Developer Chat

Hey guys! Welcome to our second HBD chat of '09, lots of great suggestions in here and a lot of questions so lets get rolling!!

Hey guys, I took over for a team beginning the 2nd season and discovered that the previous owner's 1st round and 3rd round amateur draft picks from the prior season had retired without ever playing a game! The 1st pick took a $7.5M bonus and retired? Who does that? How about a fix for that so that follow-on owners aren't starting off with a disadvantage? (av84aal - Hall of Famer - 12:02 PM)

Well, what we are wanting to do in these types of situations is make sure that these player's come back for the next seasons draft. Another solution we are looking at is having the AI auto assign these guys at the end of the season.

Are the ratings numbers generated randomly? I feel like certain categories should be linked, but get the impression that they're not when I see guys with 80 range and 20 speed. (usssalami - Pro - 12:05 PM)

Ratings are generated based on player type and the ratings that matter are linked. Speed and range are not linked because it is not necessary to have great speed to have great range. Cal Ripken is a great example of this, he wasn't fast but he could position himself well enough to make a lot of plays.

I think it would be a great idea to allow money coming in from a trade to be assigned to your choice between prospects or payroll. Has this been considered? On a similar note, will we ever be able to carry unused money over from year to year, perhaps with a 50% cut, like a budget transfer? (usssalami - Pro - 12:07 PM)

It might be something we can look at. For now, as I'm sure you already know, you can transfer that money. I'm pretty certain we will never allow user's to carry over unused money from year to year.

Can we add a "Trade Proposal" link to an opposing players card? Often in "Chat", Owners say player x, y, & z are available. We usually look at the card listed in chat, If we like the player, shouldn't we be able to link right from the card adding him to a Trade Proposal.... (7Yankees7 - Hall of Famer - 12:08 PM)

Great suggestion, I think we can add that in for a future update.

When can we expect to see owner records (most world series, highest win %, etc...)? (bjb2378 - Hall of Famer - 12:09 PM)

We have looked at doing something like this and it is on our list for a future enhancement to the game. We have some other things we would like to get done first, but I would expect this to make it into the game at some point.

Are you satisfied with the rate at which young SS, 2B and CF progress defensively? A draftee at those positions with high projections (90+) typically needs 4+ seasons of minor league ball before they can legitimately field their position adequately at the big league level, and even then they still aren't close to their projections. Those positions in particular are hard to get a young ML caliber defender at, even though in real-life MLB, it’s where a majority of the young premier defenders play. (randallball - Hall of Famer - 12:10 PM)

We are going to be taking a look at a lot of different data for the next update and I think that this is one area in which we will be looking at. Thanks for bringing it up.

Any chance of adding bullpen stats? Currently there's no way to compare bullpens. (radek - Hall of Famer - 12:13 PM)

There are a couple of ways in the game to compare bullpens. The most detailed way is via the franchise rankings page, select "Bullpen" from the grouping drop down and then sort on the rating that you are interested in comparing. Statistically you can go to the team stats page and select "Extended" on this page you can see the IR and IRS stat which is a decent indicator of bullpen strength.

Any thought on putting a payroll minimum in place? (bjb2378 - Hall of Famer - 12:14 PM)

At this time this isn't something we have looked at in depth.

The fix for game log totals is great. Can that stats be expanded to add AVG. OBP. SLG. OAV. WHIP. ERA. etc? It would provide a little further information to the log. I believe this is the old way of doing it in SLB. (leaffan10 - Hall of Famer - 12:16 PM)

Given the size constraints we decided to go with core stats rather than the calculated stats.

I would love to see "Championship Rings" listed on a players card. I know it's something you've considered, is it at the top of the list? (sickchangeup - Hall of Famer - 12:18 PM)

Yeah, this is definitely on our list and it wouldn't be that hard to incorporate. I might be able to get this one in sooner rather than later.

Would it be possible to set an age limit on the Rookie League roster? (emrod13 - Veteran - 12:22 PM)

I think that this is definitely something that we can/should consider.

why doesnt the sim keep track of batting average with runners in scoring position...this is a fundamental stat...can you add it...also...when proposing a trade...can you add to the dropdown a "minor league player only" tab...there are a lot of times owners look for non-major leaguers and it would be easier if we didnt have to see them... (Save_Mr_X - Hall of Famer - 12:23 PM)

We'll take a look at the engine and see if we can start tracking this stat. I think that it is a little bit more complicated then one might think which is why it isn't there in the first place. The minor league drop down might be possible and it has been added to the list to be looked at.

Does the awards voting logic include/account for Park Factors? (jmas410 - Hall of Famer - 12:26 PM)

Yes, that is all built in.

Any way you guys can limit the number of crappy DIRT prospects the system generates? What's the point of telling me that a prospects jumped from 30 overall to 40 overall when he's still a career AA player at best just like he was before he became a DIRT. (radek - Hall of Famer - 12:26 PM)

Diamonds in the Rough aren't supposed to be great every time you get one. The majority of the players that will become DITR will see little improvement. However, on random occasions you can get a player who will become a ML caliber player. Keep in mind also that player's can go through the cycle more than once so that crappy guy you are describing might go through the process again and become great.

