Steps to add Independent Leagues

[Gunsmoke]

Guys,

I am currently running a fictional league that is currently in 1918 with minors and a draft and era appropriate financials.

I wanted to shake things up a bit this winter by adding two independant leagues, one at AAA level and the other at A. However I don't want there to suddenly be a whole heap of new players added to the universe (there are enough in the FA pool to feed the leagues) and I don't want these leagues stealing major league level players (cup of coffee and bench players would be ok).

I have questions such as:-
- Is it best to add the leagues on 1 Jan or just after the world series?
- What level should the financials be at?
- How do I add the leagues without adding any players to the universe?
- Will these leagues always get players out of the FA pool or will additional players be generated for these leagues (anyway to stop that if so)?

What are the steps I should follow to ensure that I don't damage the league (yes I will be taking a backup).

Thanks in advance,
Mark

[The Game]

Originally Posted by Gunsmoke

Guys,

I am currently running a fictional league that is currently in 1918 with minors and a draft and era appropriate financials.

I wanted to shake things up a bit this winter by adding two independant leagues, one at AAA level and the other at A. However I don't want there to suddenly be a whole heap of new players added to the universe (there are enough in the FA pool to feed the leagues) and I don't want these leagues stealing major league level players (cup of coffee and bench players would be ok).

I have questions such as:-
- Is it best to add the leagues on 1 Jan or just after the world series?
- What level should the financials be at?
- How do I add the leagues without adding any players to the universe?
- Will these leagues always get players out of the FA pool or will additional players be generated for these leagues (anyway to stop that if so)?

What are the steps I should follow to ensure that I don't damage the league (yes I will be taking a backup).

Thanks in advance,
Mark

If you add them before Free Agency starts then the new league will sign FA's. But it doesn't matter.
Once you create the league put yourself in commish mode and go team by team and mass delete them (check the blank dot above the players dots on Roster screen, right click delete) This answered 3 also, I think.
Unsure, I want to say that some players will be generated each offseason to the FA pool. Check career stats all levels for new players. Might want to double check player history also. If ghost players and create and maintain hidden players are both unchecked it's not supposed to create new players, but I have seen new players come in a few of my leagues.

Should be good to go, you shouldn't have any major problems.
I always create an Indy league in most of my leagues.
I would suggest putting the financials of the new league at 1900 or before so they make less then what the league ML min is.

[shawa666]

Originally Posted by The Game

If you add them before Free Agency starts then the new league will sign FA's. But it doesn't matter.
Once you create the league put yourself in commish mode and go team by team and mass delete them (check the blank dot above the players dots on Roster screen, right click delete) This answered 3 also, I think.
Unsure, I want to say that some players will be generated each offseason to the FA pool. Check career stats all levels for new players. Might want to double check player history also. If ghost players and create and maintain hidden players are both unchecked it's not supposed to create new players, but I have seen new players come in a few of my leagues.

Should be good to go, you shouldn't have any major problems.
I always create an Indy league in most of my leagues.
I would suggest putting the financials of the new league at 1900 or before so they make less then what the league ML min is.

There's a faster way to mass delete players of a league.

1. go in league menu, select list all (insrt league abreviation here) players
2. mass select all the players
3. right click, select delete.
4. ?????????????
5. PROFIT

[The Game]

Originally Posted by shawa666

There's a faster way to mass delete players of a league.

1. go in league menu, select list all (insrt league abreviation here) players
2. mass select all the players
3. right click, select delete.
4. ?????????????
5. PROFIT

Your right, I had done that once, don't know why I haven't used that for my other leagues.

[PSUColonel]

I'd wait before adding Indy and/or foreign leagues to OOTP. They don't work very well within the parameters of the game and are in need of serious attention. Hopefully this will happen soon...starting with the idea of having 1 common pool of players and coaches for all teams within a "world" setting.

