Great Season and...

I want to say what a great season we all had. Some of us were destined to win, others were destined for the #1 pick in next years draft (me). Some of us had some very tough decisions to make of either tearing down the team and rebuilding or trying to eek out another playoff run, some of us just had to rebuild (me). Some of us made the playoffs, some of us didn't (me). Some of us will win a playoff series, some of us won't. 4 of us will see the conference championship series, and an elite 2 will see the world series; however only one of us can be the World Series Champion. That person can call their season a success. The rest of us have to figure out what we expected from this season and see where we finished to see if we can call our season a success. My mesuring stick was simple. All I wanted to do in my first season with Seattle was infuse the team with a lot of good talent for the future. We were not a playoff team by any stretch of the imagination, nor was it in the realm of possiblities for our squad. If pressed, I would have to admit my major league squad couldn't have seriously contended for the AAA World Series crown. However, that is the team I chose to take over. I am proud of what I did accomplish this season because what was done this season will only impact future seasons in a better way than what the last seasons did for the future of my club. Whoever ran Seattle before me really did a disservice to the team and ultimately the league. My season was a success, I can only hope you can call your season a success. None of us like failure, none of us should accept failure as an option.

I am going to come back for another beat down by the elite teams for next season, I hope you do the same =). Or if you are one of the elite teams, I hope you come back simply to compete for that ever elusive World Series title.

Great season everyone!

Also, I will be traveling over the next few days... So I'll say this early: HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!

Please everyone if you choose to partake in the festivities over the holiday, please please please get a designated driver. If you are unable to get a designated driver you can always call a taxi. One friend or a taxi can save the lives of multiple people and keep you a free person out of the clutches of the state prison or possibly in the worst case senario. Some of the drunk driving statistics from 2007 (2008's are not released yet):

1. On average someone is killed by a drunk driver every 40 minutes. In 2007, an estimated 12,998 people died in drunk driving related crashes—a decline of 3.7 percent from the 13,491 drunk driving related fatalities of 2006.
2. About three in every ten Americans will be involved in an alcohol-related crash at some time in their lives.
3. Alcohol-related crashes in the United States cost the public an estimated $114.3 billion in 2000, including $51.1 billion in monetary costs and an estimated $63.2 billion in quality of life losses. People other than the drinking driver paid $71.6 billion of the alcohol-related crash bill, which is 63 percent of the total cost of these crashes

Please do not become one of these statistics because of drunk driving or buzzed driving (which is drunk driving). Lets all be safe over the holidays so we can come back to our league and have fun =).

Again, have a very HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

Have a very Merry Christmas, Happy Hanuaka, Happy Holidays, and...

I want t wish everyone this year a very MERRY CHRISTMAS, a very Hanukka, and a very Happy Holidays. Please be safe, be merry, be joyous, be thankful for the food provided and family/friends that surround you, and remember the brave men and women who are not able to celebrate with their loved ones this holiday season because they protect our rights to celebrate by bravely serving overseas.

For those of you who celebrate Festivus... please remember Festivus does not end until the head of the household is pinned in a wrestling match. The official rule goes as such: Traditionally, the head of the household selects one person at the Festivus celebration and challenges that person to a wrestling match. The person may decline if they have something else to do, such as volunteer at the homeless shelter. However tradition states, Festivus does not end until the head of the household is pinned in a wrestling match.

Also if you are looking to buy your festivus poles please take a look at: http://www.festivuspoles.com/

My airing of the greviences are as follows: None. I am grateful for everyone as a friend and a competitor here. Please give me regards to all of your family and friends =)

Please... no one buy a one legged lamp that reads Fra-gee-lay on the shipping box because... That must be Italian.

Em_knaps

Hall of Fame -- Inductees

Pioneer League

Year One

Unfortunately there were no inductees for year one.

Please stay tuned until the next season for Year 2 through 10 voting.

Year Two

Unfortunately there were no inductees for year two

We will do Year Three starting at the end of the week sometime. Stay tuned.

Hall of Fame -- Season One's Canidates

I have compiled a list of players that are eligible, according to the rules previously stated, to our Hall of Fame for season one.

