ATG8--WHY DILUTE THE SET?

My biggest disappointment is not with the J and C cards, but the 'what could have been' that is being missed here... a lot of the apprehension would go away if we had the ability to pick what era's and what group of cards we want to play with or not. i.e. no steroid era, no Cuban etc.

How about better league choices like 4 divisions of 3 teams, 2 div of 6, any number of teams in a league like 10-12-14-16 etc. Half credits could be effective here.

How about no free agency after the waiver period. Add a taxi squad, expanded rosters with no FA. How about an easy medium and harsh injury chart choices, make that Gates Brown go away for 35 games, if he gets hurt?? Then a .275 hitter who plays a lot is more valuable.

Lots of good ideas here in the playability of the game. I like the 110% rule, a player or pitcher can only appear 110% of his plate appearances or innings pitched. Then he's ineligible to continue. A 150% rule works too. Super relievers is a bad concept, just as 450 IP for starters would be a bad idea.

The community has made all of these suggestions and more... but with the advent of ATG 8 we are not going to get any of this..

A lost opportunity.

d 21

I guess I am out of step with the majority on this thread, but I have a hard time understanding why the prospect of adding players make people feel like they're being robbed of choice.

Further, there's some surprising, and data-ignoring opinion about the quality of the best players in the in the Cuban and Japanese leagues. MLB teams sign both and the best from those islands play at levels better than your high school team. The reason there are gaps is because the Japanese league(s) act as a cartel that restrict free movement of their indentured servant players, and the U.S. government (not MLB and its teams) have imposed an embargo on free trade for Cuban talent.

There's an argument to be made that there are five contemporary Cuban players right now who strongly merit consideration for current All-Star team nomination: José Fernández, Aroldis Chapman, Yasiel Puig, Yoenis Céspedes & José Abreu. Cuba has 1/28th the population of the U.S., so with 28 times the population, there should be roughly 28 times the number of U.S. "strongly merit consideration for All-Star nomination" players, and that seems about right. The player pool for All-Star U.S. and Cuban talent is roughly comparable. Does anyone believe that suddenly the best Cuban players of the 2010 and after era are much better than their 1962-2010 equivalents? What kind of evidence is there? And the fact the Yuniesky Betancourt was the 3rd string SS on his Cuban team is a data point that indicates that even the average Cuban player is not much below the average U.S. player (probably a little lower on skills and tools and higher on fundamentals). I won't even present evidence from international baseball competitions that indicate the Cubans are competitive with the best of the rest of the world including the U.S.

And the best Japanese players who have escaped indentured servitude, players such as Darvish, I Suzuki, Kuroda, Tanaka, have played at a very competitive level here. Their skill set doesn't always translate as well as it might, but the best are still the best.

And it's worth remembering that for every Ruth or Barry Bonds or Greg Maddux or Honus or Big Train in this set, there are five Whitey Kurowskis & Lloyd Waners and Rocky Nelsons and another five Mike Madduxes, Marc Sullivans and Cy Perkinses. And a team of those guys would kick the axes of the college team you played for, just like Cuban and Japanese leaguers of the last 40 years would, too, and no one's argued here that I can find that those guys dilute the pool.

Further, I'm a traditionalist -- I prefer pitchers batting and double-switches and a game that balances one-run strategies with power and finds interleague play that counts in stats and standings a sacrilege and I oppose advertising on baseball unis.

If Buck Martinez is an "All Time Great", then there's no sensible reason Omar Linares & Sadaharu Oh should be barred because of a fluke of playing for cartel ownership or a government crushing free trade in baseball talent.

Yes , the Japanese leagues NOW are on par. BUT in Sadahuru OH's time, it was widely written that the level of play over there was somewhere between AA and AAA.
My point is , baseball in other countries has come a LONG way, but "back in the day" these leagues were nowhere near Major League level

If Buck Martinez is an "All Time Great", then there's no sensible reason Omar Linares & Sadaharu Oh should be barred because of a fluke of playing for cartel ownership or a government crushing free trade in baseball talent.

weak point there. This game can't be played with all 8M players (outside of an unlimited cap) You need to have lower salaried guys.

