From Milwaukee to....A GM gets his stripes

[darkcloud4579]

So this dynasty is based off the league in this dynasty here.

I have a save that's currently in its 306th season of play. I started it back in OOTP8 and have been playing it ever since upgrading from year to year. Sometimes, I play a lot and other years -- especially the past few -- I play a lot less. For some reason OOTP15 mostly thanks to the work of txranger and knuckler helping me get a good look for this league, has gotten me reimmersed into my league like never before and so, I've been playing like crazy. In fact, I've probably played about 70 seasons of the 300 years in just the past calendar year, which says a lot.

But for most of that time, save for bringing a new expansion team to life and sort of helping establish their lore, I haven't been a traditional GM of any team for any real length of time. I wanted to fix that and so, I decided to attempt that with one of the franchises in my league.

Right now, the majors have ballooned and we have three separate major leagues that exist.

The D2D is the premier major league with no salary cap and huge payrolls.

The UPB is the offshoot of the D2D with one league of D2D exiles and expansion teams and another league of Japanese teams that upgraded to major league status.

Lastly, the new kid on the block is the NABL, which is comprised of the Canadian League and a bunch of D2D exports by and large.

I'm going to take over the Milwaukee White Sox. The team was founded in 2010 as the El Paso Incredibles and moved to Milwaukee to become the Creamers in 2012. They moved to California in '33 first to San Jose Haymakers (a reboot of an earlier franchise of the same name) and then to Bakersfield in '48 as the Sun Sox. In '64, they moved back to Milwaukee and became the White Sox.

In 2100, the NABL was formed and Milwaukee -- after making it to the Daylight Series (the championship of the D2D) -- decided to jettison the league they were a member of for almost 100 years, mostly because ownership was concerned about the rampant increase in payroll and with 36 teams, found it difficult for teams to have sustained chances at actually winning a championship -- rather than just "making the playoffs" despite years of trying.

We just finished the 4th season of the NABL and Milwaukee is coming off their first US League (USL) pennant but they lost the Montrose Cup Final (that's the NABL championship) to Quebec in seven games.

Ownership is heavily favoring a move next season, but has not solidified where the team will go. A move back to California is pretty likely. A move to Chicago possible, but unlikely. Colorado is also a potential destination.

In any case, my job here is:

1) keep payroll at a defined amount under the cap.
2) build a sustainable championship roster
3) win championships

I'm going to give myself ten seasons. I play fast-sim style, so that's without injuries mostly for simplicity purposes. I've always played that league this way, so changing it now would mean the future guys wouldn't get the chance to accumulate stats like their predecessors. It'd also mean I'd have to pay closer attention to the day-to-day sims and I have no interest in that.

So my formula here will be to manage the off-seasons and then sim and do check-ins with the team at the mid-season mark, at the trade deadline and then at the end of the year unless there are playoffs. I won't even do any tinkering with lineups or such, that's the managers job. My job is to play GM and then see how it goes after that.

I will probably implement other house rules as time goes on. Also, I am playing stats only. This is a new thing for me, but had been considering it for ages and finally decided to do it and I like it a lot for the way it impacts how players produce.

So that's the storyline here. First things first, let's see where we'll be playing next year.

[darkcloud4579]

Sometimes what we think is gonna happen..doesn't actually happen.

The Milwaukee White Sox are moving to Hartford, CT for next season.

[darkcloud4579]

The newly rebranded Oaks were ultimately picked because it's not a complete rebuilding effort, as they've had recent success, but haven't been able to get to the promised land.

Their last title came 32 seasons ago and despite getting close haven't been able to get it over the hump.

At the start of free agency, here is where payroll in the NABL currently sits. The league has a $75m payroll, lowest of the three top tier leagues.

