2025 Season Database Tips

Here are a few tips regarding the use of the 2025 Annual Season database but also useful for all Deluxe Past Season databases:

1. We have prepared notes that you can view through the Notes page of the Organizer window.  We recommend that you take some time to read them as they contain useful information that may answer questions you might have about using the season database, the statistics and ratings in the database, and what you can expect when you start playing games with it.  Of particular interest to some will be the note about DMB's approach to rating "Openers".

2. The 2025 Annual Season Database is prepared with the real-life transactions and game-by-game starting lineups feature turned on, real-life opening day rosters (meaning that players who were disabled on opening day in real life are also disabled in this season database), and the "as-played" 2025 schedule selected. By "as-played", we mean that postponed games are listed on the dates they were actually played.

The use of real-life transactions and lineups requires that the rosters and schedules be exactly as they were in real life. Feel free to change rosters or switch to the original ("as-scheduled") schedule, but if you do, remember to change the settings in your organization or league so the use of real-life transactions and lineups is turned off.

3. The season database includes multiple player records for anyone who appeared with more than one team this year. These players have one record for each team and one combined record that reflects their overall performance.

If you wish to release all players into free agency and draft new rosters from scratch, start by using the Release all players command and then use Delete team-specific records. Both commands can be found on the Tools menu.

If you don't run the Delete team-specific records command, these multi-team players will be drafted more than once. And this command must be used AFTER releasing the players because it deletes those team-specific records from the list of free agents, not from team rosters.

4. If you conducted a draft league using the 2024 Season Database, remember that you can use the Migrate command on the File menu to automatically set up the 2025 Season Database with the structure of your league and your team rosters. See the DMB help library for more information on how to use the Migrate feature.

If you use Migrate, remember that:

a) the "Past season database" is your 2024 league database and your "New season database" is the 2025 Season Database. (You can install the 2025 Season Database more than once if you want to migrate your league to one copy and have another with the real-life rosters still intact.)

b) When Migrate is placing a multi-team player on a roster, it is the combined record that is used. His team-specific records for the 2025 season are placed in the free-agent pool. Use the "Delete team-specific records" command on the Tools menu to remove them before running a draft.

c) Migrate does not create manager profiles, so you'll need to generate new ones or use the "Roster / manager profile" window to set them up the way you want before playing games.