Guide to running a real progression re-wind league
PC user BuddlyHartley recently put together a guide for advancing a Real-Life "Rewind" league that he was handing off to another commissioner. It's a guide that others who want to run this type of league might find helpful, and Buddy was willing to share it with the community.
A "Rewind" league is where you are building the exact teams from baseball's past, and advancing those teams to the their next real-life season, while not wanting to lose a player's compiled stats from season to season. It's tough to run this type of league because there's a lot of clean-up to do and new players to add each season. But it's rewarding work if you're willing to put in the effort!
Here is Buddy's guide:
This is a Guide that I prepared to help the new commissioner of a Real Progression league called "Classic Rewind", but it can be applied to any Real Progression league. It is not the only way to run such a league, and other commissioners will use different approaches, but it does cover all of the basic steps in a systematic way that a brand-new commissioner to such a league might find helpful.
When a season is running, any league is easy, but it is those ?End-of-season tasks? that make this league a lot more time consuming.
First off, I've usually got about 9 pages open on my computer when I am doing the year end stuff.
1. The League Home Page, just to keep everyone up to date.
2-3. Two pages of the Current Roster for the team I am working on. You?ll see why later.
4. The Holding Team Roster
5. Commissioner Tools open to Apply Player Progression
6. Commissioner Tools open to Import Historic Player or Team
7. Free Agent List open to Retired Players
8. baseball-reference open to the new season for the team that I will be progressing.
9. baseball-reference open for individual player look-ups.
Tasks:
I am assuming that you have already worked through all the easy stuff after the World Series that are on the Post-Season Wizard list, such as
-- Award Championship Trophy
-- Award Owner a Ring
-- Clear Compiled Stats
-- Clear Game Results ? NOTE: Don?t hurry on this one. You might want to leave the World Series results up for a day or two, so that people have a chance to see the boxscores, or some will complain. Also, on that Clear Game Results page, here is how you deal with that page ? Uncheck ?Clear Transaction Log?, because in Classic Rewind we keep a record of our transactions from year to year. Keep the next box ?Set Each Team?s Trades Back to Zero? checked -- and don?t forget to Pick a World Series MVP, if you haven?t already.
We do NOT do Step #10 on the Wizard list called ?Clear Team Rosters.
Now you are at the big step ?. ?Age Players? ?. This is where you do the ?Real Progression?, and this is where I will spend my time explaining what I do, as this is where you will spend several hours every off-season.
Here is the order in which I do things, but you can adapt this any way you want, as they aren?t really written in stone. I just find that going in this order saves me time, and also helps me not miss anything.
1. Sort out the Holding Team and write down all the players who will be returning in the new season on a piece of paper, and what team they will be coming back to. Keep that list handy.
2. Starting with Free Agents, and then moving on to the first team (usually Atlanta, since I do them in alphabetical order), hit the "Apply Player Progression" button, making sure that it is set for "Real Life (Rarely Used)".
3. After you hit the button, a bunch of players will be then listed at the top of the page as "Retired". Guy?s Note ? I am removing this part of Buddy?s guide because I recently made a change to how retirement is handled in real-life progression. When you progress players, it un-retires every player and then tries to advance them if they are active in the season you are advancing to. If they are not, you will see ?re-retired? on the list after you progress. Players that come out of retirement will now be free agents. You will have to assign these free agents to the right team if you are doing a ?rewind? league like Buddy is describing.
4. Once you?ve dealt with any Retired players who aren?t really retired, you can then go to the two current rosters (pages 2&3) and refresh just page 3. You can then, if you wish, compare the previous year?s team (page 2) with the new season?s team after progression (page 3), and see what players had big improvements or big drops. As Commish, I sort of like to stay on top of this stuff for every team, just so I have the big picture. Once I?m done with last year?s squad, I delete page 2 (for now, as I?ll replace it when I start on the next team).
5. Now you need to import the new rookie players to the team. Go the baseball-reference page for that team for the new season, and basically work your way down the list through EVERY player. Remember to even look guys up who had 2 AB or 5 IP, because some players played for 2 (or more) teams in their rookie seasons.
