Distinguished Senators, the Washington Nationals Blog That Is Great

Wednesday, March 02, 2005

Good 1, Evil 0

Well, we won. It feels kinda good - better than losing, at any rate. I stopped watching after two innings, despite my boss' advice to hang out at the crappy bar where I was watching the game and have several beers. It's good to have a boss like that - and he's related to Mort and Walker Cooper! So anyway, I don't have a lot to say about the game, except that it was disheartening to hear Frank Robinson imply that he was sticking with today's lineup. Letting Inning-Endy and Guzman bat 1-2 is chivalrous in the sense that you're not giving yourself an advantage over your opponent, even if your opponent is letting his pitcher lead off. In the words of Speed Racer, however, I want to win and that's all. I did have a pretty involved post in the works, but a friend came over and we wound up watching From Justin to Kelly, so it'll have to wait until tomorrow.

One more thing: a highly placed source informs me that the EA baseball game has a rather stunted franchise mode, specifically in the way player contracts are handled. Anyone have the ESPN one, and if so, is it any better?

4 comments:

Ryan said...

I had no idea. That's really odd. So I assume there's no arbitration, contract backloading, etc.

Chris Needham said...

MVP does use dollars this year--last year's had a silly point structure.

But there isn't any reality to the minor league/farm team set-up.

When you draft a player, you sign him to a contract--usually for two or three years at $100-$200K per season.

When his contract is up, you can resign him, but you can't just automatically renew him, like you could in the minors. They're eligible for Free Agency as soon as that first contract is up.

There's no arbitration process either. He either accepts your money, or he doesn't. And there's no backloading, you can only set the number of years and a flat rate per season.

Plus, I've heard that the 'media revenue' adjusts to go up and down with your salary, although I haven't tested this. So there'd be no benefit in trading Alex Rodriguez, who DOES make $25M in the game, to the Mets for David Wright.

Plus, when you do 'owner mode' to build a new ballpark, it immediately dumps your original stadium, and forces you to play in a 20K seat stadium, which you can upgrade over the next few years. You can choose to play actual season games in your created stadiums, or one of the other parks, but all revenue figures are drawn as if it was from your created park. It's really a weird way of doing things.

Chris Needham said...

Other than that, how was the play, Mrs. Lincoln?


Actually, it's a really fun game to play. The graphics are really solid, and it's very playable. And the hitting mini-game is strangely addictive.

For the hell of it, I pitched the Nationals against Potomac last night. Livan pitched a no-hitter and hit a Grand Slam. (You probably ran out to buy it before you finished reading that sentence!)

Ryan said...

Hey, Two-Time All-Stars with Veteran Presence don't come cheap. I'm glad MVP got right that ¡LIVAN! is the Babe Ruth of baseball.