The Planetary Extreme Baseball Alliance

Has this ever happened to you? You're struck with the desire to write a LRS article, yet you find yourself completely lacking in inspiration for a topic. It's come to my attention that this little conundrum has hit a few of our owners. Up until now, whenever something like this has occurred, owners have generally either plowed through and produced an article they're not really thrilled with or thrown their hands up in the air and ditched the idea of writing the article entirely.

LRS Article Idea Exchange (LAIE) is intended to help owners break through writer's block by connecting and collaborating with other owners. Some of our best articles have come out of collaborative processes. LAIE will make it easier for owners to suggest and receive ideas from one another. The net result should be an end to writer's block and a greater level of diversity and creativity in our articles.

There are two ways to use LAIE:

• Suggest an idea: Do you have a good idea for a LRS article? Maybe you don't currently have the time to write it yourself, or perhaps it's an idea that's best fleshed out using a different owner's voice. You can use LAIE to post your idea so that another owner can pick it up and run with it. You may either publicly post your concept or, if you prefer, simply announce that you have an idea in mind and interested owners should get in touch with you.

• Request an idea: Writer's block got you down? Turn to LAIE for help! If you're ready to write but feeling completely lost as to what to write about, post a request for an article premise. If you have a core concept in mind that needs fleshing out, post it here and let other owners have a go at building it up. Alternatively, you can simply announce that you have an idea in mind and owners interested in helping develop it should get in touch with you.

It's my hope that LAIE will lead to a more vibrant writing environment where everyone's creative voice is heard. Feel free to start using it right away!

I have a couple of ideas. They might be better for after the season but I guess they could be done now.

Most Improved Teams
Since we've taken over an already established league, the best team owners aren't necessarily indicative of the standings. Some joined wanting a challenge and others may have came later and gotten the only team available at the time. Others may have chosen the most loaded team just so they can say they are the best. I was thinking of doing some comparision that used several factors such as....

-improved winning %
-money management
-collection of prospects

How they are weighted depends on the writer I guess. But I think if someone looks into it enough they will find a few teams that are going to be a force for many years(NT?KUR?) and a few others that are taking steps backwards(hmm?). Just be careful if you write this, your liable to make a few best friends and a few worst enemies in the process because I'm sure in everyone's minds they feel they are improving their team.

AAAA PEBA Player
As a small market team I had a lot of holes and not enough money to fill them. Instead of spending 2-3 million on 1 player, I spent a little over 2 million on 6 players who were terrible at the PEBA level but successful at the AAA level with the hopes that the LRS was somewhere in the middle, closer to AAA. The article would breakdown player by player who had success and who didn't. All the while trying to find a common theme(ie power hitters hit more homeruns while average hitters continue to struggle).

Kuwana's "AAAA project" players(feel free to add your own to list)
Ángel Fabián
Nathan Clark
Jonathan Cook
Yasujiro Takata
Peter Montgomery
Lewis Keys

I doubt I'll do both articles so if someone wants to piggy back the ideas, go right ahead. If your doing the AAAA article I could give you some quotes about the players from my team. There are a couple of guys that I misused terribly and regret signing. One of which might turn ugly and become a sub story down the road.

The book "Ball Four" by Jim Bouton was the baseball book of my youth. I loved the fact that Bouton broke down the barriers between the so-called elite athlete and the fan and showed clearly that ballplayers were just human beings with the same foibles that the rest of us have. For me, it's the behind the scenes stories that fascinate me when it comes to baseball.

When I think about stories for my team, I look at the myriad of different ratings and stats that OOTP provides us and try to imagine what sort of personality quirks might be present. The Personality Ratings, the Player Popularity and the Player Morale
(The Player Model) are all great places to flesh out the personalities of your players.

Have a guy with high greed and desire for a winning team, and is popular with fans, well that sounds like prima donna material to me. If you have a guy who is clearly under performing, who knows what sort of personal problems might be contributing to his malaise?

Just thought I'd share one of my own sources of inspiration. Hope it helps.

