Creating Custom Rosters In Baseball Mogul

by Clay Dreslough, Baseball Mogul Lead Designer

Baseball Mogul has several basic options for creating the league in which you play:

• The "Modern" button creates a league with rosters matching Opening Day in the current season.
  
  
• The "Classic" button creates a league with teams and rosters matching Opening Day from a historical season.
  
  
• The "Fictional" button creates a league of fictional players and teams. However, the league format must match a real-life historical season (such as the 16-team format used from 1901 to 1960).
  
  
• The "Expansion" button puts you in control of one of the real-life historical expansion teams, before the expansion draft (such as the 1977 Seattle Mariners or 1998 Tampa Bay Devil Rays).
  
  
• The "Custom" button gives you four options:
  
  
  • Load a pre-made database, such a "mods" created by other Baseball Mogul fans.
    
    
  • Create a historical league, and then use the League Editor to make changes.
    
    
  • The League Builder lets you put teams from different seasons into the same league. But you can't use this feature to arbitrarily re-arrange players.
    
    
  • Load a pre-determined list of All-Time All-Stars.
    

However, the above options might not meets your needs. Sometimes you wish to create a unique database, such as a league with only your favorite players. Or "All-Stars" from the 1970s and 1980s. Or a two-team league with just your favorite Red Sox and Yankee players. Or a league where you and your friends take turns drafting players.

For a more customized sets of rosters, Baseball Mogul has three other features:

1) Use Commissioner Mode. Commissioner Mode gives you complete control over the league, allowing you to trade players between any two teams.

2) Conduct a Fantasy Draft.

3) Use the "Input Rosters" button in the Advanced Tools Dialog (on the Tools Menu). Because this uses a text file that you can edit, it makes it easier to save your work and share it with others. Create a file called "Rosters.txt" and place it in your "Input" folder. Then click the "Input Rosters" button to load your rosters. Click here for more information on how "roster" files are formatted.

Once the player rosters have been adjusted to your satisfaction, you can use the League Editor to eliminate unwanted teams or change the league configuration.

The Roster File provides an easy way to add rookies to Baseball Mogul when you have basic data about a player.