Daylight Fading: A solo fast-sim dynasty - Page 5

darkcloud4579 · 10-12-2009, 03:15 AM

TEAM MOVES FOR THE 1927 SEASON
Baltimore Blue Wings ---> Bluefield (WV) Jays
Augusta Tiger Cats ----> Dayton (OH) Rens

Damien Walec is on the Pelicans opening day roster. Let's see how much he contributes this year.

darkcloud4579 · 10-12-2009, 04:00 AM

1927 NEW YORK KNIGHTS TEAM PREVIEW
My proudest acquistion came pretty much at the start of my career here. We picked up Brad Blanchard from Williamsport. He was one of three top flight hurlers we acquired from teams in a series of salary dumps, but it became pretty apparently quickly that we wouldn't be able to do the 3 Muskateers deal, because they would've commanded 4/5ths of our payroll, so I shipped them off to other teams and began the process of building the ballclub that had 9 guys on the ML roster when I arrived.

The minor leaguers were pretty barren, save for the few prospects I could manage to peddle off in those early deals.

One of the little known tricks of this league is that minor leaguers get free agency after 3 years. I do that on purpose so teams can't horde FA prospects for cheap, if they wanna horde 'em, they better pay 'em and well, most teams forget or don't.

We're talking the sorts of guys who are slow to develop, who probably won't ever develop or are 23-24 and you're just not sure about 'em.

Well, we munched on a steady diet of these players during the off-season, as there was no other way to fill out our roster.

Among the free agents we signed that weren't in this category, we picked up 15-game winner Roy Moore from Los Angeles as a free agent and 16-game winner Rodrigo Rivera from Cleveland in the same manner. Considering Brad Blanchard is our ace, but won just 13-games on an underachieving Williamsport club last year, we're thinking that we've got a Top 3 that have the makings of something pretty special.

Offensively, there are some proven newcomers coming over via trade or free agency. We're expecting a huge market correction offensively this year, as I was trying to implement some old offensive settings I had laying around from an earlier FOOL iteration and the average league ERA shot up about 3 runs in each league. Given everything has been fairly consistent for the past 100+ years, last year will stand out as an anomaly forever. It's okay, but...I do want to get offense up, as the problem over the past 40-50 years or so, is that players just aren't as good as the ones from the past, so their production isn't where theirs is and so, we've seen a steady decline in the league batting averages and ERA has dropped too.

But that's too much.

But according to last year's stats, we've got 5 100+ RBI guys on our club including 160 RBI guy Woody McCann and 30 HR/150 RBI guy Don Carter.

I was pretty sensitive to the idea of us having the largest payroll in the league, because I never like to do that, because I feel like as a human I shouldn't. But there's something to keep in mind -- I always overpay for talent I want and THREE players account for over $30 million of our payroll. So that number is a bit deceiving.

Ownership sees this as our opportunity to burnish the Knights within the New York faithful. The Gothams have 9 championships, tied with Carolina for #2 on the all-time list, but Carolina has been around since the beginning, the Gothams are 40 years younger.

Meanwhile, the Knights haven't quite established themselves in the city and are looking hard to do so.

A failure to succeed with this club will be another line in a frustration set of problems for this ballclub, so...we're hoping this is the start of something.

Do I think we'll make the playoffs? No. Do I expect to? Yes. We really should, even with so many question mark players in certain spots and a less than sure bullpen.

PREDICTION: 86-76, 2ND PL EAST

darkcloud4579 · 10-12-2009, 04:06 AM

Well...the good news is, we're not in last. Besides that, we're facing off against a very powerful opponent and I never expected us to compete in the east. They're just too good, I should know, I built them that way.

I do think we have the horses to contend for a Wild Card, but it might be just short out of our grip this year, depending on how the 2nd half goes.

