Where do the extra players come from for 1892-1900?
 

The game has 16 teams from 1892-1900, while MLB only had 12, 8 in 1900.

How does the game fill the rosters of all the extra teams? I'm planning to start in 1871, but want to get ahead of what happens in 1892 if possible.

Thanks for any help.

At first I was going to make a flippant statement, but then I thought about it...yes the American Association was no longer running in 1892,
my guess is the players from 1891 are given specualtive totals during the time...

now i am curious too

I could see that for a year or two. But for 9 seasons?! That's a tough one.

Ok, I looked at a league where I imported the full history. Spot checked 1896, which is the mid-point.

The extra teams don't have any players!

The 12 regular NL teams all have their normal players with their normal stats. The 4 extra teams are just blank.

Has anyone played this out to see what happens? Very curious now.

Looked at baseball-reference.com and started in 1871, worked my way through 1910, for debuts and retirements, breaking out pitchers also.

The MLB pool dropped from 402 players in 1891 to 326 in 1892, and stayed pretty steady at 313-327 through 1897. In 1898 31 extra players join the league (net) and 16 more in 1899.

For 1900 there are only 293 players still around (remember this includes players that played in 1899, took off (or played in the Western League) 1900 and return for 1901. That's just 18 per team. 9 of those are pitchers (athough that includes anyone who ever pitched a game as pitchers, so that overstates the problem a little). There really aren't enough players for 1900. You could muddle through with 19-20 man rosters from 1892-1899, but again 11-12 of those are pitchers, although obviously some of those are position players that just pitched on occasion.

I recently deleted my 1871-2010 league so i can redo it when I get 14 next week, so i am unsure now myself. But i left off in 1924 and to my knowledge all the players 1892-1900 were real. I know I did not use minor legues until 1902 since i did not have more then 5 players on my reserve roster.

Don't hold me to this but I'm digging into my database memory...and really off the cuff so don't ask me to explain details.

For a long time we could not do pre-1901 leagues due to issues with the league structures and databases. I believe Spritze figured out how to make pre-1900 leagues work within the database, however, some concessions had to be made due to teams and leagues folding.

The game cannot delete teams in a historical league so I think, instead the original two league system remains but teams are moved within them when they cannot be removed. The teams your're seeing are basically the place holders for defunct teams. Or maybe holders for eventual teams that come in.

I think this system is why there is the mystery statement of leauges starting before 1900 need to have an inaugural draft.

The working transaction database successfully move players around these leagues and teams.

Also, maybe because those teams are never scheduled to play games the warning of them not having enough players never flashes.

ok i am still using 12- i know, but i got used to the layout ect

anyway as a test i loaded up 1892
here is what i have at the inagural draft
75 SP
17 RP
175 Batters

so for a 16 team league as was set up at that time

5.75 pitchers per team
10.9 batters per team

so my guess is that there were a lot of players that year who played 2 games, or pitched 3 innings,
so instead of a team having 14 players and 8 pitchers, due to placing them to a 16 team league there
will just be a very thin amount of players per team

usualy i play with the spritze hs db, so there are lots of players even in the early years, in fact i usually start in 1893 with 24 teams and a full stocked AAA. so i didn't pay as much attention to regular db with i only play from 1901 on
so this was an interesting test.
that is my guess for what is there player wise anyway

Looking through my History of my league. In 1892 there 3 pitchers that pitched from 40 to 50 or more games and a handful that pitched the rest. This was for a 154 game schedule. This was somewhat the same by 1900. Three main pitchers and a handful of relievers.

Interesting. In the real NL in 1892 there were 92 pitchers. So the 75/17 seems dead on.

In the real NL, the median team had a first starter that made 49 starts, #2 made 42, #3 at 27-30, #4 at 20 and #5 at 10 starts.

So you could make it work for 16 teams, just by giving the lower end guys more starts and spreading them around.

352 total players had a plate appearance in 1892, so I don't get why the game only had 175 position players. There should be 260 of them. Even a guy like JB Young who had 1 at bat in 1892 should be in a game that imports for 1892.

Really appreciate you guys digging into this.

EDIT: Bad example with Young, who was a pitcher. "Leonard" an OF who was 0-for-0 with a walk and a steal should be in. Or Joe Daly, a 23 year old who caught but didn't bat.

I think I'm going to go with this number of teams to ensure I have enough players:

6 - 1871-78
8 - 1879-81
12 - 1882-1900
follow MLB the rest of the way

Then I think what I'll do to get over the no real transactions if you start a league in the 19th century is take all of the stats from my 1871-1900 sim, export it and modify the .csv's used by the game when importing history and start a new historical game in 1901. Assuming that's just an export/cut and past exercise. Maybe that would be too much work.

The extra players I have from 1882-1891, when MLB had 14-17 teams, not counting the UA (which was AA quality) and PL, which was a good league but just watered down the others . . . those extra players will help me get the schedules up to 150 games a lot quicker too, since I can add a few extra pitchers to the 12 teams I have.

there was a thread that linked to how many actual players were on a roster throuhout history. LGO might still have it. I would search for it now but I have to get up early. I'll try searching for it tomorrow night.

Dont know if this would help you but ive been working on a simple transaction file for 19th century leagues. I am testing the 1871 season and by using as played schedules I am seeing players play almost exactly the same amount of games as real life. Stats are pretty close but you have to remember those were short seasons compared to today.
Anyway I have separate databases for each historical leagues rookies. I have logos organized so it will automatically change.
I edited the database so players will debut with their team. I woud like any advice if anyone would like to try it but they would have to follow some instructions since its important to follow the transactions and use the database I made. If you just copy the master file or the teams file it wont work.

I would love to get involved with that. How can you edit the database? I thought only certain (few) people have any ability to tweak .odb files . . . curious about this for sure.

I think anyone can edit the csv files. It just takes some trial and error to figure out what works.

Where do the extra players come from for 1892-1900?
 

Right, but I thought that the transactions are in an .odb file, maybe I'm missing something? You can edit the teams and franchise files since those are csv.

I think the transactions may be there but the game cant use them because the database with the game still has NA and AA league abbreviation. The game just recognizes NL and AL. Thats why league expansion looks different from the real thing. They tried to make a comprimise. The work around is changing the abbreviations to NL or AL. You have to make sure there an even number of teams in both leagues when creating your league.
For 1871 I madeca teams file with 4 teams to start the league. I then replace that teams file with the one I will use for the game. I delete the 4 teams and all players then i import the real ones. The teams should import automatically if they have the NL or AL abbreviation.

As soon as I getca chance I will share my work so you can get a better idea of what im doing.

I was able to get through 1871 and it looks like i was able to make all the correct transactions. As soon as i complete 1872 i will share everything if anyone is interested. So far except for creating historical managers i dont see why the game couldnt do the transactions i make automatically.
All im doing is releasing and signing players according to a list i have made.

Rookies are debuting with correct teams. Even the expansion teams. Each league has its own database with only rookies debuting for each league.

Still debating whether i should turn suspensions off. Starting anther test season so if theres any player you would like to see stats of or any stat you wanna compare to real history let me know.