Minihouston - Editor-In-Chief
Alright sports fans, as many if you know we have the opportunity to add a very unique feature to Hardball Stitches - a draft lottery similar to that of the MLB rather than the reverse order of the end season records; where the worst record gets first pick.
I’m thrilled to add this feature to our world for many reasons, and wanted to start by giving a shoutout to Bob for offering this to us. Thank you!
- This ties us a little bit closer to the current MLB set up. Given some of the current coding in HBD, we’ve made a slight change - the MLB gives odds to the bottom 18 teams; we’ll use the 16 who have protected draft picks in the first round instead. That prevents anyone with a 17th pick shifting into the top 16 or a #1 pick being given away due to a Type A FA signing. Only the top 6 picks are picked from the lottery, after that it goes in reserves order of the standings like usual. This means the team with the worst record selects no worse than the 7th pick, second worst picks no worse than the 8th, etc. The bottom three all have the same odds and odds decrease from there with the 16th worst record have a very minimal chance at being selected…but still a chance.
- It also makes us unique from every other world in HBD and in my opinion gives us an advantage if/when recruiting is needed to backfill teams. Discord and our blog do a fine job recruiting for us as well. Now I imagine there might be a small handful of people that want it the other way because they know where they will pick - but the added level of excitement I think far outweighs the select few who won't like it. Plus it's change, something people have been wishing...hoping...dreaming of to happen in HBD.
- And on a minor note, it also gives the world another way to combat hard tanking for the #1 pick. Sure teams will tank / rebuild; but it no longer guarantees them the first overall selection. In the 10 mock lotteries we did on discord, the bottom three teams won the #1 pick 6 of the 10 times and only 3 times did one of the bottom three teams end up with the #7 pick. The #15 & 16 teams actually never moved from their position in those 10 mocks and only twice did the #14 team move up - once all the way up to the #1 pick! Now take these numbers lightly as it's a small sample size.