Quote:
Originally Posted by Palaaemon
Bird,
I am a bit confused. You have started your Hall of Fame already? What do you have your parameters set at? I know it says in the announcement that they have to be 5 years removed from retirement to be considered but with year 11 just being completed that would mean that you must have minimum service years for the HoF set at 5 or 0 which either way is a bit odd. Ten years is the standard as I am sure you know. It would appear that both Mike Young and Manny Nieto started playing in the WPK in 1965 only playing until 1969 or 1970 and then retiring? I am just curious if this is all by design or not? Please clarify and make my head stop hurting. 
Have a GREAT day!
Palaaemon |
Completely understandable confusion. (But hey, it's great to know you are still there. I thought maybe I lost the number 1, well, other than me, WPK fan.
And I might after this.)
So let me jump to the important details first and then I'll explain my thought processes a bit more fully below.
I am using out of the box rules regarding the HOF, nothing unusual or odd. So, yes, players need to have at least 10 seasons of big league experience to qualify. But wait, you say, neither Young or Nieto could possibly have 10 years of WPK experience. Yes and no. No they didn't play in the WPK for 10 years but yes they did have 10 years of big league experience. And admittedly I hadn't really thought this through so wasn't expecting it when they popped up on a ballot. (We'll get into why a ballot was even an option at this stage of the league in a bit.) But then I realized that when the WPK started many players came in as already established big leaguers.
And this is how I see that: it might help to envision the WPK as a phoenix rising from the ashes of another (unnamed) professional baseball league of a similar talent level. And the decision was made when the WPK formed that players from this other league would keep their major league service time accruals, for contractual purposes primarily. But for statistical purposes, their previous experience was not rolled over into the new league. Therefore, a player like Mike Young was credited with over 15 years of major league experience but only the statistics he accrued in his 6 WPK seasons could be considered in HOF voting.
But why even start HOF voting before enough time had passed that a good number of players had at least 10 full seasons of WPK statistics to be judged on? Let's look at this as a concession to the Players Union, which insisted that the great players from the now defunct antecedent league who only managed to get 8 or 9 years in the WPK before retirement but who put up such overwhelming numbers in those 8-9 years to merit HOF induction, could earn a plaque in Dubuque. And did not think those players should have to wait a longer time period than other players before being voted upon, at which time they would be competing against players who came after them who had the opportunity to play many more seasons. The feeling in the league office was that very few, if any, players would fit this description, and therefore did not mind conceding this point. And of course they also knew this would be a temporary issue anyway, as before too long all of the players who played in the previous league will have retired from the game, at least as players.
So, to step outside of the WPK reality for a minute and into our own. I realize that many (most?) OOTP'ers prefer to hold off on allowing even the possibility of a HOF until they are at least maybe 20 years into a new league. And I understand the rationale behind that. But as I alluded to in the earlier post, my experience (even though it is less expansive than many or even most of you), including various test league simming projects which went far into the future, has led me to believe that I am quite satisfied with how the game handles this without my interference (beyond casting my own ballot.) And this first round of voting has just increased that confidence, as the program understood that in spite of some very fine seasons by Mike Young and with a lack of a WPK baseline to compare to, he isn't a HOF'er.
And hey, as you have probably figured out by now, while I am always open to suggestions from others, I do tend to be pretty independent minded when it comes to decision making time.
