GAMEPLAN
Baseball- Play By Mail
Your chance to be a Major League Baseball Manager
Background - Gameplan Baseball is a simulation of Major League Baseball. You are the manager of a Major League ball-club, taking your team through a 162 game regular season. If you’re good enough and qualify for the playoffs you continue and try to reach and win the World Series.
In Gameplan Baseball we try to make the game work the same way as in real life, with realistic decisions to be made about team management. The choices you make are the same as you’d have to make in real life. Sometimes you’ll have to make tough decisions, whether to sign better pitchers or hitters, or develop your stadium and income sources to improve your future finances.
In addition to the management decisions about signing and cutting players you’ve also got to shuffle your roster from game to game. You’ve injuries to contend with, as well as players losing form. You have to decide which pitchers will be in your starting rotation and which will operate from the "bullpen". You have to decide when to rest your star hitters, and who to use as pinch hitters and when to use them.
Gameplan Baseball is mainly a management game. Rather than concentrating on the "game-day" coaching aspect the focus of the game is on longer-term roster building, though there is still a significant element of control over game-day decisions.
How it works - Your objective is to win the World Series against teams run by other players drawn from all over the country (and around the world). Each game contains twenty four teams divided into two leagues of twelve teams each. Each league is further divided into three divisions of four teams (so teams are missing from the real life five and six team divisions).
During each turn you play three three-game series (so a total of nine games are played each turn). You have to make a mixture of decisions: both "playing" decisions and "management" decisions as both are equally important for a Baseball manager.
Players and skills - Each team has an "active" roster (players available for selection each game) of twenty-five players, three-fifths of whom are usually hitters and the remainder pitchers. In addition you've got a number of reserve players, currently in the minor leagues who can be called up to your active squad at any time.
Each hitter and pitcher is rated according to four skills. For hitters they are Hitting, Power, Speed and Fielding. For pitchers they are Accuracy, Control, Quickness and Stamina. Each skill has a different effect on the player's abilities and performances. The better a player’s skills are the more effective he will be, but the higher his wage demands will be.
Gameplan Baseball is as much about financial management as coaching - you can’t build a "superteam" because you’ve only got limited finances, so the key to success is getting the best value for money out of your roster.
Game day decisions - Each turn you have to decide who’ll start in the batting lineup, and who to use as pinch hitters (batters who come in late in a game when you're desperate to score), or in platoons (specialists who come in when you face a left handed pitcher).
You’ve also got to decide on the batting order. Most batters need some rest during the season, otherwise they’ll be less effective during the playoffs (assuming you qualify for them) so you’ve also got to try and rest them as you go along, without sacrificing your playoff chances.
As well as the decisions about hitters you’ve also got to decide on your starting rotation for pitchers (teams normally have four or five starting pitchers, who take it in turn to pitch every fourth or fifth day), and who to use in the bullpen (the pitchers who come off the bench to finish a game when and if the starter has become too tired to continue, or has been hit out of the game).
For each pitcher you’ll decide when to take him out of the game and the situations in which you’ll bring in particular bullpen pitchers. There is quite an art to managing your pitching rotation and bullpen from day to day.
In addition to the "game-day" decisions described above you’ve also got to make roster and financial decisions during each turn. You can sign players from the free-agent list, or make trades with other managers. Whilst on the free agent list players’ values (and their wages) drop, so you’ll commonly find you’ll need to leave some of your over-priced veterans on the free-agent list and then resign them when their wage demands have dropped to more realistic levels. Other teams may sign them in the meantime but if you lose a player to another team you do get compensation.
You also have to make decisions about sending players to the minor leagues, either to turn their form around, or perhaps younger players you wish to develop. You've also got to deal with player injuries, even contract disputes and so forth as well as investing finances in merchandising, improving stadium facilities, all of which reduce your funds in the short-term, but increase your income in the longer term.
At the end of the regular season the three divisional winners and the best runner-up in each league (known as the wild-card) move forward into the playoffs. The first round is played over best-of-five games, whilst the League Championship Series and World Series are played over the best-of-seven games.
Teams that fail to make the playoffs, or are eliminated during the playoffs take part in consolation competitions or play pre-season games, readying themselves for the following season.
During the playoffs each team participates in the college draft, signing new talent to their rosters. These are usually "promising" players packed with potential who’ll need a season or two to mature.
At the end of each season each player is also assessed for gaining or losing abilities. This is dependent upon a player’s "potential" - a player loses one point of potential each season. A player with lots of potential is likely to gain skills quickly, particularly if his form during the season was good. A player with no potential will start to lose skills. Either way, players’ wage demands increase as they get older so you’ll need to decide whether a player is continuing to provide value for money.
Game reports - Each turn you’ll receive up to a dozen pages of laser-printed reports: a full roster listing with current form, injury details, lineups and so on, plus detailed stats for all of your players. You’ll also receive full boxscores for all games you played, and outline reports on all games played in your league that turn, as well as details of free agent signings, trades, injuries and all the other news you’ll need around the league.
You also have the option of receiving extra reports - there are many optional stats listings and you can also receive play-by-play listings for every one of your games. For those who really want to see all the stats from their games the option is there if you want it, though the extra listings won’t give you an advantage over other managers (though they may well increase your enjoyment of the game).
Games and turnfees - There are half a dozen games of Gameplan Baseball already running in the UK, the oldest in their sixth seasons. All run with two week deadlines (so you've fourteen days between turns). We have positions available in most of these games that will allow you to start play immediately (as in real-life, you take over a team and try to turn their fortunes around). Turnfees in Gameplan Baseball are £3.00 for one, £12.00 for four, £27.00 for ten and £48.00 for twenty. There are further discounts available if you play in more than one game.
Email game reports are now a standard option if you wish to receive your reports via the Internet rather than relying on the post. We are currently developing our systems to also allow you to submit orders via email.
We welcome players from outside the UK, although there is a need to make special arrangements for sending and receiving orders. Customers from within Europe are charged an extra 10% on all quoted price rates while customers from outside Europe are charged an extra 40% to cover the extra postage costs. These additions do not apply if you receive orders via email.
To join Gameplan only costs £5.00 and covers the cost of your rulebooks, team setup and first two turns.
To keep things simple, please email us if you have an interest in Gameplan or any of the other featured games. We will then email you back with the joining details. This allows us to continue to financially support the relevant UK sports federations. Thank you.
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