A Blend Between Fiction & History: Expanding the Rockies/Marlins in 1994 Instead of '93

[Trav876]

First, a brief overview of real life history:

In real life, the Inaugural year for the Colorado Rockies & Florida Marlins was 1993. It was an exciting time in baseball, but unfortunately was followed up in 1994 with the strike (boooo!). I loved that 1993 season. With the debut of the SNES game Ken Griffey Jr. Baseball, I knew those rosters like the back of my hand (because I would manually rename everyone to the correct names, at the time, since the game didn't have the MLBPA rights to do so). Old man rant: We also didn't have the ability to look all these guys up on the internet at the time, so I'd cut out box scores each day and/or get magazines/newspapers that had the opening day rosters, to try to figure out which guys were who. Anyway, I digress...

1994 was a big season of "what if's." We had the Expos with tons of momentum, talent, and one of the best outfields (and overall best teams) in the game with Walker, Alou, & Grissom (so much so that they moved young Cliff Floyd to 1B). We also had in '94 the realignment of divisions, into 3 NL and 3 AL...adding a Central to combine with the then East & West. With this addition, the first wildcard teams would be berthed out of the NL and AL! Exciting. Unfortunately, we never got to see how things panned out, with the strike.

This realignment was a good idea for allowing more teams to make the playoffs (it still cracks me up that prior to '94, only FOUR teams would make the playoffs: NL West/East winners, and AL West/East winners...take that NBA). However, because of the lopsided 4 teams in some divisions, and 5 in others, I've always thought it would have been a better idea to just keep the West & East, but add wildcards into those divisions. Mind you, once MLB reached 30 teams, with the Devil Rays & Diamondbacks in 1998, you could have had 5 teams in each division (5 teams x 3 divisions = 15. x2 leagues = 30 total teams).

But those realignments were tough to do because of contracts, clauses, blah blah blah...

This Sim- Groundrules

So in this sim, we're going to skip all that red tape, and simply add Wildcards to the NL and AL, keeping the East & West. Two wildcards per League (i.e. 2 in the AL, 2 in the NL, no matter whether you're in the East or West). So if the NL East is strong, for example, you could have 3 teams make it to the playoffs vs. just 1 team from the West.

The teams in the AL East/West will stay the same, because it made sense for the most part, but the NL will be slightly realigned to make more geographical sense, in the following way:

NL EAST

Chicago
Montreal
New York
Philadelphia
Pittsburgh
Atlanta
Florida

NL WEST

Cincinnati
Houston
Los Angeles
San Diego
San Francisco
St. Louis
Colorado

We will also have a "balanced" schedule, due to there being wild cards that aren't division-specific, so that you're not just playing your division more than the other. No interleague play though... maybe we'll add that down the road.

Finally, we are going to expand the Rockies and Marlins into 1994...giving the '94 season even more pizzazz, a fresh start with no strike, wild card additions, realignments, and no roids! Oh wait...I can't do that in OOTP. But what I CAN do is lock the league modifiers at 1992...basically meaning that you won't see the crazy offensive explosion of the 90's into early 2000's. While that was fun in real life, it certainly could have been tainted by PED's and/or juiced balls. Who knows how much so, but we're going to keep the 1992 overall numbers for this sim.

Almost everything else is set on default (settings, etc. ... with the exceptions below), and I will be the GM of the Rockies, doing the expansion draft, hiring managers & coaches, et al.

Minors
While it's fun to have a million minor leaguers, I've always thought it was little unfair that some teams that didn't have as many levels or organizations (e.g. 1993 Rockies in real life, no AA team) vs. the ones that did, I suppose just because they could pay for more teams? However, a league should be designed to give equal opportunity, so in this sim, everyone gets 3 minor league teams... AAA, AA, and A.

Your single A guys have to be OUT of single A after their 4th year of Pro ball. So you either release them or promote them. AA and AAA can be whoever you want. There will be roster limits on all teams as well (28, 28, 35).

Rookie Draft
To address teams tanking (while I doubt they do that in OOTP, I like to make it realistic), we're also going to add the Lottery like MLB did this past year in real life. In this sim, every team that doesn't make the playoffs will have a shot at the lottery (albeit, very small % chance if you were good).

Additionally, because of less minor league teams, we're going to have less minor league rounds. With A being 4 years maximum of pro service time, and 35 players on the roster, that means starting year 5 you should have an entirely new A team. 35 players divided by 4 years = 8.75 players per year. We will round up to 10, giving 10 draft rounds to each team. Of course, players can always be signed in free agency.

We will have historical/real life rookies imported!

Misc
Owner goals enabled, to make it realistic... Owner also decides over budget- so some teams may just not be that competitive if the owner doesn't want to spend money. BUT, the caveat here is the league will do contraction if any teams are bad for a while (I'll make that decision... if a team finishes in second-to-last or last place for 4 years in a row ... year 5 they will be gone- perhaps their spot swapped for a new expansion team). This will be like the “real life” contraction plan, where the free agents get auctioned off (OOTP has a cool “free agent draft” function, so I would just schedule that prior to “free agents filing” in the offseason)


I like to periodically do videos on these sims, so feel free to subscribe to my YouTube page below (I'll also be live simming out the expansion draft today...and will link that to this post after it's done as well)

https://www.youtube.com/@Travi876/streams

[Trav876]

Update:

So I won't get to the 1994 expansion draft yet today, but I've just finished the 1992 season sim (I started this Universe in 1992 so that the Rockies & Marlins would not be imported into the game yet...so I'll sim 2 years' worth and then enter them into 1994. This will also give players a few years to develop within the game's Player Development system and pan out differently than in real life).

