A very simple fix would be to put teams into open leagues based upon the number of Championships won.
If you have ZERO then you are placed with everyone else who has ZERO.
If you have ONE then you are placed with everyone else with ONE and so on.....

If that is too restrictive then group them 1 to 5, 6 to10, 11-15, 16-20 and 21+

Maybe the noobies would stick around if they didn't get their butts handed to them the first season or two that they play. Just level the playing field.

Making a concerted effort to clone other people’s teams is plagiarism. It is difficult to stop.
I like almost all of us would never get any pleasure from winning that way.

Any idiot can plagiarize.

There are unwritten rules and almost all of us want them to be followed and we are constitutionally unable to cheat. Once that changes WIS would be a farce.

Not much can be done except to weed those cheaters out. And to call them out.

What is in it for those people?? It isn’t like they are getting real money in their pockets except some free teams where they can keep cheating over and over again to their heart’s content while they can get away with it.

Sad. Dishonest. Lame brain insecure morons with no imagination.

Agree LB but I dont know if developing / reusing the same cookie team over and over is really cheating but I do agree it isnt really fun (at least for me) to Win that way. I know there is some debate about who actually created the team but we have a lot of copycat strategies on here....

BHeid...My opinion only is that Open leagues should be open leagues. Hard enought to fill already, if we start putting parameters it slows it down. My biggest learning when I was a noob was not understanding normalization (why 68 Bob Gibson never approaches RL) I knew the Steroid guys would take a hit on power but also guys I grew up watching in the 70s who I thought were great (Parker, Garvey) are hardly ever used........and I REALLY never understood the super range impact......on everything. 20yrs+ later I still learn something everyday but still not sure I fully understand all the levers true impact...and my record shows it. Thats what keeps me experimenting.

Posted by The_Creeper on 5/3/2025 9:16:00 PM (view original):
Agree LB but I dont know if developing / reusing the same cookie team over and over is really cheating but I do agree it isnt really fun (at least for me) to Win that way. I know there is some debate about who actually created the team but we have a lot of copycat strategies on here....

BHeid...My opinion only is that Open leagues should be open leagues. Hard enought to fill already, if we start putting parameters it slows it down. My biggest learning when I was a noob was not understanding normalization (why 68 Bob Gibson never approaches RL) I knew the Steroid guys would take a hit on power but also guys I grew up watching in the 70s who I thought were great (Parker, Garvey) are hardly ever used........and I REALLY never understood the super range impact......on everything. 20yrs+ later I still learn something everyday but still not sure I fully understand all the levers true impact...and my record shows it. Thats what keeps me experimenting.

Actually I don’t consider using a team that you have created frequently as cheating. I agree with you.
It would get boring but it is king of the hill.

Im talking about guys who use somebody else’s team.
In theme leagues I never even look at other teams players except the pitchers in a series.

So I should clarify what I mean by cheating. Stealing not overusing.

Posted by The_Creeper on 5/3/2025 9:16:00 PM (view original):
Agree LB but I dont know if developing / reusing the same cookie team over and over is really cheating but I do agree it isnt really fun (at least for me) to Win that way. I know there is some debate about who actually created the team but we have a lot of copycat strategies on here....

BHeid...My opinion only is that Open leagues should be open leagues. Hard enought to fill already, if we start putting parameters it slows it down. My biggest learning when I was a noob was not understanding normalization (why 68 Bob Gibson never approaches RL) I knew the Steroid guys would take a hit on power but also guys I grew up watching in the 70s who I thought were great (Parker, Garvey) are hardly ever used........and I REALLY never understood the super range impact......on everything. 20yrs+ later I still learn something everyday but still not sure I fully understand all the levers true impact...and my record shows it. Thats what keeps me experimenting.

If open leagues are hard to fill, it's very possible and highly likely that the reason for it is because of the copycats using the same cookie-cutter teams continuously. I am sure there are quite a few owners here on WIS that don't play open leagues for that single reason, myself included. Unless the developers on this site do something to change it, nothing will change. Dynamic pricing was effective in raising the salaries of cookie players to where the same cookie teams had to change. It accomplished what it was intended to do. Unfortunately it affected players priced for Theme and Progressive Leagues also and the players for those leagues didn't need adjustment. What we need is a separate database of players for Open Leagues with dynamic pricing and another database of players for Theme Leagues and Progressives that has player salaries that stay the same.

Posted by The_Creeper on 5/3/2025 8:57:00 AM (view original):

Posted by BillyMartin1 on 4/27/2025 5:57:00 PM (view original):
just4me, trust me, I know what kind of roster to put together to beat his team. I have done it in the past.
But the point is, I like OLs because I enjoy putting together all sorts of teams and win different ways, like I explained in my original post.

Sure I could decide to focus on his team but that's not what I'm playing for. I just find it annoying to ALWAYS have to play THAT team. And as you pointed out, more and more owners are drafting these same players, not the entire full roster like mwett does but you see those players way too much.

It just baffles me that the guy can just keep on doing this over and over in order that he can keep doing it over and over...

BM1....100% agree with most of your thoughts here, but I do not understand the frustration part. I believe if you know how to build a team to beat a certain strategy, then do it. Isnt that the challenge? I dont care if MWett or whoever has 6 ToC teams....if I am not one of them. I also agree, I join random themes or opens for enjoyment of trying new things. I NEVER worry about what someone else is doing, I focus on Winning. I do NOT support cut/paste or gimmick teams just to Win a title, hence my W/L record is decent but I dont Win as many titles as others...its $12.99 for a month or so of enjoyment 10-15minutes a day. To me it isnt more annoying than in higher caps seeing 2000 Pedro or 3 Ruths in the OF on multiple teams.

