Recapturing The Early Years of Baseball

OmahaReynolds · 05-02-2014, 02:25 PM

This is a very niche way to play the game, and 95% of players won't be interested. I know there are some of you out there who would like to figure this stuff out, though, and I'm hoping we can put our heads together and generate some ideas. Here's what I got:

Something I've always tried to do in OOTP is simulate baseball's early years. Not necessarily in a pure-historical sense, but at least reproduce the structure of baseball as it was before. While OOTP is fantastic at reproducing player output for every historical year, the thing that is tricky to do is re-create transactions in the days before amateur drafts and farm systems. As I see there are 3 eras in baseball when it comes to transactions and player development:

Pre-Farm System (1871 - ~1935):
While the St. Louis Cardinals had started building a farm system in the deadball era, the system wasn't widely used until the middle of the 1930's. Before farm systems, major league teams acquired players from independent minor league teams. The most important idea here is that major league teams are looking for talent that the perceive to be "major league-ready."

In order to accomplish that, players out of high school and college need to have somewhere else to play before they "graduate" to the major leagues. Independent minor leagues are a great place to have these players develop, but what does one do in the years before there even were minor leagues? On top of that, how do major league clubs go about picking up these players?

OOTP15 gives us a nice new feature, a setting that allows leagues to sell contracts of players to teams in other leagues. This works great for creating a "development" league where players can go directly out of school to play until they are purchased by the majors.

To test this out, I created an 8 team league in 1856 and quick-simmed 20 years. Once I got to 1876, I re-created the 1876 National League and ran a 20-round inaugural draft. I created an 8 team "Bush League," with each team representing a U.S. region, and assigned all the remaining players to Bush League teams. I set the Bush League to be allowed to sell player contracts, with the sale price at half the MLB cash maximum, which would allow National League teams to purchase two players per season. I set the National League to have a 5-round draft, and instead of completing the draft, I assigned the players in the draft pool to the appropriate region team in the Bush League.

The results were mixed. The National League teams did purchase players, but often would purchase players who were from the most recent draft class and clearly not ready to play in the majors, which lead me to believe that the AI was valuing potential ratings when deciding which players to purchase. A lot of these players just ended up on NL teams' reserve rosters for a season or two.

Another thing that happened after about ten seasons is that the Bush League's ended up with a lot of players, and guys weren't getting playing time. This and the above results sort of defeated the purpose and I need to do further testing. Perhaps the number of Bush League teams needs to increase as the league picks up more players, so that every player gets playing time.

Once the Bush Leagues get ironed out, the question then shifts to what happens when the minor leagues show up. Do the Bush Leagues get deleted and amateur players get assigned to minor league teams? Or do the Bush Leagues remain in existence until the amateur draft starts happening? I haven't figured it out yet.

Eventually, toward the start of the 20th century, minor leagues of various classifications emerge and this is something I haven't tested yet.

Post-Farm System, Pre-Draft (1935-1965)
Once farm systems are established, Major League teams should be able to pick players up right out of school and develop them in their own system, which might render the Bush League idea useless in this era. But then a problem arises - how do we get players out of the draft pool and into Major League organizations without having a draft? We could just turn off the draft, but the free agents generated in non-draft leagues are on an entirely different talent curve than players generated for amateur draft pools. One idea is to just distribute the players manually, but that sore of takes choice out of the picture for both AI and human teams. If we play god and just assign players we might as well do that in the pre-farm system era with the independent minors and bush league teams.

In 1965, we have the amateur draft and farm systems and things run on OOTP's default settings.

I'm still trying to figure out how to simulate these early eras of baseball and I'll use this thread to give updates.

Tekneek · 05-02-2014, 02:57 PM

I will be following along, as I am interested in doing this myself. Once I have the time, I plan on doing something similar.

Questdog · 05-02-2014, 02:59 PM

What I have done is create my major league and give them an affiliated AAA league but turn off all player creation. I give the major leagues AAA affiliates because otherwise extra players sit on a reserve roster and do not play and you can't go without a reserve roster or a minor league affiliate.