Code:

Union League Standings
Eastern Division	W	L	PCT	GB
Miami Amigos		54	33	.621	-
New York Gothams	47	40	.540	7.0
Boston Yanks		45	43	.511	9.5
Philadelphia Quakers	42	43	.494	11.0
Newark Sentinels	33	55	.375	21.5

Central Division	W	L	PCT	GB
Chicago Blue Collars	53	34	.609	-
Minneapolis Millers	48	39	.552	5.0
Eau Claire Paws		37	49	.430	15.5
Cleveland Broncs	37	50	.425	16.0
St. Louis Perfectos	35	53	.398	18.5

Western Division	W	L	PCT	GB
Colorado City Gold Sox	51	36	.586	-
Los Angeles Seraphs	51	36	.586	-
Victoria Cougars	41	45	.477	9.5
Salt Lake City Elders	38	50	.432	13.5
San Francisco Peanuts	35	52	.402	16.0

Presidents League Standings
Eastern Division	W	L	PCT	GB
Bantam Originals	55	31	.640	-
New York Knights	48	39	.552	7.5
Bluefield Jays		47	41	.534	9.0
Chicago Red Caps	40	47	.460	15.5
Williamsport Grays	31	58	.348	25.5

Central Division	W	L	PCT	GB
Toronto Blueshirts	47	38	.553	-
Carolina Wrens		43	43	.500	4.5
Washington Maroons	43	44	.494	5.0
Dayton Rens		41	46	.471	7.0
St. Petersburg Pelicans	38	48	.442	9.5

Western Division	W	L	PCT	GB
Houston Buffalos	54	34	.614	-
Hollister Haymakers	52	36	.591	2.0
Portland Roadrunners	43	45	.489	11.0
Dallas Steers		40	47	.460	13.5
Compton Brothers	37	51	.420	17.0

darkcloud4579 · 10-12-2009, 04:13 AM

Well here are the standings as of the last day of the season, BEFORE the last game is played. Hollister and New York are tied for the PL Wild Card. Hollister is at home against Portland and New York is at home againnnnnnstttt... BANTAM. In real life, Bantam would sit their starters and play the game at half strength, but since this is OOTP, the game won't do anything differently and we'll just have to see what happens.

Code:

Union League Standings
Eastern Division	W	L	PCT	GB
Miami Amigos		96	65	.596	-
Boston Yanks		82	79	.509	14.0
Philadelphia Quakers	82	79	.509	14.0
New York Gothams	79	82	.491	17.0
Newark Sentinels	62	99	.385	34.0

Central Division	W	L	PCT	GB
Chicago Blue Collars	98	63	.609	-
Minneapolis Millers	85	76	.528	13.0
St. Louis Perfectos	75	86	.466	23.0
Eau Claire Paws		69	92	.429	29.0
Cleveland Broncs	67	94	.416	31.0

Western Division	W	L	PCT	GB
Los Angeles Seraphs	92	69	.571	-
Colorado City Gold Sox	89	72	.553	3.0
Salt Lake City Elders	84	77	.522	8.0
Victoria Cougars	83	78	.516	9.0
San Francisco Peanuts	62	99	.385	30.0

Presidents League Standings
Eastern Division	W	L	PCT	GB
Bantam Originals	100	61	.621	-
New York Knights	90	71	.559	10.0
Bluefield Jays		87	74	.540	13.0
Chicago Red Caps	69	92	.429	31.0
Williamsport Grays	53	108	.329	47.0

Central Division	W	L	PCT	GB
Toronto Blueshirts	92	69	.571	-
Carolina Wrens		85	76	.528	7.0
St. Petersburg Pelicans	82	79	.509	10.0
Washington Maroons	79	82	.491	13.0
Dayton Rens		68	93	.422	24.0

Western Division	W	L	PCT	GB
Houston Buffalos	96	65	.596	-
Hollister Haymakers	90	71	.559	6.0
Compton Brothers	73	88	.453	23.0
Dallas Steers		73	88	.453	23.0
Portland Roadrunners	73	88	.453	23.0

I pushed the quick sim button on Portland's game and they beat Hollister 5-4. That means, if New York wins, we clinch the Wild Card outright. If we lose? A one-game playoff tomorrow to determine who will advance to the post-season.