Question about the Amateur Draft: Assuming signing bonus demands are met, which draftee has the greater probability of signing; Undecided. or May Sign if the Deal is Right? (sdhizzle - Hall of Famer - 12:29 PM)

May sign if the deal is right

This has been brought up before, but do you think you can add Tandem 5A/B and 6A/B so we can use starting staffs with 3 or 4 regular starters and one or two tandem sets without having to constantly change our pitching staffs around? (csherwood - Hall of Famer - 12:30 PM)

This is on our list, when it will get into the game is uncertain. We have a lot we want to get in before we start looking at adding the new roles into the engine.

In real life, there are many two-way players in the draft each year. Some teams prefer them as pitchers while others prefer them as hitters. There should be more of these in HBD, don't you agree? (usssalami - Pro - 12:32 PM)

While it's possible in real life it is also very rare. The engine isn't set up for these types of player's yet and when it is I would imagine that this would be such a rare occurrence that it wouldn't be that significant.

Any chance of some type of a live game display so that we could watch games instead of reading the play-by-play. WIS already has the software in SLB Live, how hard would it be to implement it with HBD as a game viewer. Watching dots with names run around a diamond would be so much more fun than scrolling line by line. (radek - Hall of Famer - 12:35 PM)

It's quite hard actually, they are two different games. Someday LIVE play will be here we don't know when that day will be though.

When ranking players for the amateur draft, if I see ten players (for example, pitchers with control under 30) who I want sent to the very bottom of the list (basically to ensure that I won't draft any of them). Is there a way to select all ten at once by hitting 'ctrl'? This would be much more convenient than having to select each player; drop him to the bottom; find the next player and repeat separately. It's kind of arduous and makes me spend less time altering my draft board. Thanks for listening! (wrecks42 - Pro - 12:37 PM)

There is going to be a significant overhaul for the amateur draft ranking process that I think everyone will enjoy. It will make ranking your prospects much easier.

In light of the 1/16 update regarding free agency and the effects of arbitration, have you given any thought to, 1) increasing the maximum contract length, and, 2) allowing us to negotiate long-term deals in season with arb eligible players? (randallball - Hall of Famer - 12:42 PM)

We can look at #2 that might be possible. As for lengthening the max that would be a little more complicated, I'm not saying it won't happen, but it will be a while.

are international prospects generated at random, or do they consider the amount of talent in a given league? (schedule1 - Hall of Famer - 12:43 PM)

IPs are generated at random.

How often are the franchise rankings re-calibrated to reflect trades/FA signings...etc. Is this only generated once per season or updated each "day" (badhame7 - Hall of Famer - 12:44 PM)

It's updated every time there is a change. So if you trade for a player those averages are created immediately when you view the page.

Is there a way to turn off the responses will refresh automatically every 2 minutes. If There is not can we get a fix for that. I dislike it when I am in the middle of reading a question/answer and it refreshes me back to the start. (plague - Hall of Famer - 12:45 PM)

Ha, yeah we can look at extending that or giving you the option to set it.

"There is going to be a significant overhaul for the amateur draft ranking process that I think everyone will enjoy. It will make ranking your prospects much easier." - does this mean excel importing? (sickchangeup - Hall of Famer - 12:45 PM)

No, no excel importing, but formula building.

When viewing an individual players career stats would it be possible to toggle between major and minor league stats instead of always seeing both at the same time? (shambo2000 - Hall of Famer - 12:46 PM)

We want to condense this data considerably and that is one the categories we will be including along with season and position for fielding stats. It gets kind of hard to read in season 10+.

Will there every be a time when we'll be able to transfer budgets into scouting, training, or medical? (BBMogul - Hall of Famer - 12:48 PM)

Transferring money to the scouting budgets wouldn't help you because those values are used to generate your scouting effectiveness right at the end of the budget setting period. For now, we only want you to be able to transfer money to the "usable" budgets so I don't think we will make this change.

Will a player going to arbitration and losing affect that player's chances of becoming a free agent significantly more than going to arbitrationa and winning? Will there be a way to sign the player to their asking price prior to arbitration to reduce the chances they leave via free agency? (stitch01 - Hall of Famer - 12:50 PM)

If you consistently low ball your offer during arbitration and win the player will have a greater chance of filing for FA when his arbitration status is up. Given the recent change you will still have two days to offer the player a long term deal however he may reject it.

I have a LHP that I believe is more effective against RHB's so I designated him as a right-handed specialist, but the coach insists on bringing him in against lefties? (cp49 - Hall of Famer - 12:51 PM)

If you have a boxscore example please send it in, we'd love to see this and improve upon it.

