FanPost

OOTP January 2013 Overflow

The thread is dead, long live the thread! Now that the old thread has buckled under the weight of 800 comments, this new thread shall be your OOTP banneret. May it guide you into the feudal skirmish of OOTP trades and free agent contracts with bounteous graice and honoure!

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Pictured: SS Terry McLellan of the Mt. Pleasant Coal Stokers showing off his gold glove defense

As usual, don't worry if the comment section is overwhelming. This post will be continually updated with everything you need to know.

Important Bits of News (newest at the top):

  • The current plan is to sim all of Spring Training on Sunday night, and the first week of games Tuesday night.
  • Simmed Friday evening. The date is now March 2nd 2013.
  • Thursday night's sim is the last offseason sim before opening day. To resolve competing bids quickly, we'll be doing "final offers." If you really, really want any particular player who is still a FA, submit a "final offer" for him via email: josefjohannlw+ootp@gmail.com. If you win, you get the player for $10k more than the 2nd highest bid.
  • Simmed Wednesday night. It's January 19th.
  • For the rest of the offseason, sims will only happen after 8pm est.
  • Simmed again Tues 7pm. It's the now the Night of January 16th.
  • Simmed Tues morning at 9am. We're now at Jan 13th. Free agents!
  • Simulated again on Monday at 7pm EST. Some more free agent signings happened.
  • On Sunday afternoon, the league was simmed for a few days. Some free agent signings happened.
  • The current objective is to move through the offseason as fast as possible. Get your free agent offers in ASAP.
  • When we get to opening day, we'll sim on a Tuesday/Thursday/Saturday schedule.
  • Consider the "3 trades to computer per year" rule in effect.
  • New policy: If I don't explicitly reply to your request for a transaction and tell you it was completed, you should assume I was dumb and forgot about it. Sorry. Ask again and it will get gone.

League Tools:

Here's an all-purpose transaction form. Use it for offering trades to the computer, and if you're an online only manager, use it for setting lineups and offering contracts.

The tiny little private messaging system: bit.ly/talktrades

League website: bit.ly/overthemonster

Contract demands of free agents: batters, pitchers

Trade Tracker

Warlocks send RF Alberto Ayala, CF Carlos Cortez, RF Carl Young and LF Joe Harris to the GMDMs for SP Bill Cornett.

Patriots send SP Ken Collins and RP Brant Anderson to the Cutpurses for LF Matt Roberts and RP Guen-pyo Cho

Patriots send SP Dave Stokes and 3B Daniel Macias to the Coal Stokers for SP Juan Garcia, 3B Alfredo Baez, 2B Ken Heurta and $9,000,000.

Sea Dogs send SS Juan Ramon to the Patriots for 1B Mike Berry.

Sea Dogs send SP Stanley Ellis and $1,000,000 to Patriots for RP Brian Charles.

Red Claws send 3B Howard Parsons to the Coal Stokers for RF Tony Valle.

Manager Checklist

If you do everything on this list, you'll be up to speed. Again, I'll use Rick Bensten's team as an example.

(1) Look at your lineups and pitching staff. Morales/Hisham/Castillo make a nice 3-4-5 punch, but they are all lefties. Maybe 2B Stan King should bat third?

(2) Tweak the playing time of your bench players. RF Bernando Cardona isn't the best hitter, but he is a defensive expert. You can set it so RF Sergio Morales comes out of games for a defensive replacement in late innings.

(3) Promote and demote players. CF Blaine Fields is a hot prospect, but he's not quite major league ready. Maybe send him to Triple-A? You could call up 3B/SS Alberto Gomez from Triple-A for infield depth.

(4) Look at your financial report and player salaries. Some guys, like the 27 year old LF Felipe Castillo are due to hit free agency. If you feel you have the budget room, maybe offer him an extension before he goes out and has a career year.

(5) Check the available free agent batters and pitchers. There are some excellent relief pitchers available. And if you look closely, you'll see some top prospects that went undrafted.

(6) Offer trades to any of the computer teams: The Kansas City DMGMs, the Tampa Bay Raycists, The New York Evil Empire and the translucent, devoid-of-identity Seattle Mariners.

(7) Request a report. Want to see the bunt for hit skills, gap power vs left-handed pitching, knuckleball potential, work ethic and nicknames of all free agent third baseman under age 27 from Panama ? Ask and ye shall receive!

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Pictured: Felipe Nieves and Rafael Solis posing in an advertisement for Kitten's Warehouse

Questions?

We're all kind of making this up as we go along. This is my first time being commissioner of a league, and I'm learning as I go. If you are confused about anything, feel free to ask. It helps everyone.