Remember when guys used completely ridiculous teams just to set WIS records? Again, its back to they paid their $12.99.

WIS initially did the dynamic salary upgrade to address cookies then stopped. I think in the past they also tweaked something to address the Superman pitching strategy and super range strategy. The larger issue to me is the need for updates, I for one used to love SLL not just for the game but the chats during it, I would probably pay a nominal fee $0.25/game to get that back. Marte is clearly todays cookie but it was Douthit, Bip Roberts, etc. The site appears to be shrinking because new owners get schooled the first time or two and quit. The long timers have built friendships and rivalries (good and bad) but that is not growth and unfortunately some folks burn out. I love this site...it is far from perfect and needs work but I am still here...haaha. Unfortunately for some. Finally, again I am not criticizing your perspective just wanting to understand.

Creeper, is there anything to understand? I don't know, but I can try to explain my point of view.

Where to start ?

How about this, the most practical reason of all, he costs me money.

By entering that same cookie cutter team into basically every single OLs, he’s systematically taking a playoff spot away, reward credits and reward points from legit owners, by legit I’m talking about people who actually spend time thinking about their rosters in the draft center and then actually do manage their team once entered into a league, people who actually PLAY the game.

Mwett doesn’t draft and doesn’t manage, basically he doesn’t really exist.

He’s just a parasite. Like an annoying mosquito that ruins the family pic-nic on an otherwise perfect summer day.

I say parasite because that’s what he is to the game, he takes away without adding anything positive to it.

He’s like a continent of floating plastic bottles on the ocean, no matter where you try and look you can’t avoid him polluting the landscape.

Like that pile of dog **** in center field, you don’t want to look at it but you know it’s there cause it stinks and you have to be conscious about it in order to avoid stepping into it.

He’s a thief, he ripped off someone else’s idea and keeps duplicating it into every single OLs to rip off actual thinking, drafting and managing owners of potential rewards.

Whoever first put together that team deserves credit, it’s definitely well thought of, regardless of the fact that it’s just a bunch of cookies put together, the thinking part is actually the bench.

Most of the starting line-up is short on PAs and the bench players are key to making it work.

But as we all know, Mwett didn’t come up with that team, he just copied it from someone else.

There’s apparently some controversy about who first put it together, but as I’ve said before, I was in an OL where gbonini called out Mwett for stealing his team "again", so I did assume it was bonini's team.

I joined WIS in 2004 and for 21 years now, I have been eagerly logging in 3 times a day to study boxscores and micro-manage my teams.

It’s been a lot of fun as the possibilities seemed nearly endless but when I see this latest trend I’m starting to see the end of it.

I use to play the NBA and NHL sims as well and quite enjoyed them before they became stagnant for lack of updates.

Someone came up with the "State Farm" or high assists strategy in NBA, and it soon became apparent that there was pretty much nothing to do to counter this and so all the other strategies were dropped and everybody started to draft pretty much the same rosters.

Same with NHL, everybody is drafting the same players all the time and so the game is agonizing and taking weeks to fill OLs.

Up to a few months ago, before Mwett started his crusade to "dominate" OLs with that ripped off cookie cutter team, I was micro-managing 5 to 8 teams at a time. Then I noticed he started entering every OLs so I started pulling out my teams and waited for the next league to start but realized he was getting into every one of them.

About a month ago I had a team "This Week In Baseball" win over 100 games but fail to make the playoffs. I finished second in my division to Mwett’s "Well Hunged...over" and lost the wild card race by 1 or 2 game to a team that had the exact same roster as Mwett’s except for 2 or 3 players.

So yeah, I’m annoyed, the game isn’t fun anymore and I see Mwett is "inspiring" copycats, that’s right, copycats of a copycat…

I could go on but I think I've made my point.


The new WIS ownership has expressed what seems like genuine interest and enthusiasm in updating and improving the overall product but I'm not sure how much time it will take for them to tackle the issue with the MLB simulator.

I think the best solution would be to bring back the dynamic salary system, though it would need to be upgraded, so that not ALL salaries go up all the time but also go down when a player's usage goes down after his salary has increased.
But that's another discussion for another time, if it ever comes up.

it's ironic because when Mwett first joined the site he was passionate to the point of militancy about making sure new users were getting the best possible experience in open leagues, and now by running the exact same team in every open league he's likely scaring off new users and ensuring they buy one team and then quit the site

I'm sure this guy is annoying (he's one of the few WIS users I've blocked in the forum) but the solution to avoiding this "continent of floating plastic bottles" (ha!) is pretty simple. Join progressives and theme leagues.

In the meantime, let's keep pressing Admin to bring back a better version of dynamic pricing. Because constant salary adjustments are the bug spray that prevent cookie teams from creeping in like cockroaches.

I wouldn’t expect many to like this idea but a variable player thing could be done.
At random each team would get 2 position players and 2 pitchers - average value but 2 different price ranges. That would completely end cloned teams.

Interesting, I didn't know anything about this guy, other than him gaming the system with a team he didn't create.
But reading everything that's being said about him in this thread, it looks like there really isn't anything positive about him.

I just can't figure out his motivation, like I've expressed already, half the fun in this game is putting together your roster in the draft center, thinking and imagining all the possibilities, like an artist looking at his blank canvass.
I have my calculator in hand and go back and forth between the draft center and baseball-reference.com, even watch players on YouTube videos, just to get me in the mood and find inspiration.

When I win, I win MY way, with my guys, my team and I'm excited and proud.
I just can't imagine what satisfaction he gets from doing what he does.
Maybe he just got ****** at the game and decided to mess it up, maybe he just wants to **** everybody off, who knows, based on what I've read in this thread from you guys, he does seem rather unstable...

When everyone is anonymous their true colors do come out.