Ammy Draft Date

[mstreeter06]

Just brainstorming for a potential move of the draft to June/July timeframe...

What if we move the 2025 Ammy Draft from November 15, 2025 to possibly July 1st, 2026 and use the 2025 season results draft order. Would this not work?

[BaseballAddict32]

we'd lose an entire draft, though. no draft in 2025. i'd move it up and find a way to do the order. to do standings seems the best.

[mstreeter06]

we'd lose an entire draft, though. no draft in 2025. i'd move it up and find a way to do the order. to do standings seems the best.

I wonder how easy it would be to adjust the settings to allow us not to lose anyone from the feeder leagues. I think that would be the only problem if we just used the traditional draft order for 2025, not draft in November 2025, and draft in July 2026 on the new schedule.

We could start drafting during Spring Training (March) and hold the draft during the season up until July. Then when the draft date in the game comes in sometime in July we can have the feeder leagues be wrapped up with their seasons and be ready to join their drafted clubs.

[BaseballAddict32]

works for me

[Qdog915]

Here here

[mikezone13]

/I'm going to use a business analogy:

If an employee of mine is taking too much time to do the task (using a system that is known to work - and works for others) - I sit with that employee and work out why they are taking longer and look to retrain/upskill the employee - if that doesn't work I change the employee. I don't go and change the process to do the task.

What we're doing by suggesting to move the draft is saying "we're happy to have lazy GMs who don't check how the draft is going (one of the main responsibilities of being a GM IMO), and we'll gladly make changes to accommodate them"

What should be happening is the first 12 picks are done before the Championship series is completed. Typically what happens is the team drafting first takes 3 days to draft as there's no timer or impetus on them to draft, then the 2nd pick takes 2 more days and so on. Start slow continue slow.. start fast and at least set the scene for others to follow.

Yes, I am still against moving the draft for 2 reasons:

1. There is no fair way to create the draft order (lottery doesn't work, a tiered or weighted lottery doesn't work either, last season's standings is definitely not fair)

2. We're changing a system to accommodate our weakest link as a league (The GMs who don't pick in a timely fashion)

[Qdog915]

The draft was set up in Statslab on June 1st. We ended the draft on June 10th. It's summer. People go on vacation. If I had left on May 31st (Sunday is a pretty normal day to leave for a vacation) and came back on June 7th (Sunday to Sunday is a pretty normal vacation schedule) I would have never had a chance to set up a list, set my self to auto pick, nothing.

Why should we squeeze 8 or 10 rounds of a draft into 10 real life days? Especially right now when people are out of town a lot. What does it hurt to take 30 real life days to draft?

This isn't a business. It's a game. Supposed to be relaxed and fun. Yes, we all have responsibilities as GMs and one of them is to draft, but we don't have shareholders to please. We don't need to do this a breakneck speed.

[JKGuy16]

/I'm going to use a business analogy:

If an employee of mine is taking too much time to do the task (using a system that is known to work - and works for others) - I sit with that employee and work out why they are taking longer and look to retrain/upskill the employee - if that doesn't work I change the employee. I don't go and change the process to do the task.

What we're doing by suggesting to move the draft is saying "we're happy to have lazy GMs who don't check how the draft is going (one of the main responsibilities of being a GM IMO), and we'll gladly make changes to accommodate them"

What should be happening is the first 12 picks are done before the Championship series is completed. Typically what happens is the team drafting first takes 3 days to draft as there's no timer or impetus on them to draft, then the 2nd pick takes 2 more days and so on. Start slow continue slow.. start fast and at least set the scene for others to follow.

Yes, I am still against moving the draft for 2 reasons:

1. There is no fair way to create the draft order (lottery doesn't work, a tiered or weighted lottery doesn't work either, last season's standings is definitely not fair)

2. We're changing a system to accommodate our weakest link as a league (The GMs who don't pick in a timely fashion)

I get what you're saying, but I would like to move the draft because then I could actually attempt to make trades in the first round.  As it is now, playoff teams cannot trade active players with anyone at a vital moment in the draft.  You want 12 picks finished before the LCS?  At this point, any blockbuster deal I want to offer or attempt to get is now off the table completely.

