All-Time League

hefalumps · 03-08-2007, 04:08 PM

I was daydreaming the other day and thought up an idea that I'm sure other people have thought about at one point or another. I think it would be really neat to have an "All-Time" league. It would be a league that exists outside of space-time (for all you sci-fi nerds out there, myself included), where the greatest players in franchise history play on the same team. Imagine Jeter, DiMaggio, Boggs, Mantle, Berra, and Clemens all playing on the same team.

Obviously setting this up would be tedious work, as each player would need to be hand-picked. I'm wondering, from the beta testers, would doing something like this be possible in OOTP 2007? I would want to import each player individually from a different year (would probably choose their best year), so basically every player would be in their prime even though the calendar year is 2007. I'm sure I've seen other people on this board ask if something like this could be done, but I thought I'd bring it up again - just in case.

Now, I'm not sure what would happen as years passed and players started getting older and retiring. Maybe you import enough players to fill a minor league "reserve roster" so the league can go at least 5-10 years before becoming completely filled with fictional rookies. Or maybe I'd just start over every five years and try something different - maybe turning on trades and free agency to let some of the all-time greats try other teams. Or maybe OOTP still has a "replay" mode that just lets you replay the same season over and over - who knows?

Anyway, just wanted to share the idea and find out if it would even be possible in OOTP 2007 before I start getting my hopes up.

Bluenoser · 03-08-2007, 04:19 PM

You can import individual players into OOTP.

However if you import 1927 Babe Ruth to the 1996 Yankees, don't ecpect to get the same stats from him that he had 27. Importing players into different eras won't give you the same results.

Why not just import greatest teams from certain eras? Might be close to what you want to do.

kagnew35 · 03-08-2007, 04:26 PM

Been thinkin bot this kind of league for years. I envision players "belongiong" to the team that they came up with or were drafted by, so keep ur hands off boggs, ruth, lyle and all the others that came up with red sox

my red sox team:

C fisk
1B Yaz
2B doerr
3B boggs-collins
SS nomar
LF williams
CF speaker
Rf ruth

SP's Young, clemens, smokey joe wood, schilling, dutch leonard
RP's wilbur wood, stanley, mcdermott, lyle, radatz

bench rice, lynn, evans in of, petrocelli, malzone, collins pesky if's
white, c

extra pitchers, carl mays, ciccotte, hurst, parnell

hefalumps · 03-08-2007, 04:26 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BruceM

Why not just import greatest teams from certain eras? Might be close to what you want to do.

It's close, and I've thought about that as well, but it's not quite what I was looking for. Although I could try importing some of the greatest teams, drop them all into the Free Agent pool, and put together all-time teams that way. Will probably just take a little tinkering to figure out the best way to go about it.

hefalumps · 03-08-2007, 04:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kagnew35

Been thinkin bot this kind of league for years. I envision players "belongiong" to the team that they came up with or were drafted by, so keep ur hands off boggs, ruth, lyle and all the others that came up with red sox

Another good idea... I've thought about building a league like that too. So the Orioles would still have Mussina and Schilling (although I think Schilling actually came up with the Red Sox, so never mind).

One problem with my all-time idea is the D-rays and D-backs - they don't have a lot of players to choose from. Boggs has been mentioned now in both the Yankees and Red Sox, but he's also arguably the best 3B that's played for Tampa. Who else would be Tampa's 3B? Vinny Castilla? Nah, if he was going to make a team, he should be on the Rockies. So I might have to eliminate the two most recent expansion teams until they grow some of their own all-time greats.

kagnew35 · 03-08-2007, 04:31 PM

Think i member talkin to garlon bout this and he was doing an all time team db, not sure if he ever finished it.

Exodor · 03-08-2007, 04:52 PM

I'm building a league for 2007 with a similar but different idea.

I took the Lahman main excel file, threw a random number generator in and put 23 random players on each team (I used the current major league structure). I imported each player in their first full season of MLB play - so most of them are young.

Each team also got two "icons" - one pitcher, one position player - guys that *I* think of when I think of the team.

I grew up in the 80s, so teams got lots of 80's players.

My Royals got Brett and Saberhagen.

The Twins got Pucket.

etc.

