Baseball Draft

The Baseball Draft or Baseball Draft League (BDL), also known as (the?) fodeuss and the SANDLOT, is an American simulated baseball organization on the Arena boards of TheForce.Net's Jedi Council Forums.

Beginning in 2018, it features a single league of 12 teams organized by the Commissioner of Baseball, who pits them against each other in a simulated season on a fictional calendar. The league is headquartered in Cleveland, OH (probably).

History
Following the creation of Draft games on the forums, several sport-specific Drafts took place-- including Basketball and College Football. Because he's a masochist, and probably to prevent the Golden State-bandwaggoning tom from winning another NBA version, Commish Inty created the Baseball Draft.



1st & 2nd Drafts
The First and Second Drafts, in 2018 and 2019, required GMs to each draft from the same franchise every round (the franchise chosen by the GM picking first that round). Thankfully no jackass picked the Louisville Colonels, though someone did pick the Angels. In these Drafts a player could be selected more than once as long as they were from different franchises-- which meant Babe Ruth could pitch against Babe Ruth, there could be like 40 Bartolo Colons, and the space-time continuum was at risk.

They were both won by the Performance Enhancers, both in 7 games and both off an Alex Rodriguez hit.

3rd Draft
The Third Draft, in 2020, allowed GMs to draft any player from nearly any era (1885-present day) in a free-for-all format. This resulted in a more varied group of players, exacerbated by the fact that individuals could no longer be selected more than once-- with the exception of Babe Ruth (a la the Anakin Skywalker Rule). Early in the season, the league was struck by the DAVID-19 pandemic. This forced teams to play a portion of their games under quarantine at Marlins Park, eventually opening up to Tampa before returning to regular home play.

It was won by A Shaq of Their Own.



The Spencer Report
After the Third Draft, an investigation produced the Spencer Report, which implicated a handful of GMs in the use of players with truncated stats to manipulate the simulator. This caused a shift from using the WhatIfSports platform of previous Drafts to Out of the Park Baseball, which penalizes rather than rewards short-season players.

4th Draft
The Fourth Draft, in 2021, shifted the simulator from WIS to OOTP. It also provided GMs 3 keeper slots to carry over players from the Third Draft as a "franchise," and opened up the draft pool to every era (1876-present day) as well as the Negro and Minor Leagues.

Upon learning the Negro Leagues would be draft-eligible, Major League Baseball followed suit to recognize them as a major league.

It was won by A Shaq of Their Own as repeat champs.

At the conclusion of the draft, each team could anoint one player as their "Franchise Keeper", putting them on their team forever, in some kind of Bizzaro world for the one person alive who is both a fan of the Rays and Taylor Swift.

All-Star Game
Near the midway point of each season, the Baseball Draft All-Star Game is held during a four-day break from the regular-season schedule. The game is an exhibition that features two teams managed by the GMs of the World Series teams from the previous year. Players are selected based on their current performance, or sometimes just arbitrarily by Juliet316, isn't that right Addie Joss?

Beginning in 2019, a Home Run Derby was added to the festivities.

International play
To date the Baseball Draft has not incorporated international play, though since it's supported by OOTP, are you really gonna bet against these guys doing something with it?

Yep. They are adding international play.

Television
Several networks televise Major League Baseball games, including Fox, ESPN, and MLB Network. But none of them carry Baseball Draft games, because they are cowards.

OOTP provides for some visualization of games however, and it's been suggested that for the playoffs they get livestreamed, like a somehow even more nerdy version of Twitch.

During Draft Four, ESP-Inty (seriously, why is everything named after this guy?) was launched. This features IntyCenter, a video recap of the most recent games.

Print and Digital
The Inty-grated Press also reports on the season by publishing recaps for every series and providing award-winning investigative journalism(citation needed).

Their complete website can be found here.

Though it technically only exists digitally, are we really putting it past heels that if he wins he won't print out his final box score/recap to frame for his bedroom?