Strat-O-Matic Baseball 365

Congrats to the participants who have made it to the final 12. It's now time to start planning for the final 12 league, the winner of which will be the 2019 Mystery Tournament Champion!

At the start of the tournament, we basically stated "same rules as last year", and for the finals that means having the 12 finalists vote on a few options of variables that make up the league. Having said that, based on my experience last year, I am going to flex my Commish muscles and leave a few of the options from last year out of the voting and make a decision on them myself. Those decisions are the following:

1. Whatver set we are using, the salary cap will be $80M. In the past we left that open to a vote between $80M and $100M, but that makes no sense to me. Why would we have a $100M salary cap all of a sudden when all of our other leagues are the standard $80M.

2. The use of DH will only be voted on if the 70's set is chosen to be used. If the final 12 vote to use the 60's set there will be no DH. If they choose the 80's or 90s there will be a DH.

3. Repeat Stadiums will be allowed. In the past, we voted on whether or not someone could use the same stadium that they did earlier in the tournament. For example, if we did not allow repeat stadiums and I used Kingdome in my 80's league, then I would NOT be able to use Kingdome in the finals if the 80's set was chosen. I am NOT putting this one to a vote - repeat stadiums are allowed. I feel if we are not allowing it, that should have been communicated up front so that people knew their "favorite stadium" would not be available to them when it mattered most - in the tournament finals. This is not be confused with "Unique Stadiums", which is another variable to be discussed later.

4. Divisions will be seeded and will NOT be generated randomly. Last year we went with random divisions, and one division was unfairly heavy on teams finishing at the top of the final 12 standings. I think if you came 1st overall in the first four rounds of this tournament, you've earned the right to avoid the others in the top 5. If SOM can't set this up for us we'll revert to a random order.....but assuming that SOM can set this up for us, this is the way the final 12 will be distributed in the divisions: E:1/6/7/12; C:2/5/8/11; W:3/4/9/10;

So with those items being established, we are left with these 3 simple items for the top 12 to vote on:

Voting Item 1. Which Mystery set do you want to use for the finals, 60's, 70's, 80's or 90's? Vote for your 1st choice (2 points) and 2nd choice (1 point).

Voting Item 2. Do you want to a regular Autodraft, or a partial "live" draft? The past few years, we've opted for the partial live draft. If live draft live, the drafting order would be based on the final overall standings with #1 in points getting the #1 pick, etc. and then snaking around for subsequent rounds (i.e., round 2 is 12, 11, 10, etc). We probably would do either 10 or 12 rounds (an "even" number is easiest / fairest) for the "live" draft (normally taking about 1 week), and then everyone fills out the rest of their draft cards with players not taken in the live draft. The discussion forum message board draft has worked reasonably well for this live draft in the past.

Voting Item 3. Do you want to have "Unique Stadiums" in the finals? Having Unique Stadiums means that we cannot have two teams in the final 12 league that are using the same stadium. If one team is using Yankee Stadium, no one else can have Yankee Stadium as their ballpark. If Autodraft is chosen, and Unique Stadiums is chosen, we'll have a quick stadium draft on the discussion forum based on final standings (1-12). If we vote for a partial live draft, we will make it mandatory to draft a ballpark as part of the live draft.

As of right now, here UNOFFICIALLY are the teams I have calculated to be participating in the finals:
1. markmorrison
2. AdamKatz
3. sphilipp8
4. franky35
5. mburatti76
6. Rjnewman
7. brian straub
8. Spider 67
9. Takanahana
10. hallerose
11. waynick

12. Jimmy_C or SteadyEddie33

This will not be made OFFICIAL until the 90's finals wrap up on the night of Wednesday May 29th. But, for those of you that are UNOFFICIALLY in, please feel free to reply with your vote on this at any time on voting items 1-3 above.

70's 1st
90's 2nd
Partial live draft yes
Unique stadium yes
80M cap
Allow repeat stadium
DH for 70, 80, 90s, no DH 60s
Seeded division