[The Game]

Originally Posted by PSUColonel

I'd wait before adding Indy and/or foreign leagues to OOTP. They don't work very well within the parameters of the game and are in need of serious attention. Hopefully this will happen soon...starting with the idea of having 1 common pool of players and coaches for all teams within a "world" setting.

If you set it up right they work. Are they prefect, no, far from, and hopefully 14 addresses some of this. I have not had a problem in my last 3 Indy Leagues.

[MUFC1878]

Originally Posted by The Game

If you set it up right they work. Are they prefect, no, far from, and hopefully 14 addresses some of this. I have not had a problem in my last 3 Indy Leagues.

I think the biggest flaw is the high number of free agents. Besides that, in my brief experience, indys work well.

[Gunsmoke]

Thanks for the advice everyone

[PSUColonel]

Have any of you guys tried international leagues in the same save as your MLB league?

[PSUColonel]

Here is some interesting reading for those interested in adding foreign or independent league:




We all know how good Yu Darvish's stats are in Japan, but how good is the competition? Photo unknown via beatofthebronx.com

I’ve been working on this post for weeks; now is as good a time as any to post it. I’ve always wondered, since we hear so much about players’ tearing up winter leagues or hear wonderful stat lines from players coming over from foreign countries (as we are now in the Yu Darvish mania). So what is the talent-equivalent of the various leagues outside of the conventional MLB-AAA-AA-A-rookie levels? I did a bit of digging around, asking questions and came up with the following approximations. Feel free to debate if you think otherwise.

Foreign Pro Leagues

Japan: the [league redacted] League rates, by various accounts, as a mid AAA-level talent league. Baseball Prospectus’ Clay Davenport did a stat-heavy analysis in 2002 and concluded that the *** was at least AAA level, perhaps close to MLB level. However, the prevalence of mediocre players from the US going to Japan and being super-stars seems to indicate that Japan is no better than AAA, and may be a bit weaker. And, not to claim this is about talent levels per race, but there have only been a very small number of Japanese-born players who were really impact players upon arriving here.
Cuba: per Dave Cameron (mentioned in a chat, need the link) the “general consensus” is that the Cuban pro league is about a High-A level of talent.
Taiwan/China: Taiwan had its own thriving baseball league for a bit, but merged it into the main Chinese league in 2003. Given the small numbers of Taiwanese-born players who have made it to the majors, and the fact that the league serves mostly as a feeder into the Japanese league, its safe to say that the Chinese league is no better than a high-A level of talent.
Korea: As with the Chinese leagues, Korea mostly feeds into the Japanese league. High-A talent levels.
European Leagues: Believe it or not, there are thriving baseball leagues all throughout Europe. They even have multiple levels of play in certain countries (the Netherlands in particular). However, based on the levels of talent of players that typically play in Europe, its hard to put the talent levels at anything close to our own Rookie leagues. In fact, I’d suspect that most European pro teams are no better than a low division 1 college baseball program (such as GW or Catholic U’s teams).
Leagues elsewhere: there’s leagues just about every where else; wikipedia searches turn up baseball leagues in Australia, Asia, the far pacific. I didn’t do any research here, assuming that these leagues are one slight notch above amateur leagues in the US.
Winter Leagues

Davenport also did a bit of analysis on the various winter leagues in 2004; I’ve taken his recommendations and adjusted them based roughly on observation over the past few years, since the winter leagues have been shifting in terms of talent attracted in recent years.

Most players who go to winter leagues fall into one of three categories:

Natives of the country looking to provide support for their home town teams and home leagues (the Nats own Ramos, Flores, Pudge, Severino and Perez being good examples)
Players looking to get in additional work after an injury-filled year curtailed their seasons.
Players looking to work on a new pitch, a new swing or some other experimental part of their game.
So, the talent levels in these various leagues are usually all over the road.

