Where to begin?

[mleuck]

I want to create a 10 team fictional league divided into two 5 team divisions. I want to use real 2021 players and MLB stadiums. My teams will be created by me (fictional) and placed into the two divisions. I need the draft to be done by me, not by the game. I would like to play a 162 game schedule where every team plays every other team.

The Big Question......
Where should I begin? help please.


Thank you

[Joelman111]

For getting the real MLB players and stadiums, you could either do:

1. The "less precise, but less technical" method. Create a new standard game and then go to League Settings->League & Teams and hit "edit league structure". This will allow you to rearrange/rename the teams however you like. Then you can go to League Settings->Functions and hit "Schedule fantasy draft". Make sure you are in commissioner mode by going to Manager Options and have the checkmark "Play in Commissioner Mode" checked. Then the next day, there will be a fantasy draft for all of the MLB players and since you are in commissioner mode, you will be able to draft for all teams.

2. The "Correct, but more complex method". Create a new standard league. Go to League Settings->Functions. Click "Clear Rosters" to dump all players into Free Agency. Click "Export MLB Rosters", which will create a new text file containing all MLB players. This file (mlb_rosters.txt) will be placed in your game's import_export folder, which will have a path looking similar to this:

Documents\Out of the Park Developments\OOTP Baseball 23\saved_games\<your saved game name>.lg\import_export

Now, create a new fictional league and set it up however you want. Go to League Settings->Functions and click "Import rosters". A file selector will pop-up and you will need to navigate to exported rosters file from the previous step. This will replace all the fictional players with real MLB players. Then you can go to League Settings->Functions and hit "Schedule fantasy draft". Make sure you are in commissioner mode by going to Manager Options and have the checkmark "Play in Commissioner Mode" checked. Then the next day, there will be a fantasy draft for all of the MLB players and since you are in commissioner mode, you will be able to draft for all teams. Finally, to play with actual MLB stadiums, you can follow the method I explain here: https://forums.ootpdevelopments.com/...d.php?t=336459 to get whatever MLB stadiums you want.


To address your desired schedule:
What you are looking for is called a "Balanced schedule". Luckily, OOTP provides exactly what you are looking for in League Settings->Options. Under the Schedules Settings section, you will see a checkmark called "Use Balanced Schedule Format". This will make every team play every other team the same number of times (as long as all the teams are in the same sub-league).

Whew, that was a bit of a long, complicated response. Hopefully it is detailed enough to get you where you want to go. Feel free to follow-up if you have additional questions.