This would be an excellent idea. Could there be a forum topic we could post inquiries/possible subjects to? I have thoughts of doing summary/evaluation type articles that could be split up by division etc. Just so 1 person isn't having to do all the work.

Akira wrote:This would be an excellent idea. Could there be a forum topic we could post inquiries/possible subjects to? I have thoughts of doing summary/evaluation type articles that could be split up by division etc. Just so 1 person isn't having to do all the work.

You can post subject inquiries and suggestions right here! That's exactly what this thread is for.

I think quite a few of the LRS owners are participating in an online league for the very first time? If so, I'd like to see an article from a GM's point of view on one's perspective of running a baseball franchise.... from stuff like handling the foreigner limit rule, financial management, draft preparation, etc. I'm sure there has been highs and lows within the season. It'd be interesting to see what those were and how a GM is handling things. Pretty much a tour of being a LRS owner in its inaugural season. I wasn't here for PEBA's initial season so I missed the hoopla surrounding that. It'd be nice to hear about the thrills and frills of the first human-operated LRS season.

Shisa wrote:The book "Ball Four" by Jim Bouton was the baseball book of my youth. I loved the fact that Bouton broke down the barriers between the so-called elite athlete and the fan and showed clearly that ballplayers were just human beings with the same foibles that the rest of us have. For me, it's the behind the scenes stories that fascinate me when it comes to baseball.

When I think about stories for my team, I look at the myriad of different ratings and stats that OOTP provides us and try to imagine what sort of personality quirks might be present. The Personality Ratings, the Player Popularity and the Player Morale
(The Player Model) are all great places to flesh out the personalities of your players.

Have a guy with high greed and desire for a winning team, and is popular with fans, well that sounds like prima donna material to me. If you have a guy who is clearly under performing, who knows what sort of personal problems might be contributing to his malaise?

Just thought I'd share one of my own sources of inspiration. Hope it helps.

I'm right there with you on this one. I haven't heard of this book, but I just ordered it from Amazon It sounds awesome.

Looking at the different ratings their history is usually what inspires my vision of individual players and what their backstory might be. My recent article about Alonso Arteaga was based on this very approach. His leadership ability, work ethic, and desire for a winning team, is what made me think that he is a presence in the clubhouse and is a great competitor...that and his boombox that plays cuban music. The same is the case for Masujiro Inoue, my now injured CF. At the beginning of the season his mood was angry and so that ended up in the Hyakujuu Season Preview.

Anyway, I have several other ideas about what some of these computer generated players are like and hopefully over time I'll be able to write some of the stories I have ideas for. That is certainly what drew me to this online league as opposed to others is that this is the perfect oulet to so.

Featherheads wrote:I think quite a few of the LRS owners are participating in an online league for the very first time? If so, I'd like to see an article from a GM's point of view on one's perspective of running a baseball franchise.... from stuff like handling the foreigner limit rule, financial management, draft preparation, etc. I'm sure there has been highs and lows within the season. It'd be interesting to see what those were and how a GM is handling things. Pretty much a tour of being a LRS owner in its inaugural season. I wasn't here for PEBA's initial season so I missed the hoopla surrounding that. It'd be nice to hear about the thrills and frills of the first human-operated LRS season.

I for one am in the boat of the first time online league experience. After having playing OOTP for about a year joining an online league sounded like so much more fun than just playing "solo." The LRS has been a perfect opportunity for a first-time online league owner.

I think that this is a great idea for an article. Personally I think it would be interesting to take this idea and collect information from all of the LRS owners over the next several weeks until the end of the season, possibly in the form of an emailed questionnaire collecting a lot of the types of perspectives mentioned. The information could then be used to create this "tour" of the LRS owner during the first season. My idea would be to have the Winter meetings as a backdrop for such an article and put the article out then. The end of the season is just fine as well. I would volunteer to write or help write this article if everyone is interested in doing this. I'm open to ideas or collaborations of course.