Here are some highlights from 1992:

The Dodgers & Mets ended up being the 2 most dominant teams in the game securing playoff bids before anyone else and having 101 and 104 wins respectively (the only 100+ win teams this year).

The Mets starting rotation was ridiculous with all these guys ERAs in the low 3's or 2's (4 out of 5 had ERAs in the 2's!): Gooden, Saberhagen, Whitehurst, S. Fernandez...

The Mets also had Vince Coleman get over 100 SB (101), but caught 36 times, a career high.

Dodgers were led by several ROOKIES. Mike Piazza who led the MLB in RBI with 131...and finished 2nd in HR behind Bonds, with 33. Pedro Martinez who finished with a sub 2 ERA as a closer, and 30 saves. And Pedro Astacio who had a 2.33 ERA and 21 wins!

Edgar Martinez for Seattle was still hitting .397 into mid August. He cooled down and didn't chase .400.

AL East Winner: Baltimore
AL West Winner: Chicago WS
AL Wildcards: Twins & Angels (clinched on final day of reg season, edging out the Yanks)

NL East Winner: Mets
NL West Winner: Dodgers
NL Wildcards: Reds & Braves

1992 WORLD SERIES WINNERS: Chicago White Sox over the Cincinnati Reds

[Trav876]

Lots of offseason moves in the '92/'93 offseason, including:

-Maddux going to the Brew Crew (after getting traded from CHI to CIN toward the end of '92)

-Bonds getting signed by the Mets

-Minnesota making big offseason moves after losing in the ALCS... trading for Sheffield, signing Ricky Henderson, Bill Swift, and Bob Tewksbury

-Baltimore also making big moves, receiving Clemens, top pitcher in the game at the time, traded from BOS (in the last year of his contract)... Baltimore also trading for Tony Gwynn, one of the game's better hitters ... and Albert Belle who led the league in HR last year w/ 44 (and they moved him to 1B)

We'll find out if any of these moves payed off in 1993.

1993 Season

At the All-Star break, Blue Jays are up 14 games in the AL East at 57-30! Olerud and Alomar are the engines helping them win. ATL leading the NL East, CWS leading the AL West, and Dodgers/Reds tied for the NL West lead.

The Astros who were picked LAST in preseason predictions, unexpectedly near the top of the NL West at 2 1/2 games out of 1st place, 6 games above .500

'93 was a very pitcher dominated year, especially in the NL which had only Barry Bonds cracking .900 OPS. Everyone else was in the 800's or below.

[Trav876]

As you can see above, the playoff teams were the Braves, Mets, Dodgers, Reds ... Blue Jays, Orioles, White Sox, and Twins.

AND THE 1993 MLB CHAMPIONS ARE:

The New York Mets ... beating the Toronto Blue Jays in 6 games. With Bonds hitting 3rd, Sid Fernandez with 21 wins and the best ERA in baseball at 1/96 ... they also have Burnitz who just missed getting ROY last year in 1992, but was a sliver slugger AND gold glover!

And now that we're finished with the 1993 season, we will expand the Rockies and Marlins as planned.

Here is the draft video- https://youtube.com/live/LWuXs2usKI0

[Trav876]

UPDATE:

We (the Rockies) are BAD. Starting off the year with 3 wins... out of 19 games! Yes, that's right, we are 3-16.

Fortunately, the Rangers are almost as bad as us, at 4-13. And the Marlins are 7-12.

Remember some of the ground rules (check out the start of this thread)- keeping the NL/AL West/East format- but adding wildcards without a 3rd division as in real life.

Check out the video update on where other teams/players are at, & simming out some games-

https://youtube.com/live/C8V0gnnLl5c

[Pelican]

What rules did you use for the expansion draft? I only allow teams to protect 12 guys. One additional for each guy drafted. And players with less than three years MLB service exempt from the draft. Those ground rules yield a stronger pool of players - and also weaken the best, deepest teams, I also allow my expansion teams to participate in the amateur draft fior a couple years before starting pay, And I allow them to develop minor league teams. And give them a decent budget for free agents, It’s no fun to have expansion teams doomed to failure.

[darkcloud4579]

Originally Posted by Pelican

What rules did you use for the expansion draft? I only allow teams to protect 12 guys. One additional for each guy drafted. And players with less than three years MLB service exempt from the draft. Those ground rules yield a stronger pool of players - and also weaken the best, deepest teams, I also allow my expansion teams to participate in the amateur draft fior a couple years before starting pay, And I allow them to develop minor league teams. And give them a decent budget for free agents, It’s no fun to have expansion teams doomed to failure.

Yeah, I agree with this. I tend to do 15 and 3 years as well, it does yield a stronger group in a 2-team expansion situation.

[Trav876]

Originally Posted by Pelican

What rules did you use for the expansion draft? I only allow teams to protect 12 guys. One additional for each guy drafted. And players with less than three years MLB service exempt from the draft. Those ground rules yield a stronger pool of players - and also weaken the best, deepest teams, I also allow my expansion teams to participate in the amateur draft fior a couple years before starting pay, And I allow them to develop minor league teams. And give them a decent budget for free agents, It’s no fun to have expansion teams doomed to failure.

That's interesting. I went with the traditional rules just to make it "like it was" in real life. But yes, it will basically doom them to failure as you put it lol. However on the flip side, expansion teams usually have big time fan interest, so you put in those dues for the first 1-2 years of being bad record-wise, but getting butts in the seats & selling tickets, to hopefully set your team up for success in the following years.