Soliciting Feedback for League idea

lpoulas · 04-29-2002, 07:49 AM

I have been running a league for the past few years (started using Tony Larussa III and evolved to DMB V8) and it is based upon the single greatest seasons of all time - Joe D 1937, Dwight Gooden 1984, Hank Greenberg 1938, etc. etc. etc. The idea was simply to draft the best team you could from a player pool of about 1500 of the greatest seasons. This was not a keeper or career league, and to keep it interesting and fresh I would change the initial draft style each year. The first year you could pick any player you wanted provided you kept to a salary cap, the next year I used a rating and ranking list for the draft, then a live draft. The one constant was that I always used the best possible seasons, as apposed to a career average, or a single season for an entire league.

A few weeks ago I heard about OOTP4 and the idea for a career style league intrigued me a great deal. But, I wanted to stick to the basic idea that my other leagues were founded upon - the single seasons of the best of the best to ever play the game. However, the career mode added a new factor to deal with - age. Many of the greatest seasons of all time came at the twilight of a players career - see Barry Bonds 2001. I want Bonds in the league, but I don't want him to retire in a year or two. One reason is I want him for 15+ years and the other is the more players retire, the quicker the fictional players are needed. I don't like the idea of mixing real and fictional players.

Here's what I did. I filtered through the Lahman database and came up with 3500 (or so) players to start a league with. In order to combat the old-age factor I adjusted everyone's age to 20 or 21 and made their season the year 2000 - only to make it easier to import (bulk vs. one-at-a-time). Since 3500 players are too many to have an initial draft with (you can do it but I didn't want my minors filled with legitimate major-league caliber players, just to have them deteriorate for lack of playing time. Don Mattingly ends up with a horrible career because he is stuck behind Lou Gehrig for example), I narrowed down the initial draft to 1300 players.

I did this randomly (using MS Excel's Random Number Generator). My initial draft was 1050 "rostered" players (30 teams, 35 man rosters) and 150 undrafted free agents. Some of the greats didn't make the initial draft - Walter Johnson and Joe Morgan to name two of them. I then will run/manage the first season. The balance of the players are left off the Season 1 rosters and will be available in the amateur drafts for future seasons.

For the amateur draft at the beginning of season 2, I will add an additional 240 (of the 3500) from the Lahman database to draft . This will continue year after year until the 3500 are gone. The main purpose of this is to avoid having fictional players created. I am toying around with having the amateur draft every other season to extend the career league. An amateur draft year after year would give me 10 seasons, and an amateur draft every other year would give m 20 season. It is also important to note that it has already been determined which players will be available in each upcoming amateur draft.

It will look like this:

Year 1 - 1300 players available for drafting (this will leave 150 players in a "Free Agent" pool
Year 3 - 240 rookies dispersed and available in the amateur draft
Year 5 - 240 rookies
Year 7 - 240 rookies
.
.
.
Year 21 - 240 Rookies (appx)

Can you imagine having the first draft pick knowing Babe Ruth is available in next spring's draft! Unbelievable. The options are practically endless for trying to obtain him.

I posted this to get some feedback to see if anyone thinks this is a good idea/bad idea. Am I missing something? Any further ideas to make it better?

Thanks and kudos ANYONE who read this entire post,
Lou

Jon277 · 04-29-2002, 07:52 AM

GREAT IDEA.

ace of spades · 04-29-2002, 08:00 AM

I like your idea, sounds very interesting. The only initial problem that I saw with it is that if its ratings are based on stats, you may run into a problem. You take Bonds 73 homeruns for example, his HR rating would be about a 14 or 15, given that a 10 HR rating should get you 40 give or take in a season. Babe Ruth's HR rating on this scale, given the other players in his era should be about 25 or 30, given that a 10 HR(rating) hitter in Ruth's early career would be 15 to 20 HR's. Its the old problem of comparing eras. I do like your idea, I think you should go with it and post a journal showing Homerun and K rankings etc. Good Luck.

blmeanie · 04-29-2002, 08:11 AM

Question : does the database allow for 3 digit totals for a season in HR? (lol) There is the possibility for some monster years there as players get better from the artificial 20/21 age point. Sounds like fun.

lpoulas · 04-29-2002, 08:23 AM

Good question. I really don't know!

Leads me to some questions as well -

Will the players really continue to get better year over year?
Will the fact that both the pitchers and batters are getting better negate the increases?
Maybe I should start the players at age 25?
"...and where the hell am I?"

