2018 Tour

My apologies on being slow with this. The last two weeks have been consumed with family time as my 94 year old grandmother struggled through her final days and then the funeral. Managed to keep up on my keeper league drafts but this slipped my mind.

I do want to briefly touch base on any changes you might want. What does everyone think about going away with league assignments? I somewhat went away from them last year towards the end. Downside is that people can duck competition but on the plus side no one is throwing their team in early and then waiting for days for the league to fill.

Let me know if you have other ideas as well

The one thing I would like to change is how stadiums are handled for playoffs. Personally I would prefer that it either be that you cannot reuse stadiums used in the preliminary rounds OR that there is a stadiums draft for unique stadiums (but that you can reuse stadiums you used in the initial rounds).

If it is the former you can plan out your stadium use for each round including which stadiums you are saving for the playoffs if you make it-increasing the strategic decisions involved. Combining it with the unique stadium draft reduces the strategy involved and make it just sort of a crap shoot on who you get in your division and what stadiums that they have used.

Using a unique stadium draft but allowing to repeat stadiums allows people to put forth generally their best teams while still giving some advantage to those who did better in the opening round.

Really I would get rid of all stadium restrictions in the playoffs. It makes sense to me that in the opening rounds to force people to use different stadiums to show they are somewhat well rounded and can handle different style teams. But once you get to the playoffs, that should be finished. Each player should simply be able to put on the best team they can devise.

I agree with Egnaro. Let people use whatever stadiums they like in the Semis and Finals.

From the perspective of someone who has been both an administrator and a competitor:

There are a number of things that can be done to make things EASIER, both on the admin side as well as the competition side. The question that needs to be addressed then is this:

What is the Tour Championship really all about? Should we consider making things easier on everybody, or more difficult?

I thought we had reached a pretty good balance where we have been at for the past three tours. For example, unique stadium drafts for every prelim league is simply too cumbersome, even though I personally like the idea. Same for 24 team prelim leagues. Too unwieldy to fill the last league.

It will probably not be difficult to get consensus on EASIER. We can do away with any and all stadium requirements if that’s what everyone wants. Personally though, I like the idea of making things HARDER (within reason), not the other way around. I’m guessing that’s going to be a somewhat unpopular position though.

A variant perspective:

What if we just abandon preliminary leagues altogether and do the following:

On August 31st, we take the 36 highest ranking teams using the current points and tiebreakers system. Managers submit their five best $80mil DH teams from all their current teams completed by the deadline date (which may need adjusting so the last leagues fully finish) and that is the semi finals player pool.

What this does:

Admin side -

Eliminates cat herding, league assignments, ballpark monitoring, full time forum participation, standings page, etc.

Competition side -

No sign ups necessary, ease of entry, ease of participation, encourages buying lots of teams if you are particularly determined (Strat will like this), no deadline dates, no stadium restrictions, no public humiliation on the standings page, and yet winning rings and making finals are still the final arbiter of “tour worthy” teams.

Simply on August 31st (or thereabouts), post your points and provide the links to your best five teams. If you had a bad year, no need to post or admit to anything. If you did good, find out if you were Top 36 good.

The only downside is that it kinda sorta punishes people who like to play less. However, many managers who play less still play quite well, so even there I’m not so sure that’s a real downside.

This can even be a test tour alternative, as we could still do exactly this even if we run the “actual” tour like we’ve been doing in the traditional fashion. Then we could compare and contrast end results and maybe reassess.

Discuss.

I've not played the past couple years as the parameters have become more repetitive--no Unleashed leagues, no 24-team leagues, no AL or NL-only leagues. Also don't like the absence of bonus points for people who win divisions/titles. It doesn't have to be 5/10 points, but even a single point acknowledges the triumph.

I understand that the object is to simplify things for the people, so I understand if all this is undoable. But if we could add a 24 team league ($60m presuming) to one of the rounds, I'd be more interested.

tws

My vote would be to keep things as they are.

After many years of the tour being an often disorganized mess, the template J-Pav put in place has worked great these past 3 years. It's never possible to please everybody, but after many years of these discussions, I think the current system represents both consistency and an excellent compromise that has proven to work better than anything in the past. I think any changes should be minor tweaks at most...less work for Commish and less confusion for managers.

My only other suggestion would be to re-emphasize the STRICT loading deadlines as started by J-Pav, which I believe would also allow the elimination of league assignments, if desired to speed things up. If all leagues must be loaded within a strictly-enforced 1 or 2-week window, anybody who thinks he can benefit from "league shopping" is free to do so, but at the risk of missing out altogether if he waits too long for whatever he considers the "easy" league, and antsy managers can't claim to be penalized for joining the "early" leagues...anybody can join any open league within the loading window. Also much less work for Commish.

Barnstormers has successfully used this method of loading leagues ever since division randomization went into effect, and nobody seems to complain about league shopping.

I also like bonus points for making playoffs and winning championships. I doubt if it would make much difference in who makes the semis in the end, but I agree that some kind of bonus points makes things a bit more interesting, rewarding and suspenseful, so fewer managers drop out of the tournament early.

I think J-Pavs current rules are the best format in general--bonus points are playoff wins. It is very fair to everyone.

I do not like the submit your 5 best teams at all---what is the point if someone is playing many teams not always against stiffer competition.

I like the different ballpark rules--including the playoffs--It forces people to be at least a little more versatile--even with 7 different parks you can tend to find a group with similar stats if you prefer one type of park.

one unleashed league is OK, though I prefer standard leagues.

I wouldn't mind the 100M league being a no-dh league (12 more hitters would be available if you had a poor auto-draft)

Since we drop a team--maybe an option would be just go to four leagues, 80m-DH / 60M-DH / 100M-noDH / 80M-noDH, count all the games--and start the semis earlier. (half the major league games are no-DH anyway--why do we play only one no-DH team) I do think the AI is better with DH teams so I can understand the 1 no-DH league.

I think the way it is now is as close to perfect and fair as is possible.

I wouldn't change anything.

Michael.

Keep the point system as is. Playoff wins are bonus points and losing a longer series is worth more than getting swept. I also agree with the current stadium rules. The 2017 finals league is incredibly competitive.