I have said it before and I'll say it again, JuicedJC has done an outstanding job as commissioner, and if I win the finals, I will ask SOM to transfer two of the five credits to JC. However, I would ask the commissioner to reconsider the rule changes for the following reasons. First, one of the main reasons to have the Mystery Tournament is to get less experienced players to participate and improve their game while still playing by the conventional rules that they are familiar with. The tournament has worked great with the conventional rules and it is totally impractical to get 120 players to vote on the rules. On the other hand, the players that make the finals are good players that understand the game, so they can be trusted to vote on reasonable choices. Second, the changes are undemocratic without any clear advantage - why shouldn't the finals managers be trusted to make reasonable rules as was done in previous tournaments? Third, changing from autodraft to message board draft makes a 100 mil draft reasonably fair since the message board format gives everyone an equal shot at the high salary players - thus eliminating a possible problem with an autodraft in which some teams are unlucky and miss out on all the high salary players. A higher salary cap might also cut down on the very high number of free agent moves that we see in the finals league. I'm kind of sympathetic to no DH in the 60s, but there still isn't a DH in the National League, so why shouldn't the finals players have the vote on whether to apply the NL rule? Repeat stadiums are always voted to be allowed, so this one isn't a big deal. I am going to vote for seeded divisions, but for democratic reasons I support the traditional vote on this - btw, we don't need support from SOM on this, we just enter our teams from the East to the West - a technique common to many theme leagues. So, those are my reasons, basically, I don't buy the reasons for cutting down our choices and I don't think it is a burden on the finals teams to vote on the usual categories.

OK everybody, ignore my original post. I won't interfere anymore. I'll let you vote on your own on all items and sort this out. Just to be clear, the top 12 now need to vote on all the following 7 items:

Voting Item 1. Which Mystery set do you want to use for the finals, 60's, 70's, 80's or 90's? Vote for your 1st choice (2 points) and 2nd choice (1 point).

Voting Item 2. Do you want to a regular Autodraft, or a partial "live" draft? The past few years, we've opted for the partial live draft. If live draft live, the drafting order would be based on the final overall standings with #1 in points getting the #1 pick, etc. and then snaking around for subsequent rounds (i.e., round 2 is 12, 11, 10, etc). We probably would do either 10 or 12 rounds (an "even" number is easiest / fairest) for the "live" draft (normally taking about 1 week), and then everyone fills out the rest of their draft cards with players not taken in the live draft. The discussion forum message board draft has worked reasonably well for this live draft in the past.

Voting Item 3. Do you want to have "Unique Stadiums" in the finals? Having Unique Stadiums means that we cannot have two teams in the final 12 league that are using the same stadium. If one team is using Yankee Stadium, no one else can have Yankee Stadium as their ballpark. If Autodraft is chosen, and Unique Stadiums is chosen, we'll have a quick stadium draft on the discussion forum based on final standings (1-12). If we vote for a partial live draft, we will make it mandatory to draft a ballpark as part of the live draft.

Voting item 4. Do you want a salarty cap of $80M or $100M?

Voting item 5. Use of DH for each set, yes or no? Vote separately for each set - 60's, 70's, 80's and 90's.

Voting item 6. Repeat stadiums allowed, yes or no? This is a vote on whether or not someone could use the same stadium that they did earlier in the tournament. For example, if we did not allow repeat stadiums and I used Kingdome in my 80's league, then I would NOT be able to use Kingdome in the finals if the 80's set was chosen.

Voting item 7. Division generated randomly or seeded based on top 12 order (E:1/6/7/12; C:2/5/8/11; W:3/4/9/10;)?

Again, I apologize for interfering. I guess I overstepped my boundaries here. I was trying to help but I guess it's up to the top 12 to make these decisions at this point.

Item 1- 1st choice is 70's; 2nd choice is 60's
Item 2- Partial live draft
Item 3- Allow unique stadiums
Item 4- $80M cap
Item 5- DH used for 70's, 80's, 90's but not for 60's
Item 6- allow repeat stadiums
Item 7- seeded divisions

The DH vote should be broken down by set (not all or none).

Item 1- 1st choice is 60's; 2nd choice is 70's
Item 2- Partial live draft
Item 3- unique stadiums
Item 4- $100M cap
Item 5- DH used for 90's but not for 60's, 70's, 80's,
Item 6- allow repeat stadiums
Item 7- divisions - no preference

Item 1- 1st choice - 90s; 2nd choice - 80s
Item 2- Partial live draft
Item 3- unique stadiums
Item 4- $80 M cap
Item 5- DH used for 90s, 80s, 70s but not for 60s
Item 6- allow repeat stadiums
Item 7- divisions - seeded

Item 1- 1st choice - 70s; 2nd choice - 90s
Item 2- Partial live draft
Item 3- unique stadiums
Item 4- $80 M cap
Item 5- DH used for 90s, 80s, 70s but not for 60s
Item 6- allow repeat stadiums
Item 7- divisions - seeded

1. 1st-80"s 2nd-60's
2. auto draft
3. No unique
4. $80 million
5. DH for all
6. Yes
7. seeded