I know that importing players from the entire history of MLB into a league with modern-era settings will produce weird results and I really don't care. It's going to be fun to take my random Royals against the rest of the league. I have a feeling the first season will produce a few 30 game winners (the Indians got Walter Johnson!) and probably a .400 hitter or two.

disposableheros · 03-09-2007, 01:27 PM

this will take a little work to do it right (mod a DB to neutralize the stats), but it can be done.

Claymore · 03-09-2007, 01:47 PM

I'm a huge fan of the all-time league as well, and am somewhat sad that OOTP doesn really do it all that well still (Puresim still supports the feature better in last years version than the new ootp will).

What I'd like to see is the ability to import players from any year, have the program normalize their stats automatically, depending on the league year you want, and the ability to have continuing leagues where players don't age, but can accumulate yearly stats and sign contracts (as an option). I dont want to worry about agting (its a Hall of Fame league, like Field of Dream, Markus, buy the movie!) without the cornfield. I have been running such a league using Earl WEaver Baseball, the problem is only the modern (for the 80's) for supported. Old Time Basseball from Stromfront (yep the same guys who did Tony Larussa) allowed you to normalize stats across eras, but that was long, long ago...

I'd really like to see this support come into ootp...

MadMax58 · 03-10-2007, 07:57 PM

I've done this same idea before in other games of the past(including a dice game I made as a kid), and started doing it for OOTP 2k6.

The way I always liked to set it up was to take the best 5 seasons for each player & average it for their "current rating". I would literally average everything about the 5 years, including age. This is how I would arrive at what age/year to consider their import year. So where Ralph Kiner may be young after the average, Barry Bonds would be a bit older in the league. I think it makes things more balanced overall, especially if you plan to run the league over many years & just draft fictional players.

For players that played on multiple teams...I've always gone this route.

(*)Player who's best 5 seasons were split between teams go to the team they had a majority of those 5 seasons with.
(*)If players do not have a majority(i.e. 2 teams for 2 years, 1 team for 1 year, etc.), I break the tie by assigning them to the team I feel is going to be weaker at their position.
(*)I try to put stars next to players who could go elsewhere, especially when I first start assigning players to teams, just in case I have some 3 or more team affecting tiebreakers.
(*)Exceptions do happen, especially for players who had a more nostalgic history with a given team...so I make those exceptions. Hey...it's my league, I can do that. Many might think its stupid, but I always put McGwire on the Cardinals, not the A's...the roids...I mean stats dont lie.
(*) I've seen some neat approaches to the modern expansion teams, like Negro League alltimers, Japanese League alltimers, etc. But I've always just allocated expansion teams with the castoffs of the other teams, and I assign them in order of divisional then geographical alignment proximity. So the Devil Rays get Yankees & Red Sox castoffs...but the Diamondbacks & Rockies split castoffs. I try to split them up so each of the expansion teams can field a reasonable team compared to the rest of the league.
(*) Oh...last but not least...I am a National League, no DH baseball purist normally...but not for this league. It breaks my heart to watch a pitcher hit instead of one of the Yankee sluggers who might be the odd man out.

I was somebody who put some seemingly strange requests out there after last year's version, just to make this scenario easier. Markus did add a few things to make it better, but I'm sure it will still be quite a bit of work to get it to your liking. If I ever do get it finished, I'll be happy to share the quickstart with others. Just that whole having a career & family thing keeps getting in the way of my progress.

tycho32 · 03-10-2007, 08:08 PM

I currently run a league like this in Pursim but will probably be switching to OOTP. I am curious what year do most of you think would be best to have this league take place in?

GForce · 03-10-2007, 08:20 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by hefalumps

I was daydreaming the other day and thought up an idea that I'm sure other people have thought about at one point or another. I think it would be really neat to have an "All-Time" league. It would be a league that exists outside of space-time (for all you sci-fi nerds out there, myself included), where the greatest players in franchise history play on the same team. Imagine Jeter, DiMaggio, Boggs, Mantle, Berra, and Clemens all playing on the same team.

Obviously setting this up would be tedious work, as each player would need to be hand-picked. I'm wondering, from the beta testers, would doing something like this be possible in OOTP 2007? I would want to import each player individually from a different year (would probably choose their best year), so basically every player would be in their prime even though the calendar year is 2007. I'm sure I've seen other people on this board ask if something like this could be done, but I thought I'd bring it up again - just in case.

