384 to 1 -- Massive playdown to crown Greatest Team of All Time

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Alright, Pool 2 is ready to get underway. But first a quick note on the evolving nature of GTOAT I.


As I mentioned earlier, this tourney was inspired by memories of Strat-O-Matic tourneys back in the day. The initial idea was to take a "plug 'n play" approach, just set up the pools and let 'er rip.


That became problematic when I realized the game was occasionally turning little-used pitchers into dominant aces through shameless overuse. As a result, the "Homer" rule was introduced, requiring the rotations to be set up by hand.


Soon thereafter it became apparent the game was doing the same thing with position players (although the impact wasn't as great as with pitchers). But lineups and substitution patterns were created for each team to ensure players were used similarly to real life


It takes around four "practice" seasons to get all the teams dialed in, so that:


- In most cases, primary players are getting within 80 plate appearances of what they got in IRL for the season in question.


- The rotation is comprised of the four pitchers who recorded the most starts that season IRL. An exception is allowed if any other pitchers are within two starts of the No. 4 starter.


- The bullpen is used in a more-or-less logical way. (There's no matching up IP.)


It's an interesting process, if a bit time-consuming, but it's the only way to get anything close to an "accurate" simulation.


I forget how many hundreds of thousands of games have been simulated so far in this tourney. But we've finally arrived at this point, and some pretty clear ground rules are being formed for the requisite GTOAT II. The increased "hands-on" activities are going to require that tourney to be scaled back considerably from GTOAT I's 384 teams. But I will have already figured out substitution patterns for 48 teams, so a competition with somewhere around 100 teams should be possible.

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