Anyone tried an expansion draft yet?

[blackrussian]

I dont mean in the sense of a historical replay where one would just add the necessary teams and distribute players according to real-life, rather actually conducting a draft after adding the teams.

any suggestions/ideas of whats worked for people?

[blackrussian]

dola,

i decided to give this a try. using a standard MLB lahman import (1974), i simmed a few years, then manually added toronto and seattle on the first day of pre-season (which is the only time you can alter league structure). there was a bit to do with the teams (logos, parks, assigning city, etc), after that i prepared for the draft itself.

this is where most of the details is the responsibility of the commish, since there are no facilities to setup a custom draft. whatever method you choose, you can assign a new team to a particular player through the editor tab in the player profile. for this expansion, i quickly assigned 25 players to each expansion team from the reserve rosters of the existing teams.

then i sat back and watched the AI do the rest. it started by signing personnel over the next few weeks. as spring training approached and started, the expansion teams began signing free agents to fill out the roster. by opening day, the teams were fully stocked.

everything else went smoothly, no unusual errors. the teams, predictably, were horrible, both easily hitting the 100+ loss mark. fairly on the mark

aside from having to come up with some sort of system to simulate the actual draft, i'd like to see the ability to change league structure after the seasons ends, not just when pre-season starts. this way, i can give the expansion teams a bit of a head start in signing free agents and personnel.

[cephasjames]

Originally Posted by blackrussian

for this expansion, i quickly assigned 25 players to each expansion team from the reserve rosters of the existing teams.

then i sat back and watched the AI do the rest. it started by signing personnel over the next few weeks. as spring training approached and started, the expansion teams began signing free agents to fill out the roster. by opening day, the teams were fully stocked.

everything else went smoothly, no unusual errors. the teams, predictably, were horrible, both easily hitting the 100+ loss mark. fairly on the mark

This is essentially what I did too, except when an expansion team went 4-122 in a 126 game season I decided to snag players from the active roster also. When taking 3 from the reserves and 2 from the active of each team my expansion teams did much better (appox. 40-86).

Originally Posted by blackrussian

aside from having to come up with some sort of system to simulate the actual draft, i'd like to see the ability to change league structure after the seasons ends, not just when pre-season starts. this way, i can give the expansion teams a bit of a head start in signing free agents and personnel.

I kind of agree with you on this. It seems that in real life pretty much eveerything happens in the off season, not the preseason.

[Tecmo]

This describes how the expansion draft was handled in MLB since 1962:

http://roadsidephotos.sabr.org/baseball/expansion.htm

I think when I try it, I'm going to use similar protections, but instead of trying to draft from one big pool, I'm going to draft from one team at a time and let the expansion teams alternate who picks first. After that, I expect the expansion teams to be busy during the rule 5 draft and free agency.

[fauteuil7]

Originally Posted by cephasjames

This is essentially what I did too, except when an expansion team went 4-122 in a 126 game season I decided to snag players from the active roster also.

This was pretty much my experience, and I haven't tried another one since. It's a lot of work to do to get it right, so my historical sims have been stopping at the first expansion.

[Robster49]

Originally Posted by Tecmo

This describes how the expansion draft was handled in MLB since 1962:

http://roadsidephotos.sabr.org/baseball/expansion.htm

I think when I try it, I'm going to use similar protections, but instead of trying to draft from one big pool, I'm going to draft from one team at a time and let the expansion teams alternate who picks first. After that, I expect the expansion teams to be busy during the rule 5 draft and free agency.

I initially started doing protection lists and following the MLB rules for my fictional universes expansion. I quickly found that going team by team and alternating picks among the expansion teams was much easier and quicker.

I just used judgement when looking at the rosters about who would likely be available. The AI did an excellent job of filling in rosters during preseason so that I didn't have to manually add over 100 players to each team. (3 levels of minors)

The result was a typically bad season by both expansion teams, but nothing out of the ordinary. Both teams have been improving the last 2 years too, so I am really pleased with the expansion draft using this method.

[BaseballMan]

I think i might use a combination of VORP and age. Maybe release 1 pitcher and i hitter from each level of the organization.
I think maybe protect ages 18-22 and 27-35 so that teams dont lose top prospects or players in their prime.

I usually give teams half the money that original teams start with and i have the expansion teams draft last.
They usually do lousy for the first 3 years and gradually get better. Which is what i want. I havent seen any 4-122 expansion teams but i have seen 40-100
which is ok since i dont really care to see expansion teams wining a championship in 3 years.