Shinkansen wrote:

Featherheads wrote:I think quite a few of the LRS owners are participating in an online league for the very first time? If so, I'd like to see an article from a GM's point of view on one's perspective of running a baseball franchise.... from stuff like handling the foreigner limit rule, financial management, draft preparation, etc. I'm sure there has been highs and lows within the season. It'd be interesting to see what those were and how a GM is handling things. Pretty much a tour of being a LRS owner in its inaugural season. I wasn't here for PEBA's initial season so I missed the hoopla surrounding that. It'd be nice to hear about the thrills and frills of the first human-operated LRS season.

I for one am in the boat of the first time online league experience. After having playing OOTP for about a year joining an online league sounded like so much more fun than just playing "solo." The LRS has been a perfect opportunity for a first-time online league owner.

I think that this is a great idea for an article. Personally I think it would be interesting to take this idea and collect information from all of the LRS owners over the next several weeks until the end of the season, possibly in the form of an emailed questionnaire collecting a lot of the types of perspectives mentioned. The information could then be used to create this "tour" of the LRS owner during the first season. My idea would be to have the Winter meetings as a backdrop for such an article and put the article out then. The end of the season is just fine as well. I would volunteer to write or help write this article if everyone is interested in doing this. I'm open to ideas or collaborations of course.

I think this is a great idea for an article topic, and I love Jon's plan for framing the story. I say run with it.[ My only tip would be to make sure it stays "in character" - in other words, owners should relate their "online league experiences" in a way that doesn't refer directly to "online leagues", instead relating them as observations filtered through the eyes of "real life" GMs. It'll take a little creativity, but it's definitely doable. I think it'd be a fascinating article to read.

I haven't written any articles yet, but I think seeing suggestions or working in some sort of exchange will help me get going on that. Good idea.

Would someone like to tackle a recap of one or more of the Neo-Tokyo Cup games? Be it a sweeping round-up of the action or a more detailed look at one game, your work would be welcome!

I feel that my strongest points with article writing are my visual elements, so if anyone would like to work with me the upcoming LRS playoffs I think it could be a great collaboration. If anyone is interested let me know, we could split up and take the bright blade or shining star then pick a team in the championship and give a good view of baseball "Japan style".

This would be a great opportunity to coordinate on a group draft round-up. We'd need one person to take charge as coordinator and master writer. Other owners would need to liberally provide in-character quotes, preferably on other owners' selections as well as their own. It's just a suggestion, but I think a draft round-up would be a fun kind of project to handle in a group format.

The new version of OOTP now has descriptions of a players personality rather then numbers. So if you're stumped for ideas, just go through your roster and the game now gives you ideas for articles.

-4-5 players on my AAA team like to play poker in the clubhouse. Maybe one loses a big bet and has to wear number 72(the worst hand in poker) for the season.

-2 players on my A-ball team are extremely disliked by team mates. Maybe they can walk around the locker room an insult players after they had really bad games and criticize team mates in the media.

-Nori Oike is listed as being so smart, that if he were not in baseball, he would have a white collar job. I think he might be going to law school in the off season and end up being a player agent later in his career. Coincidentally, his greed is high.

There are a lot of possibilities. Some blurbs are a lot more interesting then others. I can't wait to look around the league as this will add some more personality to the game.

Steel Dragons wrote:The new version of OOTP now has descriptions of a players personality rather then numbers. So if you're stumped for ideas, just go through your roster and the game now gives you ideas for articles.

-4-5 players on my AAA team like to play poker in the clubhouse. Maybe one loses a big bet and has to wear number 72(the worst hand in poker) for the season.

-2 players on my A-ball team are extremely disliked by team mates. Maybe they can walk around the locker room an insult players after they had really bad games and criticize team mates in the media.

-Nori Oike is listed as being so smart, that if he were not in baseball, he would have a white collar job. I think he might be going to law school in the off season and end up being a player agent later in his career. Coincidentally, his greed is high.

There are a lot of possibilities. Some blurbs are a lot more interesting then others. I can't wait to look around the league as this will add some more personality to the game.

This is a great point, and leads me to my next Tip o' the Day post...