The real sim, taking us up to June 10, has now been run. Jersey City has won seven in a row, apparently realizing it’s not September yet. They’ve closed to 1.5 behind Maryland and 4.5 behind Pittsburgh. Seattle now leads Miami by 5.5 and Marietta by 6. New York is now 2.5 behind Marietta.

Pittsburgh’s Randy Carman and Miami’s Richard Vuong are players of the week. No major transactions. Notable injuries to Gainesville’s Reinaldo Salerno (2-3 months) and Seattle’s Charles Fordyce (4 weeks).

League file posted. Next sim is Friday by Nate. Sorry for the mix up, as Nate and I lost track of who was doing which sim.

The hottest team to start the OEL is the Jersey City Skeeters. (Which only makes sense, as it’s April and not August or September.) Jersey City is a red hot 6-1 and leads the Platonic League by a game. Maryland and Pittsburgh are tied for second at 6-3. Gainesville is struggling at the start of the year with a mere 2-7 record.

In the Socratic League, the Marietta Mammoths are in first with a 6-3 record. The Mammoths are the only team in that division over .500 and hold a 1.5 game lead over Cairo and Tupper Street, who are each both 4-4. Miami is in last, but bounced back from the tough sim on Monday to go 3-2 this sim and is 3-6 overall.

The only interesting league news (at least to me) was that Jersey City’s Rudorufu Tastuya and Tupper Street’s Carlos Lara each had five-hit days. Nice job, guys. No major transactions.

On the injury front, Brooklyn lost shortstop Alex Sequiros to a microfracture surgery on his knee for eight-to nine months. Pittsburgh lost centerfielder Jeffrey Ealy with a strained oblique for six weeks. (That’s two centerfielders so far. Open auditions will be Thursday afternoon.) Marietta’s Courtney Mule will be out 1-2 weeks with a mild shoulder strain.

On to the games!

On April 6, in the same game that Tatsuya rang up five hits, Skeeter outfielder Kirk Tilghman collected a double, triple, and two home runs. Unsurprisingly, the offensive barrage led Jersey City to a 15-1 pounding of Tupper Street. That day also saw Miami and New York record their first wins of the season thanks to a 15-7 defeat of Gainesville and a 5-4 win over Cairo, respectively.

On April 7, pitchers came out to play as Gaby Duran combined with three relievers on a four-hitter to push Marietta past Maryland 1-0. Speedster Carlos Cisneros’s solo home run in the sixth off Geronimo “Stitch” Rodriguez was the difference. Meanwhile, Abe Nix was just one out away from a four-hit, 10-K masterpiece when he was pulled in New York’s 11-0 rout of Cairo.

On April 8, the early-season extra-inning madness continued. Maryland scored two in the ninth and one in the tenth to edge the Purple Porpoises 6-5. Meanwhile, Seattle and Marietta went 14 innings before the Pilots prevailed 3-2 on a Myles “Stretch” Horne RBI single. Word is that this Horne kid is pretty good.

On April 9, Tilghman was at it again, as he had four hits (including a double and triple) in Jersey City’s 8-5 win over Stockholm. Rookie starter John “Butch” Winters held down the Pisces offense with eight strong innings in Miami’s 5-1 win over Pittsburgh. Gainesville’s Hernando Desalvo went the distance in the Purple Porpoises 8-2 victory at Maryland. Rumors are that Desalvo is being actively shopped in trades. Again.

On April 10, another 14-inning game was played. Cairo scored a run in the top of the ninth to tie Tupper Street at 3-3. A one-out groundball single by Raymond Bullington in the bottom of the 14th finally broke the tie and gave the Redlegs a 4-3 triumph.

Unsurprisingly, Tilghman leads the OEL with a 1.307 OPS and the Skeeters have five of the top 8 OPSs in the league. Two more belong to Tupper Street’s Patrick Layfield (1.306) and Carlos Lara (1.272), who are 2-3 on that leaderboard and 1-2 in batting average and VORP. There are currently six pitchers with two wins on the year. One of them is some guy named Tyler Conn. So, after the version upgrade, he’s still pretty good. Poor Sam Mazza of Gainesville has managed to already rack up three losses. Tough start.

