Strat-O-Matic Baseball 365

Additional comments and suggestions are highly encouraged.

I got to admit this year's format with top teams getting a slight edge is a little odd, though better than all 36 being equal. How about the following (similar to a):

(a) top 6 get byes.
(b) next 12 put in league where 4 in play-offs go to finals. Auto-draft
(c) next 24 in two leagues where league champion goes to finals. Auto-draft

Alternatively top 6 get byes and 2 finalists in 3 leagues of 12 get in. Maybe that's better.

I like the idea of some byes...but I am not thrilled about everyone out of the top 9 having to win their league to get into the finals. So I fiddled with it until I liked it.

The other thing we should consider is that these partial drafts for the Commish are time-consuming. Probably not worth it.

Other potential rules
Random league assignments like the BS.
Hard deadlines.
BP penalties enforced at time of violation.

A similar debate is going on about the BS finals and how the final 12 is being/should be filled. I am going to say the same thing here that I have said there. I am against any situation where you "reserve" spots for teams that have a poorer record, which is what the option of putting the 7-18 into a 12 team league, followed by 2 other 24 team leagues. I understand that means all you have to do is make the playoffs to get into the finals as opposed to winning a 24, but you are also saying that only 4 teams out of the top 12 semifinalists can possibly get in, and 2 teams who are at least 18th in the standings or worse will get in. I think I put more emphasis on how teams do over the course of the 5 events and think that should count for a bit more.

I like the idea of 6 teams getting byes, followed by 3 12-team leagues where each of the two finalists get in.

I also would endorse random league assignments, hard deadlines, and enforcing BP violations at the time they happen. I think we also need to clarify if the bp violation results in 25 pointes off that league or off your final total.

I would suggest making it so all leagues start on a monday, and if you know you will be unable to load on a certain date, requesting to be put into 1 or 2 "late" leagues that are made available only to those who request them in advance so people can accommodate known work issues or travel plans. They would then be assigned to those leagues and have to go in them. That way fillers can be identified beforehand.

BS has a dedicated and hard working Commissioner Kennesaw Mountain Moose. The ATG elites are pretty hard core too.
The PC championship (and J-Pav has been involved longer than I have) has been much more casual in both Commissioner and participant. The changes since I started
1) eliminate the bonus point system and instead give a point for every win in postseason. (This is one reason points in standings are generally closer in PC than BS)
2) Starting this year have a 3 round draft in Semis like the Finals. (Didn't run smoothly)

The point is the silence is deafening< Very few players care enough to chime in or even draft promptly.
If people just don't care it favors keeping the Top 36 split into 3 Semis with reverting to draft until the Finals.

I actually like rewarding teams that finish better with draft picks but I voted for the autodraft. The draft takes way too much time because they aren't any deadlines and people pick at their convenience. I also prefer randomize league assignments because the whole tournament is delayed because of people waiting for the first leagues to fill to get into the last 2 or 3 leagues. The tournament would have stayed on schedule if this delayed hadn't occurred in every event.

freeman wrote:I got to admit this year's format with top teams getting a slight edge is a little odd, though better than all 36 being equal. How about the following (similar to a):

(a) top 6 get byes.
(b) next 12 put in league where 4 in play-offs go to finals. Auto-draft
(c) next 24 in two leagues where league champion goes to finals. Auto-draft

Alternatively top 6 get byes and 2 finalists in 3 leagues of 12 get in. Maybe that's better.

I like the idea of some byes...but I am not thrilled about everyone out of the top 9 having to win their league to get into the finals. So I fiddled with it until I liked it.

The other thing we should consider is that these partial drafts for the Commish are time-consuming. Probably not worth it.

I think this is the best proposal I have seen. This would get my vote.

waynick wrote:I actually like rewarding teams that finish better with draft picks but I voted for the autodraft. The draft takes way too much time because they aren't any deadlines and people pick at their convenience. I also prefer randomize league assignments because the whole tournament is delayed because of people waiting for the first leagues to fill to get into the last 2 or 3 leagues. The tournament would have stayed on schedule if this delayed hadn't occurred in every event.

I don't disagree with you Waynick. We do need some sort of hard deadlines. However, what everyone seems to be missing is the autodraft wouldn't necessarily solve the problems we had this year with the 3-round drafts. That was namely, a week+ delay to even start them, due to people not being around. I think once the drafts actually started, they were completed in a relatively reasonable amount of time.

But, having an autodraft doesn't solve this issue because those who we away for a week or more at the beginning wouldn't have had their team ready for an autodraft either, right?

I think we should just leave it the way we had it this year, but impose some time limits as others have suggested.

3 player draft done at set time the day after the 5 leagues end for semis and a the day after the semis ends for the Championship.

20 minutes to make your pick (20 minutes X 36 picks = 12 hour max)

All missed picks made at the end of the 3 player draft.

I knew before I voted that I would probably see choices A and C splitting each other and allowing B to prevail. I don't think this is a valid poll. It even appears to preclude an option other than B getting the most votes. I would vote for both options A and C before B.

What we have this year is just not as bad as some of you are making it out to be. The slight advantages of finishing well in the first five rounds should absolutely continue, both in draft picks, whether 3 or more, and in seeding. Those are well-earned.

The math of it is that if you polled the 150 or so likely participants you're probably always going to have more people voting for straight autodrafts, because more people would otherwise be disadvantaged by the top half of the semifinal draw getting rewarded. I don't know about the rest of you, but if I work my butt off trying to be in the top tier, I want it to count for an edge in a dicey single round semifinal and final and if others do better than me, then so be it. I'd want them to have that reward as well.

There's some pretty fuzzy math and statistical claims on these threads about the lack of difference between teams that make the semis. The differences are small but they are not insignificant.

We need a better more useful poll than this one. We do NOT want to degenerate back into straight autodrafting the semis and finals.