Rank	Team			Payroll
1	Tacoma Thrashers	$75,625,000
2	Saskatchewan Roughriders$69,060,500
3	Baltimore Atlantics	$67,275,000
4	Nevada Silverhawks	$64,048,250
5	Sacramento Solons	$63,250,000
6	Harlem Rens		$59,287,000
7	Atlantic Armada		$52,087,000
8	Sherbrooke Expos	$47,418,250
9	Winnipeg Blue Bombers	$43,926,000
10	Hamilton Tiger-Cats	$41,580,100
11	Gatineau Hull Volant	$39,782,000
12	Edmonton Eskimos	$39,677,200
13	Hartford Oaks		$38,340,000
14	Illinois Nationals	$36,520,000
15	Vancouver Whitecaps	$35,475,000
16	Ottawa Red Blacks	$34,955,000
17	Quebec Hiboux		$33,353,000
18	Nashville Athletics	$33,070,000
19	Kansas Grays		$31,948,300
20	Minnesota North Stars	$31,672,000
21	Windsor Warriors	$31,215,000
22	Calgary Stampeders	$27,578,600

[darkcloud4579]

League average payroll is currently $49,111,055. To determine what we can spend -- after all, we do want a winner -- ownership will calculate our figure at 30% above that figure.

So that gives us a payroll budget for this season of $63,844,371.

That sounds like a lot until I show you the top salaries of the top players in each of the major leagues.

Here you go:

NABL TOP SALARIES

Rank	Player		Team		Salary	 
1	Ted Cruz	Sherbrooke	$21,500,000	 
2	Dave Flasch	Nevada		$21,500,000	 
3	Hisaji Nakamura	Harlem		$19,000,000	 
4	Jaime Bauer	Tacoma		$18,750,000	 
5	Dusty Hurley	Sacramento	$17,750,000	 
6	Reece Taylor	Tacoma		$17,750,000	 
7	Tony Guillen	Baltimore	$17,500,000	 
8	Darren Butler	Sacramento	$15,100,000	 
9	Fred McKee	Quebec		$15,000,000	 
10	Hwi-gon Chung	Baltimore	$13,600,000	 
11	Jimmy Luedke	Saskatchewan	$13,600,000	 
12	Wilfrid Roerich	Baltimore	$13,600,000	 
13	C.J. Cummins	Tacoma		$12,600,000	 
14	David Zapata	Saskatchewan	$11,845,500	 
15	Chris Carrillo	Winnipeg	$11,149,000	 
16	Tom Nelson	Hartford	$11,000,000	 
17	Takeru Ri	Minnesota	$10,302,000	 
18	Tommy Cole	Saskatchewan	$10,300,000	 
19	Tony Molina	Hamilton	$10,100,000	 
20	C.J. Hall	Saskatchewan	$9,740,000	 
21	Tom Burns	Nevada		$9,600,000	 
22	Oscar Arnold	Nashville	$9,000,000	 
23	Jack Deelen	Harlem		$7,750,000	 
24	Isaburo Sakai	Windsor		$7,750,000	 
25	Robby Knettel	Saskatchewan	$7,700,000

UPB TOP SALARIES

Rank	Player		Team		Salary	 
1	Johnny Schaff	Salt Lake City	$25,500,000	 
2	Ian Patterson	Yokohama	$24,250,000	 
3	Francisco Ortiz	Miami		$21,500,000	 
4	Felipe Santana	Fukuoka		$19,000,000	 
5	Jamie Ables	Chicago		$17,500,000	 
6	Marcus Mills	Lake Placid	$16,750,000	 
7	Nanda Vyapari	Charleston	$16,750,000	 
8	Tsuguto Shinohara Saitama Seibu	$16,250,000	 
9	Will Younker	Chunichi	$16,250,000	 
10	Takeshi Suzuki	Houston		$15,750,000	 
11	Eiji Nagamine	Hiroshima	$15,250,000	 
12	Barend Peter	Fukuoka		$15,250,000	 
13	Tom Raulerson	Lake Placid	$15,000,000	 
14	Johnny Monaghan	Oklahoma	$14,900,000	 
15	Alfonso Carattini Ehime		$13,600,000	 
16	Danny Montoya	Tokyo Yakult	$13,400,000	 
17	Jimmy Spaeth	Saitama Seibu	$13,300,000	 
18	Ichibei Sakamoto Wyoming	$12,500,000	 
19	Ron Cubbage	Kagawa		$12,400,000	 
20	Ron Zuniga	Chunichi	$12,150,000	 
21	Masahiko Kono	Winnemucca	$12,000,000	 
22	David Sanchez	Yokohama	$11,930,000	 
23	Rusty Lake	New York	$11,900,000	 
24	William Odum	Tokyo Yakult	$11,900,000	 
25	Will Barringer	Los Angeles	$11,300,000