Dominican Winter League: Seemingly the “best” winter league, having the most ex-patriots playing in the US. Davenport’s studies from earlier in the decade showed that the talent level is roughly equivalent to AAA talent, an opinion that I still maintain. Our own Yuniesky Maya tore up the DWL last winter, but struggled to be just a serviceable pitcher in Syracuse all year.
Puerto Rico Winter League : seems to be the 2nd strongest Winter League, but with slightly fewer MLBers than in the DWL. So we’ll call it AAA level, but weaker.
Venezuela Winter League: The talent levels have dropped for a while, ever since political turmoil has taken over the country. This is highlighted especially close to home in 2011 with the Wilson Ramos kidnapping case. However, Nats farmhand Ryan Tatusko was kind enough to provide his opinion on the talent level and calls it “AAA talent.” I think at best its a low AAA, as the league is clearly lower quality than Puerto Rico. This last season’s version of the VWL seemed to be more talented that past versions though; perhaps this league is looking to challenge the DWL for pre-eminence in the winter leagues.
Mexican Pacific League: Its really hard to tell; the Mexican summer league is at best A-ball talent, but the winter leagues are quite a bit better, at least per Davenport’s studies. Now? I’d guess the MWL has degraded a bit and is probably on a par with Venezuela in terms of talent. AA-level at best.

Other US-based Leagues/Levels

Arizona Fall League: the AFL rates somewhere between a AA and AAA level by and large, though for several reasons it rates as a very heavy hitter-league (pitcher workloads and ball-parks mostly). Most of your pro teams send their top prospects from levels below AA and a number of AA and AAA (and even some guys who have MLB experience). All told, that equates with a “good” AA league. And since AA leagues are morphing into being populated with a team’s best prospects while AAA leagues are becoming repositories for “spare parts” for the MLB team, more and more the lines are blurred between AAA and AA in terms of “which team could really beat the other.” Nationals fans saw this pretty clearly during Stephen Strasburg’s minor league career; he was hit in AA but absolutely dominated AAA teams that seemed to be populated with backup catchers and backup infielders.
Top End Division I College Teams are probably not even as good as a Rookie league team, all things considered. I had this debate with my father recently, noting that the best Div-1 team this year (South Carolina) was led by a pitcher (Mike Roth) who was a 31st round draft pick in 2011 and only has 11.7 scholarships to use to field a team. A good chunk of college teams are guys on partial scholarships or are complete walk-ons. Good college teams may each have a number of pro prospects, but usually only 1 or 2 legitimate prospects. On the flip side, even a rookie-level team is ENTIRELY comprised of players who were drafted, and will include high school players who signed in lieu of going to college because they were considered good enough at the time to risk signing. A college team may use a hot pitcher to beat a pro team in a theoretical 3-game series every once in a while, but a team full of professional hitters are eventually going to utterly dominate typical college bullpens, sunday starters and mid-week players.
Independent Leagues: probably rates somewhere around a pro rookie-league or slightly higher equivalent. They’re usually full of guys who got cut from the MLB rosters and a collection of older veterans trying to hang on. So, the younger players are (arguably) below rookie-league/short-A levels but the veterans are probably in the AAA level, bringing an average to somewhere between a low-A and rookie level quality.
Semi-Pro and Amateur Teams

I’m guessing that when the old Class-B/Class-C/Class-D leagues died out in the 50s, those players then began percolating into what we now see as an improved and thriving College baseball industry, Semi-Pro leagues scattered around the country, and the (now) official Indy league designation. I always attribute the death of these low-class leagues to the advent of Television, which replaced the (usually) one source of nightly entertainment for small towns across America, which before the mid 50s would have been baseball.

Here in the DC area, there’s a “semi pro” league that is the combination of two long-standing leagues (the “Industrial League” and the “Credit Union” league) that features very good baseball. Ex division-1 players, ex Pros, good baseball. Back in the 50s this probably was a class-D level league (assuming that class-B was what has become the rookie leagues and class-C has morphed into the Independent league.