GUBA Constitution

Current OOTP Game Engine Settings

How to Join

Welcome to the GUBA!

Governing Board
The GUBA is governed by a Governing Board. The following are their descriptions:

A. Commish: The boss of the league. Keeps everything going. Mad0die aka IRON FIST.

B. Co-Commish: Right hand of the Commish. Pays for the hosting. Mikey.

C. Others: J6A sims and handles stadium maintenance. Millsy is a former commish. Ronzonie7, well I forget what he does.

Owners and Participation
GUBA owners are expected to participate actively in the league. An owner will be relieved of his team if he stops exporting or stops participating on the forums or does not respond to direct communication from the Commish. Owners are also required to respond to other owners trade requests. Ignoring owners for any reason is not acceptable. The GUBA uses a Participation Point system to track owner activity, contributions and provide rewards for owner involvement.

A Noob Guide is available to help new owners and we also have a Welcome Wagon group that will designate someone as your go-to person for questions and 2^nd opinions on trades. During your first season a GUBA owner, you will be asked to run prospective trades by your Welcome Wagon person. More on this can be found in the Guide.

Expectations

The GUBA is a “writing league," which means that we expect our owners to contribute to the league community by writing articles about your team or the league. The quality of your writing will not be judged, just doing the writing is all we ask. Awarding of PPTs is awarded at the discretion of the simmer following stated guidelines in the PPT Primer. Participation Points are tallied a couple times a season at the midway point and at the end.

Owners are expected to submit Team Exports for every sim or post in the Owner Availability forum that they will not be exporting. Owners must post in the Owner Availability forum when they expect to be unavailable for a period of time. If you are unavailable for one-third or more of an GUBA season, you are in jeopardy of losing your franchise. In these situations, it is your responsibility to find an AGM to run your team while you are away, but the Governing Board will help where possible.

What constitutes a sufficient Team News report? In order to qualify for the points, your Team News writings must be original, owner-created content. Copying and pasting from your OOTP team page will not count. You must have at least two solid paragraphs of original, owner-created written content with a 200 word minimum. Non PPT-worthy postings should be pinned in your Team News forum or posted elsewhere on the board. Also, please post each news item as a separate thread with a numbering system for easier tallying.

Team News Incentive Program: here.

Promo Days: here.

PPT Minimum

Every owner is required to obtain a minimum of 20 Participation Points by the end of each season (In addition, owners with 0 Participation Points at the midseason update will be subject to removal by the Governing Board). Ownership is a privilege, not a right. The Governing Board must assure that all owners are contributing in order to sustain a healthy, active league. Failure to earn your 20 PPTs by the stated Participation Point Deadline means you have given up your ownership rights in the GUBA. Those rights may be returned to you at the Governing Board's discretion. If you are in your first or second continuous season in the GUBA and you have not met minimums, chances are you will not be returned your ownership rights. Should the Governing Board choose to return ownership rights to you, you will accept them along with a mandatory two season Probationary Period. You may also be eligible for the Bailout Plan to avoid Probation.

Owners who enter during the course of the season will be exempt from the 20 PPT minimum or given a pro-rated PPT minimum.

PPT Probation

Terms of Two Season Probationary Period:
- You fail 3 exports in one season with no Owner Availability posts and you are gone
- You ever miss a required vote with no Owner Availability post and you are gone
- You will be required to earn 40 PPTs in Season One of Probation with 20 of those by the All-Star Break
- You will be required to earn 30 PPTs in Season Two of Probation with 15 of those by the All-Star Break
- If you meet all terms of this two season Probationary Period, you will return to normal owner status with the 3rd season.

Stadium Aging and Maintenance

We have a very neat albeit complex stadium aging and stadium modification system. Read all about it here: Stadium Maintenance

Sims
Will be conducted 3 times a week: Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday. Team exports are always due by 8pm CT (even if the sim will occur a little later in the evening). Each sim will consist of 10 days on the GUBA schedule (note: the third sim of the month will be as many days as it takes to close out the month). Post-season and off-season schedules will be posted in the Announcements forum on the message board.

Performance Related Penalties

The league instituted three penalties / restrictions for owners that are not getting the job done. We don't want anyone tanking and these measures add some extra incentive to get your team winning. Read about the PRP which is now down to just one.

Waivers

Waivers are done using the in-game Waiver Wire. Please note that if a player refuses assignment to the minor leagues, waiving him won't get him to accept assignment either. He would either have to be kept on the major league roster or released. The GUBA also has special “waive-to-trade” rules for moving players after the August 1 trade deadline. Real all about it here: Post-Deadline Waiver Trading

Designated for Assignment

The DFA is essentially being used as a holding area in the GUBA. Basically, any player acquisition regardless of the type goes to your DFA. Once on the DFA, it will be up to you from within OOTP to determine what your next course of action is for those player(s). If a player times out on your DFA, will not accept minors assignment and you have no room on your 25-man that player will be outright cut. DFA time is set to a max of 50 days in the off-season and shorter during the regular season.

