It has been a long time since I have played OOTP due to my health and general malaise. Reading tiny letters on a computer screen had become more than just a chore and was sometimes impossible. But recently my eyesight has improved a bit to where I can spend a few hours at the terminal without inducing headaches, so I thought I would start up a fictional league in OOTP 20 and see how it goes.
A few of you may remember me as one who liked to dive off the deep end into elaborate setups that took a lot of work to run. I am not up to that sort of enterprise anymore (yet?) and have decided to just go with a simple league that will scratch my itch of running a team and falling in love with some players. Of course, I cannot just set up a plain old boring standard league and there are some things that I am still going to do manually that I feel are necessary for me to enjoy the game.
Namely, overhauling the defensive ratings of all the players. It irks me to no end when a player is only rated for centerfield, but has poor range or is only rated for left, but has an awesome arm. Ditto with the infielders. Shortstops with poor arms, who I cannot move over to second base, etc. And I hate having to scrounge the lists for utility players.
So I will be setting all players defensive positions based on their fielding ratings. I have a spreadsheet set up for this purpose and I do not personally see any of the ratings, so there is no cheating involved. Basically, if a player can play the outfield, his positions are based on his range and arm. Decent range means he can play center. A decent arm means he can play right. Anyone qualifying for center or right can also play left and if a centerfielder has a good arm, he can play right, too. Infielders are a little more complicated because their DP rating is also considered but the logic is similar. Anyone who fails to qualify for any position based on his ratings is given a rating for first base.
So the Universe has 24 teams, split into two leagues, each split into two divisions, just like the real major leagues from 1969 through 1976. Only instead of the National and American Leagues, we have the National and Pacific Coast Leagues. We are going play my favorite kind of baseball: 1980's style (minus the DH).
The league totals and modifiers are based on an average of the years 1982-1987. I am using ballparks from the 1980's (where possible). The park factors were set based on the average the park showed during 1982-87 for parks that existed in the majors then. Three teams play in parks that were not used in the Majors in 1982-87: Washington plays in RFK Stadium and its modifiers are based on the average it showed when the now Texas Rangers played there in the late 1960's and early 1970's; Denver plays in Mile High Stadium, which was used as a minor league park in 1982-87 and its factors are based on 1993 and 1994 when the Colorado Rockies played there; and Portland plays in The Skydome, which opened in Toronto in 1989 and its factors are based on the average it showed in the 1990's.
Each team has a complete minor league system, but instead of the convoluted AAA, AA, A+, A-, etc. naming scheme, the levels are AAA, AA, A, B, C, D and Rookie. That is 7 levels, technically more than have ever actually been used in real life, but in the 1950's the fewest affiliates any team had was 8. The Dodgers had 24 and the Cardinals had 21. The average was 14. So each of our teams having 7 is exactly half of what they actually had then, but more than they had in the 1980's.
We will be playing with Financials based on the Modern Era, but at only 10% of current values, so that a player making $2 million in our universe is equivalent to a modern player making $20 million. Free Agency is set to the A/B type compensation as it was in the 1980's. Our draft is set to 40 rounds because we need lots of players for the extra levels of minors.
Other Settings that are not default:
Scouting is ON, but Coaches are turned OFF. Scouting is on because otherwise there is no way to judge the International Free Agents. Coaches are OFF because 1) they actually add nothing to the experience as they are randomly hired and fired by the A.I. and their past records have no bearing on anything and 2) I need to utilize the strategy sliders to get the stats to look like the 1980's and we cannot have the managers all changing my settings. Plus, I set the sliders in a much more logical manner than any A.I. managers do.
Ratings scales are set to 1-100 with show higher values enabled. If a player is 125 runner, why should this be hidden from me? I should be able to see that he is clearly faster than the other 100 rated runners. Overall Ratings are set to the 20-80 scale (why no 1-100 here?)