Final score? New York 13, Bantam 5. And just like that...we're putting the golf clubs back in the closet for a bit.

darkcloud4579 · 10-12-2009, 04:18 AM

I'd love to have written this story, but I didn't. Well, I guess I did when I went to a division rival. But...still.

LDS MATCHUPS
----
Chicago v. Colorado City
Los Angeles v. Miami
New York v. Bantam
Toronto v. Houston

Do I have expectations? Not really. I mean, we'll just push the button and see what happens. I don't expect us to beat them, but it's the playoffs and so, anything is possible. Besides, that team went 96 years without making the finals, so really...we'll see how their post-championship playoff fortunes are.

darkcloud4579 · 10-12-2009, 04:19 AM

LDS RESULTS
-----
Chicago def. Colorado City 4-3
Miami def. Los Angeles 4-3
New York def. Bantam 4-0
Toronto def. Houston 4-2

Ha. Well, at least the owners can't say I didn't deliver, yes?

darkcloud4579 · 10-12-2009, 04:21 AM

LCS RESULTS
----
Miami def. Chicago 4-1
Toronto def. New York 4-2

Well, it was fun while it lasted.

127th DAYLIGHT SERIES (1927)
-------
Miami def. Toronto 5-2

darkcloud4579 · 10-12-2009, 01:12 PM

I'm going to take some time off and sim more into the future now. I might create a new GM, I might not. This guyis young enough that he could come back 20 years if he wants to.

I kinda want to test the settings to find the right stats to get us back to where we were back in the earlier parts of the dynasty with league batting around .260-.280 and ERAs between 3.9-4.5 overall. That's ideal for me and consistent with how things had been for most of the years until talent went down and batting averages started to dip and pitchers started to get better.

So we'll probably 15-20 years into the future and then what I'd like to do, is spend a decade or so with a team, so I can really start to get a group of favorites again, get a lay of the league and so forth. I did that with Victoria and it's fun to go back and see the notables from that era. Eventually I'm going to slow down to start simming fewer seasons and keep the league established eventually. You'll see less franchise movement after the 50s or so, with the occasional change and I haven't decided if we'll expand again or not once we reach the 60s and 70s, but we probably will one more time at some point later no matter what.

darkcloud4579 · 10-12-2009, 07:22 PM

I got the league settings where I wanted them, so that's great over the past 20 years I took off.

Well I took 20 years off. It's the offseason of 1947 and here's what's happened the last 20 years since we went away in terms of championships. Most of the major championship droughts were vanquished by and large (it didn't take Bantam another 95 years to get the Series, either.)

Quote:

1928: Victoria Cougars def. New York Knights
1929: St. Louis Perfectos def. Houston Buffalos
1930: Cleveland Broncs def. Compton Brothers
1931: Minneapolis Millers def. New York Knights
1932: Carolina Wrens def. Los Angeles Seraphs
1933: Compton Brothers def. Minneapolis Millers
1934: San Francisco Peanuts def. Toronto Blueshirts
1935: Colorado City Gold Sox def. Hollister Haymakers
1936: San Francisco Peanuts def. Toronto Blueshirts
1937: Bantam Originals def. Cleveland Broncs
1938: St. Louis Perfectos def. Williamsport Grays
1939: Dallas Steers def. St. Louis Perfectos
1940: St. Louis Perfectos def. Dallas Steers
1941: Chicago Red Caps def. Victoria Cougars
1942: Philadelphia Quakers def. Bantam Originals
1943: New York Knights def. Philadelphia Quakers
1944: Atlanta Firecrackers def. Newark Sentinels
1945: Toronto Blueshirts def. Victoria Cougars
1946: Portland Roadrunners def. Newark Sentinels
1947: Dallas Steers def. Los Angeles Seraphs

The other thing is the Williamsport Grays folded and were replaced by the Atlanta Firecrackers in 1942. We did a bit of realignment too, but I'm not sure you all care about such mundane matters. ``

damientheomen3 · 10-12-2009, 07:25 PM

Can you update the HTMLs so I can see how Walec fared?

darkcloud4579 · 10-12-2009, 07:49 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by damientheomen3

