IBC

We have found Nate's replacement and he comes on a recommendation from Aaron. Aaron has managed to recommend two okay members, Gabe and myself, so I think Aaron's word is a pretty good one to take on things like this. Anyway, after exchanging a few emails, ExCo decided to bring in Steven Sander to replace Nate. Some quick background on Steven- he attends St. Louis University (Cards fan so he's smart by default) and will be graduating this coming Spring. He seems to have some genuine enthusiasm for joining the IBC which is something that is refreshing to see. We look forward to having him participate in the league and figure he will be a valuable member from this point forward. His AIM is cards2468, so feel free to welcome him to the league while we set him up with G-Chat and his IBC Email and whatnot.

Now we get to some more fun news. ExCo has decided to approve Z's move to bring his Royals to DC instead of Dan switching in his own division. Dan just moved a couple years ago, and while he has a fair claim to the Nats, Z hasn't moved in about half a decade and does root for the Nats and lives in DC. Subsequently, we are allowing Jason to take his O's and head to the midwest and take over the Royals. He didn't have a chance to move (ever, really) and we just kind of stuck him in the AL East when he joined. He'll be stuck with the Royals now and will get to face Brett P, Andrew, Jim and Kelly now.

As a result, if anybody wishes to step up and move to Baltimore please let us know ASAP, otherwise that's where Steven will be headed. If anybody is a closet O's fan or wants to take one for the team and try to tackle JB and Pat B., by all means contact somebody in ExCo or just post that you'd like to move your team to the STD Capital of the USA / Charm City.

Lastly, as you know Nate had a pretty loaded roster, albeit thin. Last week we announced there would be a minidraft in conjunction with Steven's arrival into the league if there were enough interest. As it turns out, a few teams will be minidrafting. Brandon and his Braves, John and his Mets, and Dave and his Angels will be participating in the minidraft. We will attempt to hammer out the date and details of the draft, but it will happen sooner rather than later. As a result, those teams will not be able to make trades or signings/drops from now until the end of the draft.

This looks like a busy offseason for us, as we'll also need to hold the ExCo elections down the line as well as the draft and the minidraft. To recap the offseason so far, and the moves especially, we've brought Steven into the league who is tentatively the Orioles and have moved the following teams:

Bren to San Diego
Martin to Tampa Bay
Tullar to Boston
Ken to Cincinatti
Zalaski to Washington
Gudim to Kansas City
Steven to Baltimore

Any questions, comments, concerns or thoughts, lets hear them and welcome Steven to the league.

gotta do the draft picks...Now that I've given up 4 years of hard work, I want to know if I'm getting Hanley, Wright, Halladay...or....gasp...Cain.

Its gonna be a good draft...

screw it, lets just have it tonight, im ready to go

good for me! Seriously though...I think it'll help competitive balance, and what's good for the league is good for me.

I've emailed the four of you about the draft, and there is about a 0% possibility of the draft being held tonight.

well we know the first 3 picks already hahaha

start it on the boards

We really need to allow the new member to prepare properly. He may, or may not be familiar with the sim, the players, and our league rules so to put any pressure on him (even accidentally) to hurry isn't being fair. Also, starting a minidraft prior to the completion of the playoffs would take some of the luster off them for those that have worked all season to get there. For those reasons I believe the minidraft should not start until after the World Series is completed.

I think the draft is done privately until the playoffs are done..then made public.

That may work. My main concern is giving the new guy enough time to prepare.

Nationals wrote:That may work. My main concern is giving the new guy enough time to prepare.

I am comfortable that the minidraft will not start until Steven has had a chance to properly prepare.

Thanks to the Ex-Co - very appreciative. It's going to be weird to actually give a shit about the team I'm running. I felt I wanted to win in spite of the real Royals, so this will be quite a change.

Don't get too excited. While we lack the star power of the AL Central, Nick, Dan, Brandon and myself are going to give you hell in the NL East.

Oh, I'm well aware how solid the NL East is - and I'm not considering this a drop in talent. In fact, my sentence above had almost nothing to do with the IBC.

Yep...just wanted to get the shit talking started right away.

Lots of movement on the GM front. A little mixing up of the competition has served the league well in the past, IMO. This looks to be one of the biggest movements of GM's ever though in the league. Should prove interesting.

4 teams in the min-draft. That's quite a few guys bailing on their previous years of roster work. That's going to spread Nate's talent pretty thin. Just curious, do the teams draft picks go into the mini-draft, as well? Anyways, mini-drafts always seem to get guys excited about their new rosters and results in GM's creating new holes in their rosters that need to be addressed through trades.

As much as I've criticized the ExCo lately, I gotta give them props here....sounds like some solid decisions. It looks like the offseason is going to be busy already.

I hope Ken will join our effort to have every NL Central game net-played. I could never think of leaving this group of GM's that made my first year so much fun.

Mariners wrote: Just curious, do the teams draft picks go into the mini-draft, as well?

Yes they do. All the draft picks on the rosters are into the draft.

A couple of offseason thoughts..

First, congrats to the ExCo and JP in particular for a smooth and well-run year. Not many issues or problems that I can recall. Certainly nothing that major.

Second, this off-season should be very fun. I'm hopeful that all this movement and drafting will breathe some new life into the league.

But, most importantly, I'd like to start the discussion of what we're going to do next year as far as a projection system goes. I know there was talk last offseason about possibly coming up with our own, like some other leagues. Are we set with using ZiPS, despite the lack of splits, if DMB once again fails to deliver a projection disk? The sooner we start tackling this problem the more ready for the season we're going to be. I don't want it to get lost in the shuffle of what I'm sure is going to be a busy offseason.

Brewers wrote:I hope Ken will join our effort to have every NL Central game net-played. I could never think of leaving this group of GM's that made my first year so much fun.

That would be great.

I'm going to be so confused when the screen name switches happen. Should we maybe have first names somewhere for a little while?

Cubs wrote:A couple of offseason thoughts..

First, congrats to the ExCo and JP in particular for a smooth and well-run year. Not many issues or problems that I can recall. Certainly nothing that major.

Second, this off-season should be very fun. I'm hopeful that all this movement and drafting will breathe some new life into the league.

But, most importantly, I'd like to start the discussion of what we're going to do next year as far as a projection system goes. I know there was talk last offseason about possibly coming up with our own, like some other leagues. Are we set with using ZiPS, despite the lack of splits, if DMB once again fails to deliver a projection disk? The sooner we start tackling this problem the more ready for the season we're going to be. I don't want it to get lost in the shuffle of what I'm sure is going to be a busy offseason.

I agree with Gabe. Considering that Zips is already releasing projections for next season, we need to make a decision soon. I personally don't care what set of projections we use, but we do need to decide on a plan.

I have been emailing DMB for the past couple weeks and this is as of this morning that I had this sent to me:

"I know there have been discussions about doing the projection disc and that's as much as I know."

I'm cautiously optimistic that they will release a projection disc in 2010, but I hope that they'll at least announce the plans to do so or not do so in 2009 and not March 2010.

Initial Zips look worse then last year. They are just too cautious for me. I want something that is more then just averages. Something that takes into account age and circumstances. 4.89 ERA for Porcello...I don't want to use Zips again...PLEASE come back DMB.