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Q: Who is Kbrick?
A: A 45-year old sports copy editor from New Orleans. Married for 22 years, two teenage daughters, three labradors.
Q: How did you learn about whatifsports.com?
A: I work with Spainard and JohnGPF, and a few members of this league, too. One of those two, I can't remember which, came in one day and organized a sim league. I was hooked.
Q: Which games of ours have you played?
A: Baseball sim leagues, one uneventful season of NFL sim, one season of NBA sim, many seasons of Gridiron and Hoops Dynasty, and of course Hardball
Q: Besides sports, what are some of your other interests and hobbies?
A: Economics, politics, cooking, music (metal and hard rock mostly, a little jazz for sanity sake), good sci-fi
Q: Which five people, past or present sit at your dream roundtable discussion?
A: This is the toughest question of the bunch. If we're all talking about the same topic, it should be five people with some interest in common? Here's five different groups from different subject matters, you can pick one from each to get the traditional five (it's good to be the king, or commissioner in this case):
-- BASEBALL: Whitey Herzog, Bob Costas, Hank Aaron, Mel Ott, Joe Morgan
-- POLITICS: Ronald Reagan, Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Theodore Roosevelt, Harry Truman
-- MUSIC: Kirk Hammett, John Bonham, Angus Young, Geoff Tate, Dusty Hill
-- ENTERTAINMENT: Rockne O'Bannon, Ridley Scott, Pen Densham, John Carpenter, James Cameron
-- OTHERS: John Paul II, Pierre LeMoyne d'Iberville, Jesse Marcel, Criss Angel, Pete Maravich
Q: Who are your favorite players of all-time?
A: I grew up an Astros fan. Morgan, Cesar Cedeno, Bob Watson, Larry Dierker, then Biggio, Bagwell, Caminiti, Berkman, Oswalt later on. Non-Astros would include Hank
Aaron, George Brett, Kirby Puckett, Reggie Jackson. And I have to admit, I was a Clemens fan.
Q: Which are your favorite teams of all-time?
A: In baseball, any of Herzog's teams in the 80s, the A's of the 70s. The '98 Astros should have gotten a lot further. In football, the Saints of '91 and '92.
Q: Did you play baseball or basketball (or other sports) growing up?
A: Played baseball and basketball as long as I could; was out of organized sports by my sophomore year of high school. Played in flag football and overhand softball leagues until about 10 years ago.
Q: What is the top sports-related thing you want to do in life that you have not yet done?
A: First would be to witness the Saints winning the Super Bowl. Two would be to spend a year touring the country, seeing a different sporting event or facility every day.
Q: What would you consider your greatest WIS moment?
A: I've got titles in Hardball and Gridiron, but I got more of a sense of accomplishment from two second-place teams. In Gridiron, I had a team that went 7-6 in the regular season in I-AA and fought all the way through the playoffs before losing in the title game. In Hoops, my Loyola-Chicago team reached the national title game after not being ranked most of the season. In both instances, I was able to game-plan my way past better teams, and that was the most satisfying part of those games.
Q: In Hardball Dynasty, how do allocate your budget?
A: First I figure out how much I absolutely have to have in the big league payroll, and add 3 million for callups and unforseen situations. Then I try to max out on High School, college and international signing and on training. Coaching usually takes 12-14 million, depending on how many want to return. I leave 10 in medical, since even at that low level injuries seem to occur at a much slower rate than in real life. I figure on 4 million-5 million to sign draft picks, and then figure out the other budget categories after adding all the preliminary stuff.
Q: How do you approach off-season events with players such as arbitration and free agency?
A: Obviously arbitration is changing, since some players that go to arbitration three times will now refuse to resign afterward. I think the optimal now is to go to arbitration twice, then decide if you want to commit to that player long term. Free agency, I rarely find worth the price you have to pay to land someone who will make a difference. I spend a lot of effort on developing my own prospects, so unless there's a free agent too good to be true, I usually pass. After spring training, I may sign a couple of minor-league guys to fill in holes on those rosters.
Q: What is your general strategy for hiring/re-hiring coaches?
A: In case no one has heard me say this before, I HATE the coach-hiring process. It seems like they loved the way the recruiting software works in gridiron dynasty and HAD to carry that over to this game. I'd be in favor of a much more realistic approach - since we're all basically serving as GMs, not managers (we don't make any in-game decisions), I think we should negotiate a contract with a manager, who could get up to 7 or 8 million. That manager would bring his staff with him, or at least offer the GM a choice of a few options, and he would also limit the ranges in the manager's settings page. That way we would be seeking to hire managers that fit our style of play - just like in real life. And you should be able to sign up to five years at a time, just like with players. If you have money left over during the season, you could fire the manager, and promote someone out of the minors. Think of the dimension that would add to the game, if they worked out the bugs.
With that rant out of the way, I used to try to hire the best possible coach at every single spot, and it got ridiculous. So now I just re-hire everyone I can, then identify a few candidates for the spots left open and try to go after them as hard as possible.