D2D TOP SALARIES

Rank	Player		Team		Salary	 
1	Kaleb Ashley	Chicago		$43,000,000	 
2	Joey (Trey) PetersCalifornia	$37,500,000	 
3	Madidou Mbogo	Washington	$34,000,000	 
4	Ethan Mentzel	El Paso		$33,500,000	 
5	T.J. Bourgeois	Great Plains	$32,500,000	 
6	Tommy Grizzle	Chicago		$31,500,000	 
7	Israel Sanchez	San Francisco	$31,500,000	 
8	Yan-hao Tsou	Philadelphia	$31,500,000	 
9	Jimmy Johnsen	Colorado	$31,000,000	 
10	Jamie Johnson	Carolina	$31,000,000	 
11	Leo Latorre	Los Angeles	$31,000,000	 
12	Dave Shreves	California	$31,000,000	 
13	Bonifazio Caratti El Paso	$30,500,000	 
14	Heikki Heinamaa	Carolina	$30,500,000	 
15	Miguel Pacheco	Florida		$30,000,000	 
16	Pat Mobley	Philadelphia	$29,500,000	 
17	Willie Perez	Texas		$29,500,000	 
18	Gart Peterse	Baton Rouge	$29,500,000	 
19	Ted Castro	Los Angeles	$29,000,000	 
20	Israel Vasquez	Virginia	$29,000,000	 
21	Alexander WillisDetroit		$29,000,000	 
22	Robby Wright	Toronto		$29,000,000	 
23	Dave Sarno	El Paso		$28,000,000	 
24	Sandy Rivas	Eau Claire	$27,500,000	 
25	Seung-hyeon Yune Detroit	$27,500,000

What you realize is that we're just not able in this league, to go out and sign a bunch of dudes at huge salaries when the other leagues are able to throw more at them. UPB has $100m cap, so they are at least within our range, but we usually have to overpay AND D2D has no cap and will throw money around with reckless abandon on purpose to take a guy if they want him enough.

So that means that we have to be tactical. Looking at the roster, it's hard for me to really have a sense of what a good team in the NABL is, because I've spent so much time around the D2D that I'm having a tough time translating the lower talent that manages to produce a pennant winning team. That'll take a bit of study time.

Here's our current roster of players who are signed through next year.





According to the trade monitor, we have slight weaknesses at 2B, 3B, RF, our rotation and bullpen. No way I'm filling all that with $25m, at least not with elite players anyway.

I'm wondering slash tempted to see if I could fill out a major league team in the NABL with prospects and guys like that from the other leagues. In other words, if the way to win in this league is to essentially go in a modified moneyball sort of way where you try to maximize on younger, undervalued guys who play cheap and maybe fill out with a few stronger assets to boot.

It might not work, but I've been watching this franchise for a while in Milwaukee and they've had some quality talent go through here over the years and despite that, they've never managed to win nearly as much as you'd expect. We did a lot more with less in Great Plains, in part because we had a farm system and were willing to blow things up and pull the trigger on long-range deals that for whatever reason always seemed to work out for us.

I don't think I can get this team to that level, per se, but I do think we need to try something different. And being in a new market, means that we have a bit of cushion to attempt that.

The reason we chose Hartford was 1) the league wasn't interested in realigning the team to the western division, 2) the Hartford area coupled with Springfield Mass has over 2 million people in today's pop. numbers and that's as many as the Milwaukee area, except if the team was any good and could capture the NYC metro parts of Connecticut, it'd put us well over 2.5 million and closer to 3. Boston doesn't have a 2nd team, Worcester sorta counts but...the NABL didn't have a Boston area team and this gives them one in a solid baseball market.

Anyway, enough of that. Let's get down to wheeling and dealing.

Here's the gameplan.

1) assess the FA market and make a list of ten targets.
2) assess the trade market and come up with a strategy -- buyers or sellers --
3) consummate the moves

Before any of that, though, we have to decide what the goal here is. Are we gonna attempt to win that title that we missed out on this year? Or nuke the whole thing and attempt a riskier strategy that has better long-term implications? I have five years with this club to win a title or I'm gone.

