Drafting Ballparks

[teamnasty]

One thing Strat should do to improve its online leagues is to require teams to "rank and draft" ballparks just like they rank and draft individual players, and with the same caveat that only one team can have a particular park just like only one team gets Pujols. As it stands now, you often have this unrealistic mix of 3 Cells, 4 RFK'S, multiple Coors etc but you don't get to know in advance what the parks will be other than your own. Teams should have to strategize about park just like they have to employ gamesmanship in ranking and drafting their preferred players. If you don't get the park you want when you want, HAL drafts the next most similar one, just like he does now for players. How bout it Bernie?

[geekor]

How do you gague next most similar?

I'm sorry I do NOT agree with this. This year was abnormal, as there wasn't really any skewed stadiums. But let's go back to 2006 (or any previous year). What if I drafted MM and missed out? There is nothing close that give that huge RH advantage like that. What would be next most similar? A person drafts players SPECIFICALLY for their park, and lose that park, then their entire draft is screwed.

I don't agree with that, and never will. Missing 1 player won't ruin your draft, missing you stadium would.

[teamnasty]

The computer drafts the next most similar park, and just like drafting similar players it's not an exact science. But its far better than having 4 cells, 4 rfk's, etc. And you then must calculate: do I prioritize my park high, or draft an imbalanced team and risk that I won't get the precise park that I want, or do I draft a balanced team? It enhances the strategy rather than detracts from it, promotes realism, and puts the onus on teams to build a team that can win in any park. It's imperfect as all rules as, but it kills the status quo.

[teamnasty]

It also wouldnt be too difficult for Strat to allow you to prerank 3-5 parks in order of preference in case you didn't get first choice. Nor would it be hard to permit teams to "drop" a park after the draft if their players didn't fit it. Of course you would have to have restrictions permitting one such drop and a drop-dead date after which the parks stick so everyone knows who is playing where.

[Jerlins]

Have to agree with Geekor here. It's very possible that if you drafted an RFK park for its pitching favorability, and other parks chosen were Petco, Fenway, AT&T and other similar low HR parks, you could very well end up with Yankee stadium being the next "similar park not chosen". That's a far cry from the park of first choice. If you prefer a unique park league, start up a theme league with that being the only requirement. If folks with a similar philosophy sign up, you may find your league filling faster than an autoleague would.

I've played in a division from the 05 set where it was my Great American (one of the hitters parks of 05), against THREE Petco teams (1-1, 1-6 if memory serves me correctly), and 6 maybe 7 Petco's in the league as a whole. I thought it was fun finding a strategy to compete against that.

Teams have always built their clubs based on their ballpark advantage in real life, asking the Strat community to draft a menagerie of players to safeguard against missing the park of their choice is far from realism and a bit towards the extreme.

Allowing a "drop a park" option will lead to headaches and leave sour tastes for the game as a whole than you would expect.