Then I create a AA league that is independent and let it draft players from HS and college (Sabermetric PCMs must be reset to 1 from their defaults). Each off season (before FA's file, if you are using free agency), I release 8 players per major league team from AA. I proportion the ratio of pitchers to hitters by the same ratio as is carried on the major league rosters and then I divide the batters by 8 and release that many from each position. For pitchers, I use VORP to establish who will be released (highest performers get let go). For batters, I use WAR.

Then I schedule an 8-round free agent draft in the major league on the same day I release all the players. Voila!.

This way the majors are getting players who are ready (or close) to playing in the majors.

I don't use any leagues lower than AA, so newly drafted players usually sit on their reserve rosters until they can play in AA. Make sure the AA league's reserve rosters are set to unlimited. You could add lower leagues affiliated to the AA league, if you wanted, or even have them independent and do this process between each level every year (only the lowest level would be able to drat HS and college players). However, that would force every player to play at every level (except AAA) before reaching the majors, so you'd want some guidelines for who can skip a level. Seems like a lot of work, so I just stick to the AA level.

For the affiliated minor league era, before the amateur draft is established, what I find works pretty well is to go ahead and run a draft, but reverse the usual order and let the team with the best record pick first. I really like this and usually stick with it even after 1965. Parity is for the dullards! You could also have a set draft order based on market size or whoever you think should be the dominate teams of the era. I like changing it every year to allow for some surprises. Bad teams CAN become elite teams and vice versa with the best team picks first method, especially with FA active (but even with in the Reserve Era).

goroyals · 05-02-2014, 03:01 PM

I think this post is going to spawn some great conversation. Here is my 2 cents.

Quote:

Originally Posted by OmahaReynolds

Pre-Farm System (1871 - ~1935):

Simulating the upward movement of prospects in a universe that doesn't have affiliated teams is difficult, but between the new tools that OOTP 14 and 15 have given us, there should be ways to approximate the method by which MLB teams acquired their players.

I think there are two caveats that have to be accepted. First is that there is no way to keep MLB teams from stashing a few prospects on their reserve rosters. Second is that the non-MLB teams are going to carry a lot of players. I've never heard of anyone successfully eliminating either of those issues.

That said, I like your solution of eliminating the MLB draft by assigning the draft pool to Bush League teams. I think your implementation of the posting system is a nice touch. The only thing I think you could add to control the process a little more is a free agent draft. Simply designate a certain number of Top Players from each Bush League to be released from their BL contracts every season. Then hold a FA Draft so the MLB takes the cream. The only problem is that the undrafted FA's will end up on a different BL team than the one they left from, but seeing as how those leagues were pretty unstable IRL, I don't think it's a big deal.

Quote:

Originally Posted by OmahaReynolds

Post-Farm System, Pre-Draft (1935-1965)

Just because you have a draft enabled in game doesn't mean it has to represent a real draft. I agree that it would be cool for negotiations to take place with amateurs, and that be how they ended up in an organization, but at this point the best way to replicate this era is just manipulate the draft order. Yankees, Cardinals, Dodgers, etc always get top picks and teams with more farm clubs get more picks. The Cubs, who IIRC resisted the farm system, would still be at a big disadvantage drafting, say 5 guys, and trying to get 2 to pan out vs the Cardinals who need to get the same 2 ML players out of 30 draftees.

munstermash · 05-02-2014, 03:01 PM

This is what i am trying to do with my smaller leagues.

I do not want a draft, i want teams to find players like they did in the old days.

Lafayette53 · 05-02-2014, 03:19 PM

This is the way I play a few times every version. I've had a lot of ideas on how to simulate it over the years going back to OOTP X/11. I think the best way for Markus to throw a bone to the five or six of us who play this way would be to have an option for AI teams to purchase players contracts based on current ability or something along those lines. That way the problem OmahaReynolds described (and I encountered it in my own tests) would largely solve itself.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Questdog

What I have done is create my major league and give them an affiliated AAA league but turn off all player creation. I give the major leagues AAA affiliates because otherwise extra players sit on a reserve roster and do not play and you can't go without a reserve roster or a minor league affiliate.

Then I create a AA league that is independent and let it draft players from HS and college (Sabermetric PCMs must be reset to 1 from their defaults). Each off season (before FA's file, if you are using free agency), I release 8 players per major league team from AA. I proportion the ratio of pitchers to hitters by the same ratio as is carried on the major league rosters and then I divide the batters by 8 and release that many from each position. For pitchers, I use VORP to establish who will be released (highest performers get let go). For batters, I use WAR.