In what order is the bullpen used, assuming all have equal rest: Setup A, Setup B, LH/RH specialist? If Specialist is last, what is the purpose for them- just one dangerous batter? (cp49 - Hall of Famer - 12:53 PM)

The order, assuming proper inning availability, is as follows: LRA/LRB, SuA/SuB, ClA/ClB. Specialists are only used in specialized situations so yes they would face just one or two dangerous hitters in specialized situations.

I understand one of the new fixes is adjusting overall rating for pitchers and their stamina. That is great, especially since overall rating greatly affects contract demands, so hopefully mediocre pitchers with high stamina will demand less than they do now, and awesome relief pitchers will demand more. Will you consider a similar adjustment for 1B/DH? Some of the greatest hitters in HBD demand less than $5M per season. (jimmystick - Hall of Famer - 12:54 PM)

Yes, the adjustment will affect all players at all positions. We aren't just focusing on pitchers this time.

Any chance of a live amateur draft - Yahoo-style? Nothing would change for owners who couldn't do it live as their settings would take care of their selections. It lets the active owner more hands-on. Thanks! (raz13 - Hall of Famer - 1:01 PM)

While I think this would be very fun I think it might give an unfair advantage to those who are able to be at the computer.

How come the word 'update' adds the extra 'e' on the chat board? (raz13 - Hall of Famer - 1:04 PM)

The great mystery, update is a reserved word in SQL so it's a security measure. We need to change it we just haven't gotten around to it yet.

Any way we could get the ability to add/remove multiple players to the Spring Training squad with a checkbox type option? (randallball - Hall of Famer - 1:05 PM)

We actually tried this in test and found that it was much more complicated than we had anticipated. So I guess, unfortunately, the answer is no.

I was wondering if there were any plans to give a sorting option when it comes to the career statistics page on a player's card. For any given player, I'd like to be able to see just their ML stats and not have to sift through fragmented Minor League Stats. (mrtheedge - Hall of Famer - 1:06 PM)

I think most of this will be cleared up when we revisit the page and condense the data. Adding sorting won't be a significant issue and I would expect it to make it in there.

Is there any consideration for changing budget allocation? The current system of plus or minus 4 million really handicaps rebuilding projects when taking over a bad team. Unlimited movement year to year I understand could be manipulated, but I shouldn't have to wait 3 or 4 season to get training or advanced scouting where I want it to be with my franchise. (sweetsalve - Hall of Famer - 1:06 PM)

No, this won't change.

Is it more important to have a pitcher that has good splits (lefty vs. righty) or have a higher number on their #1 and #2 pitches? (bperkins - Hall of Famer - 1:11 PM)

In the engine all of the ratings are considered and it is possible that having very high ratings in either category can diminish the penalty for the lower ratings in the other category. Personally, I like to look for pitchers who have higher effectiveness, but that is just my opinion.

Does a catcher's pitch calling affect anything other than OAV? Does it affect how many pitches a pitcher throws per inning? (sweetsalve - Hall of Famer - 1:11 PM)

No, it only affects OAV.

Currently the assignment of draft picks for class A and B free agents takes into account team record and timing of the signing. MLB ranks the free agents and assigns draft picks based upon those rankings. Is there any chance this will change in HBD to better reflect what happens in MLB? (sweetsalve - Hall of Famer - 1:12 PM)

This may change at some point and it is on our list for a future update.

Can you add a feature to download a csv file to import into excel of the players ratings and/or stats in your organization and/or league to create content for the blogs and track players? This would give us quick access to all player ratings/stats with only one query to not overload the servers. (kalikgod - Hall of Famer - 1:13 PM)

At this time we are not interested in offering downloadable data that may change in the future, but for now that discussion has been put on hold.

When a draft pick likes your offer but needs time to consider whether he will sign, is there any advantage at all to then increasing your offer? (csherwood - Hall of Famer - 1:14 PM)

No, there is no advantage to increasing your offer.

When "Live Play" comes around... will there be a way to allow/disallow it per league? Or will it strictly up to the owner? I think it has the ability to strongly favor owners who can actively play Live games, and if all 32 owners do not want to participate, it could widen the gap even further between the haves and have nots. (smoelheim - Hall of Famer - 1:15 PM)

There haven't been any details hashed out about LIVE and how it will work within the HBD framework. When we know more we'll surely let the community know.

Would you consider either of the following: limiting what owners can do in future seasons based on their remaining seasons reserved (as is the case in other dynasty games) and/or allowing theme leagues which require multi season buy ins to enter? Right now I am hesitant to join any league other than the one I am in (OCD) because of the lack of future season certainty. (ttnorm - Hall of Famer - 1:17 PM)

Both of these are good suggestions. Theme leagues are probably a no for now given the fact that HBD isn't set up to allow it. Limiting what an owner can do is potentially more viable, but still a ways off considering we haven't put much thought into what we wouldn't allow them to do. A lot of the "to do" is very important.

Any chance in the future for a HBD/Sim Baseball hybrid? I would love to do a league that has real players from baseball history. (WiredTiger - Hall of Famer - 1:18 PM)

I don't think we will be going down this path for quite some time.