You may ask, "Why 1-100? Isn't there a little more fog of war with a 1-10 scale or any other scale?" My answer is no, there is not any more fog of war with fewer ticks on the scale. With scouting on and set to normal accuracy, the 1-100 ratings are not equal to what the ratings actually are in the engine. The advantage of having a finer rating scale is that my scout can give me his advice on who he thinks is better at each skill more often than if the scale was only 1-10. He may not be right often, but having his opinion on such matters seems more realistic to me than having him say, "Well, these guys are all about the same and I can't tell them apart." If scouting were turned off and ratings were shown, then, of course, there would be more fog of war with a 1-10 scale than a 1-100 scale. But with scouting on, the scale is irrelevant to the fog of war.
Injury ratings are hidden and injury frequency is set to High (Realistic Modern Day).
Delayed Injury Diagnosis is turned off. This also adds nothing to the experience. It could be interesting if at least SOME information was given to you after an injury and the duration was just left unsettled, but as it is, it is difficult to explain in a report of a game what happened to the player.
"What happened to Bubba?"
"He's hurt."
"What's hurt? His head? His toe? His arm? What?"
"I dunno; he's hurt."
"Did you ask Bubba what hurts?"
"Yeah."
"What did he say?"
"He dunno; he's hurt."
Also, even with this turned off, injury durations are not set in stone and players sometimes heal faster or have setbacks and take longer to return than at first reported or sometimes the return date is actually reported as "uncertain".
Storylines are turned off. Another interesting idea, poorly implemented. They happen way too often and after a few seasons of play, they become repetitive. Also, some of them break immersion by not being relevant to the era you are playing. And a LOT of them will just tick you off (when your #1 prospect decides to quit and go be a ballerina or something).
AI Player Evaluation settings: Ratings/Current Year/Previous Year/2 Years ago = 20/45/25/10
Trading Difficulty set to Hard/Neutral
No DH in majors or minors.
No roster expansion in September. Our minor leagues are still playing through September, plus I never understood why this was a thing anyway.
Trading deadline is set to June 15, because that is the way it was before 1986 (85?). No waiver trades after the deadline.
Trading of Injured players is allowed (as long as there is full disclosure of the injury).
Average attendance is set to 22,500 and ticket revenue is adjusted to compensate.
25-man All-Star rosters. No DH in the All-Star Game.
Option years are enabled and the Rule V Draft is enabled.
10/5 rule is enabled.
DL length is set to 15 days as it was in the 1980's.
25 man rosters with 10-man pitching staffs in the majors and 30-man rosters on the AAA and AA minor league affiliates and 35-man rosters for all lower levels.
Player origins are based on actual data from the 1950's to the 2000's, with the 1980's weighted the most and the decades nearer to them weighted more than the ones further away.
Minimum salary is set to $50,000, rather than $55,000, because I like round numbers.
The stat totals and modifiers have been set to give us a near perfect Year I season that looks close to the average of the National League from 1982-87. They will not be changed and the stats output will be allowed to meander a bit as long as it does not get out of hand.
House Rules:
No Waiver Claims allowed, but I can lose players to waivers.
I cannot trade any free agents I sign until a World Series has passed since inking the contract. No flipping.
I simulated 1925-2000 (75 years!) and then erased all stats and history. Normally I sim for 25 seasons before I start a new universe, but changed my mind about starting in 1950 and decided to start in 2001 and call it Year I of the World Series Era. Simming at least 25 years really is necessary when you create a new league, because the players created initially are just not the same as the ones that come through the draft later.
I will be playing as the Portland Beavers in the Pacific Coast League. I set them to a Market Size of 1 during the pre-sim to insure they were a crappy team for Year I. They lost 95 games in the final season. We will not have the first pick in the draft, though, because the Baltimore Orioles lost 98 games.
Here are the alignment of the teams and their park factors and Market Sizes (based on average payroll in 1982-87):
Giant Stadium is a clone of Yankee Stadium. Angel Stadium is not called Anaheim Stadium because the Los Angeles Angels are not in Anaheim; they are in Los Angeles.
The Boston Braves and the Milwaukee Brewers are the defending champions of their respective leagues. The Cleveland Indians and the Los Angeles Angels were the other division winners in the final pre-sim season.
Here we go!