Then I schedule an 8-round free agent draft in the major league on the same day I release all the players. Voila!.

This way the majors are getting players who are ready (or close) to playing in the majors.

I don't use any leagues lower than AA, so newly drafted players usually sit on their reserve rosters until they can play in AA. Make sure the AA league's reserve rosters are set to unlimited. You could add lower leagues affiliated to the AA league, if you wanted, or even have them independent and do this process between each level every year (only the lowest level would be able to drat HS and college players). However, that would force every player to play at every level (except AAA) before reaching the majors, so you'd want some guidelines for who can skip a level. Seems like a lot of work, so I just stick to the AA level.

For the affiliated minor league era, before the amateur draft is established, what I find works pretty well is to go ahead and run a draft, but reverse the usual order and let the team with the best record pick first. I really like this and usually stick with it even after 1965. Parity is for the dullards! You could also have a set draft order based on market size or whoever you think should be the dominate teams of the era. I like changing it every year to allow for some surprises. Bad teams CAN become elite teams and vice versa with the best team picks first method, especially with FA active (but even with in the Reserve Era).

This sounds like a fun workaround. I'll probably steal it if that's okay

Questdog · 05-02-2014, 03:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lafayette53

This sounds like a fun workaround. I'll probably steal it if that's okay

It is very fun, especially if you are playing stats only as I like to do.

munstermash · 05-02-2014, 03:52 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Questdog

What I have done is create my major league and give them an affiliated AAA league but turn off all player creation.

Am i reading this right?

The AAA teams do not have a roster?

Questdog · 05-02-2014, 03:57 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by munstermash

Am i reading this right?

The AAA teams do not have a roster?

No, the AAA teams have rosters and play games. It is either that or have a reserve roster where players sit and do nothing. You cannot effectively have a major league team with only an active roster under its control.

OmahaReynolds · 05-02-2014, 04:26 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Questdog

No, the AAA teams have rosters and play games. It is either that or have a reserve roster where players sit and do nothing. You cannot effectively have a major league team with only an active roster under its control.

Questdog, I really like this idea. In my next test I'm going to start in 1876 with the National League (using all fictional players). I'll make a Triple-A league called the "National League Reserves" that will run a mirror schedule to the NL. Each team will be in the same city as the major league clubs, e.g. the Chicago White Stockings' AAA team will be called the "Chicago White Stocking Reserves."

What I'm envisioning is the White Stockings going to Boston to play the Red Caps, and each team has their reserve guys playing a game at a nearby, smaller ballpark. Not really a league, but a way for the rest of the team to get playing time.

Questdog · 05-02-2014, 04:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by OmahaReynolds

Questdog, I really like this idea. In my next test I'm going to start in 1876 with the National League (using all fictional players). I'll make a Triple-A league called the "National League Reserves" that will run a mirror schedule to the NL. Each team will be in the same city as the major league clubs, e.g. the Chicago White Stockings' AAA team will be called the "Chicago White Stocking Reserves."

What I'm envisioning is the White Stockings going to Boston to play the Red Caps, and each team has their reserve guys playing a game at a nearby, smaller ballpark. Not really a league, but a way for the rest of the team to get playing time.

Like a JV game!

Tekneek · 05-12-2014, 01:22 PM

One thing I think I have noticed. I tried simulating a setup where all the imported players went into a fictional independent league. I wanted the MLB teams to purchase those contracts, but I think I have found that under the reserve era rules they will never do so. Over a span of 10 years, they never bought a single contract.

Does anyone know if this is intended or a bug?

Thundercrack · 05-12-2014, 08:05 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by OmahaReynolds

We could just turn off the draft, but the free agents generated in non-draft leagues are on an entirely different talent curve than players generated for amateur draft pools.

Can someone elaborate on this? In what way is the talent curve different?

munstermash · 05-16-2014, 03:11 PM

I have been playing around with this setup

12-team major league with only AAA minors

10-team independent league with a college feeder

I have set the purchase contracts in the independent league to 4X what the game setting was. This makes it so only the clubs that make money or larger market teams get the better players. Due to this there seems to be 4 to 5 teams that are better than the others most seasons. In 26 years there is one team that has made the playoffs 12 times but on the flip side only 3 teams are under .500 for the 26 year period.

