Strat-O-Matic Baseball 365

So, hypothetically of course, if someone is starting a six team Franchise league and they keep for themselves the Yankees, NEL, Cubs, Pirates, and KC...
There are enough players there to make two or three good teams?

Would this be a fun league to join or would the league creator be a little greedy?

Curious to see if anyone shares my opinion on this...

I join a lot of 6 team franchise leagues - some are constructed fairly, and some are so egregiously skewed in favor of the creator, I don't understand 1) why would anyone want to join such a league and 2) does the creator of that league feel like he's accomplished anything if he wins with such a huge advantage? Is that really fun? And how stupid would he feel if he lost. I just don't get the motivation to do that. [Not surprisingly, managers that create these unbalanced leagues almost never join a fairly created league - they only join the ones they make themselves].

There are certain managers (emart, gamiam, szerio, for example) who try really hard to make balanced leagues. emart and gamiam will always distribute their proposed leagues to a few other managers to comment on regarding their balance and the other managers will often offer tweaks to make sure that all 6 (or 12) managers who join have as close to an even chance as anyone else. Szerio probably does the same. Those leagues are always competitive and the creator doesn't win any more often than any other manager.

And then there are the others who just pile on the best franchises and leave the other 5 guys to fight over the crumbs -they give franchise leagues a bad reputation.

Thanks for bringing up the subject.

Yeah...
definitely skewed-
Ive joined a few of the 12-team franchise leagues, where some of the creators do put effort in to getting reasonable fairness- nothing is perfect, but at least there is good logic behind the way its constructed.
However, a number of leagues, whoever gets any of the last 3 or 4 choices is at a pretty big disadvantage-
inversely proportional to the first few choices.

A randomized draft to select teams is usually best. Most of my leagues are multi-season, meaning everyone gets to play each of the teams. In that case, I make sure teams are as evenly matched as possible.

I'm not an expert on franchise leagues, but it seems to me that another way to tilt toward fairness is to keep the caps relatively low: say 125M or less. That way, even if one manager has a slightly larger pot to draw from, they still have to make tough decisions to keep under the cap.
If the cap is high, 999M or even 200M, then a manager with a richer franchise set to draw on can win by brute force.

For anyone interested in how the draft came out for this league. 110 wins?

https://365.strat-o-matic.com/league/469941

The other thing you can do to help even things up is have a salary cap

I don’t like the franchise themes for the most part. There’s ways to make it more interesting to me but there’s a few things about this particular setup I just don’t like/get….. for one what’s the point of a franchise league if multiple franchises are lumped together? 2, there’s a few franchises that are clearly better for a franchise based theme and some that clearly put you at a disadvantage. And lastly with an unlimited salary cap it’s pretty much whoever has the best pool to pull from. When everyone has 10+ $10m players it kinda takes the strategy out of it.
I prefer the time frame leagues over the franchise ones. At least each era will be kinda even in a talent pool aspect. You might have a specific strategy for a certain time frame but you’ll be able to field a competitive team

Morpheus wrote:For anyone interested in how the draft came out for this league. 110 wins?

https://365.strat-o-matic.com/league/469941

Manger skill is worth some wins- but this one is so clearly weighted to Yanks/Nel/Pirates/Royals-
to me its absurd, but whatever.

hahaha, with bonds, ruth, gibson, hornsby, vaughan, brett and mantle, that team has potentially picks 1-7 in a $200m draft.