How to Draft in Launch Leagues:

NOTE: Most of the following information will be displayed in BULLETINS (Available from your League Page). The Bulletins will be released in a timely fashion as your Launch League progresses through the Draft schedule.

Park Draft

Your first step will be to draft a ballpark in the Park Draft. You may want to start submitting draft lists before the actual draft order is set. That’s a good idea! The Park Draft Order usually gets set soon after the league is full. The Player Draft order is set soon after the Park Draft is run.

The park you choose will be your home park. PB uses an average of the last three years park effects for a given park as an index for the effect the park has on various statistical results. For a complete list of the parks and their relative effects, go to DRAFTS from your League page and select PARK INDICES.

To Draft your ballpark, follow the directions below:

  1. Go to your ORG page (league page) and select DRAFTS to view the "Park Draft Order/Results" for the Park Draft. Once you have found out where you stand in the random draft order, select DRAFTS again and now choose "Edit your Park Draft List" in order to make your list. You will also observe a section for the FORMATION DRAFT, which will begin on the first SUNDAY after the opening of a Launch League. After submitting a list for the Park draft, you may go into "EDIT your Formation Draft List" and start on that as well.
  2. Once you have put together a draft list by selecting parks from the left side of the screen and moving them to your list on the right side (click on "ADD"), always submit the list to save it to our HOST COMPUTER. You may submit as many lists as you wish, as only the last list submitted will be used in the draft. This also applies to the player draft. ALWAYS submit any changes to the list in order to SAVE them.
  3. After the draft is held on Friday (At 10 AM CT the draft will be run and the results will be available shortly thereafter), you may view the results in "Draft Order/Results" in DRAFTS.
  4. A word to the wise…Don’t select Coors Field unless you want to see A LOT of offense. Remember that these are 20 team leagues and that the concentration of offensive talent at Coors will be considerably greater than what we are used to in the NL! Check the park effects numbers used in PUREBASEBALL by selecting "List of Park Indices", located on the DRAFTS page.

Player Draft:

DRAFT ORDER IS SET. READ and PRINT this announcement!

The above announcement appears on your Org page sometime after the Park Draft is held. As mentioned before, you need not wait until the order is set to work on your player draft selections. Follow the directions below to draft players: 

Go to DRAFTS and select "Draft Order/Results" in the Formation Draft box. This is also the page where you will be viewing draft results once the draft starts.

DRAFT TIPS: Remember that you are drafting a Launch League team! The previous season’s statistics are used so do not draft for potential, but rather according to the last season’s stats only!

While putting together your team, you should be aware that you have to field a team capable of playing a full 162 schedule even though we are only playing 50. The usage limits will be set as if the 50 games were 162. Be sure to read the USAGE section of the GAME INFO before getting too far into the draft. RULES OF THUMB: You will need 600-700 plate appearances per position and 1400-1500 innings of pitching to get through a season. Those are, of course statistics compiled by the players in the previous MLB season

DRAFT SCHEDULE: A launch league draft takes 13 days to choose 35 players. Each day the draft is run in the morning and you can start working on the next day’s list. The first list is due the first SUNDAY after the league fills. The first day of the draft comprises only one round (pick). The next 11 days will comprise 3 rounds (picks), and the last day comprises 4 rounds (picks).

The pace of the draft will seem slow to some, but it’s designed to give even the busiest person a chance at drafting his best team. From day to day, you can make decisions on where your team is going in the draft.

PB VALUE: You will notice that players are ranked by PB value in the various draft lists (By position). PB value encompasses hitting, pitching and defensive value for all players. Keep in mind that the PB value is cumulative so that a player with equal value but more plate appearances will score higher than one with less plate appearances. The same is true for pitchers relative to the innings they played. SAVES percentage is accounted for in a pitcher’s CLUTCH RATING, but they are not nearly as important in SIM-BALL as in ROTO! The best relievers are those who can pitch a lot and can get hitters OUT!

