Rules, etc.
Sections
OOTP
Settings
Commissioner
Reserve
Clause
Financials
Market Size
Park Factors
Awards
Voting
GM Duties
Roster Rules
Rotations
Keepin’ it
real
SCOUTING SETTINGS
Disabled
PLAYER RATING SCALES
Player Actual Ratings Scale: 20 to 80
Player Potential Ratings Scale: 20 to 80
Other Player Ratings Scale: 20 to 80
Overall Rating: Stars
Potential Rating: Stars
Show Ratings > Max: No, cut off
Show Potential < Actual: No, adjust
Overall ratings based on all players: Disabled
COACHING STAFF SETTINGS
Disabled
PLAYER INJURY, FATIGUE & SUSPENSIONS
Short Injury Frequency: Normal (OOTP Classic)
Long Injury Frequency: Low
Delayed Injury Diagnosis: Never
Position Player Fatigue: Average
Suspension Frequency: Normal
PLAYER PERSONALITY SETTINGS
Use Player Personality Ratings: Enabled
Show & use Player Morale System: Disabled
Show & use Team Chemistry System: Disabled
PLAYER DEVELOPMENT SETTINGS
Batter Aging Speed: 1.100
Batter Dev. Speed: 1.000
Pitcher Aging Speed: 1.200
Pitcher Dev. Speed: 1.000
Talent Change Randomness: 100
Player Development: Enabled
Development for draft-eligible players: Enabled
LEAGUE RULES
Designated Hitter: Not a chance
ROSTER RULES
Active Roster Size: 25 Players
Reserve Roster Size: 15 Players
Expanded Roster Size: 40 Players
Roster Expansion Date: September 1
Post-Season Roster Rules: Disabled
Spring Training Roster Size: 40 Players
Injured List Length: 14 Days
TRADING RULES (See also here.)
Trading Deadline Date: July 31
Trades with other Major Leagues: Enabled
Trading of Recently Drafted Players: Immediate
10/5 Rule: Disabled
Allow trading of injured ( > 7 days) players:
Enabled
Allow draft pick trading: Enabled
AMATEUR DRAFT SETTINGS (See also here.)
Amateur Draft Date: November 1
Amateur Draft Number of Rounds: 5
Generate Players for X Rounds: 7
Amateur Draft Pool Reveal Date: 60 days prior to
draft
Enable Advanced Draftee Signing (Signing Bonus
Negotiations): Disabled
FINANCIAL SETTINGS
Note: The numbers shown below
will change from year to year, as the game
attempts to match historical trends. (See
also here.)
Average Team Revenue: $937,200
Approx. Revenue Range: $634k–$1.7m
Average Budget: $900,500
Average Player Payroll: $387,700
Average Team Expenses (excl. Players): $71,200
Average Profit: $478,300
ATTENDANCE SETTINGS
Attendance Baseline per game: 9697
Ticket Price Baseline: $1.38
Teams may change ticket price: Disabled
Visiting team’s gate share (%): 20
FINANCIAL & FREE AGENCY SETTINGS
Enable Reserve-Clause Era Rules: Enabled (See
also here.)
Remaining Salary owed if Player is cut: None
Multi-year Contracts given: None
Guaranteed Contracts given: None
Minimum Days of Service for 1 Service Year: 76
TEAM REVENUE SETTINGS
National Media Contract Baseline: $650
National Media Contract fixed?: Yes, same contract
for every team
Local Media Contract Baseline: $420
Merchandising Revenue Baseline: $210
Team Owner controls Budget?: Yes, owner decides
over budget
Revenue Sharing: No revenue sharing
Cash Maximum: $26,400
TEAM EXPENSES & SALARY SETTINGS
Player Dev. Budget Baseline: $45,000
Contract Years Maximum: 1 year
Contract Extensions: Prohibited
Team Salary Cap: No Cap
ALL-STAR GAME SETTINGS
Hold All-Star Game: Enabled (see here)
All-Star Game decides home field for final
playoff: Hell no
PLAYOFF SETTINGS
Break Ties with tiebreaker games: Enabled
Play-Off Mode: No Wildcards, only Division Winners
qualify
Name of Round 1: League Championship Series
Abbr. of Round 1: LCS
Best Of in Round 1: Best of Seven
Name of Round 2: World Series
Abbr. of Round 1: WS
Best Of in Round 2: Best of Seven
Stagger series start dates between Sub Leagues:
No, same series start date
Fixed series start dates: No, base on previous
series lengths
Further Details
Al Borie is the Commissioner and
co-founder of the league.
For now, we’re using the reserve clause rules
from the pre-free agency era, since we started in
the 1940s and that’s what they did back then. I’m
not wedded to a strict duplication of baseball
history, so we may institute modern-style free
agency earlier than they did in real life, but we
probably won’t do it before the mid-to-late
1960’s.
