Dugout Lore — Franchise Apex

Manager's Guide

Play here: https://dugoutlore.com Questions or problems: support@chinmusic.ai

This guide explains how to manage a Franchise Apex league: what a season is, how the calendar works, when your cards lock, how availability works, who else is in the room, and how the season ends in the Summer Cup. You do not need to read it end to end. Start with Sections 2 and 3 if you are about to join or create a league.

Franchise Apex is not Summer Cup Preview. Summer Cup Preview is the freemium best-of-seven series mode. Franchise Apex is a full league season with standings, a postseason, and an archive. The Summer Cup is the championship trophy that Franchise Apex (and Clash of Titans) play for — not the freemium mode's name.

Section 1: What Franchise Apex is

Welcome

You claim a real franchise and a real season — the 1986 Mets, the 1998 Yankees, the 1908 Cubs — and manage that club as history left it. Then you take it into a league that stretches across eras. Dead ball against the live ball. Integration against the long ball. Same diamond, different skies.

You do not draft a fantasy roster. The roster is the roster. Your job is to set the cards, watch the calendar, and win the season.

A season, plainly

A Franchise Apex season is:

• A league of historical clubs — typically twelve (ten and sixteen also exist)
• A symmetric schedule — every club plays the same shape of season
• Daily standings that update as games reveal
• A postseason that crowns a Summer Cup champion
• An archive that keeps the season after it ends — standings, awards, history

You manage one seat. You see your club, your schedule, your decision windows, and the league surfaces (standings, scoreboard, schedule, history).

Season tiers and game counts

Three season lengths ship as configuration. Quick is the format you will meet first.

Quick is a single round-robin — every opponent once — which is why the game count floats with league size. Standard and Full hold fixed game counts across sizes.

A league may be undivided (one table) or divided (two divisions). Division winners do not get an automatic playoff berth; the bracket is seeded by record.

Section 2: The calendar, honestly

A block is a game slot, not a day

Franchise Apex runs on blocks. A block is one game slot on the league calendar — not "Monday" and not "a full series day" by itself.

On a playing day you usually get three slots:

• Noon local
• 3:00 PM local
• 6:00 PM local

Off days sit between playing days so the book can breathe. A Quick season is roughly two weeks of real calendar days — not an afternoon, not a single weekend binge. If you thought you bought a short series like Summer Cup Preview, read that again: this is a league season with a real commitment.

Clocks follow the home manager

Each game locks and reveals on the home manager's Home time zone — not the historical team's city, and not a single shared Eastern clock for the whole league.

That means:

• When your club is the home side, your Settings → Home time zone sets when the slate locks and when scores appear.
• When you are the visitor, you follow the opponent manager's zone for that game.

Set your Home time zone before your first home slate. If it is wrong, your own home games will lock and publish on the wrong wall clock.

What "Ready at" means

Before a slot publishes, the product tells you when the game will be ready. At the publish time the box, scoring, and summary become available. You are managing ahead of the reveal — setting cards, then reading the results when they land — not watching a live broadcast.

Section 3: Cards and decision windows

The three cards

For each club you manage:

1. Lineup — batting order, positions, pinch hitting, pinch running
2. Staff — rotation and bullpen roles
3. Bench & Depth — defensive depth and advanced defense choices

Season cards are your standing defaults. You can override for a series when a decision window is open. The season card is the fallback; a series override wins for that series only.

Lineup

Set the batting order and defensive positions for your club. Every spot needs a player, and every position needs someone who actually played there — an incomplete diamond will not save. You can keep separate orders against left-handed and right-handed starters.

Pinch Hitting

For each spot in the order, decide whether a pinch hitter is allowed and under what conditions (how late, how close). When those fire, the game works down your pinch hitter order and uses the first available bench bat who can handle the position. You can keep separate orders against lefties and righties. Pitcher pinch-hit rules add a fatigue gate so a fresh starter is not lifted early unless you asked for it.