Now, I'm not sure what would happen as years passed and players started getting older and retiring. Maybe you import enough players to fill a minor league "reserve roster" so the league can go at least 5-10 years before becoming completely filled with fictional rookies. Or maybe I'd just start over every five years and try something different - maybe turning on trades and free agency to let some of the all-time greats try other teams. Or maybe OOTP still has a "replay" mode that just lets you replay the same season over and over - who knows?

Anyway, just wanted to share the idea and find out if it would even be possible in OOTP 2007 before I start getting my hopes up.

I'm doing a bit differently than you (and it's been a LONG, oft-interrupted process), but I have Franchise Stars roster set I put together that I've resumed updating and should have out sometime in April.

GH

StyxNCa · 03-11-2007, 12:58 AM

Automatic normalizing would be super!

Claymore · 03-11-2007, 08:16 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by StyxNCa

Automatic normalizing would be super!

/agreed!

Mr. Capo · 03-11-2007, 10:50 AM

I love cross-era play. It's my favorite way to play OOTP, and previous games I've played. I like using A-G's random debut DB.

Years ago I wrote a whole routine that normalized cross-era players to any given year. Spent a lot of time on it. I thought it would be really cool. And when I implemented it, you know what? It sucked. It worked just like it was supposed to, but it wasn't any fun. Cobb hitting more HRs than triples isnt' Cobb. All that's left is the name and picture.

To me, cross-era play works just fine without normalizing, as long as you don't try to use pre-1900 guys. Deadball stars who probably batted third become leadoff hitters and still lead the league in batting, while modern guys bat cleanup and vie for the HR lead. Deadball pitchers' gaudy stats are held in check by the game's use of league totals (well, maybe a little tweaking here of league totals helps).

Much of the FUN in cross-era play comes from differences in stats resulting from the different styles of play. To me, flattening this out robs them of their personalities, and they might as well be fictional players.

MadMax58 · 03-11-2007, 11:41 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mr. Capo

I love cross-era play. It's my favorite way to play OOTP, and previous games I've played. I like using A-G's random debut DB.

Years ago I wrote a whole routine that normalized cross-era players to any given year. Spent a lot of time on it. I thought it would be really cool. And when I implemented it, you know what? It sucked. It worked just like it was supposed to, but it wasn't any fun. Cobb hitting more HRs than triples isnt' Cobb. All that's left is the name and picture.

To me, cross-era play works just fine without normalizing, as long as you don't try to use pre-1900 guys. Deadball stars who probably batted third become leadoff hitters and still lead the league in batting, while modern guys bat cleanup and vie for the HR lead. Deadball pitchers' gaudy stats are held in check by the game's use of league totals (well, maybe a little tweaking here of league totals helps).

Much of the FUN in cross-era play comes from differences in stats resulting from the different styles of play. To me, flattening this out robs them of their personalities, and they might as well be fictional players.

I've come to the exact same conclusions, for the same reasons as you.

Your example of Cobb is precisely what I dont like about normalization. Yes it's true...Cobb in an equal setting would have much more HR's in comparison to today's stars or mediocre power hitters than his stats would indicate...but 25-30 HR's is not what I think of when I think of Ty Cobb. And certainly, thats what normalization would do.

Generally, I try not to use too many pitchers pre-1920...but I make certain obvious exceptions (Cy, Mathewson, Alexander, Johnson, etc.).

03-08-2007, 04:08 PM	#1
hefalumps All Star Starter Join Date: Mar 2003 Posts: 1,380	All-Time League I was daydreaming the other day and thought up an idea that I'm sure other people have thought about at one point or another. I think it would be really neat to have an "All-Time" league. It would be a league that exists outside of space-time (for all you sci-fi nerds out there, myself included), where the greatest players in franchise history play on the same team. Imagine Jeter, DiMaggio, Boggs, Mantle, Berra, and Clemens all playing on the same team. Obviously setting this up would be tedious work, as each player would need to be hand-picked. I'm wondering, from the beta testers, would doing something like this be possible in OOTP 2007? I would want to import each player individually from a different year (would probably choose their best year), so basically every player would be in their prime even though the calendar year is 2007. I'm sure I've seen other people on this board ask if something like this could be done, but I thought I'd bring it up again - just in case. Now, I'm not sure what would happen as years passed and players started getting older and retiring. Maybe you import enough players to fill a minor league "reserve roster" so the league can go at least 5-10 years before becoming completely filled with fictional rookies. Or maybe I'd just start over every five years and try something different - maybe turning on trades and free agency to let some of the all-time greats try other teams. Or maybe OOTP still has a "replay" mode that just lets you replay the same season over and over - who knows? Anyway, just wanted to share the idea and find out if it would even be possible in OOTP 2007 before I start getting my hopes up.

