Plan for the Next Few Days
Posted: Thu Sep 07, 2017 12:26 pm
There's some good news, some bad news, and some more good news.
First, some background on how we got here. The good news here is that I understand what went wrong and how to avoid this situation in the future. Earlier in the offseason, at the same time I was editing the league structure, I wanted to fix the offseason events schedule, which was a bit of mess. I hit 'Regenerate Schedule', and I did get a new offseason schedule, with a quirk. The game would not allow me to edit the Rule 5 Draft to put it in calendar year 2025. I didn't imagine that hitting that button would affect the prior season at all. I thought at the time that Rule 5 scheduling was the only eccentricity, so I scheduled the draft for early January and moved on. Later we found out that the player game logs and team schedules for 2025 were a big mess. By the time this other feature came to light, I no longer had a backup old enough to undo what had been done. This also affected service time.
Second, the bad news is that the game mislead GMs about service time and Rule 5 eligibility, I'll show you what I mean below. I think the best thing to do at this point is just sim through the draft , with apologies to teams at the top who may or may not be missing out on some decent players. This approach dodges a great deal of heartache.
Third, the good news is that player stats, team stats, team records, and service time are, at this time in-game (1/2/26), correct. In the long-term, we'll be alright.
Let's look at a particular player and what happened with him. Toby Ayers is a pitcher in the Reno organization. Toby was drafted out of high school, and so should be eligible for the Rule 5 draft after 4 years of professional service time. On 12/28/25 the game said he had 3 years and 192 days of professional service time, and that he was ineligible for the Rule 5 draft because he had less than 5 professional years. 3 years and 192 days of service time is four years of service time (172 days = 1 yr). Five professional years isn't even the rule regarding draft eligibility. It's three years for players out of college, and four years for players out of high school. Something was awry. When we crossed over into 2026, the game changed the service time to 4 years and correctly applied the eligibility rule, belatedly, making Ayers eligible for the draft. How much service time should Ayers have on 1/2/26? Four years.
A GM looking at his roster overview to figure out what to do with his secondary roster would not have noticed what was going wrong with some prospects.
Later today I'll put up a new league file for 1/4/26, simming through the the Rule 5 draft. I won't be using any team exports from the 1/2/26 league file for this mini, two day sim. Teams should export from this update. Deadline for exports will be 10 a.m. Eastern on Saturday. I'll process those exports Saturday morning and sim though 1/11/26. The league file will go up so that GMs can see the state of the league heading into the Winter Meetings, I'll continue to sim during the Winter Meetings, putting up a league file Saturday night.
Again, exports will be due by 10 a.m. Eastern on Saturday.
First, some background on how we got here. The good news here is that I understand what went wrong and how to avoid this situation in the future. Earlier in the offseason, at the same time I was editing the league structure, I wanted to fix the offseason events schedule, which was a bit of mess. I hit 'Regenerate Schedule', and I did get a new offseason schedule, with a quirk. The game would not allow me to edit the Rule 5 Draft to put it in calendar year 2025. I didn't imagine that hitting that button would affect the prior season at all. I thought at the time that Rule 5 scheduling was the only eccentricity, so I scheduled the draft for early January and moved on. Later we found out that the player game logs and team schedules for 2025 were a big mess. By the time this other feature came to light, I no longer had a backup old enough to undo what had been done. This also affected service time.
Second, the bad news is that the game mislead GMs about service time and Rule 5 eligibility, I'll show you what I mean below. I think the best thing to do at this point is just sim through the draft , with apologies to teams at the top who may or may not be missing out on some decent players. This approach dodges a great deal of heartache.
Third, the good news is that player stats, team stats, team records, and service time are, at this time in-game (1/2/26), correct. In the long-term, we'll be alright.
Let's look at a particular player and what happened with him. Toby Ayers is a pitcher in the Reno organization. Toby was drafted out of high school, and so should be eligible for the Rule 5 draft after 4 years of professional service time. On 12/28/25 the game said he had 3 years and 192 days of professional service time, and that he was ineligible for the Rule 5 draft because he had less than 5 professional years. 3 years and 192 days of service time is four years of service time (172 days = 1 yr). Five professional years isn't even the rule regarding draft eligibility. It's three years for players out of college, and four years for players out of high school. Something was awry. When we crossed over into 2026, the game changed the service time to 4 years and correctly applied the eligibility rule, belatedly, making Ayers eligible for the draft. How much service time should Ayers have on 1/2/26? Four years.
A GM looking at his roster overview to figure out what to do with his secondary roster would not have noticed what was going wrong with some prospects.
Later today I'll put up a new league file for 1/4/26, simming through the the Rule 5 draft. I won't be using any team exports from the 1/2/26 league file for this mini, two day sim. Teams should export from this update. Deadline for exports will be 10 a.m. Eastern on Saturday. I'll process those exports Saturday morning and sim though 1/11/26. The league file will go up so that GMs can see the state of the league heading into the Winter Meetings, I'll continue to sim during the Winter Meetings, putting up a league file Saturday night.
Again, exports will be due by 10 a.m. Eastern on Saturday.
