How do YOU, personally, play?

[RamblinWreck]

I just bought this game and clearly there are millions of features to it. I'm just wondering what the popular or best way to play is.

Do you solely GM, always auto-playing games/finishing the day and flying through seasons? (IE: Only set manager settings to Roster Moves, Transactions, and initiate/react to trades?)

Do you GM but set Team Strategy, telling your manager how to manage?

Or do you take control of both GM'ing and playing the games, controlling every at bat, substitution, and play?

Appreciate your feedback, this is a very deep game and I'm kind of wondering how to get the most out of it.

[TGH-Adfabre]

Online leagues only, I have thought about a solo game but the competition against human managers is too much fun.
From ticket prices to the players strategies of my 40-man roster and propects I hope to make the big leagues.

[StyxNCa]

I use the mouse to navigate the lineup screens or players stats but I use the keyboard during the game.

[prodgers]

There are as many different ways to play as there are players. Find the way you like best and go. Personally I go through the draft until the 'good' players are gone then set up my team and minors lineups and rotations negotiate salaries play out every game and try to make it to the Series.

[reds1869]

I micromanage pretty much everything. I love to really dig in and I especially love managing every at bat.

[RamblinWreck]

Cool, glad to see what you guys think. I've found some settings that allow me to play games quickly but still have full control, so that's nice. Question: is there any way to export your players' stats to an excel file for analysis and lineup editing purposes?

[Threnodas]

On most screens, there is a menu in the lower-right corner that says "Report". If you choose "Write report to disk," it will open whatever it is that you're looking at as an HTML page. If you have a sufficiently recent/smart browser (it works in Chrome), copy/pasting that into Excel should keep all the columns and rows correctly formatted.

And to answer your question, I play out each game doing only substitutions and let the CPU handle the strategy. I do all the GMing except I let the CPU manage Minor League promotions/demotions and Minor League lineups/rotations. Although I may go back to doing promotions/demotions myself. It's either just enough or just more micromanagement than I can handle.

[tejdog1]

I GM, but also set lineups, rotations, etc, and control the entire organizational transactions.

I sim through chunks of games, usually a month's worth at a time.

[BrosiusForHoF]

I started with the real 2011 major league roster, released all the players, deleted all leagues, and created a fictional 32-team major leagues with no minors (not at all interested in minor leagues), and ran a draft of all the players to create relative parity to start.

I run everything for my team though I am far more interested in managing games, so I play through every single game (in one-pitch mode), and my team is in the non-DH league to maximize opportunities to manage. Once the playoffs start, I also "watch" every playoff game played, also in one-pitch mode.

I play with injuries completely disabled. I don't feel like injuries add anything positive to the game of baseball except encouraging teams to have deeper rosters. They add too much of an element of randomness and penalize smaller market teams since those teams are more likely to have a season crushed when one or two crucial players are injured.

I am also strongly considering disabling financials after the World Series is over in my season (In which my team is currently trailing 2-0), because even though I love hot stove baseball, I really enjoy the idea of teams developing "identities" because of star players who are with them for most of their careers.

[kehowey]

I play only solo fictional leagues - usually 8 to 16 teams. I disable scouting, coaching, suspensions, injuries, suspensions, and morale. I play trades at the very low/hard/favor prospects setting. I use financials with a player development budget of 8 million and a cash max at 30 million. I disable signing bonus negotiations. I play with 2 level of minors. I use 10 draft rounds and generate players for 20 rounds. I don’t usually use feeders. I do use ghost players. I manage lineups, roster moves and transactions only at the major league level. I also manage all trades. I sim all my games.

[RchW]

I'm a 5000ft GM who controls all player moves and sims 80% of the games. I play out all playoff games and may play out key series throughout the season.

My desire is to get realistic league totals but with better SP. I play with modifiers to set up decades with different offensive stats.

[Qwerty75]

In my current fictional solo league, I am playing as two different GMs of two teams. I was one from the start and built it from a last place team to one that has won two championships out of the last three years. With this one, I make all roster moves in the majors and minors, manage games in the majors (usually sim 5-6 innings and then one pitch for the rest of the game, focusing on bullpen management and defensive subs), and sometimes manage AAA games (teaching prospects multiple positions).

The other GM was just added. I'm only making ML roster moves and promotions to the majors with this one; minor league movement and lineups and in-game managing will be left to the AI. I tend towards micromanaging, so this gives me a feel for how being a hands-off GM is like while I get to work on a team that isn't dominant yet. I'm handling the two teams independently (in two different subleagues w/o interleague play); I'm not going to trade between the GMs or otherwise plan moves that benefit the one team with the other's decisions.