First, let me restate the rules to be eligible for the Hall of Fame:

1. Any player who retires becomes immediately eligible for the Hall of Fame if he has at least 10 years experience with at least 5 years of ML experience.
2. The Hall of Fame committee (all of us) will vote, any player receiving more than 70% of the votes cast will be inducted into the Hall of Fame. If you do not want to vote for anyone you must vote that way. Not telling me that you do not want to vote for anyone will count as a non-vote and will probably skew the percentages (IE: You do not tell me you don't want to vote for anyone, 31 others tell me their votes. I would then take the percentages based off of 31 votes).
3. Their shall be no minimum number of players, along with no maximum number of players. If no player garners enough votes to be inducted into the Hall of Fame, then there shall be no inductions that year.
4. A player shall remain on the ballots for 3 years, provided the player garners at least one vote per year. After 3 years the player then goes to veterans committee vote (I am working on a veterans committee).
5. For years one through four and possibly a little bit more we will have to project the players stats by what we see for the years provided. WIS only shows stats for the years that the world was being used. An example is: Year one: Player A has 10 years of experience with 7 years ML experience. Player A would only show his 7th year of ML experience. We would have to project the other 6 years. It is each voters own opinion how to project the stats out, there will be no set projection.
   

Special Rules for the Hall of Fame

1. No player can be taken out of the Hall of Fame except in extreme circumstances. An extreme circumstance example would be the stats have signifigantly changed from what we had voted on.
2. You are responsible for checking to make sure I have included all of your players eligible for the year we are voting on. I am human, and I am checking 32 teams with 40+ players that played on that team on the ML level that year. I possibly could have made a mistake, by accident. I do not want to see anyone excluded on my mistake, so I recheck my lists, however; again, I am human and could make a mistake. With you checking your teams, you are one person checking one team. If I made a mistake, there is a very good chance you will catch it. Please speak up in a polite manner and inform me of my mistake. I will immediately correct it.
3. This is only for Hall of Fame years 1 - 10: we need to move sort of quickly to get through these years to catch up. It will not be possible to do all 10 seasons this season. We have 11 days until the season ends, which leaves us 1 day per season to debate and vote. Factoring in Christmas, that is not going to happen. My goal is to do 2 seasons this season and continue next season. With that said; Current voting is due to me (Trade Chat: Seattle Mariners; Sitemail: em_knaps) by either Chat (preferred preference so everyone sees your vote, I will check the chat by day); trade chat (I will still post who voted for who), or Sitemail (again I will still make your vote public) by Saturday December 20th, 2008. I am going to make votes public so everyone can be assured there is no sketchy business going on. My votes are at the bottom of this page. I really hope everyone enjoys this and it provides some good debates on our chat =)
   

The players are:

Hardball Dynasty's

Darrin Urich

Hardball Dynasty's

Larry Ramirez

Hardball Dynasty's

Jesus Renteria

Hardball Dynasty's

Pete Richardson

Hardball Dynasty's

Anthony Podsednik

Hardball Dynasty's

Junior Bragg

Hardball Dynasty's

Robert Hackman

Hardball Dynasty's

John Powell

Hardball Dynasty's

Andrew Kennedy

Hardball Dynasty's

Will Duran

Hardball Dynasty's

Walter Veres

Hardball Dynasty's

Davey Perez

Hardball Dynasty's

Torey Chavez

Hardball Dynasty's

Jude King

Hardball Dynasty's

Bob Durbin

Em_knaps: my only vote is for Andrew Kennedy; while it is difficult to project his real numbers, he has been a ML starter for 20 years. He is also still playing at age 45, so that tells me he must have been a special player. I could project him as an overall 85 in his prime. I could go higher or even lower. Regardless not many subpar, if any at all, players are pitching at age 45.
I considered Junior Bragg, but he would have been a closer, and I am not a big proponent of closers (unless they are Dennis Eckersley like) in the HOF. I also considered Pete Richardson, but he would have been a mid-relief pitcher. Without any solid stats, he is really difficult to see how effective he was for his team(s).

Current voting is due to me (Trade Chat: Seattle Mariners; Sitemail: em_knaps) by either Chat (preferred preference so everyone sees your vote, I will check the chat by day); trade chat (I will still post who voted for who), or Sitemail (again I will still make your vote public) by Saturday December 20th, 2008.

Also I will be doing a Power Ranking mid-week and a playoff preview once all the playoff seeds are set. Yearly awards will not be done this year, those will start next season. I did not realize we were so close to the end of the season until I checked 10 minutes ago. Jamming that in with the HOF and writing everything else would be tight and probably not possible with Christmas coming up. Baseball History starts tomorrow too. IF WIS does a upgrade of HBD, I will post it and discuss it. I don't see that happening with Christmas on the horizon, but I could be wrong. Let's get to discussing and having a good and fun debate with our new HOF. Please add comments as you see fit =). Also I am on the look out for contributors, if you are willing to help out please trade chat me!