The easier route would be to keep things as-is for the most part with some modest tweaks, see if that works and then if not, blow the whole thing up next year. But we lost 18.1 WAR, 3rd most in the NABL from the loss mosty of two guys - Mac Rasmussen (10.2) and #2 starter J.J. Davies (6.6 WAR) who became FAs.

We could bring them both back, but not at the price points which would be about all of our budget room for this off-season. I wanted Rasmussen bad, mostly because I wanted to make a splash, but...the team couldn't keep him from testing FA and I couldn't convince him to take a pretty backloaded deal before the start of FA. (Which frankly, was smart on his part.)

So the deal here is to see if we can maximize and find value, more than anything else. I think the NABL is the most winnable of any of the major leagues, because it's affordable and you can rebuild at a decent price. But it being more competitive makes it more like the NFL where you don't know who'll be good from year to year.

[darkcloud4579]

FREE AGENCY STAGE 1 (MOVE 1)
Right now, I'm assessing the farm system and shopping guys to see what I can get on the open market. I'm open to dealing prospects, because none of them are ready enough for us to use now. Remember in a stats only league, their stars (which I have activated for simplicity) don't really mean a whole lot once the guys make the bigs and get a bit of time under their belt.

I can't even figure out what the game goes on in terms of developing prospects especially if they have a few bad years in the minors. My goal right now is to see if we can't get a few lotto picks who might be AAAA or good enough for the bigs but blocked in the D2D. If I can get a few of those guys over here, it'd be good.


Also gonna head to the Indian league and see if there's anyone we can acquire. It'll cost us $7.5 million to buy a player's contract from over there, so he has to be worth it, but...at least it's an option.

Made my first deal with the Oaks. A trade with a Japanese team in the UPB after putting one of my own AAA outfielders on the market. He was good enough to start, but I don't think we needed him and wanted to see what we could get. Trade difficulty is on hard, but when you have like 60+ major league teams, there's always a deal someplace. Which I like.



In this deal, we take on some salary. Odum, 31, replaces the #2 starter we lost in the off-season to free agency -- and who is out of our price range -- but we also end up with one of the best closers in baseball hands down in this deal and he's a downright bargain. We gave up some youngsters but none were immediately in our plans. It just cost us a bit of financial flexibility, but we still have another $16 or so million to spend this off-season and I'm not done yet.

[darkcloud4579]

Okay so..I have a blanket house rule that I'll apply to how I play going forward.

Basically the name of the game is Six moves. Sort of playing OOTP more like a strategy game rather than just a normal sim.

So I get six moves I can make during the entire course of a year. Right now, four of those can come during the off-season and 2 during the regular season. I can use them when I want though during the course of those times.

I haven't decided how I can get more moves, yet. So for now, we'll keep it at six. If you have ideas, feel free to chime in on scenarios.

When you make a move, I have to sim a week at a time. So now that I've trade, I have to sim in-game a week without making any other moves. So if I wanted to offer a FA a contract or whatever else, I need to do that before the deal gets consummated because once a 1) FA signs or 2) I make a trade, it count as a move and I have to sim a week ahead.

[darkcloud4579]

FREE AGENCY STAGE 2 (MOVE 2)

Okay so now with the name of the game changed, my steps are a bit more ordered. I'm going to use Stage 2 to put in a bunch of free agent signings, because if I wait another week, it might be harder. Maybe even Stages 2 and 3 for FA signings and then use the last stage to make a trade.

What I didn't clarify is whether or not each move = 1 act. So like can I make two trades within a move? I think to make it easier to deal with, we'll count "a move" as "one day" in game for trade purposes. So everytime I hit the sim button to advance the game counts as a a move.

So whatever I do within that move counts as a move, that way I'm not constrained by being able to make only two or three trades per offseason. I don't even mind that, but...it's just a rule that I'd probably end up changing halfway through.

Anyway, let's get the 2nd move done. I'm going after those AAAA types and other bargain players more than anything else here. I don't think I'm going after any big ticket players on this stage, simply because I don't really know that there's anyone who can put us over the top.