Q: How do you finalize rosters at each level? What role does spring training play in your decision making?
A: I view spring training the way NFL teams view preseason - do whatever you want, just don't get injured. I usually make most of my roster decisions before spring training begins.
Q: What is your basic strategy for setting your starting lineups and pitching rotation?
A: I've toyed around with a few ideas here. I like speed in the No. 1 and 2 spots, and insist on above average defense at catcher, short, second and center. I find myself platooning a lot the past few seasons, with mixed success. As for pitching, I stick with a five-man rotation. I begin the season with one pitcher set as closer, the rest as setup A, and I let Simmy pick and choose who to use in what spot. If someone is struggling, I might move them to Setup B. If they really suck (Royce Goodwin, for example), I set them at mopup. But I'm wondering about the closer setting - seems a lot of pitchers perform better in the ninth if they're called SETUP (with no one listed as closer) instead of CLOSER. I haven't done any statistical study of this, just something that seems to be the case in my franchise.
Q: What do you believe are the most important individual player ratings for performance?
A: Depends on the player and the strategy. Catchers MUST have a high pitch-calling number, I'm convinced they help some pitchers who have a few poor pitches in their mix. Shortstop must be high-glove and range. Batting eye I like to be high, and I try to avoid the Rob Deer approach, so contact has to at least be a passable number. After that, the lefty-righty splits for both hitting and pitching seem to be the most reliable.
Q: How do you approach in-season player events like the draft, international prospects, waivers and promotions/demotions?
A: for the draft, I have to be creative. I try to identify players my scouts rated as second or third-round picks that i think can make a difference one day in the bigs, and move them up the board. International prospects I divide into two spots - one, a player that is likely to be a big-league contributor, I'll bid on. Those are rare, though. two, at the end of the season, I empty the prospect budget on leftover internationals, and carry them on the rookie squad at least until the draft the next season.
I find waivers can have some pretty good deals if you keep your eyes open. Shooter Donatello, one of my favorite relievers in HBD, was claimed off waivers in season 1.
Promotions and demotions, I tend to be very deliberate. I believe the game has a mechanism built in to stunt the growth of players that get rushed through the minors; there are a lot of examples of this in our league. So I almost always limit a player to one, or in very rare circumstances, two levels of promotion per season. College players, since they're starting out at 22 or 23, obviously I'll be a little less patient with them, but I don't expect to see a high school prospect reach the big leagues until age 22 or later.
Q: Do you think your strategy will be conducive to building a multi-season dynasty? Or, do you feel that your team may be great for a couple seasons, but then must rebuild?
A: I don't think there will be any dynasties in our league, there are too many good players that know what they're doing. My goal is to just make the playoffs each year, and see what happens from there. If a pitcher or two get hot, you can win the title.
Q: Do you have any favorite players from any of your HBD teams?
A: Bruce Hayes always seemed to win big games. My first acquisition was Brian Sakamoto, he was the backbone of my franchise for a long time. Brandon Standridge, because he seems to pitch better than his rankings every season.
Q: How much time do you spend on your Hardball Dynasty teams? How much do you think is necessary to be competitive?
A: 10 minutes per cycle, three times a day for the simple management part. It takes me about two hours to set up all the minor leagues and managerial settings before the season, and several hours to rank the draft picks. After that, you can spend as much time as you like looking for trade possibilities and the like. I find now, in my 11th season, I finally know who most of my players are, so I don't spend as much time figuring out who can play and who cant.
Q: Who are the users you respect the most?
A: I love the fact that we have such a stable league, returning 29 or 30 owners every season. I have great respect for guys like Nordique and 2U23L, who took over losing teams and proved you can build a winner on your own. And I work with Sbarroque and Philpitt, so we talk a lot of baseball anyway.
Q: What is your favorite aspect of HBD?
A: It's like a dream career, building a major-league franchise. The detail in this game is stunning, and the fact that they update every couple of months with improvements shows they still put a lot of attention into improving it.
Q: What is your least favorite aspect of Hardball Dynasty? As it is still a relatively new game, if you could change three things about HBD, what would they be?
A: One - see coaching discussion above. Two - Individual player settings more similar to sim baseball. I hate when the backup catcher gets thrown out stealing 10 times a season, just because I have the steal setting on 5, when in sim ball you just tell him to never steal. Three - In Gridiron and Hoops dynasty, the game creates "filler" players when a team comes up short in recruiting and such. I think we should have a similar concept to fill minor-league rosters left short by the owners. We haven't had that issue this season, but last season one rookie team didn't have a pitcher all year.
Q: If you were in one of our games, which sport would you play? At which position? And, what would you be rated?
A: In my playing days I would be a catcher, with good ratings for pitch-calling, contact and left-right splits, bad numbers for arm strength and accuracy and batting eye, and I would have the first negative number in Hardball history for speed. Today, I'd be a bench coach, with no particular area rated very high, probably a low discipline rating.
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