Hall of Fame and what the qualifications are

With the departure of the member who was maintaining the blog came the erasure of everything on the old blog. That means the HOF went with it. With that said, we will have a Hall of Fame. I have been searching through the forums and other worlds blogs to see their Hall of Fames. I say we can do better. But for us to do better we have to start from the beginning.

Who should vote on who belongs in the Hall of Fame?

1. Everyone/team will have an equal vote

Who is eligible for the Hall of Fame?

1. Any player who retires becomes immediately eligible for the Hall of Fame if he has at least 10 years expirence with at least 5 years of ML expirence.
2. The Hall of Fame committee will vote, any player receiving at least 70% of the voting will be inducted into the HOF.
3. There shall be no minimum number of players to be inducted into the Hall of Fame, along with no maximum number of players. If no player garners enough votes to be inducted into the Hall of Fame, then there shall be no inductions that year.
4. A player shall remain on the ballot for a total of 3 years, provided that they garner at least one vote.
5. For years one through four, we will have to project the ML stats out for at least 5 years by ourselves. WIS only shows their stats for the first year of the world, regardless if the player has played for 15 years and has 10 years ML expirence. With that said, I believe that it is each voters own opinion on how they project it out. That will make it very interesting on who gets in and why. It should make for some very good chats.
   

Are there any "special" rules?

Yes, they are:

1. No player can be taken out of the HOF, except in extreme cases. I don't know what that extreme case would be, but if someone feels so strongly that a player should be taken out then a review of what the reason is will be taken at that time. Extreme cases are NOT: The player should be taken out because this is not the really good hall of fame, the player shoulld be taken out because I don't want him there. The player garnered enough votes to be inducted, so he will stay based off of that. An extreme case would be something like, for some reason that the stats we saw were changed.
2. You are responsible for checking to make sure I have all of your players that are eligible that year. I haven't made any mistakes yet in my life, but I am almost positive that I will eventually. I would hate that I missed your player for the year, and he wasn't eligible anymore because of it. With that said, I do re-check the lists, but I am only human and might make a mistake; Especially with 32 teams to look through and 10 seasons. If you take the time to look at one team and check the work I do, then mistakes can be avoided.
   

I am mulling over a veterans commitee, but I don't know how that would work. If anyone has any ideas, please throw them out. For the time-being we have a lot of voting to do. We have seasons 1 - 10 to do. Currently I am working on season 1's list. When I get that done, I will post it for everyone's review. With this, I hope inhances our chats and livens up some debates. Everyone continue to have a great HBD season! More to come....

Welcome to the Pioneer Leauge Part Duex Blog

I would like to welcome everybody to the Pioneer League blog part deux. Unfortunately our other member who maintained our blog left our league, and in the middle of the season no less. Who leaves their team in the middle of the season other than Bobby Petrino (ex-Falcon coach, Arkansas Razorback coach)? Anyhow, regardless of why he left, we now have a new and hopefully an improved blog! Everybody in the Pioneer League in HBD is welcome to contribute, all I need is for you to sign up through the blog site, then trade chat me your user name. I will then add you to the contributors list.

I plan on contributing in a couple of different areas for this blog. The following things I will contribute on a regular basis: #1: a weekly power rankings, #2: a HOF (more on this later) , #3: Yearly Awards to mirror what the real MLB hands out (more on this later), #4: Baseball History, #5: Yearly and playoff preview, and #6: any issues important to HBD and our world.

Our Hall of Fame: This will be done in increments. Currently we have no HOF, which is a shame. I have been searching through the forums and other worlds blogs to see their HOF's. We can easily do better than them, and will. Our HOF rules will be announced in another article soon (probably the next article). This will definately add a new demention to our world and how we view our players. Also it will add more chatter in the chat area, which is always a welcome thing =).

Yearly Awards: While HBD automatically votes on the awards, we can certainly come up with and vote for an award winner for each award for the entire ML. HBD separates the awards in to NL and AL, we can combine it and vote for the ML winner. It will add more fun, and certainly more debate. Debate and chatter is always good!

Again, I am very open to everyone in our world contributing to this blog as it is ours. Only we can make it as good as we want it. With your contributing, it would be that much better. If you are interested, even for a weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly article please sign up through the blog site, then trade chat me your username.

Lets all continue to have a great season! Some of the races are tight still and look to be close through out the rest of the season. Good HBD'ing to everyone!!!