It would be cool to be able to play exhibitions with our HBD teams against teams from other worlds. (WiredTiger - Hall of Famer - 1:19 PM)

LIVE? Yeah, we want this too and it makes sense for something like this to live in the LIVE game.

Any chance of getting some kind of incentive for sticking with and turning around a weak franchise? My world is great...except we CONSTANTLY have 3-4 openings per season and many times it's the same weak franchises that become available. I don't blame these new guys for not wanting to re-sign when it will take several seasons just to correct the problems...but it hurts the world to have the constant turnover of the same teams. (joeymillman - Hall of Famer - 1:21 PM)

We don't have anything planned currently. We are now offering the 5/10 season incentives. I do know that a lot of worlds will give a gift certificate out to an owner who has turned a team around.

Are you bringing back the old merged worlds to fill? (yoker70 - Hall of Famer - 1:22 PM)

No, that was an issue with the update yesterday. Something got overwritten that shouldn't have.

Is there any thought to emulating MLB where you have to offer a player arbitration before you can get type A/type B compensation? (bjb2378 - Hall of Famer - 1:24 PM)

Not at this time.

Why can't we view league leaders for previous seasons? This seems like it would be simple to add since the player stats for past seasons are available. (coolio4433 - All-Star - 1:26 PM)

It might be something we can look at adding, but for now we want the league leaders to be current. This is the main reason of the single season records page.

Per a previous Dev Chat, a catcher's PC affect's OAV. HOW does it affect OAV? Is it as a function of the pitcher's pitches? IOW, given Pitcher A with P1/P2/P3 of 60/60/60, and Pitcher B with 70/60/50, will PC affect their OAV equally or will the effect be greater for Pitcher B? (carnivore - Hall of Famer - 1:28 PM)

It is a function of the pitches, mainly a modifier.

When looking at the "league leaders" board, is there any chance that there could be an option to select "rookies only"? It would be nice to see which rookies around the league are doing well without having to check team by team. (bourbonmoon - Hall of Famer - 1:28 PM)

Could be neat, I've added it to our list.

With the new arb changes dealing with free agency, can we get extension past 2 days to sign these players to long term contracts during all seasons of arb eligibility? You can't sign a arb eligible player beyond 5 seasons, so there is no real reason to not allow the ability to lock them up, it seems to me currently its a handicap that is not needed. (plague - Hall of Famer - 1:29 PM)

We might look at this, but for now it is going to stay two days.

Is the Arizona Fall League development still in the works? If so, how close are we to seeing it? (dherz_263 - Hall of Famer - 1:30 PM)

We still want it, but no development has been started on it yet. I would say it won't land for a while yet.

Any chance at a minimum payroll? I have seen payrolls under $10M. (bjb2378 - Hall of Famer - 1:31 PM)

We'll take a look at how common this strategy is and then make a decision.

It seems that if I ever let the simAI handle one of my minor league teams, the players soon decend into fatigue problems. If I'm handling it myself I can avoid this by ensuring proper rest. Shuffling every minor league pitching staff after every game is time consuming. Is there a chance that the simAI will improve its "rest distribution" habits to avoid fatigue problems? (bourbonmoon - Hall of Famer - 1:32 PM)

We're always interested in improving the AI and this is an area that I think we can improve upon.

Have you given any thought to allowing open source additions to the game? I am sure many of your loyal customers know how to program an Active Server Page or two. (bjb2378 - Hall of Famer - 1:34 PM)

We've talked about it, we love the idea, but I don't know that it works for this type of game.

In order to avoid having a poor coach hired for me, I will have multiple offers on the table in the late stage of coach hiring. The lowest coach has always been the one to accept. Is this intentional and if so, why should this sensible responsible approach be essentially punished? (TBill7 - Hall of Famer - 1:35 PM)

There are some modifications that we are going to make so that the entire process makes more sense. In other words what you are seeing won't be allowed to happen anymore.

does age increase the likelihood of injury (independent of its effect on health)? (djbradford - Hall of Famer - 1:38 PM)

No, health rating, fatigue and game situation are what determine injuries.

Any chance of adding a World Series MVP award? (csherwood - Hall of Famer - 1:39 PM)

Sure

Is there any chance of adding the ratings filters to the player search page? For example, letting me search for all players with a control rating of 80+ rather than sorting the results of all SPs. (jmas410 - Hall of Famer - 1:40 PM)

At this time we haven't considered adding filters to the search page. I'm sure we could add it in though.

Have you made a decision on adding projected ratings to the options on the player search page? (jmas410 - Hall of Famer - 1:41 PM)

We don't have them on this page for site performance reasons.

In addition to the accomplishments on the player's card, could we add "No Hitter", "Perfect Game", "Hit for Cycle" or "Player of the Week" to the list? (kalikgod - Hall of Famer - 1:41 PM)

Love this idea, it's on the list.

Player bonuses, could the option be added to contract negotiations to decide which budget to use for bonuses? I know late in the season when there is extra salary left over it would be nice to use that for bonuses, currently this is not possible but would be realistic. (BrianCampos - Hall of Famer - 1:43 PM)

I don't think that this aspect of the game will change.

