Historical Accuracy & Minor Leagues
 

Cross-posting from the OOTP Reddit board...

My ambition is to play from 1903 to the present (and beyond), while using historical teams and players, although not with historical lineups or transactions. Basically keep all the teams and players in place, but not so that history repeats itself 100%.

I have uniforms and logos covered, and when I set up the game, I think all my settings are correct. I even have it so that if the game creates fictional players (not sure why it would though) there's a 99% chance it'll create a white American. I'm not racist, but I'd like the "color line" to be reflected until 1947. Racism in the U.S. was and continues to be repugnant, but I also don't think it wise to pretend it didn't exist.

So it's 1905 now and everything looks good for now. Now, when I created the game, I didn't create any minor leagues. When would be the right time to create them? I've looked online and there were obviously "minor" associations even before 1903, but it probably makes sense not to create minor leagues until the 1920s and 1930s, when the present "farm system" was put in place. Do people agree? What would be the best way to go about it? And if/when I do create the minor leagues and I populate them with players, is it okay to use fictional ones? I've read at times that fictional players have a tendency to eclipse the historical ones if you use both.

As you're aware, minor leagues existed before 1903. Formal farm systems didn't start until the 1920s, but teams had long had informal working arrangements with minor league teams. Many of those arrangements were, technically, outlawed pursuant to the National Agreement, but teams employed many ingenious ways to skirt the regulations.

You may want to try creating independent minor leagues - i.e. leagues where the teams have no affiliations with major-league clubs. OOTP has made some strides in this area in the latest version, and there have been some recent discussions regarding the best way to handle independent leagues (see, e.g., here).

Did you want to use fictional players? In a historical league the game does not create any fictional players unless you turn that option on. If you use a draft then you don;t have to bother with historical lineups and such. My 1919 White Sox only had one player that actually played for the Sox that season. Buck Weaver.

When you create minor leagues make sure that you have enough players on the Reserve roster and perhaps as FA to fill one AAA. 20 - 30 players per level that you add. Add a minor league every 10 seasons or so. Unless you want to use ghost players, but I have had several bad experiences with ghost players, especially when you turn ghost off and 300 Jim Unknowns are suddenly FA.

I have no problem with fictional players per se, although I am concerned about what I have read regarding fictional players tending to eclipse historical players. It seems true of most sports games I play that the players the game creates tend to develop insane potential relative to the real players.

Based on Baseball-Reference, I probably won't start adding minor leagues until 1919, since it seems that is when affiliations started (or at least when a record started being kept). I'm going to try and use the historical leagues (International, Pacific) but will probably just fill them with fictional players. Heaven help me, since even though I have the game set to create 99% American players, I have a suspicion they'll be an ahistorical mix of ethnicities.

The only super annoying thing I have found is that even though you can set percentages for nationality when it comes to facegen, you can't seem to do anything in regards to race for players, and cannot do anything about fictional pictures for coaches in terms of either nationality or race. So in 1905 I have teams owned or coached by black and Latin guys with ahistorical names like "Kevin" and "Omar." It's not hard to manually change these things before the start of every season, but it's still a pain.

I also noticed that when I created a 1998 historical game, every single player that didn't have a "special" face (typically the big name players) was white. So I'm going through each of the rosters using Baseball-Reference to change the pictures so that guys like Rickey Henderson and Cecil Fielder are African-American, Latin and Japanese guys are Hispanic and Asian, etc. It seems kind of crazy to me that so much time would be spent on getting historically accurate rosters and stats, but no one bothered to note Mac Suzuki is Asian and not a white guy.

Check the mods forum, someone has a file with historical player pictures. That may solve the facegen problem.

Thank you so much, Ranger, that pretty much sorts not just historical facegens for players as well as player names but also demographic percentages as well! I am very appreciative! Also, thanks to Questdog and the HFP Team for their hard work!

Guess on the manager/front office personnel front I'm still stuck adjusting things manually, but c'est la vie, you can't have everything... :laugh:

In my ABF league I wish some of the fictional players were better. Walter Johnson, Christy Mattewson & Satchel Paige all have over 5000 K. Closet fictional guy has 3012 approx. 5 or 6 real players have 500 + HR closet fictional guy has 250.

I kinda wish I would have used Questdogs set when I started my league, especially after I brought in several great Negro League players in 1920.

Couple additional questions:

1. I created a historical league with no minor leagues, and then before starting the season added multiple AAA, AA, A and Rookie leagues. Is there a way I can save just the league structure/settings for the minors, so if I start a different historical league, I can just impose the minors I've set up on to it, or do I have to do it all over manually again?

Also, is there an obligation for how "deep" you need to go with minor leagues? I know MLB The Show only uses AAA and AA.

2. If I simulate too far into the season by mistake, is there any way to go back and look at what the division and league standings were in previous months? For example, if it's July, is there a way I can see the standings from May or June?

Thanks in advance.