Minihouston - Editor-in-Chief
Starting a series of Comissioner / Editor-In-Chief logs, mostly just on goings or thoughts of the current world. And to start cataloging the start of Hardball Stitches.
While collecting data and the history of the Cobbfather world, I wondered what it would be like to start with a world from scratch. Starting Year 1 with a true look at career numbers and not just who ranks in the top 5 in a certain category. Seeing many players who were top at their position miss out on the HoF because they weren't a top 10 HR hitter. Now I get it, that might be a different conversation because some people just don't care about the HoF voting and others are too new to a world to know anything about a player on the ballot. But having a blog writer whose willing to put in the time to share their thoughts so the league can vote with a little more info, could be fun. Then perhaps the guy whose #1 all time in saves, by nearly 30% more than #2 has a chance to make it in the Hall. Or the 2B who leads all players at his position in most every hitting stats, stands a chance as well. Or the SS whose has the most career Gold Gloves - a stat you can't exactly track in the current HBD but we will on the blog - misses the Hall of Fame. Having time to dedicate to tracking some of the things HBD doesn't always include in their historical records. Not only that but a world where many records are not drive by those early HBD years before big adjustments were made to the sim. Having power rankings throughout the season to see where your team falls, or having playoff predictions, draft and free agent recaps, all to add to the experience of the world. It's a lot of work, but I'm looking forward to it - if it isn't already obvious. :)
As commissioner I welcome all feedback and will do my best to handle thing that come up. I will say, my preference is to settle everything in private. A believer in praise in public, criticize in private. I'd much prefer discord but will settle for Trade Chat for those of you not on the discord. If you have an issue with someone or how they are doing things; please feel free to DM and I will bring it to their attention. The blog takes on a lot of my free time and I hope we can all be respectful of not only each other but the quality of the league.
For those of you not in Cobbfather, I did this writeup 2 seasons before winning the World Series about my first experience with HBD - having joined the game for the first time when my fantasy baseball league folded due to Covid. Learning the game was definitely a HUGE learning curve for me and hopefully I've gotten better about "rebuilding" a franchise. Now I know what some of you are thinking - that's a tank job! And I don't fully disagree, though in my defense it wasn't intentional and a lot had to do with a lack of knowledge of what I was doing. I underestimated Free Agent and what categories mattered more, and as many brand new owners I put a little more faith in the OAV - especially with pitchers. I also vowed to leave the team in better shape for the next owner than the one before we did. One of my pet peeves is when an owner completely sells the farm and signs a bunch of awful contracts they know they won't be sticking around for, leaving the next owner with no farm and what we can Fat Cats (big contracts and no value - they eat all the food) at their ML level. With my current run, rejoined Cobbfather after 6 seasons off, I've made it a point to do a better job at rebuilding and making sure it's not tanking. This might keep me out of the top 5 picks but I think I can still build a solid team with the other things I've learned and hopefully with some good trades. I'm working on a similar writeup for this second run, though the current S62 will be my last as I shift focus to Hardball Stitches. Hopefully the next owner will appreciate the rebuild I started for them.
Until next post!
-mini