Because of minor league player retirements, I am finding there are no minor league pitchers available to sign to fill out rotations. Having to sign ML pitchers to fill single a rotations seems a little unrealistic. Is there any plan to increase the supply of FA's or decrease the minor league retirements? (kalikgod - Hall of Famer - 1:43 PM)

We'll be looking at the data in the coming weeks so when we do we'll make sure that things are in balance with what we expect. For the time being make sure you are promoting at a regular rate and signing all of your draft picks. Alternatively, you can always hit up the try out camp.

If/when all 32 owners vote for post season awards, does it tabulate the actual voting? And if/when they don't, are the votes that were cast actually counted? How does the SIM address the voting? (randallball - Hall of Famer - 1:44 PM)

If all 32 owners do not vote the AI distributes the remaining votes based on the player that is the best statistically.

Before adding an age limit to rookie league rosters, you must allow position players in tryout camp. Otherwise those of us that may need to sign a minor-league FA SS or C to fill out the Rookie league rosters are going to be out of luck. (badhame7 - Hall of Famer - 1:45 PM)

Yes I agree, we are looking at reintroducing the try out camp position players

I know that height/weight have been said to be purely cosmetic, but could we get the 5'6" draftees to stop "dreaming of playing in the NBA"? Also, the community college draftees that "want to finish out their college careers" is a bit off. I do think that those should be ?s of signability on some players, but who it applies to could use some tweaking. (randallball - Hall of Famer - 1:46 PM)

We'll take a look at these at make sure they make sense or are at least a bit more realistic.

Is your list tangible? Or is it a word document? Is it on your desk, Tom's desk, or on a whiteboard in your room? It seems like you have an awful lot on this list so far. (r0b0t - Hall of Famer - 1:47 PM)

Yeah, our list is huge and it is definitely tangible

When do you plan to adjust ballpark effects? (05nomar05 - Hall of Famer - 1:48 PM)

We've already made a few modifications. The next big change will be adding ballparks.

You wrote on here that ou prefer Pitcher's who have higher "effectiveness". What does that mean? What do you consider to be high effectiveness? (05nomar05 - Hall of Famer - 1:49 PM)

Any pitcher whose VsRHB is >= 70 mainly.

World records. Would it be possible to have a lengthier list for lifetime leaders past 5. For example say top 20 for career leaders in home runs? (plague - Hall of Famer - 1:50 PM)

We may expand this in the future but right now we are okay with the top 5.

Are you considering changing compensation for unsigned draft picks to mirror MLB's, where if you can't sign a guy you took with pick 10, you'd get pick 10b the next season. Right now it's a huge penalty if a team with a top-5 pick can't sign a guy, because they end up picking around No. 40 the next season. (benj13blue - Hall of Famer - 1:51 PM)

I think we will look at this when we rework the rankings process and I think that we can probably add something similar into the game.

This is a small thing, can you add a button for setting JUST Auto-Reccomends for rest/defense/pinch-hitting at the MLB level? I know I could hit the auto-recs button for the level, but that adjusts line-ups and pitching staffs too. In the case of a AAA call-up or injury replacement, all the replace logics need to be updated (and I'm fine with the recommended), but I don't want to have to reset all my line-ups. Basically, it would save 6 clicks and page loads. (98greenc5 - Hall of Famer - 1:53 PM)

Yeah, we can add something like this.

HBD OF currently can not make throwing errors...do you intend to fix that? (randallball - Hall of Famer - 1:54 PM)

Yes, please send an example if you have one.

So if the PC is a modifier of the pitch quality (and not RH/LH effectiveness), will a 60PC catcher and a P1 of 70 have the same effect as a 70PC catcher and a P1 of 60? (toddcommish - Hall of Famer - 1:55 PM)

It's a modifier on the pitcher's repertoire so all pitches are factored and the modified by the PC rating.

Can you add the players current team abbreviation to players listed on the "leaders" section of the office page? (mgccpro - Hall of Famer - 1:56 PM)

If there is space, sure!

I love the new Advanced Roster Mode. I would like to offer the suggestion of instead of a separate radial buttons for activate and deactivate for the MiL staff to have one option for active inactive swap. do you think this would be possible? (tarollio - Hall of Famer - 1:57 PM)

This page may expand on the future, but for now we aren't looking at expanding it.

Have you given any thought to tweaking International Scouts emails when finding a player? Right now there is no need to really look at the scouts email, you just click the player. Realistic Scouting emails, combined with hazy projections could make internationals more interesting (dherz_263 - Hall of Famer - 1:58 PM)

We want to expand the whole process, what that all entails has yet to be discussed. I do the same thing, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing.

I know you guys said you were doing research on having the stamina for RL pitchers being higher, did anything come of this? I still get RL teams with 18 pitchers on them having 0 (0)'s because of poor stamina issues. Could you maybe increase the roster to 35 and allow 5 inactives? (m0unt187 - All-Star - 1:59 PM)

I think what I would like to see instead is the stamina rating start out a little closer to the projected rating so that it doesn't take them that long to develop it. Just a thought though.

