Spring Training or No Spring Training? Want to know your opinions!

[nutt]

Ok, first off.... I know if there's no pre-season in reality, with all the injuries and other logical things that occur...

Any other advantage/disadvantage to short or long spring training lengths?

What are the advantages and disadvantages to spring training leagues versus leagues that just start on opening day?

I mainly use ST for any league in my world that has a minor league system and is not a single league or apart of a promotion/relegation pyramid.

With a club in a pyramid league, it is just the active and reserve roster.

Any helpful insights as to why or why not? (From a game perspective, lol)

[venflaalachi]

I don't have spring training to reduce the amount of potential injuries to players. Same reason I don't use minor leagues. Players still develop so I am ok playing this way.

[snepp]

Originally Posted by venflaalachi

I don't have spring training to reduce the amount of potential injuries to players.

I'm the opposite. For whatever reason I get a bit of masochist enjoyment out of spring injuries.

[YankeeBoy3193]

Originally Posted by venflaalachi

I don't have spring training to reduce the amount of potential injuries to players. Same reason I don't use minor leagues. Players still develop so I am ok playing this way.

How do you turn Minor Leagues off?

[quillenl]

Originally Posted by snepp

I'm the opposite. For whatever reason I get a bit of masochist enjoyment out of spring injuries.

This, and enjoy the early preseason prediction that will sometimes tell me I am out to lunch thinking my team will contend.

[imnotsammysosa]

It's the best time to train guys at new positions. I love spring training.

[FantasyDrafter]

Originally Posted by imnotsammysosa

It's the best time to train guys at new positions. I love spring training.

This is the major benefit I’ve always used it for as well for many OOTP versions. I always try to keep my everyday players above 90% fatigue so I like to have a starting 8, DH, and then a jack of all trades who is a good hitter and reasonable IF and OF that plays close to every day but at a different position every day (and is the immediate replacement for an injured player). If you can identify someone like this in the minors and then use them in that role through their arb years, helps reduce fatigue in your important players and keeps an extra good player happy more often than not. Usually you can sign them cheaper once they are out of arb years (or to an early extension) as well, and you actually know if they are decent or not.

So once I identify that guy, even if he’s a couple of years away from mlb, he might play a lot of SS one year, 2B the next, etc.

[Larryk007]

There are many ways to enjoy this game, but my way is to follow as closely as possible to the real game. So, let's have spring training in Florida and Arizona and enjoy the ride! Invite those minor leaguers, free agents that are fragile and see what we can do to improve. Scouting is always debatable, but what the player does in the game is what counts. I do wish we had more spring training games, like double headers or something (this has been requested before in the forum).

[Strom1172]

I don't overly like Spring Training, but I do find it useful as I can evaluate talent, work on my rotation, relievers, and batting order.

[Bunktown Ballers]

I use spring training to use as Lab Development. If I don't have anyone for Lab Development in bypass ST. It's just a preference for each individual

[Pelican]

I love Spring Training, in OOTP and IRL, when I can get down to Florida. It bothers me that OOTP by default starts a few days before Opening Day. I would much prefer not only five weeks of ST, but a Winter of wheeling and dealing. But here are the reasons why I feel ST is worthwhile, necessary, in OOTP.

[1] To sort out who deserves to make the MLB team, and to determine placement of players in the minor leagues, based in part on Spring performance. You can also fiddle with various lineups.

[2] To give every player a chance to get ready, without letting anybody get fatigued, and with minimal injuries. So, my ST games will involve twenty or thirty players off those large rosters getting into a game.

[3] Playing a realistic schedule with fifteen teams in Arizona, and fifteen in Florida, plus you can add "B" games as well. Plus I leave time at the end of ST for the traditional series between the LA teams and the Bay area (or Sacramento/LV) teams, plus NY and Orioles versus Gnats.

[4] The end of ST, cutting rosters to 25 (or 28 in my sims, through May), is a prime time for teams to DFA players, typically those without remaining minor league options, and to make trades to avoid losing guys for nothing in return. It's a great time for weaker teams to add fringe players cut by the better teams.

[5] For the OOTP user, ST is a great chance to try out different strategies, like bunts and hit-and-run and run-and-hit and steals and defensive changes, in order to see how the game handles those options.

[6] You can set up exhibition games with your AAA team, or with Korean teams, or the Savanah Bananas. Fun stuff.

