The hobby of sports simulation games can be enjoyed in a variety of ways.

1. You can conduct team or season replays
2. You can join a league
3. You can participate in live weekend tournaments

All of these options are fun, but they all require a significant time commitment, especially season replays and league play.

Tournaments are fun too and they offer the camaraderie that is such a big part of this hobby, the things that I like less about tournaments are the fact that you’re playing with historical teams that were not created by you and also the sample size that determines the winner is very small, allowing luck to play a big factor in who is crowned champion.

My goal with Sim Auctions was to create a fun and challenging project and to provide a 4th option for APBA players, fans of statistical baseball simulations and fans of baseball history in general.

My idea is disband two or more historical teams, in other words, make the players free agents and then create new teams via a fantasy baseball style auction.

The APBA Baseball For Windows program allows two or more owners to drop the players from any two or more teams in baseball history and reconstruct them via a draft, for our purposes, we’ll do this via fantasy style auctions (260 – imaginary dollars per owner) – we then choose micromanagers to manage the teams and replay entire seasons in a very short amount of time to determine the winner.. Entire seasons must be replayed because a short series (e.g. – 4 out of 7) will often not identify the best team.

Time is a vanishing resource for all of us, so my intention with this project was to create a competition between two or more player,s driven by the intensity of the auction process, and then to quickly determine who had the best team without having to engage in a long term commitment (like league play or a season replay).

Auctions are our focus, but drafts can be more accessible and can also be a lot of fun. Below I outline both options:

OPTION #1 – LIVE VIDEO AUCTION – this is conducted via a video chat application like Zoom, Skype, Microsoft Teams, Google Hangouts, etc. For my auctions, I like to use Zoom.

1. This auction is ideal for 2 to 6 people.
2. Each GM would select one historical team – the players on those teams will all be made free agents.
3. An auction would be scheduled via Zoom to recreate two new teams from the the pool of free agents.
4. Each GM/Owner would receive 260 imaginary dollars to purchase their players.
5. Each GM would nominate one of the available players to be auctioned. The order of who nominates the first player would be determined randomly. The auction would proceed in a back and forth fashion until all the players were purchased and the two new teams were created. As an example, GM #1 nominates a player for $1, lets say its the 1956 version of Mickey Mantle, GM#2 bids $15, GM #1 then ups the bid to $20, GM#2 doesn’t relent and bids $30 for Mantle, GM#1 will not be outdone and bids $40 for Mantle, GM#2 bids $43, GM#1 considers bidding higher, but decides to save his money for other players, so the bidding ends at $43 and GM#2 is awarded the player. The auction then continues in a similar fashion for the next player that gets nominated. This entire process is conducted live on Zoom. An excel spreadsheet visible to all participants is used to track the auction.
6. During each bid, an 8 second timer, visible to all participants, is activated. The timer is reset to 8 seconds after every bid.
7. 26 players must be purchased during the auction.
8. The day after the auction is over, I input the rosters for the teams into the APBA program and set each team’s preferred right handed/left handed lineups and starting rotation .
9. Each owner selects a Micro Manager (ideally with tendencies compatible with the makeup of their team).
10. I schedule a 2nd Zoom meeting and share my computer screen with the other GMs, I then simulate entire seasons with the newly created teams to determine the winner. Each season counts as “1 game”, the team that wins 4 seasons wins the Sim Auction World Series.
11. After the simulations are complete, I send each participant a summary of the standings and statistics for all the seasons.
12. All told – not counting the time it would take you to prepare your strategy, you can conduct a five person auction and simulation in about 7 hours, split into two Zoom sessions.

So as I mentioned earlier, no long term commitment, and since an entire season is simulated, you get definitive confirmation of who created the best team!

Check out a recent auction on my You Tube channel to get a sense of what a Sim Auction is all about.

OPTION #2 – DRAFTS – Drafts are less challenging than auctions, but still test your team building skills.

1. Since there is no back and forth bidding, Drafts are typically faster than Auctions. A Draft via ZOOM is ideal for 2 to 6 participants, or more.
2. Drafts of 6 or more participants can be conducted via text, email or a group chat app like Slack or Group Me. The time interval between picks would vary, but would typically be 30 to 60 minutes and selections would be made between 9am and 6pm, or some other agreed upon time. The draft would last as many days as necessary to fill all the team rosters.
3. Each GM would select one historical team – the players on those teams will all be made free agents.
4. A Draft would be scheduled to create new teams from the the pool of free agents.
5. The progress of the draft would be visible to all the GMs via an Excel spreadsheet that would be updated periodically and be accessible online to all the participants.
6. Once the Draft is concluded, I would enter all the team rosters into the APBA program, along with the team lineups and pitching rotations.
7. Each owner selects a Micro Manager (duplicate Micro Managers are allowed)
8. After the draft, I schedule a 2nd Zoom meeting and share my computer screen with the other GMs, I then simulate entire seasons with the newly created teams to determine the winner. Each season counts as “1 game”, the team that wins 4 seasons wins the Sim Auction World Series.
9. After the simulations are over, I send each GM a summary of the standings and statistics for all the seasons.

For additional information, please check my RULES page.