Real Players, Fictional Teams?

[jvhalbrooks]

Forgive me if this is an obvious newbie question, but I've been search and have been unable to find the answer.

I would like to create a league with real players but with fictional teams, which would then draft these players. Is there an option for doing this? I keep trying, but I've been running into roadblocks.

Thanks in advance.

[albatross11]

I've never tried it, but I seem to remember some posts describing what you want to do. Maybe if you create a regular MLB league; delete that league (thereby dumping all the players into a free agent pool); then create your fictional league and use the free agent pool. Maybe.

[beardyian]

i would suggest making the all the players free agents as well as editing the teams names etc to whatever you wish them to be called.

[Charlie Hough]

Are you planning on doing a historical league with real players and fictional teams? Or do you want to run a league starting with 2010 MLB players but with fictional teams?

[jvhalbrooks]

Thanks for the suggestions. I would like to try an historical league, with all the historical rookies drafted each year, but with fictional teams.

Seems like I did that years ago in another sim, but it was a laborious process.

[Charlie Hough]

Okay, I can help you here. When you create a new historical league using the wizard, you can randomize cities and nicknames for your teams. Or, you can always edit all of these details after the league is created. Make sure to choose the inaugural draft option and make sure there is a rookie draft scheduled.

However, keep in mind that when your league is created, the franchises will still have their historical team and franchise IDs, and they will have their actual stadiums. This is the case despite the fact that you may have asked the wizards to change the cities and locations.

You will want to delete the team IDs in the ballpark and options screen. Make sure you hit enter after deleting each ID. Then you'll want to edit all the names, dimensions, and other details for the ballparks, unless you want to use real ones.

Then make sure to delete all league statistical history and all player history. This is very important because the players all have real life historical data, and if you don't delete this, they will be tied to their real life franchises through their recent statistics. So if you run the inaugural draft, you will see news items and fan reaction to the loss of players from various franchises, even though you intend to start from scratch as if they never played for those teams.

By deleting the player history, you should solve this. By deleting the team IDs, that should clear up the historical ties to these franchises after they are renamed. But you'll want to turn off automatic league expansion just in case. If you want your league to expand, you'll have to do that in the future using the manual expansion mode.

Anyway, I tested this out, and it seems to work. I ran a full season and then held the rookie draft. Everything seemed to play out like a fictional league except with historical players.

[jvhalbrooks]

Brilliant! Thanks!