Next sim will be Friday. League file is posted.

It’s the prettiest sight any commissioner can ever see. 100% of the teams uploaded this sim. That meant that every single owner uploaded and reduced their major league roster to 25. Thanks everyone.

So,the 2009 regular season is underway. After four games, there is only one team left unbeaten: the Maryland Poedamnedmonium. Maryland is one game up in the Platonic League over Jersey City and Pittsburgh. In the Socratic League, Cairo, Marietta, and Tupper Street lead the way with 3-1 records. The cellar is surprisingly occupied by Miami and New York, who are the only two winless squads on the season.

The first Player of the Week awards were handed out to Jersey City’s Seve Bosch and Tupper Street’s Carlos Lara. I would think Maryland’s Henry Gary was in contention too, as he threw a four-hit shutout against Seattle on April 4.

One notable injury, as Brooklyn lost outfielder Tory Chavez for four weeks to a torn thumb ligament.

Now, on to the game action!

On April 1, Marietta and Miami staked an early claim to the longest and most exciting game of the year. Marietta held a 3-0 lead after seven innings, with Mammoth starting pitcher Fermin Garcia cruising. However, Miami struck for two in the eighth on a two-out, two-run double by Agustin “Gloop” Moreno and then tied it with a sacrifice fly in the ninth off new Marietta closer Eddie Pineda. When David Vidal singled in pinchrunner Ted Masson in the top of the tenth, it appeared that the Masters had a stirring come-from-behind victory. Not so fast, said Marietta’s Steven Seidl, as he tied the game with a 410-foot bomb to center field. The pitchers then took control of the game, with the two sides combining to retire the next 11 hitters in a row. Miami finally put a couple runners on with none out in the 13th inning, but saw their chances evaporate with a strikeout and double play. Marietta drew two walks in the bottom of the 13th, but couldn’t break the tie. Miami started the 14th with two singles, but a double play and routine fly out ended that threat. Suddenly, on a 1-1 pitch, George Cue blasted a leadoff, game-winning home run to start the bottom of the 14th. His 421-foot blast sent the nearly 55,0000 Marietta fans dancing into night.

On April 2, the new look Tupper Street Redlegs started their season with a bang, knocking off New York 13-7 in a game featuring 26 hits. Apparently, their hitters worked off the rust in spring training.

On April 3, the first day with all 12 teams in action, there were three games won in the final at bat. Maryland pushed past Seattle 3-2 on a bases-loaded sacrifice fly to shallow left by Willie Williams. Tupper Street pulled victory from the jaws of defeat, scoring two in the bottom of the ninth off New York, including a game-winning Joseph Mulford RBI single. Marietta tied its game with Miami in the bottom of the ninth on a Kevin Grow solo home run and then won it in the tenth with two outs on back-to-back doubles by Alec Vandenberg and George Cue.

April 4 featured Gary’s shutout of the Pilots and Tupper Street’s Jeffrey Yancy combining with two relievers to blank New York 3-0 on five hits.

April 5 saw Miami’s third defeat in extra innings, a brutal way to start the season, when Gainesville’s Orlando Ruiz homered in the bottom of the 11th for a 2-1 Purple Porpoise victory.

As this sim shows, anything can happen when the games start being played. The league file is posted. Next sim will be Wednesday. With Friday’s sim, play will start in AAA, AA, and full-season A-ball, so get those minor league rosters set.

Spring training is over. Monday is the first regular season sim. Although I will be handling all of next week’s sims while our fearless leader takes a well-earned vacation, I will be channeling Nate’s hostility at everyone who fails to adjust their roster down to 25 people. Do not make me do it for you.

As a recap of the spring gone by, the Pittsburgh Pisces posted the best record in the OEL at 17-7 while the Brooklyn Bombers brought up the rear at 8-16. The Pisces’ infielders led the way as Darren Schmeltzer led all hitters with a .449 batting average and a 1.239 OPS and Danilo Henriquez slugged a league-leading seven home runs. A shout out to long-time Tupper Street top prospect Carlos Lara, who turned in a second-best .416 average this spring.