Beach Boy · 04-29-2002, 08:42 AM

Interesting concept. My only question is this:
Since this is a league of best-ever hitters against best-ever pitchers, would the players really "develop"? Assuming that Babe Ruth and Barry Bonds hit a lot of their homers off bad pitchers, won't their totals be much lower facing the best pitchers ever? And vice versa: Won't Bob Gibson get a lot fewer wins and a much higher ERA facing the best hitters ever? And if that's so -- if all the hitters and pitchers wind up with much more mediocre seasons than they actually had historically -- would that affect their future "development"?

lpoulas · 04-29-2002, 08:47 AM

In my few test seasons so far, it is slightly more a hitters league than a pitcher's league. I haven't advanced in the "career" mode yet, and this is based upon single season play. I am trying to tweak the era/league totals screen to have a good statistical output.

So far the lead league in HR's has been about 65 and the best starting pitcher has a 2.20 or so ERA. Highest pitcher strikeouts is 240-250.

The overall runs scored are too high though - 10-15 people knock in over 140 - so there is still some tweaking before the league takes off.

YoungEagle · 05-01-2002, 11:20 AM

I'm an old Tony LaRussa player myself!

I've been looking for a league like this. Chief Wahoo had a roster set out, but evidently it isn't available for downloading right now. Was wondering if you could send me your league file?

william_schaible@hotmail.com

lpoulas · 05-02-2002, 06:14 AM

I'll send it tonight, don't have it on my work laptop.

YoungEagle · 05-02-2002, 06:27 AM

Thank you in advance.

This league sounds really interesting. I started a similar project. Grabbed the Lahman database, wrote some queries in Access to sort for the players with the best years. Got to the point where I was going to make their best year the year 2000 and change the birthdates to the year 1975... But you beat me to it.

04-29-2002, 07:49 AM	#1
lpoulas Minors (Single A) Join Date: Apr 2002 Location: Jersey Posts: 75	Soliciting Feedback for League idea I have been running a league for the past few years (started using Tony Larussa III and evolved to DMB V8) and it is based upon the single greatest seasons of all time - Joe D 1937, Dwight Gooden 1984, Hank Greenberg 1938, etc. etc. etc. The idea was simply to draft the best team you could from a player pool of about 1500 of the greatest seasons. This was not a keeper or career league, and to keep it interesting and fresh I would change the initial draft style each year. The first year you could pick any player you wanted provided you kept to a salary cap, the next year I used a rating and ranking list for the draft, then a live draft. The one constant was that I always used the best possible seasons, as apposed to a career average, or a single season for an entire league. A few weeks ago I heard about OOTP4 and the idea for a career style league intrigued me a great deal. But, I wanted to stick to the basic idea that my other leagues were founded upon - the single seasons of the best of the best to ever play the game. However, the career mode added a new factor to deal with - age. Many of the greatest seasons of all time came at the twilight of a players career - see Barry Bonds 2001. I want Bonds in the league, but I don't want him to retire in a year or two. One reason is I want him for 15+ years and the other is the more players retire, the quicker the fictional players are needed. I don't like the idea of mixing real and fictional players. Here's what I did. I filtered through the Lahman database and came up with 3500 (or so) players to start a league with. In order to combat the old-age factor I adjusted everyone's age to 20 or 21 and made their season the year 2000 - only to make it easier to import (bulk vs. one-at-a-time). Since 3500 players are too many to have an initial draft with (you can do it but I didn't want my minors filled with legitimate major-league caliber players, just to have them deteriorate for lack of playing time. Don Mattingly ends up with a horrible career because he is stuck behind Lou Gehrig for example), I narrowed down the initial draft to 1300 players. I did this randomly (using MS Excel's Random Number Generator). My initial draft was 1050 "rostered" players (30 teams, 35 man rosters) and 150 undrafted free agents. Some of the greats didn't make the initial draft - Walter Johnson and Joe Morgan to name two of them. I then will run/manage the first season. The balance of the players are left off the Season 1 rosters and will be available in the amateur drafts for future seasons. For the amateur draft at the beginning of season 2, I will add an additional 240 (of the 3500) from the Lahman database to draft . This will continue year after year until the 3500 are gone. The main purpose of this is to avoid having fictional players created. I am toying around with having the amateur draft every other season to extend the career league. An amateur draft year after year would give me 10 seasons, and an amateur draft every other year would give m 20 season. It is also important to note that it has already been determined which players will be available in each upcoming amateur draft. It will look like this: Year 1 - 1300 players available for drafting (this will leave 150 players in a "Free Agent" pool Year 3 - 240 rookies dispersed and available in the amateur draft Year 5 - 240 rookies Year 7 - 240 rookies . . . Year 21 - 240 Rookies (appx) Can you imagine having the first draft pick knowing Babe Ruth is available in next spring's draft! Unbelievable. The options are practically endless for trying to obtain him. I posted this to get some feedback to see if anyone thinks this is a good idea/bad idea. Am I missing something? Any further ideas to make it better? Thanks and kudos ANYONE who read this entire post, Lou __________________ Commissioner, <a href="http://www.geocities.com/lpoulas/ATB.html" target="_blank">All Time Baseball</a>