Can you update the HTMLs so I can see how Walec fared?

yessir. It's actually updating right now.

damientheomen3 · 10-12-2009, 10:17 PM

Walec failed

At least he had some good seasons and won a gold glove, made the all star game and became a millionaire...

darkcloud4579 · 10-14-2009, 01:49 PM

So I've simmed forward again to 1959. I haven't decided what I'll do next. I'm enjoying having so much history to refer back to, especially some of it that can be related since I played during some of those seasons. I'm going to see what's next, I dunno precisely what my plan is at the moment, except I'd like to get back into it again.

darkcloud4579 · 10-17-2009, 07:59 PM

It's 1961. I've decided to forward ahead again and added two teams. We're now at 32 and we'll eventually be at 36, but...I wanted to do it a bit slowly.

The two new teams are the Fayetteville (NC) Generals (UL East) and the Reading (PA) Pretzels (PL Central)

darkcloud4579 · 10-17-2009, 08:30 PM

Since we've got all of this history -- 161 years of it to be exact -- it might be nice to check out the past and see all of the teams we've got, how much history between all of them and profiling some of the history makers throughout our time to date.

ALL-TIME HOME RUN LEADER

Domingo Mendez, 886 HRs (1808-1832)

Mendez played all over, but the bulk of his career was in St. Louis and Pacific (now Philadelphia.) He won 7 MVPs during his career and until the 1870s, was the the all-time hits leader with 4,476 before he was eclipsed by Fernando Coronado.

ALL-TIME HITS LEADER

Fernando Coronado (1857-1881)
Coronado was a career .319 hitter, hit 266 career home runs, but made his mark getting on base. with close to 5000 hits. Many wondered why he didn't stick around to reach the iconic number, but he simply said at the end of his career, "when you've had enough, you've had enough. And I've had enough."

He only had 100+ RBI seasons, but was productive all over the place in his career spanning from his start in Bantam to San Diego, brief stops in New York and St. Louis before spending his last 10 years in Minneapolis.

His record has stood for over 80 years and so, far, no one has come particularly close to it at all. Maybe they never will?

CAREER WINS LEADER

David Bowman, 480 wins (1871-1898)

David Bowman isn't as well known as Nelson Mares despite having 9 more wins than him, but that doesn't make his accomplishments any less impressive. Bowman was the original iron horse pitching in the league, winning close to 500 games while spending the overwhelming part of his career in Santa Rosa. He left and went to Carolina towards the tail end and won a title playing with another talented standout (and reader contributed player) Jay Muns.

Bowman is also the all-time losingest pitcher with 334 losses, which is why many people criticized him at the end of his career and didn't think the pitcher of the year award ought to be renamed after him, despite taking over the mantle of most wins in league history. But critics of those critics, point to the fact that Bowman is also the league's leading strikeout pitcher with 7,474 and remains the only hurler in league history with over 7,000 strikeouts. Nelson Mares is #2 and trails him by over 700 strikeouts.

MOST SAVES
Ward Holliman, 119-140, 2.19 ERA, 1033 SAVES (1934-1959)
A 1st round pick of the Toronto Blueshirts, he spent his entire career in Toronto amassing an absolutely ridiculous figure out of over 1000 saves. The #2 guy on the list only has 806, so that gives you some perspective.

He has at least 29 saves for his entire career (and only did that once excluding his rookie year) and was one of the most reliable relievers during his career. Might he have won a Mares Award had he played elsewhere? Probably. But no matter, he was enshrined in the Hall of Fame and surely that's no booby prize.

SINGLE SEASON RECORDS
HR: Greg Dean 60 (1845)
BA: Konrad Rodinger .400 (1800)
RBI: John Ashley 221 (1926) (Ashley benefited from the "Year of the Grapefruit Ball" in 1926 when offensive numbers peaked considerably after some experimenting with the baseball caused some major spikes. We went back to the regular baseball after that one insane season.
SB: Tom Hayes 124 (1871) (Hayes is #1, 2 and 3, 5, 6, 7 and 10th on this list. With 1 2 and 3 he broke his own record each time.)