[7] Toward the end of ST, you get set up your rotation, so your ace is rested and ready for Opening Day, and your other starters have ramped up their innings. Everybody hits the ground running - even if the ground is wet and frozen in the north.

To me, even with teams I think I know, ST is a chance to get a feel for the roster, and for individual players to shine - or fail. And yes, to take a peek at those preseason predictions and begin to prove them wrong!

[PSUColonel]

Originally Posted by Pelican

I love Spring Training, in OOTP and IRL, when I can get down to Florida. It bothers me that OOTP by default starts a few days before Opening Day. I would much prefer not only five weeks of ST, but a Winter of wheeling and dealing. But here are the reasons why I feel ST is worthwhile, necessary, in OOTP.

[1] To sort out who deserves to make the MLB team, and to determine placement of players in the minor leagues, based in part on Spring performance. You can also fiddle with various lineups.

[2] To give every player a chance to get ready, without letting anybody get fatigued, and with minimal injuries. So, my ST games will involve twenty or thirty players off those large rosters getting into a game.

[3] Playing a realistic schedule with fifteen teams in Arizona, and fifteen in Florida, plus you can add "B" games as well. Plus I leave time at the end of ST for the traditional series between the LA teams and the Bay area (or Sacramento/LV) teams, plus NY and Orioles versus Gnats.

[4] The end of ST, cutting rosters to 25 (or 28 in my sims, through May), is a prime time for teams to DFA players, typically those without remaining minor league options, and to make trades to avoid losing guys for nothing in return. It's a great time for weaker teams to add fringe players cut by the better teams.

[5] For the OOTP user, ST is a great chance to try out different strategies, like bunts and hit-and-run and run-and-hit and steals and defensive changes, in order to see how the game handles those options.

[6] You can set up exhibition games with your AAA team, or with Korean teams, or the Savanah Bananas. Fun stuff.

[7] Toward the end of ST, you get set up your rotation, so your ace is rested and ready for Opening Day, and your other starters have ramped up their innings. Everybody hits the ground running - even if the ground is wet and frozen in the north.

To me, even with teams I think I know, ST is a chance to get a feel for the roster, and for individual players to shine - or fail. And yes, to take a peek at those preseason predictions and begin to prove them wrong!

I agree with all of this and would like to add minor league spring training also.

[Pelican]

BTW you don't have to play five weeks of Spring Training like me. Even a week of exhibition games can give insight into your team and help you make informed cuts and place players at the proper minor league level.

And you don't have to play out every one of your team's games. You can sim through most of ST. Just save time to labor over those last cuts, and to look for hidden gems DFA by other teams. Plus this is the time, if, for example, you find yourself with an excess of OF, to trade with a team with a bullpen that is overloaded.

[snepp]

Originally Posted by Pelican

BTW you don't have to play five weeks of Spring Training like me.

I'll base my spring training length roughly on my season length. 5 weeks for an mlb length season, 1 week for my "beer league" saves that only run like 30 game seasons, etc.

[FantasyDrafter]

Originally Posted by PSUColonel

I agree with all of this and would like to add minor league spring training also.

Minor league ST would be great.

[itsmb8]

Originally Posted by PSUColonel

I agree with all of this and would like to add minor league spring training also.

Real ST leagues and minor league ST is something ive been asking for for years

[Guthrien]

I like it! I start almost all roster tryouts / prospects or people I need to get experience in at a new position. Last year you had a lot of scouting adjustments that would happen during ST which I also enjoyed, I'm not really seeing that this year.

[Curve Ball Dave]

Put me in the pro-Spring Training camp.

Right now I have a guy in AAA who, for the past two seasons, put up monster numbers. I've had him in the starting lineup for the following two Spring Trainings to see what he can do. Both times he's shown he can't hit major league pitching so he's back in AAA to start the season once again.

To give one example.

When there's open roster spots Spring Training is a very good guide for me to determine who gets one of those open spots between other choices. AAA guys who have great springs but get sent back to AAA because I don't have open spots are the guys who are my first choices when I need a replacement due to an injury or lack of performance.

This is models real life.

As for injuries, that's baseball. It's part of the challenge of the game. My ace closer got injured in SP. He'll miss the first week of the regular season. That makes my job difficult. I want the game to be difficult.