Welcome back to our "Meet the Owner" series! For our second interview, I wanted to interview someone who has been a big part of the recent history of KML, aoscott2 who in addition to having a great team, has also been a big help to the world in participating in multiple owner swaps. I greatly appreciate him for doing this and because of how much content he provided, I am breaking it up into two blog posts. Without further ado, here's the scoop on aoscott2:
Given your recent success, what advice would you give to a newer user that is just starting HBD?
1.) This is a very tough game with a lot of information to not just learn but, master. I would start with reading the forums because owners ask questions and you can get a lot of information from there. That is where I learned more about 80% of what I know. Whenever owners ask me questions about anything I have always been helpful so, feel free to reach out.
*Editor's note: the HBD Discord is also a great place to learn/ask questions
2.) Go in depth on the successful teams. Watch the players they sign and how they build their teams. Try to find a correlation between who they sign and figure out why. You want a Gold Glover on your team look at the gold glove winners defensive ratings and tailor your draft, international signing and free agent signing around that. Look at the past award winners.
3.) With that said, “I would not trade with anyone for the first year or two.” It takes time to learn and understand the ins and outs around arbitration, contracts, player & coach ratings and not to mention you have to learn the interface while figuring out who are you top players in the minors. If you’re in your first season, budget for next season is due right away! I think that should be a private world rule for first time owners.
4.) What I have told new and experienced owners who asked for help is to watch your game ticker and that will help you understand how important it is to have the proper range for your fielders and why you want the minimum range on your catcher to stop the passed balls. While watching you will notice “shallow flyout to LF” or “bloop single to LF” and ask yourself do I have the proper range out there are not. Infield single use to kill me when I first started. Now it kills me in the playoffs. By doing this you will start to see where you need help. When your player makes an error look at his stats and verify if you have the minimum defensive ratings for that position. Then take notice if that led to a run and remember that just drove up your pitch count by facing an extra batter. You will start to treat it like watching it live and get upset which should get your competitive juices flowing. No matter how good your pitching is you will need to have the defense to support your pitcher or your pitcher will have up and down seasons. If you get to the playoffs you will be exposed sooner or later.
5.) If you're in KML read the post from “Seattleace” about parks. He is the GOAT of our world and we all can learn something from that.
What type of players do you look for?
So, I’m not here all night I’ll talk about the second most important thing to me on my team. They run side by side for me:
1.) High health ratings
a. You need to be available
2.) High Makeup
a. To help with keeping decline low
No answer is correct, however, availability is everything to me and if you are healthy then part of your contract is fulfilled. I don’t have to spend 550K or so to replace you when I could be putting that money to International Free Agents. I also don’t have to promote a player if need be or add another 300K to the payroll. It seems like nothing but every 300K adds up to 1 million.
I will also say that it doesn’t help all the time. My pitcher Yasmani Ordonez had a 99 health rating and I had a 20/20 budget (Medical and Training). He went on the 60 day DL in back to back seasons 18 & 19. Luckily, he came back for the playoffs both times. His health rating dropped from 99 to 96. His rating dropped too however, I benefited by not resigning him early in Arbration and I saved 500K per season on the life of his current contract. I believe my 20/20 budget helped him along with his decent makeup rating too.
So, I like my players above 60 for Health and Makeup. I’m willing to let makeup go alittle but I don’t make exceptions for health. In Baltimore the minimum to be traded for in Health and Makeup is a 120 average between the two.
What do you like about HBD?
I like how in depth it is.
Lots of moving parts. It fun to
draft players and watch them grow through their careers. Then watch them move up on the single season
list along with career list.
What Private World Rules would you like to see?
I don’t really like MWR for new owners or owners that join a world for like 2-3 seasons. The problem is you are taking over a terrible team that will be OLD and carrying high salaries. My real reason for feeling that way is because the budget either matches the previous owner or you can reset everything however you can’t max out your scouting how you would like while rebuilding. I had a situation where I had to punt the draft and the player signed anyway even though the “Mom” was the agent. If you think about it you need 2-3 seasons to get your vision going and get the budget correctly aligned with how you want it.
I also don’t want to take away draft picks. That is part of the fun and we need talent on that team to get owners to take over that team in case we lose the owner. I would make the owner sign a Type A free agent by offering “max” money. Typically, teams that aren’t winning have money to sign International Free agents so, make them at least sign a Type A guy to move the talent around. Or give the commissioner the ability to edit that teams draft position. Maybe the rule could be that you can’t draft in the top 5 for 3 straight seasons so, they commissioner can move them to like the 17 pick or something? I can see that it could be a problem giving someone that control so, let the commissioner open a ticket up if it’s a private world rule. Easily done during “Budget” time.
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