Quote:
Originally Posted by David Ball
This is an interesting idea, but in this case also kind of a shame, because Galvin is one of my particular favorite players, in large measure because of his enormous durability in an era that chewed pitchers up and spat them out. So it's a disappointment to see his career come to a premature end this way, but 1885 was the one season in the middle of his career when Galvin did have injury problems.
Can I ask about how you've set all this up? You seem to have free agency turned on, but exactly what is your system, and why did you not choose to go with the reserve system that was actually in effect by 1884? How do you insure teams can field a complete team with these small rosters? Do the major teams have reserves?
I know from a post in another thread that your Eastern League is an independent minor that began in Afghanistan, then migrated to America. Do you have or intend to have a fuller set of independent minor leagues, and how do you handle playhers movement betwen minor and major league teams?
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The Preston Boyd injury really disappointed me too, because he really developed into a very good pitcher. There is another doppelganger currently in the league, but the development engine has not been kind to him. We will see how much longer he hangs on. But the Boyd injury was double frustrating because he was rated as "Durable."
The "create the league in Afghanistan thing" is just a workaround I developed for a very annoying bug. When you are adding a league to an existing historical universe, the added league gets created with modern settings. This includes player creation settings, so those players created along with the league must be deleted if you do not want your overall league statistics to be off. Initially creating the league as an Afghanistan league just makes it easier to identify and delete the created players (i.e., all players from AFG). And I chose Afghanistan simply because it is the first country in the drop down list.
But yes, the Eastern League is an independent minor league. I chose to add it at this point because I had a large number of rather marginal players left over from the one year existence of the Union Association. I could have simply allowed those players to drift into retirement, but why not give them a place to play. Luckily for me, the Eastern League can trace it's history to 1884. Thus the Eastern League was born. I am not going to follow the structural changes of the league; it is in place mostly for window dressing.
At some point after the turn of the century I will expand the Eastern League and affiliate it, in addition to adding some more leagues to have at least three minor league levels. I don't quite know yet when I'd like to add the affiliated minors. I might wait until the 1920s to be more in line with history, but I may do it sooner to help the development engine.
I did have free agency turned on at first, but it is now off. It was in the 1880s when the reserve clause became front and center for baseball. I mimic the reserve list by taking each team down to the reserve limit in the offseason (right now it's 11).
The AI doesn't have too many problems with the rosters. I check each roster prior to the season and make any adjustments I feel are necessary. I don't have to make too many adjustments though. Just those teams that feel they can get by with six catchers and two pitchers. If a team did not get enough players, I will generate some marginal players for them.
There is some quirkiness with the AI's handling of one and two man pitching rotations, but now, the pitching rotation is at three, and the roster management is improving. All teams have five pitchers.
One more important point, I go through the newly generated free agents each offseason. I do this for two reasons: (1) to make sure I'm happy with the names being generated, and (2) to remove the metric ton of middle relievers the game feels that it is necessary to generate.