WINS: Lars-Erik Johansen 36 (1862) (The mythology of Lars-Erik Johansen coming back as a pitcher, after a reporter once said that he wasn't as good a pitcher as Nelson Mares in his prime, proved once and for all, that he was one of the best to ever play the game hitting OR pitching.) No one else has ever won 30 games. Gunner Carter, Johansen and Nelson Mares are #2 at 28 wins.

LOSSES: Millard Rouse, 29 (1869) (This was his ONLY season in the majors and he went 0-29 with a 10.89 ERA)

SAVES: Pedro Perez 59 (1914)

ERA: Lars-Erik Johansen 1.24 (1862)

damientheomen3 · 10-17-2009, 09:19 PM

Jesus Christ what are your age speed settings at? Those ratings are incredible for 45 year olds...

darkcloud4579 · 10-18-2009, 03:32 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by damientheomen3

Jesus Christ what are your age speed settings at? Those ratings are incredible for 45 year olds...

.400/1.000

For years, though, it was at .500 across the board. I like older players to play longer, rather than not.

darkcloud4579 · 10-18-2009, 09:13 PM

...

damientheomen3 · 10-18-2009, 09:24 PM

Well, I'd like to request another player. Make him a starting pitcher named Charles Brenner please.

darkcloud4579 · 10-18-2009, 10:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by damientheomen3

Well, I'd like to request another player. Make him a starting pitcher named Charles Brenner please.

Sure thing!

10-18-2009, 09:13 PM	#98
darkcloud4579 Hall Of Famer Join Date: Jun 2003 Posts: 8,712	... Last edited by darkcloud4579; 10-19-2009 at 09:58 PM.

10-12-2009, 03:15 AM	#81
darkcloud4579 Hall Of Famer Join Date: Jun 2003 Posts: 8,712	TEAM MOVES FOR THE 1927 SEASON Baltimore Blue Wings ---> Bluefield (WV) Jays Augusta Tiger Cats ----> Dayton (OH) Rens Damien Walec is on the Pelicans opening day roster. Let's see how much he contributes this year.

10-12-2009, 04:00 AM	#82
darkcloud4579 Hall Of Famer Join Date: Jun 2003 Posts: 8,712	1927 NEW YORK KNIGHTS TEAM PREVIEW My proudest acquistion came pretty much at the start of my career here. We picked up Brad Blanchard from Williamsport. He was one of three top flight hurlers we acquired from teams in a series of salary dumps, but it became pretty apparently quickly that we wouldn't be able to do the 3 Muskateers deal, because they would've commanded 4/5ths of our payroll, so I shipped them off to other teams and began the process of building the ballclub that had 9 guys on the ML roster when I arrived. The minor leaguers were pretty barren, save for the few prospects I could manage to peddle off in those early deals. One of the little known tricks of this league is that minor leaguers get free agency after 3 years. I do that on purpose so teams can't horde FA prospects for cheap, if they wanna horde 'em, they better pay 'em and well, most teams forget or don't. We're talking the sorts of guys who are slow to develop, who probably won't ever develop or are 23-24 and you're just not sure about 'em. Well, we munched on a steady diet of these players during the off-season, as there was no other way to fill out our roster. Among the free agents we signed that weren't in this category, we picked up 15-game winner Roy Moore from Los Angeles as a free agent and 16-game winner Rodrigo Rivera from Cleveland in the same manner. Considering Brad Blanchard is our ace, but won just 13-games on an underachieving Williamsport club last year, we're thinking that we've got a Top 3 that have the makings of something pretty special. Offensively, there are some proven newcomers coming over via trade or free agency. We're expecting a huge market correction offensively this year, as I was trying to implement some old offensive settings I had laying around from an earlier FOOL iteration and the average league ERA shot up about 3 runs in each league. Given everything has been fairly consistent for the past 100+ years, last year will stand out as an anomaly forever. It's okay, but...I do want to get offense up, as the problem over the past 40-50 years or so, is that players just aren't as good as the ones from the past, so their production isn't where theirs is and so, we've seen a steady decline in the league batting averages and ERA has dropped too. But that's too much. But according to last year's stats, we've got 5 100+ RBI guys on our club including 160 RBI guy Woody McCann and 30 HR/150 RBI guy Don Carter. I was pretty sensitive to the idea of us having the largest payroll in the league, because I never like to do that, because I feel like as a human I shouldn't. But there's something to keep in mind -- I always overpay for talent I want and THREE players account for over $30 million of our payroll. So that number is a bit deceiving. Ownership sees this as our opportunity to burnish the Knights within the New York faithful. The Gothams have 9 championships, tied with Carolina for #2 on the all-time list, but Carolina has been around since the beginning, the Gothams are 40 years younger. Meanwhile, the Knights haven't quite established themselves in the city and are looking hard to do so. A failure to succeed with this club will be another line in a frustration set of problems for this ballclub, so...we're hoping this is the start of something. Do I think we'll make the playoffs? No. Do I expect to? Yes. We really should, even with so many question mark players in certain spots and a less than sure bullpen. PREDICTION: 86-76, 2ND PL EAST

