[BaseballMan]

Guide to 19th century league play.

This guide is to help you setup and run a 19th century league using actual teams for that year. I have assumed that you are familiar with how ootp works and how to edit the database. If you are completely new to OOTP, i would suggest you read the manual, search and ask the forum for anything that you are not clear on how to do. This guide is designed for those who wish
players to import to the team that they first played for in real life. However if you wish to use a whatever happens scenario with the actual teams of that historical year, you can do that too.

To have players imported to their correct teams you must make some changes to the Lahman database that comes with the game.
The reason the game doesnt import the players to their teams is because the game uses the AL & NL abbreviations and thus doesnt recognize the American Association abbreviation of AA. I am hoping this could change in OOTPXI but i have no knowledge if it has. I do know that this is the case for OOTPX.

So to start you need to go to the Lahman database folder usually named "Stats" in the OOTP folder. Now open the Teams file and change all other league abbreviations to AL or NL. Keep in mind that in any year you wish to start your league you will need to have an even number of teams in both leagues even if you have to copy a team's line from another year. Just make sure
you change the year to your import year. You can delete the extra team once you start your league.It is merely to setup your league. After the league has been created the game will allow you to expand with an odd number of teams. You can even expand by only 1 team if you wish.
Also it is easier to delete all the teams and import the historical teams for the first league year rather than drafting them. But thats just for your first league year. After that players should go to their correct teams.


But before you create the league you need to perform the next step if you wish players to go to their correct teams. The next step is to open the batting, pitching, fielding csv files in the "Stats" folder. Again change all league abbreviations to AL or NL. Or else the game will not import players to their correct teams and you will need to run a amateur draft. I would suggest only having the American League and National League because i think the game has to use both the AL & NL abbreviations and may not work with only one of them. Which would lead to problems when you have separate leagues as you would have duplicate players.
Finally you must move the odb file or the game will use the expansion that comes with the game.

Now you are ready to create your league. You may be able to So create a fictional league of 2 leagues with 2 teams in each league. You should do this step for Go ahead and run your inaugural draft. Now go to Edit League structure and remove all teams. Next go to the Free Agents screen and delete all players. You will also need to go to to your saved gamed folder and
remove any history like the draft if you wish to have no history kept from the this point. Now go back to League structure and import the historical teams for your starting year into their appropriate league. Since we are starting in 1871 we will import all teams into the National League league.

League setup settings.

Now go to global setup and uncheck scoutings & coaching. I would also suggest not using suspensions till you feel you have enough players in your league. Also suggest setting injuries and fatigue to low if you are starting pre-1880. Changing them later when you feel you have enough players if a team has a rash of injury's on the DL. Now go to the "Rules"section and set
active roster size to 15-16 players. Set DL to between 7-10 days for now. Change it later when you feel league is ready. Uncheck Trading, Amateur Draft, and Finances.
Now go to "Options" and check retire players according to history. Turn off Expansion Draft. Set number of games per team to 80 so you can use Flommesse's historical schedule for 1871. You should also uncheck all-star game in the years you only have the National League active as the game will crash when it gets to the all-star game. Either disable the playoffs or use a custom playoff setting.
Finally go to "Strategy" and uncheck the adjust league totals in order to use SteveP method for getting good league totals for your first year. But before you run your test season you need to import Flommesse's historical schedule for 1871. I use the as played schedules. Now save your league and make a back up copy. Run your test season and get your league totals.
Copy and paste the original, enter your league totals and save a copy of the league again.

Now you should create a manager for each team. The reason is that you will need to be a manager of a team in order to sign a player. Since we are having players go to their actual teams i would suggest using historical managers. If you have more than one manager in a year just let them manged the amount of games they did in real life and then change managers. Just remember
these are managers in name only. I set change the team control settings under manager options to computer AI. Once you have a manager for all teams you want to sim to opening day and backup your league again.
Now we are ready to start simming and actually running the league. So open your league and sim to the day after the last scheduled game. Do not proceed to offseason. You need to set all teams to not allow AI roster changes or else the computer will sign players to the wrong teams. Now you should release all players that are not on that teams roster at the begining of the next year. For teams that have folded this is where the managers come in handy as you can go to that manager and find the folded team from there and release the players. You can not select manual awards with only one league. However the game will still pick most of the awards for you.

Next i retire players who did not play the next year. I use a retire list i made that lists each player that did not play that year. I created a unretire list which lists each player that came back in a year. So i know when a player was out for a year without having to research each year. These are 2 small excel files and i would be gald to share them if you wish to use them.
Now we can proceed to December 31st. At this point i fire all managers that did not manage their team at the beginning of the next year. Do not assign new managers yet as that will screw up the manager history. Save a copy of your league.

Next proceed to Jan 1st of the next year.This is the point at which i unretire players. Also assign or create managers for teams that need them. Do not worry about rosters at this point because the rookies wont show up to their appropriate teams until we sim to preseason.
So go ahead and sim to pre-season. Import the correct schedule sign players to their correct teams. If a player played for more than one i assign him to the team he played for first. I also let the player play the same amount of games for the first
team as in real life before trading him. I only mention this because some transactions do not have exact dates. In later years i think you can use the transaction data from Retrosheet. You should have the correct rosters as real life at this point. So sim to opening day and allow computer to make roster changes and sim your next season.
Repeat the process.