Make PB More Successful – Innovative Suggestions

Much of the discussion on this board is about un-managed teams, cost to charge founders for additional teams over three or four, contraction, etc. These suggestions are band aids and will not bring in more managers. Let’s face it, innovation is required.

I would like to propose several ways that PB would be revolutionized and therefore might attract managers who play Sims games in other venues. I will list a few below ( and certainly encourage criticism and new suggestions) but preface that by stating that nothing will get new managers without proper advertising and that the innovations I propose, for the most part, will require more effort from John Meredith who seems to be the PB program guru. All my suggestions may be moot if John (or someone Mike and John feel comfortable toying with the program) cannot devote the time. I know several programmers who would love to get involved – as may some of you – and some would do it for no money. If Mike and John are not comfortable with sharing the program with an outsider then again forget upgrades. But, reasonable men who love their enterprise can figure out ways to protect it.

Some innovations:

1. Incorporating five future prospects from Triple and Double A ball into the mix. Each team would be awarded (random pick) these players and have them placed on their farm teams as DNP players. So as to keep an even playing field the teams would not pick these players a program would assign them randomly to each team. Each player would be eligible to be traded, sent to the free agent pool to make room for waiver picks (see below), etc. In real time leagues these players would be eligible to play when their AB’s or Inn Pitched reached a certain number. This would dilute the rookie draft but not eliminate it. It would make trading much, much, much more interesting. A trade like the Red Sox just made can not be done in PB right now but with a farm team of prospects who have not made it to the majors yet the possibilities become endless and it’s more like real baseball – pure baseball.

2. Creating a waiver wire. In real baseball teams strategically try to pass players through the waiver wire for many reasons. All of those reasons are valid but there is always a risk involved when other teams are doing their homework. A system of waiver wire transactions introduced into purebaseball (at various times during the season) should keep managers more active.


3. Automated roster moves when the program (this would be a new one) detects that a team doesn’t have the personnel to complete a five game series.

4. Elimination of the 10% and 15% bonus plate appearances and innings pitched for players with subsequent increase of the rosters to 40 players. This would increase interest in the free agent draft later rounds. The cut to 27 would remain after the rookie draft. After the cut to 27, five new prospects would be added from the Triple A and Double A pool and then 8 rounds of free agent picks would occur to bring the rosters back up to 40 at the beginning of the season. If the Triple and Double A player prospect innovation were incorporated, a team may opt to keep as many of the previous year’s as they wish in the 27 player context – in fact, some of them may be highly prized rookies for that season – the luck of the draw or trading acumen. One danger here is that managers may be so inclined to keep prospects that they will not be able to field a team with enough innings or plate appearances to get through a 160 game season. That can be handled in any number of ways – these numbers (plate appearance and total innings) can be calculated and teams that don’t meet them can be penalized for each INN player required during the season. They lose a prospect randomly picked by the computer – not one of their own choosing.

Well, some of you will love di