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.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Looks like a nice addition to the game. However, you mention that Manny Machado doesn't need to be protected, but it looks like he can be selected by the expansion team. Is there a pop up that shows up and prevents the expansion team from selecting him?

Unknown said...

Players under 22 can't be drafted. Machado is 21. I tried drafting Bogaerts and I got a messaged stating why I can't draft him.

Clay Dreslough said...

Carl is exactly right -- the game prevents you from drafting him, even though this screen shot doesn't clearly show that.

When actually drafting, the default option is "Available Players", which only shows players that you can draft. I changed this to "All Active Players" for the screen shot, just so you can see the protected players.

Roger Stanley said...

Hello Clay,

Will it be possible to one day choose the year in which to create an expansion team? That would be awesomely fun.

Thank you, for your dedication.
Roger Stanley

Matt said...

I have been awaiting this feature to be put into the game! I will be buying again this year!

Rob said...

It would be great if you could create 4 Divisions with 4 teams because having 6-5-5 in each league doesn't make sense. But 4-4-4-4 not only makes sense but I think it will happen soon in MLB with two more expansion teams.

Love the game, thanks!