Pinch Running

Pinch Running is its own block on the Lineup card. It is not pinch hitting. Pinch hitting replaces a batter at the plate. Pinch Running puts a faster man on the bases for a runner who is already on base, between plate appearances — never mid-at-bat. The man you run for leaves the game; the pinch runner takes his spot in the order.

Turn it on with Turn Pinch Running On (Y). On N, no pinch run fires.

When it is on, set:

• When — minimum inning and score differential, joined with AND or OR, plus an optional gate that only fires when the tying or go-ahead run is aboard
• Aggression — Off, Conservative, Standard, or Aggressive, or the team default. Aggression caps how many pinch runs you take in a game and how big a speed edge the runner needs
• Minimum SPD edge — how much faster the bench man must be than the man on base (or keep the aggression default)
• Pinch Runner Order — bench ranked top-down; the first eligible name with the required speed edge gets the call

This is not your pinch hitter order, and it is not team steal / baserunning aggressiveness. Those still govern attempted steals and taking the extra base. Pinch Running only decides when fresh legs enter for a man already on the bases.

Regular-season Franchise Apex series are 3- and 4-game books as the schedule writes them — not a Summer Cup Preview best-of-seven. Set the card for the series in front of you; do not plan around a Games 3–5 middle book the way a best-of-seven does.

Staff

Label your rotation and bullpen the same way you would in a short series: who starts, who closes, who bridges, and in which score situations each arm is willing to enter. Fatigue and rest carry across the season at this scale — a gassed long man yesterday is not a free option today. Miss a lock and the season card (or a generated legal card) still fills so the block can sim.

Bench & Depth

Bench & Depth is its own card. It holds defensive depth charts, late Defensive Replacements (glove-for-bat from a given inning on), and Advanced Defense. None of that belongs on the Lineup card.

Advanced Defense

Advanced Defense is where the defense stands — not who is in the game:

• Infield in — with a runner on third, pull the infield in. On/Off, plus how close the score must be, from which inning on, and which out counts it applies to.
• No doubles — shade the outfield to cut off extra-base hits in the same kind of close, late window. Same On/Off · margin · inning · outs shape.
• Handedness shade — legal shade by batter hand. For left-handed and right-handed hitters separately, choose Straight up, Shade to the pull side, or Shade to the opposite field. Extreme infield shifts are not offered.

Cards open with the league default for this era. Change what you want; Reset to era default restores the three rules. Advanced Defense is not Defensive Replacements — replacements change *who* is out there; Advanced Defense changes *where* the men already in the game stand.

When cards lock

Cards freeze about 30 minutes before the first slot of the block. After freeze, the sim runs ahead of reveal. You cannot edit a frozen card for that slate.

Miss the lock and you are not left empty-handed:

• Your existing / previous legal card carries forward when one exists
• Otherwise a generated legal card is used

You are never left without a card, and you are never left with an illegal diamond. A hand-built card that fails validation is rejected with a message — it is not silently rewritten into something you did not set.

Decision windows

Between locks you get a window to set or change cards for the next series. The dashboard shows what is due and when the next lock hits. Use it. The season is short enough that one missed window is a real cost; it is also short enough that you can stay caught up with a few minutes a day.

Section 4: Availability

Why Season Availability exists

There are players on your roster that did not have a full season of plate appearances or innings pitched for one reason or another. Maybe they were injured. Maybe they were a platoon player. Maybe they were a mid-season call-up. In Franchise Apex, we mimic the percentage of playing time that happened in the real season. You manage their rest from Team Page → Season Availability ›.

That origin story is about the historical year — not a product disabled list. When a bat or arm runs out, he is unavailable, rested, or spent. He is never "injured" or on the IL in Franchise Apex.

Season Availability desk

Open Team Page → Season Availability ›. That is the authority desk — a dedicated Availability page for your club. Your Dashboard may show a compact this-series summary with a link into the same desk; it is not the home for the full report.

The report is ready when your season materializes (bye-week style), before Game 1. Your opener inbox may point you there so you can plan rests up front.