I am thinking about doing my draft a different way.
I was thinking of keeping playoff teams normal but instead of a lottery for the
worst teams, i was thinking of having the non playoff team with the best record or tiebreaker get the #pick. Instead of rewarding teams for finishing last.

[blackrussian]

Originally Posted by cephasjames

[FONT="Book Antiqua"]This is essentially what I did too, except when an expansion team went 4-122 in a 126 game season I decided to snag players from the active roster also.

lol, mine werent quite that bad, but one team hit 118 losses in a 162 gm season. the funny part is that the manager of that team (if not both expansion teams) were fired before the season even ended. obviously the AI owners were expecting a bit too much from their expansion teams

but yr right, i expanded the pool of available players to the active roster as well and that helped a bit. perhaps if any measure expansion is incorporated into the game eventually, we can at least flag a new team as expansion so the owners dont fire the entire staff for the inevitable last place finish.

[ey215]

I've been wondering about this and just haven't had the time to mess with it yet, but if you don't do any type of "draft" will the AI just fill the rosters out?

What do I care if they suck?

That and it could make for an interesting challenge for myself.

[turdfurgeson]

This is one of the things that I have not made a decision on when the time comes for me. One idea I have been toying with is to manually edit the expansion teams rosters to include players that were actually taken by the teams in real life, or at least the most important 10 to twenty, it really depends though. And then to fill the teams I was playing with the idea of after adding the teams in the pre season, editing the league structure to allow for a draft on March 1st ( I believe that this is the earliest it can be done) and disable import rosters from database, and set the PCM to levels that are very very bad, and allow for a draft on march 1st. Then I would set the draft for 5 rounds ( really wish this could go lower) and edit so every pick is alternated between the expansion teams. Then right after the draft switch it back to the normal settings.

What I would love to be able to do, and I am not sure if there is a way, but I could be wrong, is to somehow go team by team and select the players that would be "unprotected" and somehow have these players incoprorated into a new, smaller database that I could use as the path to import for the march 1st draft. Then I would have no need for any extra "fictional" players.

[exoromeo]

I used the method mentioned above (go to each team and sign X number of players per team to each expansion team)...however, the year prior to expansion in my fictional league, I set the teams up in the minors, let them play there one year then promoted the teams (preseason, league structure, move teams) to the majors, and signed the players in the "expansion draft"...worked out well.

[ctorg]

I haven't tried an expansion draft with the new game yet, but I had a great system with OOTP6.

I set all the teams to human control and put selected "unprotected" players from each team on waivers, setting the waiver period to 1 day. I used the pool of waived players as a draft pool and had the expansion teams "draft" from it by having them claim players. I'd then go forward one day and, since all teams were human-controlled, those selected players would go to the expansion teams. Then I'd set everything back to normal.

I haven't tried to adapt this method to the new version yet, as I've only had it for a couple of days and haven't even played more than a month or so in a test league.

Does anyone know any reason it wouldn't work or would become more difficult to do?

I have to say that one disappointment with a complete rewrite is that all my old tricks and workarounds go out the window. Not that I'm unhappy, because I think this will eventually be a breathtakingly great game.

[turdfurgeson]

Originally Posted by ctorg

I haven't tried an expansion draft with the new game yet, but I had a great system with OOTP6.

I set all the teams to human control and put selected "unprotected" players from each team on waivers, setting the waiver period to 1 day. I used the pool of waived players as a draft pool and had the expansion teams "draft" from it by having them claim players. I'd then go forward one day and, since all teams were human-controlled, those selected players would go to the expansion teams. Then I'd set everything back to normal.

I haven't tried to adapt this method to the new version yet, as I've only had it for a couple of days and haven't even played more than a month or so in a test league.

Does anyone know any reason it wouldn't work or would become more difficult to do?

I have to say that one disappointment with a complete rewrite is that all my old tricks and workarounds go out the window. Not that I'm unhappy, because I think this will eventually be a breathtakingly great game.

That was a very nice strategy. The only problem I can think of is that currently there is no option to control every team Like that. You can though from the league set up screen tell every team that the ai can not do roster changes. The difficulty here is that you can't, from what I can tell, let the AI run the organizations of two computer teams at the same time with out running all of them. So you can tell the AI to not make any changes for all, then you can go to one org and ask them to fill out there entire organization, then you can do this with another, but from what I can tell you cannot have them both do it at the same time so they compete for free agents.
I hope that I am missing something or there is a good workaround, because this is a very clever idea.

[WarningTrack]

I've been doing a historical sim from 1901 using Arod23/Garlon.

I'm up to 1985, so I've expanded a couple of times.

