Strat-O-Matic Baseball 365

is the commissioner of as the are evidently subject to change without notice. He had started a 200M live draft league early in week, but chose today, well after I had joined, to arbitrarily move the time of the draft up one hour. The only notice was a comment on a thread by north texas widomakers. I suspect most people don't read the pure vanilla boards much -I almost never do anymore, and especially a thread to get people to join a league that I had already joined.

I have asked SOM to refund my credit and take over my team. Forewarned is forearmed with nomadbrad, so be very careful of joining any live draft leagues he starts, so that you don't end up planning a dinner out, rushing home to draft your team and find yourself SOL.

Okay, to be fair just noticed that he sent me a league mail in a totally unrelated league at 11:21 this morning that he was changing the time. Too bad I don't sit around all day looking to read my league mail, so I didn't see it until going through some of the teams that I skipped working on because of the live draft scheduled for 9p.m. I am still absolutely livid and totally done with this guy.

I think there are multiple issues here--

Issue number one is simply the changing of the time of the draft;
at least 3 people didn't realize the time had changed from the earlier posted time.

BUT there is also an issue with viewing the time--
its not in an obvious enough spot on your team.

and last,
there still is no way to communicate in league before a draft.

3 headed issue

Another member of tonight's league informed me that at least three of the twelve managers didn't know the time was changed.

One wonders if that is what nomadbrad was trying to achieve. He does certainly like to stack the deck in his favor as the following example will illustrate.

Nomadbrad created a league with these parameters:
12 combinations: Teams #2-12 are for players 1900 to present only! If a player has multiple cards, franchise with the MOST expensive card owns the players rights......Make your BEST team out of the players on your chosen franchises only......NO TRADES preseason or during season............... Team 1 - ALL players pre 1900 (1875-1899) + CIN Reds + KC Royals + ARI DiamondBacks ......... Team 2 All Senators + Twins + Astros + Marlins .........Team 3 DET Tigers + Mets + Mariners...........Team 4 All Braves + MIL Brewers + Padres.........Team 5 Cubs + Whitesox......... Team 6 Stl Browns + Orioles + STL Cardinals......... Team 7 All Dodgers + Angels + Rockies......... Team 8 All A's + Phillies......... Team 9 NeL players + Expos + BlueJays ......... Team 10 BOS Redsox + CLE Indians......... Team 11 Yankees + TEX Rangers......... Team 12 All Giants + Pirates......... PLEASE pick a STADIUM that corresponds to one of your franchises.


He, of course, reserved first pick for himself taking the NEL players, the Expos and Blue Jays. Just to get a sense of how well thought out that choice of also ran franchises was to pair with the NEL players check out his team which won 110 games.

http://365.strat-o-matic.com/team/1434504.

How prescient of him to realize that Pedro, Clemens and Murray not to mention Fryman and Henke, were the perfect fits for the NEL superhitters as the set really only lacks decent relief and a couple of... you guessed it...top starters.

I was fool to join the league, I think I picked 8th and took the Dodgers, Angels and Rockies because I thought they could field a competitive team. They did win 91 games.

The moral of the post is, beware of joining franchise based leagues in general where the Commissioner gives himself the first choice of franchises, and certainly think long and hard about joining leagues nomadbrad starts.

Yeah--
Id say when 3 people miss for the same reason it ain't a good draft.

When leagues like that are created, it should be mandatory to assign the franchises randomly after 12 managers have signed up. Even better is to commit to a 12 season rotation in which each manager plays each franchise combination once. Most of the time when it's first-come, first-served, the last three or four combinations won't win.

And I agree about the draft time-change. The main reason I don't join live drafts is because I can never be sure I can be available at draft time, particularly living on the West Coast when mist such drafts start at dinner time.

I hope SOM gives you a free credit for this current debacle, I would be upset too and I understand your anger.

He, of course, reserved first pick for himself taking the NEL players, the Expos and Blue Jays. Just to get a sense of how well thought out that choice of also ran franchises was to pair with the NEL players check out his team which won 110 games.

Yeah, the whole business of both your situations sounds very shady. I agree that these theme leagues where the commissioner gets to choose his team (or teams) first is weak, at best.

Changing the time for a live draft, the day of the draft is rude and inconvenient at best, and possibly cheating at worst.

Changing the subject just for one moment, any interest in a live ATG8 live draft league with a salary cap of 100-140 million? I know the great group of guys that do the Friday and Saturday night live drafts usually prefer a 250-999 cap. Wouldn't it be nice to try something a little different?........Saturday night works for me...???

While I can certainly understand being upset with expecting to draft at a certain time and finding the draft was already started about an hour earlier, it does seem nomadbrad tried to communicate the change well in advance by making a post at 11:23 (unknown time zone) and sending an email in the other league.

My recollection was I received a regular email from Strat (not the Strat mail) when the time was changed for a live draft in other leagues.

Perhaps this could have been handled better, but do not believe there was any nefarious intent on nomadbrad's part. I would feel comfortable joining a live draft created by him in the future.

Largely based on previous posts by daly57 and rburgh (perhaps others too that I do not recall) and very limited experimentation it seems it may be possible to communicate with other teams with the Strat mail prior to the draft.

You may be able to:

1. Go to your team in the pending league
2. Go into Front Office for your team
3. Go to the top of the page where the http type of link appears
4. Without changing the beginning part of the link, change the ending "/frontoffice" to "/inbox" [then touch return/go/etc]
5. While on the Front Office page use compose notice to send to all teams currently in the pending league.
6. Think the other pending teams can see the message sent by doing steps 1 through 4 and then "clicking" on the message.
7. This may or not work. If someone can verify either way, it might allow pre-league communications for rules
questions, time changes, etc. Think predraft you can only communicate with all the pending teams not just one team.

Radagast Brown: I very much want to do live drafts with lower caps. Set it up and I'll join.

Ed: after reading your post I did check my email. SOM does give you an email notifying of the change in time. Problem is 90+ pct of my incoming email is unwanted retail ads, so I rarely check it. Most of my personal communication is via facebook and I only use email occasionally, at least at home.

On that note, the email I sent to strat about getting the credit returned was undeliverable.

I think the only way you should change a draft time is AFTER you have received approval from every other manager.