The Planetary Extreme Baseball Alliance

Alleghenies wrote:Ipicked the wrong weekend to get migraines. While I am cutting EVERY guy that was drafted and it won't really hurt my team, we need to do something about statslab so the picks aren't so bad. It is ridiculous how bad the picks are. A team like Reno or Yuma (not picking on you guys) who are rebuilding this would destroy their rebuilding.

That's why I recommended NOT drafting via Statslab ratings. Yuma's pick was pretty widely agreed as being one of, if not, the best player in the draft. It was for sure a weak draft class and it definitely wasn't deep, but there isn't really anything you can do about that. I think the picks this year made a lot more sense than last year with the whole list issue.

I think a lot of the issue with the poor players is that the number of teams was lowered over time. Right now, there are top-tier players from the old days that are superstar caliber and there are a few of them. But with the smaller league, not as many "good" players are generated and very rarely do you find one that will be anything close to the current superstars. But once the current stars retire and the players balance out a bit more, the generated prospects should also improve. Plus the system is designed to have good and bad draft classes.

Alleghenies wrote:Ipicked the wrong weekend to get migraines. While I am cutting EVERY guy that was drafted and it won't really hurt my team, we need to do something about statslab so the picks aren't so bad. It is ridiculous how bad the picks are. A team like Reno or Yuma (not picking on you guys) who are rebuilding this would destroy their rebuilding.

Not to pick on Greg - because, I'm not, but this is the sort of thing that I've been saying about the compensation rules - someone can not be happy and just pass on a years class and gather up... 5... 6... 7 extra picks the next year; I had 2 picks each in the first three rounds (thank you WV) - I could let them all walk unsigned and go into next year with three picks each round - or trade my existing picks, leverage them for talent and still have a pair of picks each round. What if everyone just let their picks go? We'd have a 60 pick first round??

It's one thing to cut them after they've been signed (no compensation), but Teams should be 'forced' to at least make a slot offer - or something at least 'competitive', to a player - otherwise it just feels like gaming the system. If you've made a reasonable attempt to sign a player and they walk, then so be it. None of this $1 offer mentioned upstream... As Dylan points out, the possibility that the smaller league is generating fewer good players just makes the excessive compensation picks unfair to the folks at the bottom of each round.

As for StatsLab - if you make your list soley based on the StatsLab ratings, after ample experience and warnings, then you get what you get. We all should be creating a list, just in case, to cover the early rounds - cover your rear incase something comes up - even if it's only for a pair of rounds - and the way the draft went, you'd almost certainly end up with multiple guys in your top 25 - I know we did. If you do that, then there shouldn't be a problem. Sure, you may end up with a bunch of catchers or MR, but that's just the way the ball bounces on your list, and not a fault of the 'system'

I do not believe teams should be bailed out by being unprepared. Everyone here has been through the draft thing multiple times - we all know the drill.

I would agree with toning down comp picks. It's supposed to help teams who get screwed over by greedy draftees, not allow teams to collect draft picks like baseball cards. Obviously, the comp picks this year were from the issues last year, but still.

The league is just very top heavy right now, but that will work itself out as the players I mentioned retire. And glancing through the full college/HS player list, there is some decent talent on the way up.

I disagree on the have to offer slot, as in MLB a bunch of 1st rounders and 2nd rounders are signed for under slot.

I was pleased with the draft. It didn't seem to be particularly weak, to me. I landed 5 of my top ten choices and another 3 from my top twenty, so I was fortunate. But I ignored StatsLab and my scout, both of whom have proven to be unreliable in the past, and used OSA ratings and my own intution to make selections. We'll see how that works out in a year or three!

Happy with my first few rounds of draft picks.


Me actually trying to sign my low-round picks at the moment
Not impressed...

Sandgnats wrote:

Leones wrote:Well that's annoying... after updating the league file and starting work on signing draftees the list show the last two guys are impossible to sign. Which is weird becuase every year I deliberately weed those impossible to sign guys out of my lists. Either I missed these two or something got out of snc with the game. Nonetheless I hope they enjoy mulling over the $1 signing bonus offers. Pretty sure those guys won't be with the club anytime soon. :)

I also tendered a couple $1 offers too Patrick!