On the pitching side, Pisces hurler T-Rex Tashiro benefited from his club’s offense with a 5-0 record in five starts, despite a 5.21 ERA. New York Knight Sadakuno Shibata and Stockholm Slugger John Roll went through the entire spring without yielding a single run. Miami’s Francisco Martinez struck out a league-high 26 batters.

Some more significant injuries this sim. Here are the ones causing a loss of regular-season time:

Tupper Street outfielder Jacobo Xiquena will miss four weeks with a strained oblique.
Pittsburgh Pisces closer Miguel Herrera will miss six months with a torn labrum (dang it!).
Seattle’s Frankie Garnett will miss two weeks with a bone bruise in his wrist.

No major transactions this sim.

League file is posted. I’ll upload web pages either this weekend or after Monday’s sim. So, get your major league roster down to 25 and let’s see which team proves best in 2009!

We’ve now simmed two weeks of Spring Training. The mighty, mighty Pisces are 11-2 in the Platonic League, while Miami and Marietta are tied atop the Socratic league at 8-5. Outside of Pittsburgh, everyone is between 4-9 and 8-5, so it’s pretty even.

Pittsburgh’s Darren Schmeltzer is now leading Spring Training with a .526 batting average and a 1.387 OPS. Gainesville’s Dan Rushing leads with 4 home runs and 15 RBI. Marietta’s Russell Frederickson and Pittsburgh’s T-Rex Tashiro are the only players with three wins. Seattle’s free agent acquisition Tobias Rosado has 15 Ks. My new favorite-named player, Michael Bad of Topper Street, leads with four saves. So many nicknames, so few fields. Sigh.

On the transaction front, you’ll notice a series of trades of draft picks. That was to clean up some minor issues with the trades processed by Nate on Friday and to make sure that the right teams had the right draft picks. Everything should be ok now. No other major deals. Stockholm executed the first waiver claim of the former minor leaguers that teams tried to sneak back through waivers, taking infield prospect Giap Trieu off the Pisces. So much for my plan of trying to get a couple people through early. It will be an interesting scrum at the end of Spring Training.

In injury news, a few more players got hurt enough to potentially miss regular season time. It was a rough sim for outfielders in particular. Here’s the list of significant injuries:

New York’s Earl Moya is out four months with a torn labrum.
Brooklyn’s Perry Hodgin will miss three weeks with a separated shoulder.
Jersey City’s George Pullum is out five weeks with a sprained knee.
Stockholm’s Ronald Veit is out four weeks with a fractured rib.

Everyone else hurt this sim should be return in time for the regular season.

Week three of Spring Training will be simmed by Nate on Wednesday. Friday will finish the exhibition season and take us to the cusp of the regular season. That means that next Monday will be the first games that count. So, please remember by Monday to get your major league roster back to 25. Nate may be running that sim and he will not hesitate to release players to get you under the limit. He’s ruthlessly efficient that way.

Good luck all.

Rested from his offseason vacation, the Deputy Commissioner has jumped back into the swing of things and simmed the league up to the first day of Spring Training, March 2. Twelve fan bases are dreaming of capturing the prestigious OEL trophy and swilling champagne from that sacred chalice.

Interestingly, the game automatically added everyone on the 40-man roster to the ML rosters for Spring Training. Looks like that happened for all of us. Hopefully, no players accrue any major league service time, as promised in the game’s online manual. It’s interesting, as I didn’t realize a number of these guys were even on my 40-man roster. Huh.

Anyway, there were some free agent and other contract signings this sim: First, Tupper Street inked outfielder Brady Morris to a one year, $2.3M contract. Since Morris was a Type A free agent, Miami picks up a supplemental choice and Tupper Street’s second round pick. Win-win. Pittsburgh signed reliever and fan favorite Vincent Furness to a one-year, $2M deal. No free agent compensation for the resigning, despite Furness’s Type A status. Pittsburgh also signed second baseman Alberto Jimenez to a three-year, $9M per year extension.

Since we’re at the start of Spring Training, everyone got new scouting reports. Woooo!

As a side note, the more observant among you will notice a three-team series of trades involving Cairo, Miami, and Seattle. This was done simply to get the first round picks traded between Cairo and Miami in the big deal headlined by catcher Raul Zambrano to go where they were supposed to. The game’s system gets confused when you’re swapping picks in the same round, and when a team has more than one pick, and … never mind. Just trust me that this was necessary. It seems to have worked like a charm.

