PyroFalkon's Patriot Baseball League

[PyroFalkon]

Hello everyone, I'm going to go ahead and give making dynasty posts a shot for my Patriot Baseball League, or PBL, which means it unfortunately shares an acronym with another American professional "sport" that's more ignored than a beggar in New York City.

Just in case you missed my blathering in the general forum, the PBL is comprised of 50 teams, each with four levels of minors. Each organization represents a state of the United States. The PBL is divided into two conferences, East and West. Each conference has three divisions: the West has the Pacific, Mountain, and Heartland divisions; the East has the Midwest, South, and New England divisions. (I'm aware of the irony of "Midwest" being in the East, but that's the country for you: the Midwest US is about a quarter of the way from the east coast.) I use standard MLB rules for everything else, including playoffs, trades, and so on.

One variance to my rules -- the change that makes my league extremely sadistic and hilarious -- is that revenue sharing is off, there's no salary cap, and there's no real limit to how much cash teams can have in reserve. This will lead to some insanely bloated contracts early, but I'm going to avoid changing numbers manually because I want to see the "invisible hand of the market" in action and fix things after they get out of control. (And yes, I'm aware of the irony of seeing something invisible as well. My post apparently is full of irony today.)

We started things off with a totally empty roster. Then I filled the rookie league six times, releasing them all between fills. I intended to hold the inaugural draft with nothing but kids under 24, but apparently the game had other ideas. When it came time for the draft, suddenly a bunch of different players were created without my command. I couldn't figure out how (if it's even possible) to stop the game from creating them, so I just gave up went with it.

At that point I turned off commish mode and took the first job offering me the highest level of play, except for New Jersey, for personal reasons. The job I took was for the Sitka Moose, the Single-A team of the Alaskan team.

So the season came and went. After several misfired starts, ironing out issues, re-assigning logos (that is, state flags), and finally getting the game to behave itself, we've played through the first season. In the majors, the first winner of the Patriot Series was...



Hawaii did damn well for placing second. I commanded the draft order to be in order of when the states joined the union, so Hawaii got last pick for each draft round. Theoretically that means they would have ended up with the worst players in the league, but they went 92-70, placing second in their division and winning the wildcard race for the Western Conference. They'll probably be a threat in the coming years.

Meanwhile, how did I do in Sitka? We'll let this screenshot tell the tale...



Ha! I have to say I enjoy it when a game is a little blunt with its feedback. The only way that could have been better is if the pop-up box continued with something like, "Seriously, just give up. Go take up quilting or something, and stay away from baseball. You stink."

Nowhere to go but up from here. Unless I somehow manage to score a 1 or 2 that is, but I'm... I'm better than that. I'm sure of it. I think.

[bwburke94]

Hey, are you the same PyroFalkon who did those "walkthroughs" for The Sims all those years ago?

[PyroFalkon]

Yes sir, I am. Currently I write for IGN Entertainment, and I've got over 50 guides with them, with the latest being MLB '11 The Show. I did all their guides for Sims 2 and Sims 3, but they don't let me do Sims guides anymore, I think because Sims has sort of fallen a bit in popularity and the expansion guides weren't getting as many hits as they were hoping. Or maybe because my boss doesn't realize when Sims expansions come out; I used to tell him whenever they did, and lately even my love for the game has waned. (More personal reasons, coincidentally related to the reason I don't want to manage the New Jersey team in my game.)

Right now I've got a dry period -- the major labels don't release many games in summer, preferring to wait until the holiday buying period starts -- but I'm hoping to do some more guides soon.

[PyroFalkon]

Wow, that season went a LOT faster. The only thing I can think is that, during the first season, none of the GMs knew the true value of players, and there was a lot of scurrying around as the minors became a hotbed of activity. During my time with Sitka, I think I had to make changes to my lineups every week as the Alaska GM moved players around, which slowed me down. This time around, there were changes only about once every three weeks, at least until after the All-Star Game in July.

Not that I stuck with Sitka, though. Despite scoring a measly 3 points, I wasn't fired. However, the Norman Eagles -- the Double-A affiliate of Oklahoma -- offered me a job. A promotion is a promotion, so I took it, inheriting a team that went 69-71 the previous year. The owner wanted me to keep the team around .500, a goal that made me slightly nervous.

The Eagles did great for the first few months. Maybe too great: many of players were lost to our Triple-A affiliate. (I may not have had many personnel changes in total, but when I did have them, I lost key players.) Not helping matters was the insane injury-proneness of my team. I had a total of TEN players on the DL from early August to about the beginning of September. My record tanked, but not completely so: though we flirted with first place in the division for most of the season, we wound up finishing 5th (out of 8). Also, our final record was 71-69, so I was able to meet the owner's expectations.

After the season concluded, I got a piece of good news...



...followed by a piece of better news...



I got promoted to Tulsa, the Triple-A affiliate! I didn't even bother looking for a new job; I'll go ahead and give Tulsa a try. Just one more step closer to the majors. I'm inheriting a team that went 70-74, so there's some work to be done there.

As far as the majors go, the winner this year was...



...What kind of state calls itself "The Roughrider State" anyway? And just what the hell is a Roughrider? (Then again, since I'm from real-life Ohio and our nickname comes from a stupid nut, I don't really have much room to poke fun.)

Clearly I've figured out the game's basics and I don't totally suck, so Season #3 is shaping up to be good. Let's hope I can turn Tulsa around and give them a shot at the Triple-A Playoffs.