03-08-2007, 04:26 PM	#3
kagnew35 All Star Starter Join Date: Dec 2005 Location: Las Vegas, Nev Posts: 1,965	Been thinkin bot this kind of league for years. I envision players "belongiong" to the team that they came up with or were drafted by, so keep ur hands off boggs, ruth, lyle and all the others that came up with red sox my red sox team: C fisk 1B Yaz 2B doerr 3B boggs-collins SS nomar LF williams CF speaker Rf ruth SP's Young, clemens, smokey joe wood, schilling, dutch leonard RP's wilbur wood, stanley, mcdermott, lyle, radatz bench rice, lynn, evans in of, petrocelli, malzone, collins pesky if's white, c extra pitchers, carl mays, ciccotte, hurst, parnell __________________ Elder Statesman of the Board http://www.soxxcountry.com/ site with FaceGen Central and Duffys Tavern Live OOTP Chat Room

03-08-2007, 04:31 PM	#6
kagnew35 All Star Starter Join Date: Dec 2005 Location: Las Vegas, Nev Posts: 1,965	Think i member talkin to garlon bout this and he was doing an all time team db, not sure if he ever finished it. __________________ Elder Statesman of the Board http://www.soxxcountry.com/ site with FaceGen Central and Duffys Tavern Live OOTP Chat Room

03-08-2007, 04:52 PM	#7
Exodor Major Leagues Join Date: Apr 2005 Location: Portland, OR Posts: 481	I'm building a league for 2007 with a similar but different idea. I took the Lahman main excel file, threw a random number generator in and put 23 random players on each team (I used the current major league structure). I imported each player in their first full season of MLB play - so most of them are young. Each team also got two "icons" - one pitcher, one position player - guys that I think of when I think of the team. I grew up in the 80s, so teams got lots of 80's players. My Royals got Brett and Saberhagen. The Twins got Pucket. etc. I know that importing players from the entire history of MLB into a league with modern-era settings will produce weird results and I really don't care. It's going to be fun to take my random Royals against the rest of the league. I have a feeling the first season will produce a few 30 game winners (the Indians got Walter Johnson!) and probably a .400 hitter or two. Last edited by Exodor; 03-08-2007 at 04:54 PM.

03-09-2007, 01:27 PM	#8
disposableheros Hall Of Famer Join Date: Jun 2004 Posts: 4,332	this will take a little work to do it right (mod a DB to neutralize the stats), but it can be done. __________________ 2 Wild Cards, 11 Division Champs, 4 League Champs, 3 World Champs, and 3 Best GM awards Baseball Maelstrom - New York Mets - 180-149 .547 Corporate League Baseball - Coke Buzz - 889-649 .578 Western Hemisphere Baseball League - Santiago Saints - 672-793 .459 Record - 2428-2271 .517

03-08-2007, 04:19 PM	#2
Bluenoser Hall Of Famer Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: In The Moment Posts: 14,224	You can import individual players into OOTP. However if you import 1927 Babe Ruth to the 1996 Yankees, don't ecpect to get the same stats from him that he had 27. Importing players into different eras won't give you the same results. Why not just import greatest teams from certain eras? Might be close to what you want to do.