We’re currently using the default settings, which
we may discover are inadequate for our purposes.
If so, expect the settings to change, possibly a
lot. I don’t have a lot of experience as
Commissioner of leagues with financials enabled.
This is going to be a learning process for me.
Market size is determined by real life.
Teams in smaller cities will have less money to
play with than teams in larger cities. It’s a
fact of life in real baseball, and it will be
the same here. I am open to reducing the
large-market teams’ advantages to some degree by
instituting measures such as luxury taxes.
None of the teams will be playing in really
small markets; as in real life, major league
teams play in major cities. But as an added
slice of realism, there is a difference between
playing in a city of 1 million people and
playing in a city of 8 million people.
We’ve discovered that Market Size is fairly
irrelevant with our current settings. That will
change when we install modern free agency. I’m not
sure yet what I’m going to do about Market Size
when that occurs, I need to some more research to
see how things will play out in OOTP.
GMs may design their own parks if they’re
into that. Here are the allowable parameters:
- Overall AVG: max 1.050, min .950; no more than
.030 difference between LHB and RHB
- 2B: max 1.100, min .900
- 3B: max 1.200, min .800
- Overall HR: max 1.300, min .700; no more than
.300 difference between LHB and RHB
I’ve done a lot of research on real-life park
factors, and although the data is sometimes
inconsistent from one source to another, I believe
I have an understanding of what kind of park
factors are realistic both historically and
currently. OOTP allows you to input values that
are WAY beyond what is realistic, and that’s okay
for some leagues, but in this one we’ll stay well
within the boundaries that can be found in real
professional ballparks.
We may not need rules for how often GMs
can change their parks. The Commissioner will
probably grow weary of GMs who want to tweak their
parks every year, but as long as nobody’s doing
that, I don’t think I’ll need to legislate it.
Hall of Fame: We have a very informal
“Hall of Fame Committee”. Basically, whenever it’s
time to select new Hall of Famers, everyone in the
league who wants to be on the committee gets to be
on the committee; we have a discussion about the
candidates and about the process if necessary, and
then we vote. If the committee is just three
people one year, it’s three people. If it’s all
twenty the next, it’s all twenty.
All-Star Game: We play a mid-season
All-Star Game (NBL All-Stars vs ABL All-Stars).
Beginning with the 1957 season we have turned the
All-Star Game voting over to the A.I.
End-of-season awards (Most Valuable Player,
etc.): Beginning with the 1959 season GMs
may vote for all postseason awards (prior to that
GMs were limited to voting in their own leagues
only).
Voting is not mandatory. People who want to vote
can, and those who aren’t that interested need not
bother. A deadline will be set and whatever votes
are received by that time determine the results.
Then we move on.
GM duties
I expect GMs to pay attention to their teams
during the season. It’s not absolutely necessary
to export after every sim, but if three or four
sims go by with no activity from a GM I start to
wonder if something has happened to him. To avoid
being asked if you’re still alive I recommend
making a team export after each sim, or at least
every other sim, even if you’re not making any
changes to your team. It only takes a few minutes.
If you’re going to be unable to export for an
extended period drop me an e-mail or a PM in
Slack. I know real life takes priority over a
game. But communication is key; taking a few
seconds to let me know you're going to be away
tells me you’re still with us, whereas no activity
and no communication for an extended period tells
me it’s time to start looking for your
replacement.
See also here.
Roster limits:
|
Active
Roster |
Reserve Roster |
Spring Training |
40 |
15 |
Opening Day–August 31 |
25 |
15 |
September 1–End of Regular
Season |
40 |
15 |
Postseason–start of Draft |
25 |
15 |
End of draft–Spring Training |
25 |
20 |
The OOTP game calendar will not advance when any team is in violation of roster limits. That means if you sign a free agent in the middle of the sim and that signing puts you over the roster limit, the sim will stop, and it can only continue after the violation has been resolved.
For this reason, there is a process when offering free agent contracts during the season:
- After offering a contract to a free agent or free agents, inform the Commissioner in a PM that you have done so (unless that signing would not put you over the roster limit; in that case it is unnecessary to inform me).
- Do NOT identify which free agent(s) you have offered a contract to (remember, I’m a GM in this league as well; you don’t want to tip off your strategy to me).
- DO inform me which player or players you want me to release if the free agent(s) sign with you.
- If you do not do this, and the signing puts you over the roster limit, I will release the newly-signed player(s) so the sim can continue.
Players on the IL do not count against the roster
limits. However, you may not use the IL to “hide”
players. Once a player is healthy, you must
take him off the IL and assign him to either your
Active Roster or your Reserve Roster, or release
him.