Each time I did what has already been discussed. I assigned free agents to each expansion team and then went down the reserve rosters and just randomly picked players. Sometimes I had to go onto the active roster, but in that case, I just took a player from a deep position on that team. I also would check to make sure I wasn't grabbing any starters.

It worked amazingly well. Every team I started was balanced by position and ready to go. Of course, all were bad, but none lost more than 110-120 games, so I consider that as being close to real life.

For the second season, most teams were players in free agency, or they stocked up via the draft.

1969 was a bitch, with four teams to fill instead of two.

I wish there was an expansion draft feature built into the game, to save us simmers all this trouble. But really, in the grand scheme, it wasn't that big of a deal.

[ctorg]

Originally Posted by turdfurgeson

That was a very nice strategy. The only problem I can think of is that currently there is no option to control every team Like that. You can though from the league set up screen tell every team that the ai can not do roster changes. The difficulty here is that you can't, from what I can tell, let the AI run the organizations of two computer teams at the same time with out running all of them. So you can tell the AI to not make any changes for all, then you can go to one org and ask them to fill out there entire organization, then you can do this with another, but from what I can tell you cannot have them both do it at the same time so they compete for free agents.
I hope that I am missing something or there is a good workaround, because this is a very clever idea.

It will probably be a while before I get to try it out with OOTP2006. I'm still trying to get a handle on the basics of how to do things.

It sounds doable, though. Even in OOTP6, I did the "drafting" myself rather than leaving it to the AI. The AI wouldn't claim that many players in one day, so I had to do it. It's a lot more work now, though, because there are minor league teams to fill out as well. In OOTP6 I just wanted to get to about 30 players per expansion team to give some reserve players in the minors to expansion teams.

[SandMan]

What I have done and it works for my enjoyment is to give the expansion teams 1 player from each teams 25-man roster. The team gets to put 5 players on the list and the expansion teams gets to pick one. It has been interesting because I let some pretty good, but old players get picked up in expansion, just as what is done in real life but the expansion teams always suck as expected and are then in a re-building or building process. I have also started randomizing the draft for all non play-off teams. This keeps teams from sucking for 4-5 years then pulling off a 110 win season....

[DrArbiter]

Originally Posted by blackrussian

aside from having to come up with some sort of system to simulate the actual draft, i'd like to see the ability to change league structure after the seasons ends, not just when pre-season starts. this way, i can give the expansion teams a bit of a head start in signing free agents and personnel.

Agreed.

My workaround for this (which is similar to another mentioned later in this thread) is to have an extra dummy league sitting around in my universe. It's an empty league (no teams), with a zero-game schedule, no spring training, and draft turned off. With these settings, the league is effectively "inactive," even though there's no active/inactive features in the game currently.

The preseason before I expand, I create the teams in this dummy league, and give them suitable financials. During the season, they'll pick up a couple crappy FA's, which I don't mind. Then, since they've got a bunch of money, they'll typically do fairly well on the FA market. When preseason rolls around, I move them into their "real" league, and off I go.

Notes: I use this in a universe that's setup more along the 19th century lines -- completely fictional, no affiliated minors. In my case, "expansion" teams are, in practice, thought of as amateur or semipro teams that turn pro and join a pro league. Also, my first-year draft takes place before the season starts, so when the teams get moved in, they get bolstered by some draft picks -- I often give the new teams all the picks in the first round of the draft, if they need it.

YMMV, but this is one way to get expansion teams to be active the previous offseason, which, if nothing else, should help minimize the need for an extensive expansion draft process.

[mgsports79]

Has anybody tryed with MLB Quickstart meaning a fictional team because I add new teams but no Automatic Expansion Draft happened! I'm in the 2006 season in MLB Quickstart! Does teams submit a list of Players and Pitchers who are going to be available for the Expansion Draft?

[DrArbiter]

Originally Posted by mgsports79

Has anybody tryed with MLB Quickstart meaning a fictional team because I add new teams but no Automatic Expansion Draft happened! I'm in the 2006 season in MLB Quickstart! Does teams submit a list of Players and Pitchers who are going to be available for the Expansion Draft?

There's some hotkey for starting the expansion draft -- I think it's [Alt]-[F4] or something.

[Jules]

Originally Posted by mgsports79

Has anybody tryed with MLB Quickstart meaning a fictional team because I add new teams but no Automatic Expansion Draft happened! I'm in the 2006 season in MLB Quickstart! Does teams submit a list of Players and Pitchers who are going to be available for the Expansion Draft?

Did someone spike your Gatorade?