Broken Bat - Suggestions: Acquisition Focus

Forum >> Suggestions >> Acquisition Focus

Post ID	Date & Time	Game Date	Function

#31414	03/03/2016 1:18:07 am
Jalapeno5 Joined: 06/01/2014 Posts: 226 Inactive	First up, apologies for the long post, but how about allowing owners to set a position focus for player acquisition at the start of the season upon identifying a single position of need, similar to the training focus? Working with some numbers that would need refining, what that would do is uplift your chances of winning a claim on a player in a specific position by say 20%, whilst reducing claims on all other positions by 10%. To give an example a catcher appears on waivers and attracts 10 claims. 3 teams have catcher specified as their acquisition focus so each of their claims are worth 120% of the current weighting. 3 teams have no focus so they sit at 100%. 4 teams have other positions specified as their acquisition focus, so the strength of their claims fall to 90%. Before anyone points out that the maths doesn't stack-up, think of it in terms of raffle tickets... If everyone buys 10 tickets per player on waivers at the moment, all this does if you choose to use it is grant you 12 tickets should the player you're claiming match your focus, 9 if it doesn't, and 10 if you didn't set one. I think this would add a nice risk/reward element that owners could use to help overcome the slightly scattergun approach to player acquisition, which is really my only gripe about this otherwise brilliant game. Couple of caveats before people point out the obvious flaws: * This would only apply to position players, you'd always have an even chance of winning claims on pitchers as the category's so broad. * Focus could perhaps be changed once or twice in the season, maybe once at the start and once at the all-star break to prevent people changing it daily depending on who they've got claims on. I know there's been a few discussions about changing waivers, and I'm sure this probably has problems I haven't considered, but hey - something for discussion. Cheers! Updated Thursday, March 3 2016 @ 1:19:34 am PST

#31416	03/03/2016 5:07:05 am
newtman Joined: 11/02/2013 Posts: 3343 Inactive	This is only the second idea for change to waivers that I have liked. The ability to only set it once per season would be key though since as you mentioned it would be badly abused if it were allowed to be changed often. Considering some people can go rather lengthy times without being able to win a claim on a position they have no one at, while others win claims on multiple players at a position this would seem to at least skew it towards team needs without breaking the system.

#31417	03/03/2016 5:50:57 am
MukilteoMike Joined: 08/09/2014 Posts: 3294 Inactive	I'll give you points on creativity, but I'm not a fan of the idea. The first problem is that it really will only serve its purpose on developed players, and even then only if they have been trained at the optimum position. Most players who have less than two or three years in the minors have a poor primary position, so your emphasis won't truly match. Heck, even many veteran players are playing the wrong position, usually due to bot management. Another major issue is that all positions aren't equal. There are obviously far more outfielders than anything else, so I'd set it for them regardless of what I need or want. And are all the other positions equal? I don't know. There could be a weighting to try to balance it out, but who knows what that should be. For instance, if OF you get +10% and -6% on all others. Other positions would need to be more like +20% and only -3%. Both of those are working off a 1-1-1-1-1-3 breakdown (the three being outfielders, 1 for all others), which I'm sure is far from accurate. At draft it might even be evenly distributed; again, I have no idea. In my opinion, the simplest solution would be to have the tiered waiver system that has been previously suggested. Using that, you could attack the exact players you have more interest in, which is basically what the suggestion here is all about. You accomplish that in a much simpler, fair process. I'm not exactly bullish on that either, but I would prefer that over this idea. Updated Thursday, March 3 2016 @ 5:53:26 am PST