We could use the J & C players for those spots if you like. You also mentioned that if you don't like these players don't use them. Well we also don't want to see them on other teams in the league either. This isn't the WBC. It is more enjoyable for some (or most?) of us to only use MLB and maybe NeL players. If we use the J & C players we might as will just wipe the player names off of the cards and not use any names. Maybe just give every card a serial number and you can choose if you would rather use player card 18293 or 18294.

What is being missed with all the calls for new cards is the change in the performance of the game as more and more top players are added. Pitching cannot be improved much over an 8 million dollar pitcher that allows a .125 batting average on it's card, no matter how good you will only improve slightly on this. The hitters on the other hand have gone from probalby an OBP in ATGI of about .400 on average to the ability to field every position with .600 to .650 OBP cards. The previous problem of picking a park where someone else took your players is now being made a non- issue with a multitude of exceptional players.

This is totally distorting the game. These additions of the Cuban and Japanese players do nothing but increase this problem. It is like playing poker with Jacks Queens 2's and 3's being wild and bragging that you got 4 of a kind.

If Buck Martinez is an "All Time Great", then there's no sensible reason Omar Linares & Sadaharu Oh should be barred because of a fluke of playing for cartel ownership or a government crushing free trade in baseball talent.

Also,
This game was originally "All -Time - Great Teams" not players, the idea was to have a league with some of the greates teams of all time to offset the yearly teams available by season.

But since it doesn't really say All- Time - Great Baseball why not let in top historical cricket players?

And it's worth remembering that for every Ruth or Barry Bonds or Greg Maddux or Honus or Big Train in this set, there are five Whitey Kurowskis & Lloyd Waners and Rocky Nelsons and another five Mike Madduxes, Marc Sullivans and Cy Perkinses. And a team of those guys would kick the axes of the college team you played for, just like Cuban and Japanese leaguers of the last 40 years would, too, and no one's argued here that I can find that those guys dilute the pool.

When I say dilute the player pool, I refer not to the different values of player cards, but to the dilution of the game from a historical collection of MLB to a mishmash of non-MLB cards. I'm not here to argue whether Japanese baseball is AAA orAA, or whether Ichiro and Darvish were good and daisuke and irabu were not. I realize Rod Gaspar is not very good, but he is a vital, historical part of the 1969 Mets, one of the original TEAMS in ATG. So descriptions and anecdotes about how great or analogous Japanese or Cuban baseball is to MLB don't matter to me. I'm sure they were all great players and wonderful human beings. I just don't want them in a historical MLB set.

andy i totally agree with your stance!

I still think these are good additions.I'm getting tired of the cards we have now .As to old timers playing hereI was here when it was called Small world and am older than most of you guys here so I don't know what age has got to do with it.I think too many people here are set in there ways and don't like change.And I mentioned before about Oh playing in the weaker Japanese leaguews/But when Mlb alstar teams toured ther Oh still hit that pitching and homereed more than the Mlb alstars.Back then Japanese players did nlot come to the states gto play.And as far as Cuban players,They couldn't get out of Cuba.Alot of the 1st players from Cuba got out by coming on small fishing boats risking their safety to get to Florida and safety.When they played the world championships here in Edmonton,the security around them was unreal Especially the star players.Maybe it interests me is because I have big interest in those teams because back then was the only chance to see these players from those countries.I coached competive baseball for over 30 years and had players from many different walks of l had on one team one year where 1 of my players was getting food from a foodbank and another players family was worth millions.

I think too many people here are set in there ways and don't like change.

Doug, my friend, you have nailed my opinion. For a historical set of All-Time baseball players, I don't want change. At least not in the matter of adding nonMLB cards.