Player Eligibility

Position Players:
Position players are allowed to play any position you'd like, with the understanding that if they aren't "rated" at that position they probably won't fare so well. The basic defensive spectrum is in use in OOTP11, assigning positions a declining degree of difficulty as such: P, C, SS, 2B, CF, 3B, RF, LF, 1B. The basic concept behind the defensive spectrum is that players can generally adapt fairly well to a defensive position to the right of the spectrum, but not as well to the left of the spectrum.

Pitchers:
Endurance is a measure of how many pitches a pitcher can throw before tiring. Pitchers with high Endurance ratings tend to be used as starting pitchers, while pitchers with low Endurance ratings tend to be used as relievers. OOTPX added number of pitches as another factor in determining whether a pitcher is a starter or a reliever. The decision is yours to make.

Amateur Draft
GUBA champions will pick last and GUBA runners-up will pick next to last. The rest of the playoff teams will be sorted first by the round they exited and then their won / loss record. The 16 teams that failed to make the post-season will have their pick order determined via Draft Lottery using a complicated formula that slightly improves your chances the worse your team played.

Any draft tiebreakers will be determined by: Head-to-Head record --> Division record --> Run Differential → Penis size.

The amateur draft pool is revealed in mid-March and drafting will commence with the Getch Draft Utility. The draft is entered into the game on June 1. There will be no live drafting. Details on the draft: here.

Free Agent Draft Pick Compensation (new for 2018)

The entire second round of the amateur draft will be replaced with compensatory picks for losing guys in free agency. This effectively moves our normal second round to the third round and on down.

Why do this, you ask? There have been 2 "problems" that have been established in this league and in OOTP in general - too much money and lack of quality free agents. We addressed the former with our Financial Reform. This would address that second problem. Some guy is hitting .300 with 30 HR is a free agent at the end of the year. Your team sucks. Traditionally this guy could get lowballed and traded for a #3 pick and some cash, or a scrub pick. Why? Because you have to get *something* for him.

With this proposal, instead, you know that should he sign in free agency for a decent amount of money, you will get 1, possibly 2 2nd round picks for him. This increases the value of veterans, who, as of now, have almost zero trade value for a 2 month rental. Now, the power is placed back in the hands of the team the player is on – trade me something that is a better package than the 2nd round pick I am going to get for him.

Additionally, to address concerns about diluting the value of your old 2nd round picks being moved to the 3rd round we will be making the draft pool 25 rounds long.

Rule 5 Draft

The Rule 5 Draft will occur each offseason. You must make sure to protect your players on the 40-man, or risk losing them to the Rule 5 Draft. Anyone lost to the Rule 5 Draft are lost, there's no "I forgot" rule in the GUBA. Control your organizational roster. Rule 5 SYSK (shit you should know).

When drafting a guy in the rule 5 you must keep him on your 25-man all season. You have 2 options if you decide not to do this:

You must first offer the rule 5er back to his original team (who can demote him).
If they don't want him back, you may trade him, but the receiving team also has to keep him on their 25-man roster all season (violation penalties applicable).

Any attempt to circumvent these rules will result in a $1.5 million fine from current cash.

Trades
ALL trades must be posted on the message board and confirmed by both owners and will be completed by the Commissioner AFTER the games are simmed (only exceptions to this at the trade deadline and before the financial roll).

How to post a trade and the trade rules can be found HERE.

Please respond to trade offers as quickly as possible and be nice, even if the offer is absurd.

Off Season Free Agency
FA offers will be made via FTP exports from within OOTP. The off-season schedule will be posted in the Announcements forum on the message board.

Players signed during off-season free agency may not be traded until June 1 of the upcoming season.

In Season Free Agency
Signing of free agents during the season is managed from within the game and your team exports.

Contract Incentive and Bonus Rules
Contract extensions and free agent offers are handled from in-game via team export.

After the fiasco stemming from contract incentives and bonuses, the GB has come up with a set of guidelines to be followed when offering contract incentives and bonuses to players. These guidelines cover both free agent offers and extensions for current players. MUST READ

Option Years
In order to decline an option year of a contract, teams will be required to pay a buyout of 25% of the option year's value or $500,000, whichever is more.

The rule was made when game date was 5/1/2012. Contracts signed prior to 5/11/2012 were grandfathered in.

All-Star Game
Every owner will vote for the All-Star teams. The simmers will make every attempt to get these results into the game. The prior season's World Series Gms will pick the reserves following these guidelines.

Owner's Choice Awards
Back as of 2027! They and the Owner of the year will be voted on via the league's StatsLab Awards page.

Mandatory Voting
The GUBA is a league where participation is expected out of all owners. The following important league issues require a mandatory vote:

Voting for All-Stars
Voting on any Rule Changes (typically done on the forums)
Voting for the OCAs / OotY

Owners who do not participate in the mandatory voting will be penalized PPTs and Fan Interest.

Credits
Thanks go out to Global Baseball Consortium, Montgomery Brewster Baseball Association, Federation of International Baseball, and any others that inspired this document or were used as a model for differing sections