Some of the top picks will get signed right after the draft but many seem to play 2 years in the Indy league before a team signs them. I have one player who played 8 years of Indy ball then finally got signed by a big league club.

On the other side you see some veterans go to the Indy league to play a couple of more years when a MLB club will not sign them.

I might try a few more Indy teams in my next test.

cmaug · 05-28-2014, 11:39 AM

I found this thread while doing some research for a league set up and I have a question (or 2)...

How many lower level teams do you need to sustain a major league that acquires players nearly exclusively by purchasing contracts?

Is it similar to the ratios that you use for feeder teams?

I understand that I would need to allow for appropriate cash maximum to allow for the purchase of enough players. Anything else that has come up over time?

05-02-2014, 02:25 PM	#1
OmahaReynolds All Star Reserve Join Date: Aug 2010 Location: New York Posts: 653	Recapturing The Early Years of Baseball This is a very niche way to play the game, and 95% of players won't be interested. I know there are some of you out there who would like to figure this stuff out, though, and I'm hoping we can put our heads together and generate some ideas. Here's what I got: Something I've always tried to do in OOTP is simulate baseball's early years. Not necessarily in a pure-historical sense, but at least reproduce the structure of baseball as it was before. While OOTP is fantastic at reproducing player output for every historical year, the thing that is tricky to do is re-create transactions in the days before amateur drafts and farm systems. As I see there are 3 eras in baseball when it comes to transactions and player development: Pre-Farm System (1871 - ~1935): While the St. Louis Cardinals had started building a farm system in the deadball era, the system wasn't widely used until the middle of the 1930's. Before farm systems, major league teams acquired players from independent minor league teams. The most important idea here is that major league teams are looking for talent that the perceive to be "major league-ready." In order to accomplish that, players out of high school and college need to have somewhere else to play before they "graduate" to the major leagues. Independent minor leagues are a great place to have these players develop, but what does one do in the years before there even were minor leagues? On top of that, how do major league clubs go about picking up these players? OOTP15 gives us a nice new feature, a setting that allows leagues to sell contracts of players to teams in other leagues. This works great for creating a "development" league where players can go directly out of school to play until they are purchased by the majors. To test this out, I created an 8 team league in 1856 and quick-simmed 20 years. Once I got to 1876, I re-created the 1876 National League and ran a 20-round inaugural draft. I created an 8 team "Bush League," with each team representing a U.S. region, and assigned all the remaining players to Bush League teams. I set the Bush League to be allowed to sell player contracts, with the sale price at half the MLB cash maximum, which would allow National League teams to purchase two players per season. I set the National League to have a 5-round draft, and instead of completing the draft, I assigned the players in the draft pool to the appropriate region team in the Bush League. The results were mixed. The National League teams did purchase players, but often would purchase players who were from the most recent draft class and clearly not ready to play in the majors, which lead me to believe that the AI was valuing potential ratings when deciding which players to purchase. A lot of these players just ended up on NL teams' reserve rosters for a season or two. Another thing that happened after about ten seasons is that the Bush League's ended up with a lot of players, and guys weren't getting playing time. This and the above results sort of defeated the purpose and I need to do further testing. Perhaps the number of Bush League teams needs to increase as the league picks up more players, so that every player gets playing time. Once the Bush Leagues get ironed out, the question then shifts to what happens when the minor leagues show up. Do the Bush Leagues get deleted and amateur players get assigned to minor league teams? Or do the Bush Leagues remain in existence until the amateur draft starts happening? I haven't figured it out yet. Eventually, toward the start of the 20th century, minor leagues of various classifications emerge and this is something I haven't tested yet. Post-Farm System, Pre-Draft (1935-1965) Once farm systems are established, Major League teams should be able to pick players up right out of school and develop them in their own system, which might render the Bush League idea useless in this era. But then a problem arises - how do we get players out of the draft pool and into Major League organizations without having a draft? We could just turn off the draft, but the free agents generated in non-draft leagues are on an entirely different talent curve than players generated for amateur draft pools. One idea is to just distribute the players manually, but that sore of takes choice out of the picture for both AI and human teams. If we play god and just assign players we might as well do that in the pre-farm system era with the independent minors and bush league teams. In 1965, we have the amateur draft and farm systems and things run on OOTP's default settings. I'm still trying to figure out how to simulate these early eras of baseball and I'll use this thread to give updates.