Any consideration for a tournament of champions like there is in SLB? (plague - Hall of Famer - 2:00 PM)

I think we would love to have something like this. It will be awhile but I think that it is something we will get in there.

Why is it necessary to have $2M in a budget in order to transfer. It's very difficult to budget everything pre-season with free agency such a big variable. I understand requiring some $$ kept for players, but $2M seems excessive. (mgccpro - Hall of Famer - 2:01 PM)

The $2M minimum is in place so budgets can remain in $1M increments and the 50% penalty can be assessed.

Is World #103 we had an abandoned franchise that was given to another owner with 40 games left in the season. This franchise was 19-99 when he took it over, so he was basically taking a charity case on for 40 games. Will there ever been any incentive for doing this? He gets absolutely nothing out of the deal other than a headache, would it be possible to get a discounted first season with the franchise if you take over a team after x amount of games? (sharkeyke - Veteran - 2:05 PM)

For now the compensation is that they get their season at no cost. I'm not sure that we will change that anytime soon.

As far as a C's pitch calling, I have a pitcher who seems to consistently pitch better with my 40 PC rated catcher than with my 69 PC rated catcher. Why would this be so? (torrone - Hall of Famer - 2:06 PM)

It's hard to say as there are a ton of factors that could be influencing it like ballpark, opponent, your defensive setup for that game. If you have a some examples feel free to submit them in a ticket and we'll take a look.

Do International Free Agents and Amateur Draft picks ever reduce their demands if unsigned for some period of time? Completely superfluous question, can you incorporate rain-outs and double-headers once or twice per season just to mix things up? (ratpoison - Hall of Famer - 2:08 PM)

IPs and draft picks will never reduce their demands. We may be able to incorporate those things into the engine at some point but it would be really difficult to modify the schedule after it has been generated so I'm not very optimistic.

Any chance we'll have french names for french canadian players and japanese names for japanese players and so on? (jeanpaul22 - Hall of Famer - 2:08 PM)

That is all in there already, it probably needs to be expanded a bit at this point so if you have any suggestions feel free to pass them along.

When ranking the Amateur Draft. Is there a future update that will allow you to adjust your draft settings without having to redo your draft pool again? It's a pain to set your draft. Then realize you want to draft more of another position....then you have to do all the rankings again. (05nomar05 - Hall of Famer - 2:09 PM)

No, the settings have a direct impact on who you see in your pool and it will always be related. However, with the coming changes it will be much easier to rank the players so it won't be as time consuming.

Might it be possible to tell the A.I. manager to play certain players over others, such as young prospects over minor league vets just filling out the rosters? I have promoted guys only to see them riding the pine, and I don't want to have to manage each and every minor league team. (ewd330 - Hall of Famer - 2:10 PM)

This is something that we are looking into. We agree bbtter player's should play more over poor player's.

Is there a way to consider stats or even signing amount, instead of just ratings when considering free agent compensation. I had a starting pitcher go 9-5 last season with an ERA under 3.00 in 150 innings, get a 3-year $30 million contact in free agency. Yet his overall rating was only 68, so I got no compensation. (mileininger - Hall of Famer - 2:16 PM)

When we relook at the overall rating this will work itself out. The entire game is based on ratings so I don't think we want to change that and look at something like stats which can be misleading if the player had an exceptional year or a really bad year.

Have you considered having two or three diamonds in the rough per season considering that so few ever have a chance of making ML? As it stands DITR makes very little difference in the game. (TBill7 - Hall of Famer - 2:19 PM)

At first we thought about doing it this way, but we decided that it was more important to include every owner in the world.

I would love to see a "newspaper" style page where we can see abbreviated standings (W/L, Pct., GB) for each division, results with linescores for each game played during the previous cycle (WP, LP, HR's), and scheduled games and starting pitchers for the next cycle. Maybe even a brief league leaders chart for a handful of categories. Basically, the kind of stuff you browse through while drinking your morning coffee. (tecwrg - Hall of Famer - 2:23 PM)

I agree, I think this would be a neat idea.

Why would a pitcher's best pitch not be his P1? If his P2 is a better pitch should he not use it more than his lesser P1? (bourbonmoon - Hall of Famer - 2:24 PM)

The pitches are not ranked, so pitch 1 is not always or supposed to be better than pitch 2.

Is there anything in the works to be able to negotiate a contract with an arbitration eligible player in the current season like you can with a FA instead of waiting till the new season starts, especially if your going to meet his long term demands? (firesign34 - Hall of Famer - 2:25 PM)

Nothing is being worked on at the moment but it seems that demand is pretty high which means that we will discuss it further to see if it makes sense.

may i also suggest that instead of 10 votes to veto a trade, that threshold be lowered to 5 when a trade involves an owner who has been playing HBD for less than 3 months? (victorzhao - Hall of Famer - 2:27 PM)

We don't have any plans to change this right now. The veto should be used by owners in the world to avoid such occurrences. If the trade is bad you can always post in the world chat or get in contact with your commissioner.

