Expansion + Divisions + Playoffs

[Galeg]

I think I'm ready to spice things up a bit by expanding MLB by 2 teams. I also think I understand how to make this happen and not break the game, but I would like to gather from regular players what their preferences are for a lot of settings during this process.

1. With 32 teams, how do you prefer to set up the divisions? My initial thought was to give each league 4 divisions of 4 teams, but I'm second guessing myself and considering 3 divisions of 6 teams instead.
2. Based on the division set-up, what is your preferred playoff structure? When I was leaning toward 4 divisions in a league, I was just going to have the division winners advance without a wildcard. That seems like it might produce some stale playoffs with many of the same teams, however.
3. Is there a consensus on the best expansion draft settings? For example, limiting the number of selections from each team sounds good to me, but I'm not sure how well that works in practice.
4. Should I mess around with the team settings for new expansion teams or are the defaults fine? 100 fan interest seems kind of excessive...

Thanks for all the help.

[mitchkenn]

Originally Posted by Galeg

I think I'm ready to spice things up a bit by expanding MLB by 2 teams. I also think I understand how to make this happen and not break the game, but I would like to gather from regular players what their preferences are for a lot of settings during this process.

1. With 32 teams, how do you prefer to set up the divisions? My initial thought was to give each league 4 divisions of 4 teams, but I'm second guessing myself and considering 3 divisions of 6 teams instead.
2. Based on the division set-up, what is your preferred playoff structure? When I was leaning toward 4 divisions in a league, I was just going to have the division winners advance without a wildcard. That seems like it might produce some stale playoffs with many of the same teams, however.
3. Is there a consensus on the best expansion draft settings? For example, limiting the number of selections from each team sounds good to me, but I'm not sure how well that works in practice.
4. Should I mess around with the team settings for new expansion teams or are the defaults fine? 100 fan interest seems kind of excessive...

Thanks for all the help.

4 team divisions, with only winner to playoffs - means you could have a sub .500 in in playoffs if you have a real weak division. i prefer the 3 divisions of 6 teams myself with the wild card option.
i've used to game expansion, put my protected list to 25,, players with less than 3 years also protected. max of 5 players to be taken from any team - that would give the new teams about 75 players if you already have 30 teams now, so it would also stock much of their minors. Maybe 4 players would be better?
with the expansion protection list, i found (by error and trial) you also need to go to each team on the list and have the AI (or yourself) create the list, or those teams will have no one protected.
make a back up of your game before you do any of this, just in case .....
good luck. and enjoy.

[Galeg]

Originally Posted by mitchkenn

with the expansion protection list, i found (by error and trial) you also need to go to each team on the list and have the AI (or yourself) create the list, or those teams will have no one protected.

Really!? I didn't know about that issue. Can anyone else confirm?

Thanks for the advice.

[Bluenoser]

If you're interested, see post #4 in this thread for an example of how I do an MLB style league with 36 teams.

http://www.ootpdevelopments.com/boar...d.php?t=288736

[plinko83]

I'm thinking of adding two expansion teams as well after the 2019 MLB. I want to do 4 divisions of 4 in each league with one wild card. Wild card plays the division winner with the worst record in a 2 out of 3 'play in.'

any thoughts on this and would it be reasonable to do in OOTP?

[BBGiovanni]

Originally Posted by Galeg

Really!? I didn't know about that issue. Can anyone else confirm?

Thanks for the advice.

I've not noticed that.

As to your original comment, for MLB I almost always add 2 teams and go to 2SL 4D 8T. There's an excellent schedule with no interleague games, with unbalanced schedule. I don't have the game open, but it leads to playing division rivals often enough to make sense but without (like modern MLB) making the rest of the league (SL in the game) seem so foreign/irrelevant because you only see them 2x/year.

As to playoffs, it depends on what I'm doing. Sometimes I limit it just to division winners. But I like my newest system, where each division winner gets a bye while 4 wild card teams play off to get into the DS. It makes the division title very desirable, but lets as many teams in as in current MLB.

I really dislike 4 team divisions, IMO it worsens the problem of mediocre teams getting automatic playoff berths that we see in real life.

I never noticed fan interest was so high for expansion teams, but maybe it's supposed to compensate for the bad record they'll end up with? I've had decent results with the default settings for expansion drafts, and it seems reducing protection below 25 really makes for strong expansion teams. That may be a feature or a defect for you.

[BBGiovanni]

Oh, I limit per-team picks to 3 I think. I try to have the teams do about 50 rounds of draft so they can fill a minor league team.

[fredbeene]

I started 1964. Split the divisions then manually added 2 teams. The AI generated
the Phoenix Brigands and Las Vegas Raazorbacks
There was no draft.
Phoenix it appears had enough bad free agents to field a team (they are currently 9-108)
Las Vegas only got 1 player a catcher. I couldn't figure out how to get more players so i had to create fake ones.... (i don't like this option for a WHOLE team - they are 70 - 38!!)
No minor leagues systems are set up.
How is it possible to expand by 2 teams and only use the historical players and also have minors?

[fredbeene]

Well what a WASTE.
After the 1964 season completed the 2 expansion teams DISAPPEARED.
I do not even see them any more in end of the year standings.

What a FRIGGIN waste.

If i go to Game Settings League settings - Leauges and Teams the split division and 2 teams i created are gone.
So whats the point!

If i go into an OLD box score i can still pull up the 2 expansions teams (that is the ONLY way i can)
All those players are in LIMBO and no longer part of the league after the world series finished

[bwburke94]

You left historical evolution on, perchance?

[fredbeene]

Yes I left (AUTOMATIC EXPAND LEAGUE) on
I don't want to go through the hassle of realigning all minor and renaming Mil Braves to Atlanta Braves etc.


Is it possible to play a historical with automatic expansion AND do your own expansion?

Also, when i created my expansion team, why didn't it create all the minor leagues?

[mitchkenn]

if auto expansion is on - any changes you make will be negated as the year turns over because the teams you created did not exist in the database in whatever year you are going into.... the game is programed to be historical, and adding your teams makes it fictional - so they will disappear.
You'll either need to uncheck auto expansion, or create a fictional league with historical players and name/edit/create everything according to history, from scratch ...
not what you want to hear, but ....

it is NOT possible to play historical with any self created teams. it is then no longer historical if you have self created and the game corrects itself to be historical once again.

[fredbeene]

thank you.
I tried Historical with no auto expansion.
I split the leagues into 2 divisions for 1964.
Simmed the year and everything seemed fine.
Simmed to Winter meeting begin and every time RELEASED every player
This isn't turning out to be much fun.

I tried starting a fictional league, but it just creates fictional teams even though it says it supports historical

I resimmed and the same thing happend