There have been talks of making this similar to the NHL HUT league where we use Diamond Dynasty and schedule games whenever we want against whoever we want. While I still think this is the easiest method and makes a lot of sense for the first season, I wanted to provide another two ideas for the people who aren't satisfied with this. A lot of people want a Online Franchise mode league. While that's fun to do with your friends, it doesn't support more than 30 players. The spirit of this website is to support a large number of players in a competitive environment. This idea is a little crazy for season 1, so just keep that in mind. Please let me know what you think and feel free to add and expand on what I have here. My first idea is to have this Online Versus based. Most of you probably think I'm high, but hear me out: Players are matched up against each other in a schedule for X number of games. Let's just use 29 to make it easy. You can pick whatever team you'd like, however you can only use each team once (multiply that by however many cycles of games you're playing... so each team twice for 58 games) Home team gets the first pick of each team, you can't choose the same team – this would be done on the site in the same way you set line ups for NHL. Now there would need to be a structure and a hierarchy to organize players. Every level would still use MLB teams and follow the same format MLB – 30 Best players in the league AAA – Next best 30 AA – Next best 30 Etc. Etc. you get the point. The nice thing about baseball is that there's no lack of levels and external leagues to support players. High A, Low A, Short Season Rookie, Rookie, all of the independent leagues (Can AM, Atlantic, American Assoc., Frontier etc.) You could even split it up in to the actual league names (eg AAA consists of International League and Pacific Coast League) if you wanted to keep in AAA through Rookie. It all depends on how many players you get. You may only need MLB–AA for the first season. The part I haven't got to yet is playoff team selection. The only issue I possibly foresee with this is on the website side of things. When two teams who aren't matched up against each other use the same team, could stats be taken properly? Let's say I'm using the Blue Jays vs @EvO and someone else takes the Blue Jays against someone else. Would that cause an issue? That could be solved if you randomly assigned teams for each game, but I don't think that involves as much strategy. You'd also have players complaining that they got some bad team against a good player. Player Movement So obviously there has to be a way to move players up and down from the MLB. It would probably have to happen after the season was over. It would be nice if @Tris10 could rig something up that automatically determines a performance model based on stats like in NHL, however worst comes to worst it can be the bottom 15 (or 10 or 5 or w/e) players that get sent down and replaced by the best players in AAA. The other option is to have a commissioner or committee who does not play in the league or have any ties to players to fairly determine what players get sent down or called up. That way maybe one season only 5 players get sent down, but the next maybe 10 get sent down because of performance. The biggest issue would be determining the hierarchy of players in the first Season. There would have to be a play in of some sort. After that you'd have to start at the bottom. If we had a committee for each level or one that over saw all levels it would be possible for people to jump 2 levels or w.e. Policies – Lagouts A quick lagout policy isn't too difficult – it's nice since there's no time limit in baseball, so all you'd have to do is restart the game and play the remaining outs. You wouldn't be able to use any pitchers or batters that had already been burned. Play remaining outs, no need to get to the exact point in the game you were at. Can't use a pitcher or hitter that has already been removed from the game. Person who lags out MUST intentionally walk the first batter they face or intentionally strike out once or twice if they were hitting. (up for discussion obviously) If you lag out while pitching, you must go to a reliever once you are back in the game no matter what. If you did not lag out, you can continue to use the pitcher that was on the mound no matter how fatigued they were. This is voided if you are batting and pinch hit for the pitcher and then someone lagouts (you removed him from the game). Don't lag out if you don't want to face Kershaw for another 3 innings at full energy. Base runners must be put back on base if you lagged out while pitching. If you were the one to lag out while hitting, you don't get those runners back. You could implement things like mercy rules if you really wanted to, but they shouldn't be needed. I'm sure it wouldn't be fun getting destroyed 20–0 and still having to finish the rest of the game though. I basically just spooged ideas down on to a forum post. Let me know what you guys think.
I have never liked the "pick up where you left off" for lag outs. I think the most fair option is to replay the game. It sucks for whomever was leading but it is the most fair way to go about things. All lag outs or disconnects will be tracked. If an individual develops a pattern than league removal would follow. Just my 2 cents.