I'm also not willing to have pending trades when there are players still playing.  Injuries, losing/gaining massive skill points, and players going on significant hot/cold streaks can affect a trade too much. 

We might as well be doing something other than sitting around.  This would also allow those who want to spend a greater amount of time deciding on their pick to do more research.  We will be able to get through more seasons this way too.  It keeps a flow that can be beneficial to everyone involved.  This is not a business and I want to have fun with it.

[mikezone13]

I agree regarding the comments about breakneck speed, however it seems that is what nearly everyone who wants to move the draft is complaining about.

I'm fine with the speed we're taking to draft (OK, it's possibly a touch slow but nothing to be too concerned about IMO).

I was putting forward a point of view that IF speed is the issue, deal with the speed of GMs.

If someone can develop a truly fair draft order for a draft that moves to a mid-year date, I'm happy to jump in the camp that suggests moving it.

One thought I have is this on a fair-ish system:
- Move the draft to 1 day after the AFBL championship (or the week after)
- Create the draft order based on standings at the All Star break (we then drop the rule that the AFBL champ picks last)
- This gives us from All Star break until end of the championship to draft
- The following draft is then based on end of season results (the AFBL champ picking last rule can be reinstated) and the draft can move to mid-year or stay at the end of the year

At least this way we likely end up with two different orders for the next two drafts that are based on team results.

[mstreeter06]

we'd lose an entire draft, though. no draft in 2025. i'd move it up and find a way to do the order. to do standings seems the best.

I wonder how easy it would be to adjust the settings to allow us not to lose anyone from the feeder leagues. I think that would be the only problem if we just used the traditional draft order for 2025, not draft in November 2025, and draft in July 2026 on the new schedule.

We could start drafting during Spring Training (March) and hold the draft during the season up until July. Then when the draft date in the game comes in sometime in July we can have the feeder leagues be wrapped up with their seasons and be ready to join their drafted clubs.

I still think this would work but no decision will be made for this offseason. Tabled until 2025 Winter Meetings for official voting. Discussion will remain open over the 2025 Regular Season.

[mstreeter06]

I'm moving that we continue to find a solution to move the draft date to July from November. There have been several suggestions in this thread so I'm sure there is a way we can figure this out.

This would solve the long periods of inactivity for the league as a whole during the offseason plus allow us to add additional rounds of the draft with the additional HS feeder schools being added in phases.

Any suggestions or thoughts about how to deal with the 1 season's draft that would be affected by the move? I'm open to whatever seems like the majority decides with either some type of lottery or something similar to Mike (NJ)'s suggestion 2 posts above or something else entirely.

[LT]

I like Mike's suggestion. Do the 2027 draft based on the 2027 mid season standings at the end of the season. Do the 2028 draft in June of 2028 based on the final standings in 2027. Moving forward the drafts based on the previous seasons standings and draft held in June...

[JKGuy16]

I like Mike's suggestion. Do the 2027 draft based on the 2027 mid season standings at the end of the season. Do the 2028 draft in June of 2028 based on the final standings in 2027. Moving forward the drafts based on the previous seasons standings and draft held in June...

Seems reasonable to me.

I am all for the draft being midseason to avoid this long lull between sims.

[mstreeter06]

I want us to find a solution so we can move the Draft from the offseason to midseason.

My thoughts would be to move the 2028 draft from November 2028 to July 2029 and use the 2028 season results.

The only issue I can think of is how do we not lose the COL feeder players that wouldn't be eligible to return back to school. I wonder if we temporarily change the max age in our COL feeder league before we roll from 2027 to 2028 if that would help this? We could also allow a double pool of International Free Agents temporarily?

Any thoughts? I know this would be the best option for our league so we can avoid these 2 week down periods during the offseason plus allow teams to actually work out trades to move up, down, into the 1st rounds as they desire without holding up the draft.

[JKGuy16]

I'm down for anything that gets us through this lull that is the offseason draft.