Thursday, April 17, 2014

Creating an Expansion Team (Baseball Mogul)

This year's version of Baseball Mogul has a new feature: the ability to create a new expansion team and build it from players on current teams, using the current MLB rules for conducting expansion drafts.


When you choose "Expansion" on the New Game Dialog (above), there is a new button in the lower right with a question mark on it:


Clicking this button takes you to the Create Expansion Team dialog, where you select the city for your expansion team, and specify a team name, stadium name and division.

Note: The team name automatically includes your city name. For example, the above team will be called the "Las Vegas Dealers". You can use the League Editor to change this later (such as to the "Nevada Dealers").
After you click "Play", Baseball Mogul will automatically create a 2nd expansion team to ensure that there are an even number of teams. The computer analyzes the current city data and picks a city at random from among the best options.

Is it fair to assume that the "Oregon Cavemen" play in "GEICO Park"?
Baseball Mogul then hands you control of your team, at the beginning of the expansion draft.


Each of the existing teams is allowed to protect 15 players in the first round of the expansion draft, and 3 additional players in each additional round (and players drafted in the last 3 seasons, such as Manny Machado, do not need to be protected). For example, in the following list of third basemen, we see that the Yankees left A-Rod unprotected, because they would love an expansion team to take his contract off their hands:


At any point, you can use the Play Menu to let the computer complete the expansion draft for you. And, after the expansion draft is complete, you can still grab unsigned players to fill out your major-league and minor-league rosters.