Anyway, time for pitchers and hitters to shake off that offseason rust. We’ll sim one week per time, with the first week’s games coming on Friday. Yee haw!

Well, the annual winter meetings have come and gone. It’s now December 16, 2008. During the meetings, there was one big signing as veteran starting pitcher Tobias Rosado agreed to a one-year, $13.67 million contract with the Seattle Pilots. Big addition to an already rising franchise. And, since Rosado was Type B, Jersey City becomes the proud owner of the first supplemental draft pick in history. Yay Skeeters!

In less high-flying news, rightfielder Benito Parra signed with the Marietta Mammoths for one year at $1.3 million; Miami signed middle reliever Antonio Hernandez to a three-year deal worth $9,630,000; Maryland inked second baseman John Avelar to a two-year contract worth $1,770,500; Stockholm grabbed reliever Michael Thiessen for two years and $1.2 million; Brooklyn signed rightfielder Bill Waite for one year at $750,000; and Stockholm signed second baseman Roger “Squirrel-Bait” Kirby for one year and $540,000.

In other news, Seattle had a slight setback as star closer Millard “Duck” Quinn suffered a strained oblique while playing football in the offseason. Fortunately, he has pretty much already healed, so it doesn’t look to be major.

League file is posted. In the next sim, I’ll take the game to January 1, 2009. That will give everyone new OSA scouting reports and will also create the latest year’s almanac (available upon request). Then Nate will have all of the sims next week as I bask in sun on a beach.

We’ve now entered the era of free agency for the first time under OOTP 11. Woo hoo!

There were some personnel transactions and many players received contract extensions for the league minimum. Otherwise, free agency arrived. So, start your shopping!

Everyone hopefully saw yesterday my email/blog post about the free agent rules. Based on my review of the players, here’s the list of free agents for compensation with their prior teams.

Type A:
C Pio Pastrana (GAI) (signed by Marietta)
3B Constantino Martinez (STO)
CF Brady Morris (MIA)
SP Bricio Loera (SEA) (probably no compensation per my test, but sign at your own peril)
SP Leonel Spires (SEA)
SP James Weiler (MPD)
MR Thomas Fleenor (BRK)
CL Vincent Furness (PIT)

Type B:
LF Ronald Veit (MIA) (signed by Stockholm)
SP Tobias Rosado (JCY) (signed by Seattle)
CL Lloyd Reardon (TST)

Remember that under the new rules, the team signing a Type B free agent doesn’t give anything up; the team that loses the player gets a supplemental sandwich pick as compensation.

Some other notes about the sim. You will see that I made a number of trades to move draft picks around. That is to match the deals made to date. Hopefully, this will help the game’s free agent compensation system now work the way it’s supposed to.

On a related note, we are going to be using the game’s draft order going forward, including for the next draft in June 2009, rather than the customized one we have traditionally used in the league. The game uses only regular season records to determine the draft order. In the league, we have usually adjusted that to take playoff outcomes into account, so that the champion picked last regardless of its regular season record. But, as part of our effort to go to the game’s system and because of some kinks in the game’s free agent compensation system, Nate and I decided we wanted to use the game’s draft order. We checked with Matt and Mike, since Seattle and Miami are the two teams disadvantaged by switching right now by dropping slightly in the draft order in the game’s version compared to the traditional order used in our league. They both graciously agreed to the switch (thanks, guys), so we’re going to be using it going forward.

The league file is updated. We’ll start the traditional 1/2 month sim process now. So, Nate will sim up to November 30 on Monday. We’ll then go to the 15th of each month and the end of each month after that until we get to Spring Training.

Well, we’ve run the first sim in the new version of the game and a couple hiccups have appeared. The good news is that the realignment seems to have gone smoothly, with the teams sliding into their new leagues/divisions. For instance, I already hate Brooklyn, Jersey City, and Gainesville and want them to fail!

But, yeah, a couple hiccups. The new version of the game seems to base the Gold Glove awards on Zone Rating. But, zone ratings only existed for the catchers so only catchers won the awards. If I’d known that, I guess I could have given out the other positions’ awards by fiat, but such is life.