STATISTICS: When doing your draft list, you can view partial stats for any player by clicking on his name (all players are hyper-linked). The Stats will draw on the bottom frame. ODR refers to overall defensive rating. OPS/RH and OPS/LH refer to OPS (sum of slugging and on base percentage) against LH and RH pitchers if the player is a batter and against LH and RH batters if the player is a pitcher. All statistical terms used in PUREBASEBALL are defined in the STAT GLOSSARY in GAME INFO.

CONDITIONAL DROPS: Us e of conditional drops becomes crucial on DAY two of the draft when we begin to draft 3 players per day. In order to avoid getting a particular player if you get another, use of conditional drops is essential. Once you have constructed your list, simply click on DROPS after a player you want to make drops for. After you have selected DROPS, your list will appear on the left side of a web page and you can ADD any player on your list to a DROP list for that player you are making drops for.

Whenever you draft a player on a particular day, that players "drops" will not be drafted later in that day’s rounds.

NOTE: If you draft a player on a particular day, that player’s drops will no longer be available to the draft program on subsequent days.

NO LIST: If your list runs out, the ROBOT will pick players for you. He will choose the highest PB rated player at a position you have not drafted. Teams who do not submit draft lists will be drafted by the ROBOT as well.

LAST SUBMITTED LIST: The last draft list submitted to the HOST will be the one used on any given day of the draft. You may edit a submitted draft list by simply going to DRAFTS and bringing it up again. Add or subtract players and SUBMIT again and the new list will replace the old one on our system (HOST).

LONG TERM injuries (various types of injuries explained in Game Info) are turned off for Launch Leagues.

How to Draft Faster

Some tips on a speedier draft experience:

  1. Use the position by position approach to gather names from the master list. Don’t draft from INF, OF, or P unless you have time to burn. The smaller groups will access much faster. We are working on splitting these groups up further to speed things up.
  2. Occasionally submit your list so that you won’t lose your work in case of a power outage or other calamity.
  3. Do Conditional Drops LAST. Once you have built a list of names, it’s easier to decide how to use the conditional drops option.
  4. Unless you are putting in names for more than one day, keep guys off your list you have no intention of drafting THAT day. This makes your work easier when you reorder and speeds up the process. BTW: The box to the right of the player on your draft list is the REORDER box. Simply move the cursor to the box and TYPE in the number you want the player to be on your list. Then click on REORDER below the list and watch the list magically change.
  5. You do not have to draft nearly as many players in the later days of the draft to get through three rounds. You will find that as the draft advances, you will be often nab three players out of the first 10-15 names on your list. Every team starts to have divergent needs as the rounds go by.
  6. Clear the CACHE on your browser! Customer service professionals working for your Internet Provider are a good source of information about how to do maintenance on your browser to keep your cache clear. Your SETTINGS should be refreshing pages every time you go to them, your HISTORY should be cleared often, and your TEMPORARY INTERNET files should be deleted periodically. The more you surf, the more often this maintenance should be done. It is also helpful to occasionally CLOSE your browser and start a new session.

Use last rounds of Draft to bolster depth.

The last rounds of the draft should be used to get that third catcher, extra starter, more outfield depth etc. Remember that your 50 game season usage limits are prorated from a 162 game season. Therefore if player A has 531 plate appearances in 1997, he will be allowed 531 times 50, that total divided by 162 and the result multiplied by 1.1 (batters are allowed 110% of Plate appearances in PB)= 180 plate appearances in the 50 game season. This total will be tracked by the PAuse number in your status page (Please read more about the status page in USAGE section of GAME INFO).

Actual Batters PA multiplied by 50/162 times 1.1

Actual Pitchers INNINGS multiplied by 50/162 times 1.15

Actual Stolen Base attempts multiplied by 50/162 times 1.25

Players marked innocuous (Click on name in draft and look for innocuous in red in first line of stats) are unlimited as to their plate appearances and pitchers are unlimited as to their innings pitched. These players are not very effective but can be useful on your 35-man roster if you need plate appearances or innings.