Since there has been some discussion regarding future leagues, I figured that I should probably weigh in now that we are in the process of selecting the players for the final league.
When the twelve of us originally discussed the idea for a league, we were a group of disappointed, former 1969 league players, and proposed to have an ATG league consisting of players from the 1960s era. After that was proposed, then someone else proposed to expand the league concept to its current eight league format. Most of the managers seemed enthused with this concept; however, I was a bit hesitant to want to make a long term commitment, but eventually decided to do so. And in spite of my earlier reservations, and subsequently my overall record, I have enjoyed my participation in this tournament. Kudos to Dan for doing a great job as commissioner. I also want to congratulate Randy for the great job that he did in dividing up the players into the different eras.
That having been said, I will be taking a hiatus from online SOM after completing the last (70s) league in this tournament. It sounds like many of you are planning on continuing, so I wanted to inform you of this so that you would have sufficient time to recruit another manager.
If I were to make any recommendations for any future tournaments, they would be these:
1) Reduce the draft length to either 16 (15 players and a stadium) or 21 (20 players and a stadium) rounds. I found the latter rounds of most drafts to be quite frustrating.
2) Speaking from personal experience of having the first draft choice for many of the leagues, I don’t feel that having the first choice necessarily worked to my advantage. What I would suggest is that if the manager with the least points is to be rewarded, first arrange for a random selection for the draft, then prior to the draft allow the manager with the least points to make the first selection, and then proceed with the draft. So if the manager with the least number of points were to have the 4th/21st selections by random assignment, he would select 1st, then 4th (which would actually be 5th) and then 21st (actually 22nd). Because he would be one ahead of all other managers through the course of the draft, he would end up skipping the last round. (Hopefully that didn’t sound too confusing).
3) Lower the threshold for some of the extra point hitting performances (maybe 7 or 8 ribbies in a game, for example).
Best wishes to y’all.
Ken