Draft idea

I'm open to anything that makes the draft bigger.

I'm not for it. I don't see the need to be linked with the real life Rays. Plus, like Jim said, it will non-rationally help/hurt various teams throughout the league given the disproportionate distribution of talent across the real life MLB. Why should the John M. and Ken K. be hurt because LAA and MIA have poor farm systems while Rich C. and Thomas V. get a stronger prospect because their RL counterpart have deep systems? Doesn't make sense to me, even though my team would benefit from the system, as TB has a well-stocked system with guys that fit my drafting profile.

Well Jim, there are a number of things I find wrong. You may disagree with some (or all) of them, so I am going to list them.

1) You're correct that all the biggest name prospects will be picked. But there are always a ton of guys at the end of the draft that I wish I had an extra pick to take. These players are not evenly distributed among all 30 teams. That's an imbalance. I know there are other GMs that feel similarly after the draft, and I doubt their lists have a player from each team ranked equivalently.

2) You mention you're picking career grinders, recent real life picks, or ultra-raw low level guys. In general that's correct. But again, all 30 organizations won't have a player of that caliber. Take last year, the Phillies would get a huge boom in the 5th round, as Odubel Herrera would be a perfect type of player under your description. Similarly, the Orioles would snatch a huge piece for the back of their pen in Michal Givens. What about the Twins? Even if they wanted to, they wouldn't have the option to take a guy of that stature. Plus, they didn't have a 2nd round pick, and their 1st and 1.S picks were picked long before (Tyler Jay and Kyle Cody). They'd essentially be left choosing a guy from the later in the draft (their highest unpicked player was #80 - Travis Blankenhorn) or taking some pretty marginal prospect from their extremely top heavy system. J.T. Chargois? Travis Harrison? Jermaine Palacios? Stuart Turner? The list isn't as inspiring as some of the other teams. Why should we essentially gift the Phillies, Braves, or Orioles with an extremely valuable piece while limiting the options of the Twins to a situation where their best option may be a 25 year old reliever in high-A after missing two full seasons. It doesn't make sense to me.

3) Let's say that their is an environment in which all available talent is evenly distributed in this 5th round. Essentially, the player each team selects is exactly equal in present value. At this point, you're still left to rely on your RL team's player development system. As a generalization, think about how much this could stand to benefit the Cardinals, who can seemingly turn beggars off the street into above average major league talent. Now compare that to a team like the Padres whose best homegrown player in recent memory is...Will Venable? Jedd Gyorko? Again, it's an non-rational gift to each team that over the long run will have drastically different value depending on which name your team has on the front of their hypothetical jerseys.

4) Why do we want to connect to our real-life counterparts again? It makes sense for some of us. I know you're a Pirate fan in real life, so that lines up well. I imagine Joe likes the Cubs and Sean likes the Brewers since they chose those franchises to mirror back in 2003. But take the newer GMs. Mark in Houston, Tim L. in Detroit, or Nathan F. in Kansas City may not have any association or desire to have an association with the real life Astros, Tigers, or Royals. They simply control these teams because they were available. Why do we want to force them to link with their real life counterparts? As for me, although the two places I've lived in my life (California and Quebec) are super far away from Tampa Bay, I still generally like the Rays; I like their roster, like their front office, like their uniforms, and even kind of like their ridiculous stadium. That said, I feel no need to be forced to have my NSBL Rays be any more associated with the real life Rays other than sharing a name and a virtual stadium. Maybe I'm the only one who thinks this, but I'd place my bets on many other GM feeling similarly.



If you disagree with me on these 4 points, consider this:

5) Let's add a 5th round. The rest of the league will draft normally, but GMs who choose to could just draft players from their home organization and feel the linkage of their NSBL team to the real life team. The player pool will still be filled with the same players ("career grinders hoping to strike gold, college guys that just got drafted, or ultra-raw ultra-low level guys") so there shouldn't be any regret about being locked into selecting from a player pool 1/30th the size of the rest of the league. If you do feel regret about your player pool being smaller than everybody else, then this is a contradiction, and the talent distribution is not negligible as you suggested, and thus, the format would create an uneven playing field across the 30 teams. If you don't mind your player pool being shrunk, then I question why we feel the need to push these changes upon all teams when the perfectly good option exists of teams who want to, can just draft their own players any time they want!

To this, I could only ask "who doesn't do that"? Back then, she was truly in the rotation of justice.

Why did Sean choose the Brewers back in '03? Because I'm a Mariners fan (and the Mariners were unavailable when Joe introduced me to the league). Also, I like the color yellow!

I always look at the Brewers prospects to see if there is a guy that fits what I'm looking for. Demi Orimoloye was a guy I found because I was reviewing the Brewers draft picks for that year. I liked what I read about him, so I just grabbed him. I'm not really trying to be connected to my real-life counterpart, but it adds another level of challenge to it all. I've actually had to simplify my personal rules these last couple seasons because I let my team get into terrible disrepair.

The actual compromise is more complex. We add a 5th round. The draft order stays relevant and will match that year's draft order. If there is a prospect in your team's RL system, you may pick them. If you don't like the players that your RL system has to offer, you simply pass. If you pass this pick, it gets moved to the end of the round where you can then pick any draft eligible player. These picks would, of course, have a NTC attached to them. This round also could be added as a 2nd rd of the winter draft instead of a 5th rd of the summer draft.

There's the compromise. It's super convoluted!