Season Availability is not Staff rest. Staff fatigue is day-to-day arm rest between starts and appearances (Section 3). Season Availability is the season plate-appearance and innings desk plus Rest Plan.

Reading the report

Hitters show PA available · PA spent · Expected · PA remaining · status. Status reads Covered, rests planned, or Short. Pitchers show the same idea in IP, with Starters and Relievers called out separately.

Expected is the remaining-window need minus Spent (never below zero). As Spent grows, Expected drops. A rest day is how you save PA — not a hidden "games" quota.

Rest Plan

On the Availability desk, Rest Plan lets you:

• Play him — keep him in through a planned sit
• Rest him — sit him and save PA
• Move rest… — shift a planned rest to another game

Changes stick for the season until you change them again.

Laws that keep the desk honest

• Unavailable ≠ injured. Product language is unavailable · rested · spent.
• Extra innings are free. Plate appearances and outs from inning 10 on do not charge the season pile.
• Pre-DH club DH seat. On a club whose real season had no DH, PA taken in the DH seat are free for bats with ≥150 PA in that club-year. Field seats always charge.
• Spent men are covered at freeze. If a bat or arm is at 0 when the slate locks, the system substitutes before the game. If he already entered with PA or IP left, he finishes that game.
• Save is not refused for low PA/IP. Pickers warn you; freeze covers spent seats. Fix greyed-out names from Season Availability / Rest Plan, not by fighting Save.

Section 5: Who the other clubs are

Humans and system-managed clubs

A league may include system-managed clubs — era-default clubs that play without a human manager. You can see exactly which clubs those are on browse, standings, league home, schedule, and scouting surfaces. They are named plainly. That is deliberate: you should know what you bought before you commit.

System-managed clubs are capped:

A size with no configured cap is not offered. The robots are not a surprise after payment.

Private leagues, commissioners, and invite codes

If you create a private league, you can be its commissioner. You get one invite code (and a link you can share) that admits many managers until the roster is full or you revoke it. It is not a one-shot challenge token — the first friend who joins does not burn the code for everyone else.

As commissioner in this phase you can:

• Create the private league and hold commissioner identity
• Share the invite code
• See who has joined and who has paid (roster view)
• Finalize the owner list to start the season

You cannot edit another manager's cards, force a sim, change a lock, or rewrite a result. Those powers are not part of this guide's product surface.

Public leagues have no commissioner. They fill on their own path (including a fill window and, when needed, system-managed clubs up to the caps above).

Private leagues start when the commissioner finalizes, not on a public fill clock — but finalize still has a hard ceiling tied to payment authorizations. If the window is about to lapse, finalize or the league resolves like any league that missed its minimum.

Section 6: Standings, the postseason, and the Summer Cup

Standings

Standings sort primarily by winning percentage. When clubs are tied, the published tie-breaker chain is:

1. Winning percentage
2. Head-to-head record among the tied clubs
3. Head-to-head run differential
4. Overall run differential
5. Runs scored
6. Deterministic hash from the schedule seed (last resort — reproducible, not a coin flip in the room)

Games behind and the rest of the table chrome follow ordinary baseball sense. Revealed games only count.

Summer Cup berths

The postseason crowns a Summer Cup champion. Berths scale with league size and tier. Division winners do not get an automatic berth — seeding is by record.

On a Quick season at ten or twelve teams, the top two go straight to a best-of-seven Summer Cup. Longer seasons add early rounds (best-of-five) before the Cup.

The Cup itself is a best-of-seven on a 2-3-2 home pattern: the higher seed hosts Games 1–2 and 6–7; the lower seed hosts Games 3–5. Play cadence is 2 / 3 / 2 games across three days.

Clubs below the berth line keep a league story through Legacy Chase and the archive — the season does not vanish for anyone who finished out of the Cup field.

After the season

When the season completes, the league lands in archive: standings, awards, history, and the Summer Cup champion stay readable. Your My Leagues hub keeps completed leagues available so you can reopen the book.

Section 7: How to get unstuck

Still stuck? Email support@chinmusic.ai with your league name and what you expected to see.