03-09-2007, 01:47 PM	#9
Claymore All Star Reserve Join Date: Jun 2005 Posts: 764	I'm a huge fan of the all-time league as well, and am somewhat sad that OOTP doesn really do it all that well still (Puresim still supports the feature better in last years version than the new ootp will). What I'd like to see is the ability to import players from any year, have the program normalize their stats automatically, depending on the league year you want, and the ability to have continuing leagues where players don't age, but can accumulate yearly stats and sign contracts (as an option). I dont want to worry about agting (its a Hall of Fame league, like Field of Dream, Markus, buy the movie!) without the cornfield. I have been running such a league using Earl WEaver Baseball, the problem is only the modern (for the 80's) for supported. Old Time Basseball from Stromfront (yep the same guys who did Tony Larussa) allowed you to normalize stats across eras, but that was long, long ago... I'd really like to see this support come into ootp...

03-10-2007, 07:57 PM	#10
MadMax58 Minors (Triple A) Join Date: May 2006 Posts: 266	I've done this same idea before in other games of the past(including a dice game I made as a kid), and started doing it for OOTP 2k6. The way I always liked to set it up was to take the best 5 seasons for each player & average it for their "current rating". I would literally average everything about the 5 years, including age. This is how I would arrive at what age/year to consider their import year. So where Ralph Kiner may be young after the average, Barry Bonds would be a bit older in the league. I think it makes things more balanced overall, especially if you plan to run the league over many years & just draft fictional players. For players that played on multiple teams...I've always gone this route. ()Player who's best 5 seasons were split between teams go to the team they had a majority of those 5 seasons with. ()If players do not have a majority(i.e. 2 teams for 2 years, 1 team for 1 year, etc.), I break the tie by assigning them to the team I feel is going to be weaker at their position. ()I try to put stars next to players who could go elsewhere, especially when I first start assigning players to teams, just in case I have some 3 or more team affecting tiebreakers. ()Exceptions do happen, especially for players who had a more nostalgic history with a given team...so I make those exceptions. Hey...it's my league, I can do that. Many might think its stupid, but I always put McGwire on the Cardinals, not the A's...the roids...I mean stats dont lie. () I've seen some neat approaches to the modern expansion teams, like Negro League alltimers, Japanese League alltimers, etc. But I've always just allocated expansion teams with the castoffs of the other teams, and I assign them in order of divisional then geographical alignment proximity. So the Devil Rays get Yankees & Red Sox castoffs...but the Diamondbacks & Rockies split castoffs. I try to split them up so each of the expansion teams can field a reasonable team compared to the rest of the league. () Oh...last but not least...I am a National League, no DH baseball purist normally...but not for this league. It breaks my heart to watch a pitcher hit instead of one of the Yankee sluggers who might be the odd man out. I was somebody who put some seemingly strange requests out there after last year's version, just to make this scenario easier. Markus did add a few things to make it better, but I'm sure it will still be quite a bit of work to get it to your liking. If I ever do get it finished, I'll be happy to share the quickstart with others. Just that whole having a career & family thing keeps getting in the way of my progress. Last edited by MadMax58; 03-10-2007 at 07:58 PM.

03-10-2007, 08:08 PM	#11
tycho32 Minors (Rookie Ball) Join Date: Feb 2007 Posts: 42	I currently run a league like this in Pursim but will probably be switching to OOTP. I am curious what year do most of you think would be best to have this league take place in?

03-11-2007, 12:58 AM	#13
StyxNCa Hall Of Famer Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: Victoria, Texas Posts: 3,136	Automatic normalizing would be super!

03-11-2007, 10:50 AM	#15
Mr. Capo Minors (Triple A) Join Date: Jun 2006 Posts: 240	Normalizing isn't as fun as it seems I love cross-era play. It's my favorite way to play OOTP, and previous games I've played. I like using A-G's random debut DB. Years ago I wrote a whole routine that normalized cross-era players to any given year. Spent a lot of time on it. I thought it would be really cool. And when I implemented it, you know what? It sucked. It worked just like it was supposed to, but it wasn't any fun. Cobb hitting more HRs than triples isnt' Cobb. All that's left is the name and picture. To me, cross-era play works just fine without normalizing, as long as you don't try to use pre-1900 guys. Deadball stars who probably batted third become leadoff hitters and still lead the league in batting, while modern guys bat cleanup and vie for the HR lead. Deadball pitchers' gaudy stats are held in check by the game's use of league totals (well, maybe a little tweaking here of league totals helps). Much of the FUN in cross-era play comes from differences in stats resulting from the different styles of play. To me, flattening this out robs them of their personalities, and they might as well be fictional players.