The process for making a trade is as follows:
- After agreeing to the trade, one of the trade
participants must post the details of the trade
in the #confirmed_trades channel in Slack.
- The other must confirm it.
- Both GMs must inform the Commissioner (in a PM
or in the #confirmed_trades channel) what level (Active or Reserve Roster)
and what role (rotation, starting lineup, etc.)
to assign their new player(s), and to make sure
they export with space for the new players.
Trades are processed before each sim.
Traded players are available to to their new
teams right away, but I don’t want to have to
guess what you want me to do with them, or who
you want me to release or send down if you
haven’t made room for the new players. You need
to tell me, right after making the trade.
Draft picks may be traded, but only draft picks
for the current draft (if the trade is
made during the draft), or for the very next
draft (if the trade is made at any other time).
GMs may adjust the size of their rotations
throughout the season to account for doubleheaders
and days off, but:
- GMs must always attempt to give
pitchers at least three days of rest between
starts. (Sometimes OOTP goes off the rails and
starts a pitcher on short rest even though the
GM did not instruct it to do so. In most cases
it’s very easy to determine whether this was an
OOTP glitch or if the GM intended to circumvent
the rules.)
- A four-man rotation is permissible during
certain stretches of the season (especially in
April and most of May, and usually in late
September), but during much of the season
doubleheaders are common, and at those times
teams will generally need to switch to at
least a five-man rotation and sometimes
even a six-man rotation for brief stretches. The
size of the rotation is not really the issue;
the issue is the number of days off each pitcher
gets between starts. It should never be
less than three, unless it is clear that OOTP is
messing up.
- If you tend to miss a lot of exports during
the season, you should probably set your
rotation to a six-man, Always Start Highest
Rested and leave it. Not exporting is not an
acceptable excuse for breaking the
three-days-off rule.
See also here.
Before a GM commits to this league, it’s best
that he’s aware that I prefer as realistic a
simulation as OOTP is able to deliver. Thanks to
its many variable options, OOTP can be pushed and
prodded into producing a highly realistic
simulation of real baseball, and in this
league, we will always seek realistic results,
unless there is a compelling reason not to (and
it’s got to be a very compelling reason).
I have found that when I advocate for things to
be “realistic”, sometimes people think I mean
“exactly like real life”. This is a fictional
league; fiction, by definition, is not exactly
like real life. So when I say “let’s make this
league as realistic as possible”, I’m not saying
“let’s duplicate every single aspect of Major
League Baseball down to the tiniest detail.” Say
you’re channel-surfing on TV, and on one channel
there’s a gritty police drama, and on another
there’s something with dragons and wizards and
other supernatural goings-on. They’re both
fiction, but if someone asked you which one was
“more like real life,” would you have difficulty
answering the question? When I use the word
“realistic” as it pertains to OOTP, I don’t mean exactly
like reality, I just mean something that at
least strongly resembles reality.
My concept of what is realistic may be different
than yours, and it’s okay if we don’t agree on
every single nuance. Feel free to tell me when you
think I’m wrong, and why; you may change my mind.
You’re probably not going to wholeheartedly agree
with every decision I make, but as long as you’re
on board with my “realism first” dictum, you
should fit in well. If you’re not, it may be best
for you to find a different league. There are
oodles of OOTP leagues out there; it’s a waste of
time and energy to attempt to conform a league to
each individual member’s tastes. This league is
either for you, or it’s not.
Like any other game, OOTP has flaws, and GMs that
are aware of some of the cracks in the system can
exploit them. Some actions that would not work
well, or at all, in real baseball might work quite
well in OOTP. Intentionally exploiting a flaw
in the game that allows a GM an advantage that
doesn’t exist in real life will be considered
cheating in this league. We may not have a
specific rule about every potential exploit, but
the “spirit of our rules” should make it clear
what’s cool and what isn’t: if you’re doing
something that only works in the game and not in
real baseball, it ain’t cool. That being said, I’m
not looking to axe anybody after one minor
infraction; I am aware of the potential for some
of these “cheats” to occur innocently or otherwise
without malicious intent.
I don’t like dictating strategic/managerial
options to GMs; I would much prefer a scenario in
which the game were designed in such a way that
nothing a GM could do could cause the game to
simulate baseball unrealistically. Unfortunately,
the game designers—intentionally or as the result
of oversight—have left options on the table that
allow GMs to do exactly that, willingly or
unwillingly.
It’s a computer program; sometimes computer
programs go off the rails a bit. I can’t
anticipate every OOTP issue that might come up,
but if I see something that needs to be corrected
“on the fly,” I will correct it. The program
exists to serve us, not the other way
around. I will make every effort not to make
changes in mid-season that might impact one team
more than another, but realism is the ultimate
master here, and realism may at times be served
over fairness.
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