6. After all Rookie Imports are done, then you need to move over any players from the Holding Team that are ready to return to that team. (With the new changes you may no longer need a holding team. Just move free agents who are not retired to their real teams.) This is usually a very small number of players, if any.
7. So that?s it ? you?ve now done one team. Congratulations!!! Only 23 more to go!! LOL It is quite the process, and it can take hours to work through every team, but I have actually found it quite interesting and fun to do. Just don?t hurry. Take your time and enjoy the process. The league is not going anywhere. If someone quits because you took a day or two longer then they thought was necessary, wave them goodbye, as they are jerks anyway. Anyone who has done the commissioner duties in a real progression league, and knows how much work it is to do, is just happy it gets done and that someone is willing to do it, whether it takes a week or two or even three to finish. It?s a BIG job!
8. We can skip the next item on the Wizard, since we don?t ?Retire Players? in this league. That is done automatically when we do the real progressions.
9. ?Create New Schedule?. As I mentioned before, you don?t really want to do this ? EVER. It is one of the worst tasks that a Commissioner can do, and totally thankless. So I leave everything in the first 3 Options alone, and jump down to Option #4 ?Swap Teams on Schedule?. This is just done for variety, but I think is worth doing. But ? when you swap teams, you can ONLY swap teams within the same Division, or it will throw the entire schedule out of whack. Remember, this is an original schedule, so games are already weighted to teams in your own division first, then out of your division. Also, I do this randomly, and don?t write down my choices from year to year, so that there is no pattern to it. You can do it differently if you wish, but I didn?t want it to become predictable.
So once you?ve swapped all the teams, go to the Schedule page, then go to ?Switch to all Upcoming Games?, and then scroll all the way down to the bottom of the schedule. All teams should have 81 Home Games, and 81 Away Games. Hopefully no problems there, as the schedule has been fine for the past 3 seasons. Just always remember that it is a 176 Day Schedule, not a 162 Day schedule, and you?ll be fine.
Thanks again Buddy for sharing!
A "Rewind" league is where you are building the exact teams from baseball's past, and advancing those teams to the their next real-life season, while not wanting to lose a player's compiled stats from season to season. It's tough to run this type of league because there's a lot of clean-up to do and new players to add each season. But it's rewarding work if you're willing to put in the effort!
Here is Buddy's guide:
This is a Guide that I prepared to help the new commissioner of a Real Progression league called "Classic Rewind", but it can be applied to any Real Progression league. It is not the only way to run such a league, and other commissioners will use different approaches, but it does cover all of the basic steps in a systematic way that a brand-new commissioner to such a league might find helpful.
When a season is running, any league is easy, but it is those ?End-of-season tasks? that make this league a lot more time consuming.
First off, I've usually got about 9 pages open on my computer when I am doing the year end stuff.
1. The League Home Page, just to keep everyone up to date.
2-3. Two pages of the Current Roster for the team I am working on. You?ll see why later.
4. The Holding Team Roster
5. Commissioner Tools open to Apply Player Progression
6. Commissioner Tools open to Import Historic Player or Team
7. Free Agent List open to Retired Players
8. baseball-reference open to the new season for the team that I will be progressing.
9. baseball-reference open for individual player look-ups.
Tasks:
I am assuming that you have already worked through all the easy stuff after the World Series that are on the Post-Season Wizard list, such as
-- Award Championship Trophy
-- Award Owner a Ring
-- Clear Compiled Stats
-- Clear Game Results ? NOTE: Don?t hurry on this one. You might want to leave the World Series results up for a day or two, so that people have a chance to see the boxscores, or some will complain. Also, on that Clear Game Results page, here is how you deal with that page ? Uncheck ?Clear Transaction Log?, because in Classic Rewind we keep a record of our transactions from year to year. Keep the next box ?Set Each Team?s Trades Back to Zero? checked -- and don?t forget to Pick a World Series MVP, if you haven?t already.
