Miami just got relocated!

[mrbadguy]

In all my years of playing OOTPB this is the first time ive seen a team relocated.

[qcbandits]

I had them move to Columbus Ohio in one save

[jpeters1734]

what happened to the Indianapolis Indians?

[AirmenSmith]

Now if only we could have contraction so the Rays can be removed.

[Orioles1966]

I had my fictional New York Warriors move to Albuquerque,NM and became the Albuquerque Gears and afterwards I awarded New York another Warriors team(aka/ the second Washington Senators team).

[Syd Thrift]

Originally Posted by jpeters1734

what happened to the Indianapolis Indians?

The game doesn't really track where minor league teams are in relation to newly expanded or relocated major league ones, so the answer is almost certainly "they're still there". I do have to say that the field the Indians play on is probably the single best thing about downtown Indianapolis. The only other thing that is even close IMO is the Kurt Vonnegut Museum, and that's basically just a storefront with a couple of typewriters in.

[David Watts]

Originally Posted by Syd Thrift

The game doesn't really track where minor league teams are in relation to newly expanded or relocated major league ones, so the answer is almost certainly "they're still there". I do have to say that the field the Indians play on is probably the single best thing about downtown Indianapolis. The only other thing that is even close IMO is the Kurt Vonnegut Museum, and that's basically just a storefront with a couple of typewriters in.

So it goes.

[Ghost Town]

I’m heading into my 2024 season with the Marlins, & Baltimore just announced they are relocating to San Antonio.

[snaekolf]

In my current game they just moved to Austin.

[eriqjaffe]

Originally Posted by Syd Thrift

The only other thing that is even close IMO is the Kurt Vonnegut Museum, and that's basically just a storefront with a couple of typewriters in.

We were just there in November. Your description is apt, and yet it really was fascinating.

[Tram2Whitaker]

Originally Posted by mrbadguy

In all my years of playing OOTPB this is the first time ive seen a team relocated.

It has to be checked in league evolution. I've had this happen in many simulations, often with very little rhyme or reason (i.e. a perfectly profitable, and winning Arizona Diamondbacks moving to Indianapolis). OOTP 14, in particular liked moving teams to Indianapolis and Austin. Also, 14 did not like the unbalanced leagues, so they would often expand, as well.

My current Miami Marlins game (OOTP XX), I was relocated to Jacksonville for the 2025 season. It was kind of shocking. I had just made the team a winner, but was worrying about an out of control payroll, when all of a sudden, I'm in a big market with awesome loyalty and amazing fan interest. Moved my Jacksonville affiliate to Miami, for balance.

[Charley575]

Originally Posted by AirmenSmith

Now if only we could have contraction so the Rays can be removed.

You know that's actually a very well run organization. They may be small market and their stadium ever so humble, but they are extremely well managed. Just contract Miami. That's the most incompetently managed sports franchise I have ever seen. It's a shame, because SoFla deserves better, but the only real solution to the Marlin mess is to just put them out of their misery.

[Syd Thrift]

I'm really not sure why there's always this call to contract the league. Baseball's doing pretty well at the moment and I don't think that a big divide between large market and small market teams is what's causing the issues that it does have, at least not anymore. If anything I'd like to see the league find a way to bring baseball back to Montreal and maybe expand southward into Mexico. Whether that's done by another round of expansion or by relocating existing teams, I don't really care.

[Charley575]

Originally Posted by Syd Thrift

I'm really not sure why there's always this call to contract the league. Baseball's doing pretty well at the moment and I don't think that a big divide between large market and small market teams is what's causing the issues that it does have, at least not anymore. If anything I'd like to see the league find a way to bring baseball back to Montreal and maybe expand southward into Mexico. Whether that's done by another round of expansion or by relocating existing teams, I don't really care.

I generally agree with you but there IS an issue with roster continuity in the smaller markets. Essentially, the smaller market teams serve as a kind of AAAA level whose function is to expose prospects to major league competition so that the TRUE major league teams will know what they are bidding on 4-5 years later. Fans in these markets can have no attachment to players because they will be gone in a few years, and I DO believe that these 5 year tear down and rebuild cycles are the primary driver of all the empty stadiums you see in the smaller markets.

[Syd Thrift]

Originally Posted by Charley575

I generally agree with you but there IS an issue with roster continuity in the smaller markets. Essentially, the smaller market teams serve as a kind of AAAA level whose function is to expose prospects to major league competition so that the TRUE major league teams will know what they are bidding on 4-5 years later. Fans in these markets can have no attachment to players because they will be gone in a few years, and I DO believe that these 5 year tear down and rebuild cycles are the primary driver of all the empty stadiums you see in the smaller markets.

I hear this, sort of, but in practice what I see is not so much small market teams being shut out but teams that made bad decisions being shut out for a while due to the relative slowness in which things change in baseball. The biggest example of this is Miami. I'm sorry but on no planet is freaking *Miami* a small market. They're poorly run and as a result can't draw flies but no, they're not small. Kansas City is small and they are terrible right now but 4 years ago they won the World Series. Baltimore really isn't all that small and is terrible now but as of 2016 they'd made the playoffs in 3 of the previous 5 seasons. Probably the "best" example of this is the Mariners, but as a Mariners fan I can tell you that a. when they did win games they were the largest-market team in the league, and b. they went through two horrible GMs and yeah, that's what mismanagement gets you.

Anyway, all of that is more of an argument for better revenue sharing than contraction. Contraction is not so easy to undo once you do it and right now I feel like we've got a good ratio of teams per population. Both the NFL and NBA do fine with similar numbers of teams (the NBA in particular could probably expand to twice its size if they set up a promotion/relegation system a la European football, but that's pie in the sky thinking). Moving a team out of a city creates a ton of resentment and disbanding that team altogether creates even more. I think that's a lever that should be pulled only under extreme measures - the Pilots in 1969, for instance, or the Expos in the early 2000s (in both cases the league relocated the teams but that's kind of my point - those are the closest situations we had over the past 50 or 60 years, and they were still kind of far off).

[Brad K]

Originally Posted by Syd Thrift

The game doesn't really track where minor league teams are in relation to newly expanded or relocated major league ones, so the answer is almost certainly "they're still there". I do have to say that the field the Indians play on is probably the single best thing about downtown Indianapolis. The only other thing that is even close IMO is the Kurt Vonnegut Museum, and that's basically just a storefront with a couple of typewriters in.

Its a great park. Modern retro is really cool.