I didn't pick any "Impossible" guys, but I did record their pre-draft monetary demands, and many of them differ a great deal from what they are demanding now, post-draft; for instance, my supplemental pick Pat Philips claimed to want $4.6M initially, but now he has fallen in line with the slot amount, quiet as a lamb

Others have demanded more than they wanted beforehand as well. I basically pay very little attention to their pre-draft demands for this reason.

Alleghenies wrote:I disagree on the have to offer slot, as in MLB a bunch of 1st rounders and 2nd rounders are signed for under slot.

Yeah, in theory, in order to be fair, the rule would have to be an offer of slot unless the draftee demands less (of which several of mine are in this draft, for instance). In practice, however, that's not really workable because it would be far too much work for the commish to police.

For this and a variety of other reasons, I continue to bang the drum for running the first x rounds (I'd say 3, but the number is less important than the concept, heck, even the first round only would be good) of the draft via the forums in the week leading up to the draft.

Take a week of sim time off after the final pre-draft sim and run the first x rounds on the forum. It would generate a lot of chatter on the forum and would give owners more than just a very short window of time to make their most important pick(s).

Let's be honest, the real concern about supplemental picks is that we get a first round that is 50ish picks rather than the 26 to 30 that it should be, not anything having to do with the second and third round. To me, having (at least) a first round on the forum combined with the Common Sense Accord in our constitution would take care of any temptation to game the system. If someone wants to keep rolling forward second and third round picks, I think they are just hurting themselves by costing themselves a year of player development in the hopes of getting marginally better players down the road. [shrug] Anyway, that's my two cents, and that's in no way a criticism of all the hard work that the commish has done in improving the draft process.

Anyway, HOW 'BOUT THEM LONGSHOREMEN?!? A 6-1 week moves us into a tie for the second wild card, a mere three games back of the Great Lakes-leading Sandgnats. San Juan Winter League refugee Jose Santos has been electric as an early May signee, at least from a peripherals perspective, with a 1/23 BB/K rate in 32 innings. He's 1-2 with a 3.38 ERA and a 2.45 FIP. His signing and the surprising emergence of the enigmatic Bill Martin in the #4 spot in the rotation (5-3, 2.69 ERA, 2.68 FIP, 15 BB, 57 K) means that we get to see what two-time medical miracle Mark Ray has left in the tank in a bullpen role. When we drafted him as the third player taken overall in the 2024 draft, he was recovering from a torn rotator cuff, and he made all of 7 PEBA starts last season before tearing his UCL. My scout still thinks he's a "decent starter", but Ray's expectations is to be in the bullpen. How he recovers (and how long before he has some other horrible injury that will cost him a season or more of time - I'm betting on compartment syndrome or a blown-out knee) will be an interesting story line this season.

I like your idea of a slow/forum start to the draft. It would definitley result in increased interest in hte draft and some great forum chatter. Happy with the status quo but this would be a positive change.

Leones wrote:I like your idea of a slow/forum start to the draft. It would definitley result in increased interest in hte draft and some great forum chatter. Happy with the status quo but this would be a positive change.

Even offering a slot offer would not have come close for some impossible demands but I see what you mean James.

I like that Idea as well. It was very hard to do my draft from my cell phone as we don't get very much notice of the schedule until the season starts.

July 9th 2018... July 9th 2027...

I've been here a long time, and even though the live draft makes us very unique I believe it has run it's course. We all have lives and real commitments.

question ... how do we (PEBA) execute the waiver trades of August??? Is it a setting in game? Is it a manual process?

Not that anyone cares, but if we go to a forum draft, WV GM will be leaving.

The live draft is planned at the very start of the season and in my opinion, gives people plenty of time to plan for it. It's 6 hours spread out over 2 days across 1 weekend and I think it does a great job of wrapping the draft up quickly. With the list issues of last season now fixed, creating a list is super simple if you cannot attend the draft live. IT's definitely one of the unique experiences that this league has to offer.

Forum drafts are an absolute nightmare, especially in a league like this where GM's may not be online that much, even if it's only for a few rounds. I'm talking 1 round lasting a week, waiting for 1 person to pick all day, scout ratings changing mid draft because it's taking so long etc.


I think there are more important things that need to be fixed like recruiting & Statslab updates (Dan issue), things that are needed to keep the league alive.