then I saved that new workbook as a webpage and placed the source code of the tables from that html file into the ballot form. The source code from the tables included a number of "classes" that I just did not need, so I cut down on the classes by using the find & replace function in my html editor. I then added the option buttons and drop-down menus and cleaned the ballots up a bit. Feel free to look at and use the source code of the ballots. They only email the results to me, they don't send it to an online database that updates the results, which would be nice, but I didn't have the knowledge of how to do that. And so I posted the ballots and the schedule again at our forum and that's where we are now.

If you have any questions or comments, let me know.