Also, I realigned the divisions as soon as we got to the offseason. But, that meant that the major awards (Rookie of the Year, Cy Young, Ted Williams) were given to players based on their NEW divisions, not the old ones. So, yeah, that’s a little weird. Here are the happy winners, nonetheless:

C Willie Williams of the Maryland Poedamnedmonium honored: Wins the 2008 OEL PL Gold Glove Award at C.
C Sixto Arenas of the Marietta Mammoths honored: Wins the 2008 OEL SL Gold Glove Award at C.
RF Kirk Tilghman of the Jersey City Skeeters honored: Wins the 2008 OEL PL Rookie of the Year Award.
1B David Vidal of the Miami Masters of Their Domain honored: Wins the 2008 OEL SL Rookie of the Year Award.
SP Tyler Conn of the Brooklyn Bombers honored: Wins the 2008 OEL PL Cy Young Award.
SP Alberto Deluna of the Miami Masters of Their Domain honored: Wins the 2008 OEL SL Cy Young Award.
2B Alberto Jiménez of the Pittsburgh Pisces honored: Wins the 2008 OEL PL Ted Williams Award.
LF Richard Vuong of the Miami Masters of Their Domain honored: Wins the 2008 OEL SL Ted Williams Award.

I guess the only thing I see that is weird is that Jimenez probably wouldn’t have won a Ted Williams Award and someone else, maybe Miles Horne, would have. I tried to make it up to Miles with a new entry in his player history, but I suspect he’s still pissed.

The only news of interest I see is that some of the team owners gave their clubs some cash. That’s nice of them, I guess. Lots of transactions of interest, so I’ll just reprise the non-minor league, non-personnel ones here:

Thursday, October 23rd, 2008
New York Knights: Claimed SP Carlos Riva off waivers from Miami.

Wednesday, October 22nd, 2008
Stockholm Sluggers: LF Mark Peters voids his last optional contract year.
Stockholm Sluggers: 3B Constantino Martinez voids his last optional contract year.
Maryland Poedamnedmonium: SP James Weiler voids his last optional contract year.
Jersey City Skeeters: SP Tobias Rosado voids his last optional contract year.
Marietta Mammoths: MR Walter Font voids his last optional contract year.
Gainesville Purple Porpoises: RF Shane Spies retires.
Jersey City Skeeters: SP Joseph Silas retires.
Brooklyn Bombers: MR Saul Gelinas (AAA Atlanta) retires.

Some interesting contract decisions and a very notable retirement by Joseph Silas. Hell of a pitcher.

It is probably VERY important to note that arbitration is different in the new version of the game. There is a separate salary arbitration screen (under the OEL menu) where you can decide what to offer. The player (computer AI presumably) submits a competing offer and the computer chooses. You can see it all at this site from the OOTP 11 Manual.

Also, free agent compensation has been fixed to include the requirement of offering arbitration and the awarding of sandwich picks. So, I suspect we’ll try to use the game’s features for free agent compensation and only step in to correct things if it proves not to work out. Again, see the relevant page of the OOTP 11 Manual.

So, in short, please check the game and do whatever you think necessary for the salary arbitration process.

Nate’s got the next sim, on Monday, which will go to November 12, taking us past salary arbitration and to the eve of free agency. League file is posted, so go there.

The Brooklyn Bombers’ offense broke out in Game Five tonight while starter Terry Benda upheld the tradition of great starting pitching. Add it up and you get an 8-1 victory and three games to two series lead for Brooklyn.

Ex-Pisces Perry “the Platypus” Hodgin was the offensive star for Brooklyn, collecting three hits in four trips to the plate, including a two-run home run. In all, Hodgin piled up three RBI and two runs scored to pace the attack.

Meanwhile, Benda held the Pittsburgh hitters to five hits over seven and a third innings. Despite as strong wind blowing out to dead center, the Pittsburgh attack could do nothing with the 21-year-old’s offerings.

Game Six will be simmed tomorrow by Nate. Will Brooklyn celebrate a title, or will the Pisces force a decisive Game Seven? Tune in to find out.