05-02-2014, 02:59 PM	#3
Questdog Hall Of Famer Join Date: Jun 2006 Location: In a dark, damp cave where I'm training slugs to run the bases...... Posts: 16,142	What I have done is create my major league and give them an affiliated AAA league but turn off all player creation. I give the major leagues AAA affiliates because otherwise extra players sit on a reserve roster and do not play and you can't go without a reserve roster or a minor league affiliate. Then I create a AA league that is independent and let it draft players from HS and college (Sabermetric PCMs must be reset to 1 from their defaults). Each off season (before FA's file, if you are using free agency), I release 8 players per major league team from AA. I proportion the ratio of pitchers to hitters by the same ratio as is carried on the major league rosters and then I divide the batters by 8 and release that many from each position. For pitchers, I use VORP to establish who will be released (highest performers get let go). For batters, I use WAR. Then I schedule an 8-round free agent draft in the major league on the same day I release all the players. Voila!. This way the majors are getting players who are ready (or close) to playing in the majors. I don't use any leagues lower than AA, so newly drafted players usually sit on their reserve rosters until they can play in AA. Make sure the AA league's reserve rosters are set to unlimited. You could add lower leagues affiliated to the AA league, if you wanted, or even have them independent and do this process between each level every year (only the lowest level would be able to drat HS and college players). However, that would force every player to play at every level (except AAA) before reaching the majors, so you'd want some guidelines for who can skip a level. Seems like a lot of work, so I just stick to the AA level. For the affiliated minor league era, before the amateur draft is established, what I find works pretty well is to go ahead and run a draft, but reverse the usual order and let the team with the best record pick first. I really like this and usually stick with it even after 1965. Parity is for the dullards! You could also have a set draft order based on market size or whoever you think should be the dominate teams of the era. I like changing it every year to allow for some surprises. Bad teams CAN become elite teams and vice versa with the best team picks first method, especially with FA active (but even with in the Reserve Era). Last edited by Questdog; 05-02-2014 at 03:07 PM.

05-02-2014, 02:57 PM	#2
Tekneek Major Leagues Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: GA, USA Posts: 455	I will be following along, as I am interested in doing this myself. Once I have the time, I plan on doing something similar.

05-02-2014, 03:01 PM	#5
munstermash Minors (Triple A) Join Date: May 2002 Posts: 261	This is what i am trying to do with my smaller leagues. I do not want a draft, i want teams to find players like they did in the old days.

05-12-2014, 01:22 PM	#12
Tekneek Major Leagues Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: GA, USA Posts: 455	One thing I think I have noticed. I tried simulating a setup where all the imported players went into a fictional independent league. I wanted the MLB teams to purchase those contracts, but I think I have found that under the reserve era rules they will never do so. Over a span of 10 years, they never bought a single contract. Does anyone know if this is intended or a bug?

05-16-2014, 03:11 PM	#14
munstermash Minors (Triple A) Join Date: May 2002 Posts: 261	I have been playing around with this setup 12-team major league with only AAA minors 10-team independent league with a college feeder I have set the purchase contracts in the independent league to 4X what the game setting was. This makes it so only the clubs that make money or larger market teams get the better players. Due to this there seems to be 4 to 5 teams that are better than the others most seasons. In 26 years there is one team that has made the playoffs 12 times but on the flip side only 3 teams are under .500 for the 26 year period. Some of the top picks will get signed right after the draft but many seem to play 2 years in the Indy league before a team signs them. I have one player who played 8 years of Indy ball then finally got signed by a big league club. On the other side you see some veterans go to the Indy league to play a couple of more years when a MLB club will not sign them. I might try a few more Indy teams in my next test.

05-28-2014, 11:39 AM	#15
cmaug Major Leagues Join Date: Sep 2012 Posts: 344	I found this thread while doing some research for a league set up and I have a question (or 2)... How many lower level teams do you need to sustain a major league that acquires players nearly exclusively by purchasing contracts? Is it similar to the ratios that you use for feeder teams? I understand that I would need to allow for appropriate cash maximum to allow for the purchase of enough players. Anything else that has come up over time?