We do NOT do Step #10 on the Wizard list called ?Clear Team Rosters.
Now you are at the big step ?. ?Age Players? ?. This is where you do the ?Real Progression?, and this is where I will spend my time explaining what I do, as this is where you will spend several hours every off-season.
Here is the order in which I do things, but you can adapt this any way you want, as they aren?t really written in stone. I just find that going in this order saves me time, and also helps me not miss anything.
1. Sort out the Holding Team and write down all the players who will be returning in the new season on a piece of paper, and what team they will be coming back to. Keep that list handy.
2. Starting with Free Agents, and then moving on to the first team (usually Atlanta, since I do them in alphabetical order), hit the "Apply Player Progression" button, making sure that it is set for "Real Life (Rarely Used)".
3. After you hit the button, a bunch of players will be then listed at the top of the page as "Retired". Guy?s Note ? I am removing this part of Buddy?s guide because I recently made a change to how retirement is handled in real-life progression. When you progress players, it un-retires every player and then tries to advance them if they are active in the season you are advancing to. If they are not, you will see ?re-retired? on the list after you progress. Players that come out of retirement will now be free agents. You will have to assign these free agents to the right team if you are doing a ?rewind? league like Buddy is describing.
4. Once you?ve dealt with any Retired players who aren?t really retired, you can then go to the two current rosters (pages 2&3) and refresh just page 3. You can then, if you wish, compare the previous year?s team (page 2) with the new season?s team after progression (page 3), and see what players had big improvements or big drops. As Commish, I sort of like to stay on top of this stuff for every team, just so I have the big picture. Once I?m done with last year?s squad, I delete page 2 (for now, as I?ll replace it when I start on the next team).
5. Now you need to import the new rookie players to the team. Go the baseball-reference page for that team for the new season, and basically work your way down the list through EVERY player. Remember to even look guys up who had 2 AB or 5 IP, because some players played for 2 (or more) teams in their rookie seasons.
6. After all Rookie Imports are done, then you need to move over any players from the Holding Team that are ready to return to that team. (With the new changes you may no longer need a holding team. Just move free agents who are not retired to their real teams.) This is usually a very small number of players, if any.
7. So that?s it ? you?ve now done one team. Congratulations!!! Only 23 more to go!! LOL It is quite the process, and it can take hours to work through every team, but I have actually found it quite interesting and fun to do. Just don?t hurry. Take your time and enjoy the process. The league is not going anywhere. If someone quits because you took a day or two longer then they thought was necessary, wave them goodbye, as they are jerks anyway. Anyone who has done the commissioner duties in a real progression league, and knows how much work it is to do, is just happy it gets done and that someone is willing to do it, whether it takes a week or two or even three to finish. It?s a BIG job!
8. We can skip the next item on the Wizard, since we don?t ?Retire Players? in this league. That is done automatically when we do the real progressions.
9. ?Create New Schedule?. As I mentioned before, you don?t really want to do this ? EVER. It is one of the worst tasks that a Commissioner can do, and totally thankless. So I leave everything in the first 3 Options alone, and jump down to Option #4 ?Swap Teams on Schedule?. This is just done for variety, but I think is worth doing. But ? when you swap teams, you can ONLY swap teams within the same Division, or it will throw the entire schedule out of whack. Remember, this is an original schedule, so games are already weighted to teams in your own division first, then out of your division. Also, I do this randomly, and don?t write down my choices from year to year, so that there is no pattern to it. You can do it differently if you wish, but I didn?t want it to become predictable.
So once you?ve swapped all the teams, go to the Schedule page, then go to ?Switch to all Upcoming Games?, and then scroll all the way down to the bottom of the schedule. All teams should have 81 Home Games, and 81 Away Games. Hopefully no problems there, as the schedule has been fine for the past 3 seasons. Just always remember that it is a 176 Day Schedule, not a 162 Day schedule, and you?ll be fine.
Thanks again Buddy for sharing!
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