My Big Beautiful Baseball Bash Project in OOTP26

[silvam14]

Probably should be in Dynasty Forum, but what the hell.... I've decided to take on a huge project trying to find the sole survivor in a tournament involving every team from 1901 to 2024

Here is a brief synopsis and status

[Sweed]

This will be fun to follow. It will be interesting to see how teams from different eras play using 80's strategy settings.

Look forward to seeing how the teams of my youth perform. The threepeat A's teams of the early 70's. The Big Red Machine teams of the mid 70's. The Orioles of the late 60's and early 70's with all of that pitching. Moving onto my early adulthood and my all time one year favorite team the '84 Cubs. You are into bracket play, how have these teams fared?

[silvam14]

Originally Posted by Sweed

This will be fun to follow. It will be interesting to see how teams from different eras play using 80's strategy settings.

Look forward to seeing how the teams of my youth perform. The threepeat A's teams of the early 70's. The Big Red Machine teams of the mid 70's. The Orioles of the late 60's and early 70's with all of that pitching. Moving onto my early adulthood and my all time one year favorite team the '84 Cubs. You are into bracket play, how have these teams fared?

Yes I am into my brackets. I just finished bracket 8 last night. the 1936 Senators punched their ticket to the final 32.

This is really a lot of fun once each bracket is setup. There are big upsets and cinderella stories like the 2000 Orioles. Ill post the results if I can find a way to present these

[silvam14]

Going to be starting Bracket 8 soon. 1975 Reds Incoming!

[SGJ2]

Originally Posted by silvam14

Probably should be in Dynasty Forum, but what the hell.... I've decided to take on a huge project trying to find the sole survivor in a tournament involving every team from 1901 to 2024

Here is a brief synopsis and status

I have been fortunate enough to follow this along from the start, and have to say it has been incredible to follow. From how it was setup and now as the brackets are starting to be completed.

I just profiled a recent game from the last bracket and it is on my Substack page (free to subscribe no paying for anything)
https://sgjjamie124699.substack.com/...sh-bedlam-2218

Also SilvaM was kind enough to do an article on his Big Beautiful Baseball Bash for my Sports Games Journal (also completely free to download
https://www.facebook.com/groups/729168249217043/

Also that issue of The Sports Games Journal has an article about a What IF 1970 project I am doing with OOTP

[Bobfather]

I played Stra-O-Matic in the Brockton, MA area. We called it the Brockton Area Strat .
Which became BASH. Just the title of this post made me think of that.

[Bobbyraz49]

Very cool idea. Will be keeping an eye on your progress. Thanks for sharing.

[Highlander]

Always like these kind of things. I did one awhile back where I had teams play full seasons against each other to narrow it down but ran into trouble with the older teams not having enough pitching to play in a more modern era. When they only have 4 starters and 1 or 2 relievers....some of whom barely pitched.....things got pretty rough.

Believe it or not, the team that won my whole competition was the 1943 Cardinals. The 1988 Mets, 1976 Reds and 1953 Dodgers were 3 of the other best ones. The pitching of that Cardinals team was unbelievable. They had some seasons I ran where they scored the least number of runs in the whole league but still came in first because they gave up so few runs themselves. I'll be interested to see how the teams that excelled in my sim do in yours!

[Highlander]

Should have added this to my last post, but how are you dealing with guys who played great partial seasons? I know you can make guys under a certain number of AB or IP worse in the game setup- do you have a set number you are using? I ran into that when I did mine where guys like Shane Spencer on the 98 Yankees or Gregg Jefferies and Jeff Innis on the 88 Mets really had huge seasons because of very limited real life playing time. I was playing out full seasons, though, so it was much more of a factor than it might be doing tournament style with a lot fewer games.

[silvam14]

Originally Posted by Highlander

Should have added this to my last post, but how are you dealing with guys who played great partial seasons? I know you can make guys under a certain number of AB or IP worse in the game setup- do you have a set number you are using? I ran into that when I did mine where guys like Shane Spencer on the 98 Yankees or Gregg Jefferies and Jeff Innis on the 88 Mets really had huge seasons because of very limited real life playing time. I was playing out full seasons, though, so it was much more of a factor than it might be doing tournament style with a lot fewer games.

I'm just using the end of season rosters and let the computer figure out the lineups. It does a good job of using the right players with a few quirky exceptions

[silvam14]

Well, in Bracket 8, The Big Red Machine punched their ticket to the final 32 with a 2-0 sweep of the surprising 1968 Phillies.

Pete Rose, who was having a terrible tournament up to the final, went 6-9 in the last two games to earn series MVP

[silvam14]

Celebration

[silvam14]

Series MVP in Action

[Sweed]

Nice.

[uruguru]

I find it interesting (or suspicious?) that, of the first 8 teams to make the final 32, three of them are pre-1910 teams. I wonder if there is some unexpected craziness in scaling dead-ball era teams to modern league totals.

[spartacus007]

Originally Posted by uruguru

I find it interesting (or suspicious?) that, of the first 8 teams to make the final 32, three of them are pre-1910 teams. I wonder if there is some unexpected craziness in scaling dead-ball era teams to modern league totals.

There were 39 seasons between 1871 and 1910. That's 25% of the total seasons between 1871 and 1910.

So the representation is as close to perfect as it could be.

[uruguru]

Originally Posted by spartacus007

There were 39 seasons between 1871 and 1910. That's 25% of the total seasons between 1871 and 1910.

So the representation is as close to perfect as it could be.

I could be wrong, but I thought it was all of the teams starting in 1901. That would the 1901-1910 teams about 8% of the total teams in the tournament.

[SGJ2]

Originally Posted by uruguru

I could be wrong, but I thought it was all of the teams starting in 1901. That would the 1901-1910 teams about 8% of the total teams in the tournament.

It is 1901-2024. But it is import to note that only 1/4 of the 32 brackets each with 64 teams per bracket have been played. So the make up of the final 32 is far from complete.

Also a team like the 1906 Cubs for example taking one of the spots on paper is not surprising since they won over 70 percent of their regular season games. The 1908 Pirates sometimes get forgotten in the Cubs-Giant part of that season but Pittsburgh won 98 games that year and finished a game out.

All that being said each bracket (of 32) are the size of NCAA Basketball brackets and like those tournaments it is as much about survival as anything else.

Still 1906 Cubs, 1927 Yankees and 1975 Reds all have made it through and are teams that are part of dynasties that would be on just about anyone's top 10 list.

[silvam14]

Update:

The 1979 Pittsburgh Pirates are champions of Bracket 9 defeating the surprising 2012 San Diego Padres in 3 games.

[silvam14]

Bracket 10 Champions! 1938 New York Yankees.

MVP George Selkirk