Strat-O-Matic Baseball Players Championship 2015 (Rules)

Thank you!

J-Pav, thanks for the effort you're putting in. I agree with your assessment of the bonus points even if you've been "debunked" by the expert

Hi J-Pav! Thanks for guiding the Tour this year. Looking forward to the competition!

Thx guys! Good to see the Old Guard represent - I hope we can get a bunch more!

I'm officially in J-Pav.

If ya need help with anything, LMK.

visick

Thank you, sir!

I wanted to add the playoff system is good and much fairer than the Barnstormers method.

Personally, I always preferred the top 12 method. However, I was gradually won over to the top 36 argument (finishing 13th twice had NOTHING to do with that!) Usually, most sports' outcomes are designed to decide "who is best". In SOM Online, I have come to believe the better question is "who can play". The 36 semi-finalists have consistently been a good representation of who can play, and any of those managers make a deserving champion.

When you use the top 12 method, too many good managers are discouraged from continuing play when they fall behind too quickly early on. The top 36 method, I think, is the best compromise among the many ways to sort out the best managers yet still keep them involved the longest amount of time. And all of this is also a function of how many managers sign up to begin with. If we're around 100 or so managers as has been typical, I do think we have a pretty good format as outlined.

Just over three weeks before the first deadline...please sign up today!

Three weeks out from the start of the 2015 Tour Championship...

The banner advertising the 2015 tour sign-ups is up and running.

I pasted a copy of the link to the official SOM tournament page http://onlinegames.strat-o-matic.com/tournament/23 to the rules thread, however, there are still many edits to be made and there is a bit of incorrect information on there currently. I'll work on this over the weekend to clean it up. Thx goes out to John and the gang at OnlineGameSupport for helping us out with all this!

OnlineGameSupport has updated the official tournament page, however, I submitted a second round of edits as several items were missed in the first go around.

In addition, I would like to solicit feedback from those signed up for the 2015 Tour regarding salary dumping. For this tournament, I've specified that salary dumping begins when your available team salary dips below 90% of the original starting salary (ie, below $72 mil in an $80 mil league such as those in Event I).

Salary dumping has previously gone unaddressed in prior tours, and I believe this has been detrimental to the participants.

Example: You are in Event 5 League 4, and you are chasing Manager X in the overall standings and you are down by two points. You notice late in the season that Manager X, who is in League 1, is in first place in his division with a 20-4 record against a last place division foe who is now at $59 mil available salary.

Is this just his good fortune and your bad luck? Is the last place team entitled to bleed losses (possibly at the expense of you and others) in pursuit of bettering his team however he sees fit?

A survey of all playoff teams in 2014's Event I revealed that among the 36 teams, the AVERAGE final salary was $79.15. Winning teams continually demonstrate that you do not throw away salary. Further, a sample of the very worst performing teams often display huge salary forfeits (not always, as there are no absolutes here, but often enough to qualify for Strat-O "Don'ts").

Do you think 90% of original starting salary and 5/10/20 FA penalties is a fair compromise between having reasonable flexibility with your roster and adversely affecting the other tour participants? Are there any examples of a manager winning a ring with less than 90% of starting salary?

To reiterate, this is addressed to 2015 Tour PARTICIPANTS. If you haven't signed up yet, there are 17 days left!