[IBL] A Couple First-Year Reflections (MNM)

[genny]

Hello all - Hope this finds everyone well.  I wanted to jot down some
thoughts/questions after year 1 as an IBL owner of MNM.  Nothing
earth-shattering by any means.

First, it has been a really fun experience.  The game is terrific, and all
the owners I've played or dealt with have been great.  Pretty cool what you
all have built over many years.  Thanks for letting me be a part of it.

My thoughts/questions are prompted by a question you probably all face: how
to keep participating in this unique and immersive experience in balance
with other obligations.  I had difficulty at times last year getting games
played, often needed an extension, and then found myself playing 2-3 games
very late on work-nights via MIS.  It also led to pretty indifferent play
of MNM, with an eye on finishing each week as the biggest priority.  Some
of it is time-management, but much less than you'd think, with two kids and
what seems like a second and third job coaching traveling baseball and
softball for their teams.  Spring through August are just crazy.

So toward the end of last year, I discussed with Sean in reflection on
whether this was a good time in my life to play IBL.  Sean, as always, was
awesome.  Tried to line up a co-owner, who was great as well, but
ultimately fell to the same home-work-family-IBL balance struggles I was
having.

Now, in the rhythm of IBL, all seems well.  I like the offseason, have
talked trade with many of you, and look forward to the draft.  I hope to
make a go of it again next season, but I know the balance struggles will
inevitably return - with a vengeance.

So, there were two general areas I wanted to ask about:

*Can I improve how I play:*  Not the team management side - lots of room
for improvement there :) - but the nuts-and-bolts.  Here's how I do it:

I play with two computer monitors.  On one, I pull up PDFs of each
pitcher's card on half the screen and enlarge so easily readable.  I use
those instead of the cards themselves to read results off the pitcher's
card.  On the other screen, I have IRC open, and at this point I have been
doing grs as I play and have that open too, toggling back and forth at the
end of each half-inning to fill-in the results on grs or as otherwise makes
sense.

When playing via MIS, I either have it open or print it out beforehand and
use the hard copy.

I use paper copies of the charts and hard copies of each team's cards.

Early on, I kept a scoresheet and did grs afterwards, but felt doing grs at
the same time streamlined it a bit.

Question:  How have any of you built a better mousetrap?  Anything you do
before the game starts to make things run more smoothly (i.e. faster) when
playing, most particularly via MIS?

*Would it help to try to come up with a common MIS form/standards:*  All
the MIS forms of owners made sense in their own way, and many seemed to be
modifications of others.  But as a result, some, including the one I
cut-and-pasted together from others I saw, take on a Frankenstein-like
character of bolted-on parts.  It often made playing a different MIS week a
bit of a chore (playing via ftf is the answer of course, but just tough to
find mutually convenient time to do that each week).

In addition, some are just hard to play.  For example, some of the
hit-and-run conditions included calculating the number of HGs and Ks on the
pitcher and hitter's card along with the ASR, and then using hit-and-run
depending on the HG and K totals.  That's relatively time-consuming
endeavor for a single play call, and it has to be rinsed and repeated each
time a different hitter's card is subject to a possible hit-and-run.

It leads me to wonder if it would be helpful to come up with a standard MIS
form with some substantive parameters.

As to form, I am not a great computer guy, but perhaps a standard MS Word
or Excel format, with links/tabs to move easily around a uniform template.
Many of you may have ideas about a common template/form that each owner
could fill out, providing a uniform experience for other owners in playing
and negotiating MIS forms.

It also could serve to define the parameters of what is
allowable/expected.  For example, if an owner would like the opponent to
total HGs and Ks on cards, and that was deemed a reasonable part of an MIS
(and I can see why it would be), require the owner making the request to
include the HG/K totals of each of his possible hit-and-run hitters so the
opposition does not have to add them up.  The requesting owner need only do
that once, whereas the playing owners rotate every week.

One limitation on this idea, even if it has merit, is time.  I would be
happy to collect ideas, start from a template that there is some consensus
already implements MIS reasonably well, canvass the various MIS and survey
what sorts of information/variation is found between various owners' MIS
forms, and/or take other information-gathering approaches, so everyone can
weigh in.  If that sounds interesting (!) to anyone else, happy to help.
Or would welcome a hand in that, and may need a hand in actually creating
the computer side of any agreed upon form.

Well, anyway, you guys get it.  And if the verdict is that MIS
standardization isn't worth the time and effort, no worries at all.  Not at
all sure how much easier/faster it would make MIS play, but thought I'd
throw it out there.

Thanks much everyone for any thoughts, and thanks again for all the
collegiality during my first IBL year.  Have a great rest of the weekend!

- David
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