04-29-2002, 07:52 AM	#2
Jon277 Minors (Double A) Join Date: Apr 2002 Location: Rhode Island Posts: 158	GREAT IDEA. __________________ Jon Pass

04-29-2002, 08:11 AM	#4
blmeanie All Star Starter Join Date: Dec 2001 Location: Atlanta Posts: 1,044	Question : does the database allow for 3 digit totals for a season in HR? (lol) There is the possibility for some monster years there as players get better from the artificial 20/21 age point. Sounds like fun. __________________ blmeanie email me at blmeanie Above link works for some email client programs but not all, email me at blmeanie33@earthlink.net

04-29-2002, 08:23 AM	#5
lpoulas Minors (Single A) Join Date: Apr 2002 Location: Jersey Posts: 75	Good question. I really don't know! Leads me to some questions as well - Will the players really continue to get better year over year? Will the fact that both the pitchers and batters are getting better negate the increases? Maybe I should start the players at age 25? "...and where the hell am I?" __________________ Commissioner, <a href="http://www.geocities.com/lpoulas/ATB.html" target="_blank">All Time Baseball</a>

04-29-2002, 08:47 AM	#7
lpoulas Minors (Single A) Join Date: Apr 2002 Location: Jersey Posts: 75	In my few test seasons so far, it is slightly more a hitters league than a pitcher's league. I haven't advanced in the "career" mode yet, and this is based upon single season play. I am trying to tweak the era/league totals screen to have a good statistical output. So far the lead league in HR's has been about 65 and the best starting pitcher has a 2.20 or so ERA. Highest pitcher strikeouts is 240-250. The overall runs scored are too high though - 10-15 people knock in over 140 - so there is still some tweaking before the league takes off. __________________ Commissioner, <a href="http://www.geocities.com/lpoulas/ATB.html" target="_blank">All Time Baseball</a>

04-29-2002, 08:00 AM	#3
ace of spades Minors (Rookie Ball) Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: Center Field Bleachers, Old Tiger Stadium Posts: 49	I like your idea, sounds very interesting. The only initial problem that I saw with it is that if its ratings are based on stats, you may run into a problem. You take Bonds 73 homeruns for example, his HR rating would be about a 14 or 15, given that a 10 HR rating should get you 40 give or take in a season. Babe Ruth's HR rating on this scale, given the other players in his era should be about 25 or 30, given that a 10 HR(rating) hitter in Ruth's early career would be 15 to 20 HR's. Its the old problem of comparing eras. I do like your idea, I think you should go with it and post a journal showing Homerun and K rankings etc. Good Luck.

04-29-2002, 08:42 AM	#6
Beach Boy Minors (Rookie Ball) Join Date: Feb 2002 Location: Virginia Beach, Va. Posts: 49	Interesting concept. My only question is this: Since this is a league of best-ever hitters against best-ever pitchers, would the players really "develop"? Assuming that Babe Ruth and Barry Bonds hit a lot of their homers off bad pitchers, won't their totals be much lower facing the best pitchers ever? And vice versa: Won't Bob Gibson get a lot fewer wins and a much higher ERA facing the best hitters ever? And if that's so -- if all the hitters and pitchers wind up with much more mediocre seasons than they actually had historically -- would that affect their future "development"?

05-01-2002, 11:20 AM	#8
YoungEagle Major Leagues Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: Wayne, MI Posts: 364	I'm an old Tony LaRussa player myself! I've been looking for a league like this. Chief Wahoo had a roster set out, but evidently it isn't available for downloading right now. Was wondering if you could send me your league file? william_schaible@hotmail.com

05-02-2002, 06:14 AM	#9
lpoulas Minors (Single A) Join Date: Apr 2002 Location: Jersey Posts: 75	I'll send it tonight, don't have it on my work laptop. __________________ Commissioner, <a href="http://www.geocities.com/lpoulas/ATB.html" target="_blank">All Time Baseball</a>

05-02-2002, 06:27 AM	#10
YoungEagle Major Leagues Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: Wayne, MI Posts: 364	Thank you in advance. This league sounds really interesting. I started a similar project. Grabbed the Lahman database, wrote some queries in Access to sort for the players with the best years. Got to the point where I was going to make their best year the year 2000 and change the birthdates to the year 1975... But you beat me to it.