I think you missed dw172300's point. Assume Player A wants 1.5mm in ARB. If we offer him that, is that considered as "taking him to arbitration"? It would seem that it shouldn't, since you just agreed to his demands. (sickchangeup - Hall of Famer - 2:28 PM)

Sorry, yes that would be considered fine. You have to really give him a lower offer and win to have any adverse affects.

Can a prospect that was mishandled early in development ever get to his projections if he is put in a good situation or are the progression points he missed gone for good? (kalikgod - Hall of Famer - 2:29 PM)

It's going to take a great deal of work but it's mathematically possible.

To follow up on the Type-A Free agent loop hole question. Could you not just have the FAs consider all offers for 3 cycles before signing with the best one? (bjb2378 - Hall of Famer - 2:31 PM)

We'll take a look at this, I guess I misunderstood what you were all explaining and now I get it.

The new "recs" buttons on the Franchise Management Console page are fantastic. One small request, I prefer to use tandem rotations in the minors (especially low minors). I still need to manually set my low minors because the "recs" button always forces a traditional 5 starter approach. Any chance of two buttons (one for "Recs Normal" and one for "Recs Tandem") (badhame7 - Hall of Famer - 2:33 PM)

Currently the recommendations do not include tandems but we can expand that.

Can you have the wild card standings available all season long? (boot2112 - Hall of Famer - 2:35 PM)

No, that page is hit quite a bit and rather than compile those values every day we want to keep them for when they are most important.

Its my understanding that under the new Free Agency acceptance logic, top players are less likely to accept a contract renewal at any point in the season. Is this correct? Also, will their demands have increased as well? (dherz_263 - Hall of Famer - 2:35 PM)

Demands will not increase and yes the contract renewal will not be as automatic as before.

This is kind of petty but on the player records page the 2nd stat line where you can sort by category and statistic is not lined straight. part of the words are cut off. Can this be fixed? (gratepool - Hall of Famer - 2:37 PM)

Yeah, I'll fix that.

Does PC affect a hitters ability at the plate or pitchers ability on the mound, or is it strictly for Catchers? (nymetman - All-Star - 2:38 PM)

It only affects the pitcher's ability on the mound.

Any chance of changing pitchers into two categories? Meaning relief pitcher and starting pitcher and have their OVR commensurate. (firesign34 - Hall of Famer - 2:45 PM)

At this time no we have no plans on separating them into two categories.

Players on the waiver wire are listed alphabetically by 1st name. Could they be listed by when they were waived? It would save a lot of time looking for the guys added since we last looked it over. Thanks. (unclevic - All-Star - 2:46 PM)

We can just make the page sortable, that would probably be the easiest way to handle it.

Any update on the hall of fame. I would also like to put in my 2 cents for only taken into consideration players that generated stats during the world. I would rather not see someone make the hall of fame because he was 35 years old when the world was created, so you generated fake past stats that never actually happened. (plague - Hall of Famer - 2:47 PM)

No updates yet and it will definitely only take into consideration actual HBD stats.

Will there ever be individual base running aggressiveness settings? Seems silly that my "manager" would tell my well below average speed players to try and steal 25 times in a season just because I want my 99/99 guy to steal as much as possible. -Thedream42 (thedream42 - Hall of Famer - 2:48 PM)

No, due to data constraints and size limitations this will never happen in HBD. We will be looking at some very specific SB data so what you are describing should drastically be reduced.

Could the team LOB be calculated for the box score instead of dashed? It doesn't seem that hard to see how many players were on base when the final out was recorded per inning and total them. (kalikgod - Hall of Famer - 2:50 PM)

I'm not sure why this isn't calculated, I'll see what we can do.

How come we're still seeing 55 health rating guys playing for 6 seasons without getting a major injury and yet see a 85 rating get hit several times. I think it's time to fix this. (ZEKE1109 - Veteran - 3:23 PM)

This is all about probability and statistics. In the long run, the lower rated health player will see more of an injury history.

One of my Ace starters has his 5th pitch rated at 18. In 10 seasons I've had the best pitching coach in the world on couple of occasions but he did not drop that 5th pitch. Better yet, why is he even trying to throw this pitch knowing he has 4 better ones to chose from? (radek - Hall of Famer - 3:24 PM)

A pitching coach makes the decision whether having a pitch helps or hinders a pitcher based on his overall number and grades of pitches. If it makes more sense to keep a pitch (a show-me pitch), then it won't be dropped.

There was talk in the updates of a player being more likely to opt for FA if being forced to go to arbitration 3 times. Let's say we're good with a player's arbitration's demands. It would be great if WIS could add a way for owners to agree to the 1-year salary that the player is asking for, so we wouldn't necessarily have to offer a long-term contract, but would also benefit from not taking a player to arbitration when we are ok with his demands. Is this doable? (dw172300 - Hall of Famer - 3:25 PM)

This is an improvement we think will make it into the game soon. You're correct in that a very large number of players agree upon a 1-year contract rather than go to arbitration.