10-12-2009, 04:18 AM	#85
darkcloud4579 Hall Of Famer Join Date: Jun 2003 Posts: 8,712	I'd love to have written this story, but I didn't. Well, I guess I did when I went to a division rival. But...still. LDS MATCHUPS ---- Chicago v. Colorado City Los Angeles v. Miami New York v. Bantam Toronto v. Houston Do I have expectations? Not really. I mean, we'll just push the button and see what happens. I don't expect us to beat them, but it's the playoffs and so, anything is possible. Besides, that team went 96 years without making the finals, so really...we'll see how their post-championship playoff fortunes are.

10-12-2009, 04:19 AM	#86
darkcloud4579 Hall Of Famer Join Date: Jun 2003 Posts: 8,712	LDS RESULTS ----- Chicago def. Colorado City 4-3 Miami def. Los Angeles 4-3 New York def. Bantam 4-0 Toronto def. Houston 4-2 Ha. Well, at least the owners can't say I didn't deliver, yes?

10-12-2009, 04:21 AM	#87
darkcloud4579 Hall Of Famer Join Date: Jun 2003 Posts: 8,712	LCS RESULTS ---- Miami def. Chicago 4-1 Toronto def. New York 4-2 Well, it was fun while it lasted. 127th DAYLIGHT SERIES (1927) ------- Miami def. Toronto 5-2

10-12-2009, 01:12 PM	#88
darkcloud4579 Hall Of Famer Join Date: Jun 2003 Posts: 8,712	I'm going to take some time off and sim more into the future now. I might create a new GM, I might not. This guyis young enough that he could come back 20 years if he wants to. I kinda want to test the settings to find the right stats to get us back to where we were back in the earlier parts of the dynasty with league batting around .260-.280 and ERAs between 3.9-4.5 overall. That's ideal for me and consistent with how things had been for most of the years until talent went down and batting averages started to dip and pitchers started to get better. So we'll probably 15-20 years into the future and then what I'd like to do, is spend a decade or so with a team, so I can really start to get a group of favorites again, get a lay of the league and so forth. I did that with Victoria and it's fun to go back and see the notables from that era. Eventually I'm going to slow down to start simming fewer seasons and keep the league established eventually. You'll see less franchise movement after the 50s or so, with the occasional change and I haven't decided if we'll expand again or not once we reach the 60s and 70s, but we probably will one more time at some point later no matter what.

10-14-2009, 01:49 PM	#93
darkcloud4579 Hall Of Famer Join Date: Jun 2003 Posts: 8,712	So I've simmed forward again to 1959. I haven't decided what I'll do next. I'm enjoying having so much history to refer back to, especially some of it that can be related since I played during some of those seasons. I'm going to see what's next, I dunno precisely what my plan is at the moment, except I'd like to get back into it again.