As I suspected, there were a lot of minor league free agents who I'm really curious about. Since most didn't get any PT, they could be had on minor league deals with a signing bonus. I'm not imposing a house rule on these right now, because I'm not concerned about it, but it's a loophole that I hadn't considered. I just like that they're available and frankly, I'm not playing to frustrate myself, but to just make winning a bit challenging and interesting.

Anyway, as a result, we can try to ink those guys with signing bonuses and without impacting our cap figure which is nice. It'd be interesting to see if you could someday win a title that way.

I've made my first set of offers and I've initiated my second move, so now we'll see what happens as we head to the 3rd move. Remember that because we only get 4 off-season moves, if it takes me the rest of my moves to sign someone, than so be it.

Here were my moves on the 2nd turn. If any of them sign, we'll profile them, but for now, just know that I'm interested.

[darkcloud4579]

I decided there will be a 3 transaction limit per day/per turn, meaning you can't make more than three trades or purchase 3 contracts or 2 + 1 in a turn.

Anyway on the 3rd turn, it was mostly about trades rather than any free agency moves. We purchased two contracts from the Indian league including the reigning IPL pitcher of the year. Hilariously, he ended up in Indian because the previous regime of this franchise DEALT him there. Not sure what that was about, but when I ran across him, decided he was worth the bargain of paying for his repatriation plus the last year of his $12.5 million deal ($4.5 million) to shore up our rotation.

We also paid to acquire prospect catcher Xavier Bove, who after three strong years in the IPL was never going to get to the bigs until his deal there ended. I think he has a lot of potential and at age 20, thought it was worth it to bring him over here to see if he could hang on a big league club even though we have a solid catcher to begin with.

Lastly, we made a deal of our own minor league catchers to Indianapolis who had a surplus at relievers for their closer, which solves our bullpen issues even more. A solid move.

We're not done yet heading into our last turn. Will be curious to see if we land -- and who we land -- from free agency, I didn't increase any of our offers. If we stopped now, I'd be fine with taking this club into the season, knowing we'd have some moves to make during the regular season depending on how things were going.

I have at least one prospect who needs to be dealt, too.

[darkcloud4579]

I hadn't been playing with spring training on, but with stats only play, it's all of a sudden a much more important thing. So I've turned it on at 4 weeks, to give me time to evaluate guys and decide who is doing what, etc.

[darkcloud4579]

Here were my Stage 3 moves.



I have one more off-season move left. I'm tempted to save it to around spring training so I can see what's going on with the team and make a decision before the season starts. We'll see though, I have a few moves I'm interested in making so I might not be able to wait.

[darkcloud4579]

Xavier Mason is a star in the making or at least, he looks like one. But we couldn't keep him because he's not going to develop fast enough for me, frankly. So we basically dealt a can't miss guy for what amounts to two dudes who should add to maybe 3/4ths of him if we're lucky, but Ramirez is further along and fits what we need now.

[darkcloud4579]

I was hoping to make other moves that day, but ended up forgetting about my rule and frankly, nothing else materialized after I tried shopping a few guys on the trade market.

So with that, the off-season is finished. Now we'll get to the spring training phase of things, see how the team stacks up and then go from there.

Pre-season projections have us finishing the year at 96-66 and winning the USL East. We'll see if turns out that way, but obviously we're not expecting anything less than a title this year.

[darkcloud4579]

Already performed one of my two in-season moves on opening day.

[darkcloud4579]

The NABL trade deadline comes super early. So May 31st is the last day to make deals.