Any thoughts on closing the loophole where former type-A players can be signed immediately for no compensation immediately after the end of the FA period? This loophole encourages people to wait up until FA closes to sign players -- not a good system. (bjb2378 - Hall of Famer - 3:27 PM)

Really there is nothing we can do to avoid this. The owner signing these player's is taking a risk also hoping that those player's won't sign with other teams and that they don't have any offers on the table when the FA period closes. That said, we will be reviewing FA demands and that will impact this.

Any chance of stopping 6-year MiL vets from asking for multi-million $ deals? In real-life they'd be happy with ML minimum. (cespencer - Hall of Famer - 3:30 PM)

The demands are based on skill set. The reason these players can have higher demands is because not all owners promote and protect players properly. As a result, we can't have them ask for bare demands because one or two owners would end up benefiting from this. Demands must be based on skills.

After the latest updaete, the most years you could offer in a ML contract to an International Free Agent is three years. Is this an intended result? (r0b0t - Hall of Famer - 3:31 PM)

You can offer them a 4th or 5th season, but it has to be enough to make them sign it. They'd be giving up an arb year or two to give them up.

With the new arbitration rules in place, is the process to require a team to "offer arbitration" to pending Free Agents to secure a potential draft pick in the works? The number of compensation picks awarded seems a bit absurd. (steelforge - Hall of Famer - 3:52 PM)

Nothing like this has been discussed or worked on at this point.

Why is there more major league talent for starting pitchers (mediocre) in the ametuer drafts? There are quite a bit low level ml prospects, but seems to be very few potential major league pitchers. (oddson - Hall of Famer - 3:53 PM)

Each season the distribution is different so one season might be heavy with high caliber 3B/1B while another season it might be a higher distribution of Relievers.

I've seen many young players not have their ratings progress once they hit the ML level. Is there some sort of combination between makeup, patience etc that would cause this? (leaffan10 - Hall of Famer - 3:54 PM)

If you have a specific example of this please submit a ticket with the profile link so that we can look into it.

Can Holds be added as a pitching stat? It would really help with judging bulpens. (gratepool - Hall of Famer - 3:54 PM)

It makes sense to include it if it is possible.

What is the next "major" step for HBD? When will 40 year old pitchers deteriorate at a more life-like pace? (blackmink18 - Hall of Famer - 3:57 PM)

I'm sure my opinion of the next major step is different than tzents, but I think that the next logical evolution of the game is to incorporate LIVE play. The next logical feature that will be implemented will either by the HOF and/or the Arizona Fall League. The 40 year old pitcher's deteriorating will be looked at in conjunction with the other data changes scheduled for the next update.

one suggestion i have: can we get something on the front page that lets you know when action has been taken on a trade that you've proposed? otherwise, we would have to click on trade proposals to see whether status has changed from "proposed" it would be nice to get something in my inbox. (victorzhao - Hall of Famer - 3:58 PM)

Potentially, we might be able to send an email or notification of some sort.

I've been trying to do this on my own for a few of my leagues, but could league-relative stats be incorporated for previous seasons for team and/or player stats (OPS+, ERA+, etc.)? (randallball - Hall of Famer - 3:59 PM)

The problem with this is that the schedules table is just enormous so in the interest of site performance we don't things like this. I would really like too see team match ups and your record against them but technically speaking the page would be huge hindrance to site performance.

Now, about that whole reliever ineffectiveness issue. Any chance that the view of us the players -it is a critical problem- and you the developers- no problem there- could move towards some convergence? (robocoach - Hall of Famer - 4:01 PM)

Again, if you have specific examples of relievers that aren't performing well send the profiles in a support ticket.

Post-update, will players now be less likely to sign long-term deals at any point or only in the final year of their original contract? (jakurus - Hall of Famer - 10:55 AM)

You can only negotiate a deal with an upcoming FA in the final year of their contract.

In my opinion the budget really hampers a new coach. Any chance we can change the max from 14 to say 16 or 18. That allows a coach more flexibility in his first season with a team and also makes it so he can max out after 1 season instead of 2 seasons. (plague - Hall of Famer - 10:57 AM)

This could be possible, we'll discuss it and see if it makes sense.

Are expanded schedules/options for Spring Training in the plans anywhere? (randallball - Hall of Famer - 10:59 AM)

No, we haven't looked at this and at this time I don't think we want to extend ST. Split squads are something we are interested in, but are a ways away.

Is there a way that every team could be represented in the all-star game? New owners taking over bad teams can use something to get excited about. It's also frustrating to see one team with 8 all-stars. Perhaps there could be a cap on numbers? (bourbonmoon - Hall of Famer - 11:05 AM)

At this time, no. We may include such a feature at some point.

Thanks guys, I've still got close to 50 questions to answer and I'll do my best to get to them today before the day is done. Thanks for all of the great suggestions and questions!!!!