GUBA Constitution

Current OOTP Game Engine Settings

How to Join

Welcome to the GUBA!

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

A. Commish: The boss of the league. Keeps everything going. Final say. IRON FIST.

B. Co-Commish: Other league admins. Also simmers.

C. Head Recruiter: Finds and fills open teams. Promotes the league.

D. Other Roles (Draft Nazi / Awards Guy / Stadium Dude): Owners taking responsibilities above and beyond team ownership.

Owners and Participation
Owners are expected to participate by exporting lineups, writing content on the forums and promptly responding to communication attempts by others in the league. We recommend Personal Messages within the Forums as the primary method of communications between owners. An owner can be relieved of his team if THREE lineup exports are missed in a row with no communication to the Governing Board. You are also expected to post team news on a regular basis on the forums - yes, this is a “writing league”. A Participation Point system is used to track owner activity and provide rewards for owner involvement.

Participation Points

GUBA owners are expected to participate actively in the league. To encourage participation, and to keep the league healthy and active, the GUBA has a special "Participation Points" system that measures each owner's level of participation. Participation Points (PPTs) can be redeemed later for a variety of in-game benefits. Participation Points are tallied a couple times a season.

The Participation Points system is also tied closely into the Fan Interest value in OOTP, based on the idea that the more active you are as an owner, the more interest you generate among your fan base. The GUBA is also a "writing league," which means that we strongly encourage our owners to contribute to the league community by writing articles about the team or league.

More details and up-to-date info can be found 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.

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.

As mentioned above, 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. Owners are given an opportunity to participate in shaping the rules of the league, and thus participation in mandatory league votes is, in fact, mandatory.

**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. One sentence is far less than a paragraph. 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 for easier tallying.

Team News Incentive Program (simplified 2013 season)

We want to continue to reward the top TN writers with a healthy bonus, but also encourage those who haven't written a lot of TN in the past to improve their output through a reward.

If you finish the season with at least 10 Team News, you will receive 6 PPT and a +2 Fan Interest Bonus.

If you finish the season with 20 Team News reports, you will receive 10 PPT and a +5 Fan Interest Bonus.

FI Bonuses are up to a max of 90 then you'll receive $1mill in cash for every point earned instead.

Stadium Aging and Maintenance

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

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.

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: Click me

Designated for Assignment

The DFA is essentially being used as a holding area in the GUBA. Basically, any player acquisition regardless of the type now 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 30 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 OOTP:2007, 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.

Amateur Draft
GUBA champions will pick last no matter what their draft position would have been based on record. GUBA runners-up will pick next to last. The teams with the 5 worst records will have their pick order determined via Draft Lottery. All others will pick as determined by their prior regular season record. All tiebreakers will be determined by: Head-to-Head record --> Division record --> Run Differential → Penis size.

The amateur draft will occur in mid-June. The draft pool will be released three game months in advance and we'll draft on the forums until that draft's sim comes up. The draft on the forums will include time limits to make your pick. There will be no live drafting. All efforts will be made to allow owners to make as many picks themselves as they desire. All owners will be PM'ed when the draft is ready to begin. Picks beyond the 10^th round are not allowed to be traded!

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 second round? We all know 1st round picks, especially at the top of this draft are extremely valuable. It makes no sense to replace those for compensation. Second round picks still have value, but is someone really going to miss that **1/2 RF or ***1/2 MR? And 3rd rounders are too low a value.

But, I hear screams from crappy teams already, what about us? We have no talent to lose, and now you are taking away our draft picks? A couple things. You have a crapload of money usually when you are losing since you aren’t paying anyone good. Sign some free agents and let them walk and get some picks, while also increasing your team’s performance this year. Secondly, I would suggest we include a lottery protection, that the worst 5 teams will not lose their 2nd round picks.

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. Or, if he's really good and signs for a crapload, 3 2nd round picks. 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.

Here is the slotting:

Picks 1-5 based upon the Draft Lottery.

Picks 6-25 based upon top 20 free agent contract deals as determined via complicated formula

Picks 26-33 are secondary comp picks for the top 8 free agents

Picks 34-36 are tertiary comp picks for the top 3 free agent contracts

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 21 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.

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.

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.

- For all players: The dollar amount offered for a contract incentive or bonus will be no more than 50% of the highest valued non-option year of the contract, not to exceed $2.5 million

- For hitters: The Plate Appearance contract incentive may be set no higher than 625 PAs

- For SPs: The Innings Pitched contract incentive may be set no higher than 225 IP

- For MR/CLs: The Innings Pitched contract incentive may be set no higher than 100 IP. Relievers are not allowed to be given a player of the year bonus since they are not eligible for this award.

Penalties for breaking these rules:

If the violation occurred on a free agent signing
- Player is released to free agency
- Team loses the monetary value of the current year the player is signed for, plus the value of the incentive or bonus.

If the violation occurred on an extension
- The extension is rescinded and the team must re-negotiate with the player
- The team loses the monetary value of the first year of the extension, plus the value of the incentive or bonus.

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 may or may not actually get those results into the game.

Owner's Choice Awards
Cancelled around 2015.

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 Hall of Fame

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