2020 Tour Changes?

Ok Mr Randal64, I appreciate the point you made about there being 30 MLB Teams while our leagues only have 12 in our current format. I also appreciate a couple sentiments you expressed and the respectful way you expressed yourself.
Nevertheless, let’s be clear that the facts don’t come near to your statements that we’re playing with All-star teams and taking the top 300 players - not even close!
The simple facts are that only 20 All-star players start per season and there are only 68 total All-stars on the NL & AL teams combined. And every All star does play and start on his regular season team unless injured.
So, even if we picked all 64 all stars, which doesn’t ever happen, there is still at least a minimum of 232 players we use who are not all-stars! Not only this, but we pick from 700 plus players, many of them in the lower 1/2 of the salary totals. Ever pick a player making 2million or below? I picked 8 or 9 on my current $80M team.
None of these are one of the top 300 players. Reality is that if we use $60M teams many players are not true starters on their MLB teams and most are NOT the top 300 players. So what’s the appeal to using lots of players who are basically subs or poorer quality starters, while good, well know players aren’t playing? Go to a Minor league game and about 1/2 the starters are going back and forth between majors and minors - we usually have several of these on strat teams and they are not really even true Major league players. I’m willing to guess that most strat $80M teams this year are not as good as the average play off contenders in MLB.

It seems to me we probably do want to play more of the starters on MLB teams and not have lots of good know players not even making a team.

The Cincinnati Reds were a losing team last year and several years in a row.
At Strat-o-Matic salary for 2019, the Reds cost over $84 million.

The Milwaukee Brewers had a winning record, but not a great team. Their Strat 2019 salary is over $100 Million.

The 2019 Strat Houston Astros are $135 Million

A brief counterpoint:

We all have our own preferences, and I guess this thread is a chance to express that.

My counterpoint is, why would we want to make things easier? I’m not specifically saying that we should make things harder, but I think having a reasonable mixture of events is probably the best compromise, and that’s what we currently have. Plus, with the precedent that’s been set, there is some basic continuity to the flow of the tour.

The other thing is, while some of us post more than others, those opinions shouldn’t necessarily hold more weight than a very likely contented and quiet majority. I can write an all caps post about having six $100 mil events or whatever my personal preferences might be, but that alone shouldn’t be a basis for changing the tour.

My oh-two.

I agree J-Pav and if we do adjust salaries they should go slightly up, not down, as up is consistent with the trend.

With the quarantine, I'm excited to come back after a couple years off.

I always like how the Barnstormers Tour has an event where people get to choose their cap. Instead of a 3rd $80M league, what about having an event where people can choose between the $60M and $100M cap?

I kind of like the Barnstormers' idea of dividing the parks into different groupings and you need to choose one only from each of the groupings for the 7 ballparks you might need to choose. That will force owners to get outside of their comfort zone and see if they can do well in different types of parks.

I don't play the Tour (I'm a filler guy) but I keep up on the Forums. It seems to me that a thread about changes to the Tour should happen much earlier.

9 managers have posted ideas in this thread. A small fraction of all participants. Starting a changes thread earlier would give more time for consensus.

Signups for last years Tour started exactly one year ago.

Time to do so again?

As a quick fix to the disagreement on Salary Cap, we could always have a flex salary cap event. For example, Event 1 in Barnstormers was 60/80/100m, choose your league. We could do Event 1 as 60/80m, choose your league. That way I'd pick 60m, Gilbo would pick 80m, and everyone would be happy.

I'm definitely not a fan of the high salary leagues. High salary leagues are about how good you are at drafting versus how good you are building a team for your park and competition.

Two years ago Event 1 was a choose cap league. 100% of managers chose the $80 mil cap.