As of May 1st, the standings are:

CANADIAN LEAGUE STANDINGS
Eastern Division	W	L	PCT	GB
Gatineau Hull Volant	32	20	.615	-
Atlantic Armada		28	25	.528	4.5
Ottawa Red Blacks	27	25	.519	5.0
Hamilton Tiger-Cats	26	26	.500	6.0
Quebec Hiboux		21	30	.412	10.5
Sherbrooke Expos	20	31	.392	11.5

Western Division	W	L	PCT	GB
Windsor Warriors	28	22	.560	-
Saskatchewan Roughriders28	24	.538	1.0
Calgary Stampeders	26	24	.520	2.0
Edmonton Eskimos	25	27	.481	4.0
Vancouver Whitecaps	25	28	.472	4.5
Winnipeg Blue Bombers	24	28	.462	5.0

UNITED STATES LEAGUE STANDINGS
Eastern Division	W	L	PCT	GB
Hartford Oaks		28	24	.538	-
Baltimore Atlantics	22	28	.440	5.0
Illinois Nationals	22	30	.423	6.0
Nashville Athletics	22	31	.415	6.5
Harlem Rens		17	35	.327	11.0

Western Division	W	L	PCT	GB
Tacoma Thrashers	40	11	.784	-
Nevada Silverhawks	30	22	.577	10.5
Kansas Grays		28	23	.549	12.0
Minnesota North Stars	28	24	.538	12.5
Sacramento Solons	20	29	.408	19.0

[darkcloud4579]

I'm about to make my final move of this regular season, in a deal that'll actually shed some cap space. Underachieving but versatile SS Danny Moran is going to St. Joseph of the UPB in exchange for their starting SS T.J. Kunkel. On the surface, the deal doesn't even look to make sense but Moran is five years younger and has had better years than Kunkel has and he can play four different positions, which explains the demand for him.

I'd just like to shed the salary, as well as get someone more productive in tow.

[darkcloud4579]

[darkcloud4579]

New name, new city, same result. We clinch the USL East for the 2nd straight year. Can the retooled club make it back to the championship with a new outlook? At least we escape the wild card game, that pits the two worst playoff teams against each other (4 v 5) to see who advances.

2105 FINAL NABL STANDINGS REGULAR SEASON

CANADIAN LEAGUE STANDINGS
Eastern Division	W	L	PCT	GB
Gatineau Hull Volant	104	58	.642	-
Atlantic Armada		81	81	.500	23.0
Hamilton Tiger-Cats	80	82	.494	24.0
Sherbrooke Expos	78	84	.481	26.0
Quebec Hiboux		74	88	.457	30.0
Ottawa Red Blacks	68	94	.420	36.0

Western Division	W	L	PCT	GB
Windsor Warriors	86	76	.531	-
Saskatchewan Roughriders84	78	.519	2.0
Calgary Stampeders	83	79	.512	3.0
Edmonton Eskimos	83	79	.512	3.0
Vancouver Whitecaps	78	84	.481	8.0
Winnipeg Blue Bombers	73	89	.451	13.0

UNITED STATES LEAGUE STANDINGS
Eastern Division	W	L	PCT	GB
Hartford Oaks		94	68	.580	-
Harlem Rens		78	84	.481	16.0
Nashville Athletics	76	86	.469	18.0
Illinois Nationals	74	88	.457	20.0
Baltimore Atlantics	72	90	.444	22.0

Western Division	W	L	PCT	GB
Tacoma Thrashers	96	66	.593	-
Nevada Silverhawks	89	73	.549	7.0
Sacramento Solons	86	76	.531	10.0
Kansas Grays		80	82	.494	16.0
Minnesota North Stars	65	97	.401	31.0

[darkcloud4579]

[darkcloud4579]

Our season ends in a heartbreaker against the Sacramento Solons who advance to the Montrose Cup Finals and end our year in the LCS.

Truthfully, this team could've fallen on its face a lot sooner. I made some relatively dramatic moves to the core of the team, some of the moves paid off, while others I'm skeptical about. But all of them were generally made in the direction of thinking long range and so, I think we're well positioned to make more moves to get the team back here next year and this time, over the hump.

I always thought this team, from the start of the year, was missing something and I wasn't really sure what to do about that because I inherited this team rather than built it, so was always sorta hamstrung from the start.

Soo....that's where we are right now. For next year, need to make more tactical moves in an effort to get back here. We'll have payroll go down by about $20 million which should help, coupled with some of the other moves we've made, there are guys we can deal too.

I'd say it was a disappointing year, but the building blocks are in place for us to be looking forward to the future.

[darkcloud4579]

Gatineau wins the NABL, the 3rd straight Canadian team to do so. So much for them being the weaker league?

Florida won the Champions League.