10-17-2009, 07:59 PM	#94
darkcloud4579 Hall Of Famer Join Date: Jun 2003 Posts: 8,712	It's 1961. I've decided to forward ahead again and added two teams. We're now at 32 and we'll eventually be at 36, but...I wanted to do it a bit slowly. The two new teams are the Fayetteville (NC) Generals (UL East) and the Reading (PA) Pretzels (PL Central)

10-17-2009, 08:30 PM	#95
darkcloud4579 Hall Of Famer Join Date: Jun 2003 Posts: 8,712	Since we've got all of this history -- 161 years of it to be exact -- it might be nice to check out the past and see all of the teams we've got, how much history between all of them and profiling some of the history makers throughout our time to date. ALL-TIME HOME RUN LEADER Domingo Mendez, 886 HRs (1808-1832) Mendez played all over, but the bulk of his career was in St. Louis and Pacific (now Philadelphia.) He won 7 MVPs during his career and until the 1870s, was the the all-time hits leader with 4,476 before he was eclipsed by Fernando Coronado. ALL-TIME HITS LEADER Fernando Coronado (1857-1881) Coronado was a career .319 hitter, hit 266 career home runs, but made his mark getting on base. with close to 5000 hits. Many wondered why he didn't stick around to reach the iconic number, but he simply said at the end of his career, "when you've had enough, you've had enough. And I've had enough." He only had 100+ RBI seasons, but was productive all over the place in his career spanning from his start in Bantam to San Diego, brief stops in New York and St. Louis before spending his last 10 years in Minneapolis. His record has stood for over 80 years and so, far, no one has come particularly close to it at all. Maybe they never will? CAREER WINS LEADER David Bowman, 480 wins (1871-1898) David Bowman isn't as well known as Nelson Mares despite having 9 more wins than him, but that doesn't make his accomplishments any less impressive. Bowman was the original iron horse pitching in the league, winning close to 500 games while spending the overwhelming part of his career in Santa Rosa. He left and went to Carolina towards the tail end and won a title playing with another talented standout (and reader contributed player) Jay Muns. Bowman is also the all-time losingest pitcher with 334 losses, which is why many people criticized him at the end of his career and didn't think the pitcher of the year award ought to be renamed after him, despite taking over the mantle of most wins in league history. But critics of those critics, point to the fact that Bowman is also the league's leading strikeout pitcher with 7,474 and remains the only hurler in league history with over 7,000 strikeouts. Nelson Mares is #2 and trails him by over 700 strikeouts. MOST SAVES Ward Holliman, 119-140, 2.19 ERA, 1033 SAVES (1934-1959) A 1st round pick of the Toronto Blueshirts, he spent his entire career in Toronto amassing an absolutely ridiculous figure out of over 1000 saves. The #2 guy on the list only has 806, so that gives you some perspective. He has at least 29 saves for his entire career (and only did that once excluding his rookie year) and was one of the most reliable relievers during his career. Might he have won a Mares Award had he played elsewhere? Probably. But no matter, he was enshrined in the Hall of Fame and surely that's no booby prize. SINGLE SEASON RECORDS HR: Greg Dean 60 (1845) BA: Konrad Rodinger .400 (1800) RBI: John Ashley 221 (1926) (Ashley benefited from the "Year of the Grapefruit Ball" in 1926 when offensive numbers peaked considerably after some experimenting with the baseball caused some major spikes. We went back to the regular baseball after that one insane season. SB: Tom Hayes 124 (1871) (Hayes is #1, 2 and 3, 5, 6, 7 and 10th on this list. With 1 2 and 3 he broke his own record each time.) WINS: Lars-Erik Johansen 36 (1862) (The mythology of Lars-Erik Johansen coming back as a pitcher, after a reporter once said that he wasn't as good a pitcher as Nelson Mares in his prime, proved once and for all, that he was one of the best to ever play the game hitting OR pitching.) No one else has ever won 30 games. Gunner Carter, Johansen and Nelson Mares are #2 at 28 wins. LOSSES: Millard Rouse, 29 (1869) (This was his ONLY season in the majors and he went 0-29 with a 10.89 ERA) SAVES: Pedro Perez 59 (1914) ERA: Lars-Erik Johansen 1.24 (1862)