Miniball is a baseball draft simulation game. You play the manager. Your job is to draft sixteen players - 9 position players and 7 pitchers - to maximize the run differential over the season.
There are three ways to score or prevent runs: hitting, pitching, and fielding. There are two categories of player - fielders, who play a position and bat, and pitchers, who pitch. Players have stats that determine how well they perform in each category. Generally, stats are on a scale of 1-7 (I tried for 20-80 like the draft rating system, but it made the math too hard).
There are 9 positions on the field. Each position has a difficulty - for example, shortstop has difficulty 5, and is an infield position. So, a player with an Infield rating of 5 would be a league average shortstop.
Players earn points - think Defensive Runs Saved - for over or underperforming their assigned position. The bonus is equal to the difficulty of the position times how far off the player's rating is from the position's difficulty. So, a player with a 5 Infield rating playing shortstop would score 0 points, but a player with a 7 Infield rating would score 10 points. Conversely, a player with a 3 Infield rating would score -10 points. Put that guy at first, though, and he'll be above average - with a difficulty of 2, his skill of 3 is worth 2 points. The same rules apply to catchers and outfielders. You can see the table on the main page for the difficulty of each position.
The most difficult position is catcher, with a difficulty of 6. Only 1 in 8 players can play catcher at all - in most draft classes, there are only a handful of catchers with skill that high. On the other end is the DH, with a difficulty of 0. At the start of the game, with 0 skill in each position due to having no players, your defense will be at -140 points/DRS.
Offense is pretty simple. Players have a batting rating. They score runs equal to 3*batting. The top 4 spots in the lineup bat more often, so they score 4*batting in stead. With no one in the line-up your batting starts at 0 runs.
The bullpen's job is to pitch 27 innings, giving up as few runs as possible. (think: you play 3 games, then all your guys get to rest). Each pitcher has a number of innings he can pitch per series, and an ERA. ERA * innings = runs allowed. I guess we're playing 9 serieses. For example, if you hire 3 pitchers who can cover 7 innings each with an ERA of 3, then four more closers who can only cover 2 innings, but have an ERA of 2, you'll give up a total of 21*3 + 8*2 = 79 runs.
At the start of the draft, you're assumed to have position players, with an ERA of 9, making all the pitches. 9*27 = 243 runs allowed.
You have 16 picks to make and $200mil to spend. Each player has a salary. If you run out you will... for the time being, you'll just have negative money. In the future I'll actually stop you from picking. Make sure you save enough money to finish the draft!
There are three other teams in the League. Currently, they pick one player at random each after each of your picks. So, don't wait too long to pick the best players. The AI and visibility of the opponents will improve in future versions.
Your goal is to maximize total score, which tends to come out similar to a MLB run differential. You get no points for saving money. JT's high score is 74. Leaderboard & team hall of fame will come soon.