Every (Current) Franchise's Best Season Results

mainstreet · 04-10-2015, 07:27 PM

So I decided on a bit of a lark to use the team importer to create a league that was similar to the modern structure, but rather than use 2015 teams, pick out the best season from each franchise and run them against each other.

Rules for picking seasons:
1. Only 1901 and later were considered -- I've noticed OOTP seems to have problems loading earlier teams and I didn't want to deal with that, still being new to the engine. Maybe once I get more comfortable I can redo it for those handful of teams.
2. Teams that won the World Series were always chosen unless the franchise had no World Series winners OR the season in question was one in which there was no World Series (notable: 1902, 1904, 1994, all saw a representative make the league.)
3. For teams that have no World Series wins (or equivalent as mentioned above), consider pennant winners only.
4. Highest winning percentage of teams that could be considered by rules 1-3.
5. Select the 2001 Seattle Mariners, 116 regular season wins. Seattle and Washington are the only existing franchises that have no pennants to their claim, and the 1994 Expos were admitted from the OR clause in Rule 2.

Alignment was kept similar to 2015. The only change was that Houston and Milwaukee were flipped as both teams were selected when they were playing in the opposite league. I was tempted to change for geography as well (Brooklyn and New York in the West?!), but decided against it.

I decided to not use the DH at all although 8 teams out of 15 in the AL (after Milwaukee's move) were DH era, figuring teams were more hurt by adding an unused one than dropping a used one.

Modifications made: From playing around with fictional and 2015, I can say with confidence that if a pitcher's stamina isn't yellow or better, they have no business starting -- lasting 5 innings will be a challenge. Too many teams failed to bring 5 pitchers that had sufficient stamina, I looked at the real-life stats and bumped a handful of pitchers up to 43 stamina. (Also, Kansas City was benefitted by me giving bad, but nonzero, defensive ratings to Hal McRae and Jorge Orta, the only "true DH" players I managed to import -- as they would be useless otherwise in this no-DH league -- positions given by checking their career numbers.) A few teams failed to have 25 players, I searched their franchise history the few years after to add pitchers that were likely minor leaguers at the time, created "Undeveloped, Bench" fictional relief pitchers and assigned them those names.

The AI doesn't seem to understand this fact, though, and started these bad-stamina guys over my bumps or over legitimate (if weaker) starters anyway. Being a game manager, in 2015 mode, that always carried 6 starters because of stamina issues (the 6th starter being used for long relief), this was sort of irritating.

My original plan was to pick a game each day and play it as both teams. After I accidentally autoplayed the first two weeks of the season, and saw that the game hosed all my changes anyway, to carefully make sure the SPs could actually do it, I said screw it, and let the regular season play without me in its entirety. (As the season progressed, the game kept generating fictional players to replace injuries. I might have wished for more control over this.) I would do the "one game per day" method during the wildcard and division series, then turn off live sim and play every game of the ALCS, NLCS, and World Series manually. I still had to fight the sim every game when it kept insisting that Marcelino Lopez (27 stamina) and Alexi Ogando (37 stamina) could actually start a game, or that I would want to do this anyway.

Ironically, the World Series was played between two teams that did not actually win the World Series during their year -- though for one team, the WS did not exist.

Standings from the regular season:
(Note: Spoiler, see bottom of images.)

Batting leaders:

Pitching leaders:

Playoff tree:

("Spoiler" note: No, I didn't take over Texas, they were just my "Act As" team at the end. I didn't want to post that in case you didn't notice the significance, spoiling the playoffs for you to reveal they made the World Series. I only used "Act As" to give me access to the games in the playoffs -- I always managed both teams and played them optimally (in my mind).)

Conclusions:
1. I do need to figure out how to make teams not make stupid miscues like with the whole starting pitching thing, unless someone wants to make the case to me that orange (or worse, red) starting pitchers can, in fact, start and go 5+ innings without getting tired and still make their starts... because with some teams I was fighting this every damn game. Also teams in the playoffs need to realize when they have days off and not panic and add another SP because no one will be ready to go the next day, when there's no game then.
2. I am contemplating now running 30 leagues along these same lines, this time focusing on a single franchise at once. This would serve as a qualifying round to retry this with teams that might be more optimized for OOTP to give each franchise its best shot.
3. Injuries might have played a significant factor here. Not sure if there's a way to turn them off or if I want to. Notably, Texas's only CF active (Borbon) got injured in Game 3 of the World Series, forcing a 0-def Josh Hamilton to finish the series there -- I did add a few points of defense, because in real life I would be allowed to make a move to bring up Endy Chavez, but a 3-def is still very bad.
4. Fictional players are as good as bench players on many teams, and did end up getting on them despite me not wanting them created. I suspect injuries may also have caused a problem.
5. Old-time teams that sit back with a bunch of green and blue stamina guys can be OP in the postseason (or just in general) because they have more options, compared to modern teams that need to carefully watch their stamina and pitch counts. Or perhaps staminas are just too low for modern teams across the board.
6. FaceGen is racist. Well, maybe not, but it does seem to assume most everyone is white. White Frank Robinson made me headdesk when I first saw it. Too many non-white players for me to bother going through and changing every single one.
7. Despite all this, hard to argue that we might have a case to declare the 1904 New York Giants the best team ever, or at least the best team in the 1901+ era. They did, after all, beat every other franchise's top team. (Of course, even one season is a small sample size, but alas.)

mainstreet · 04-10-2015, 07:31 PM

Not sure how the double thread post happened. Please keep this thread and delete the other one. (If you delete this reply as well that's fine.)

Lekta · 04-18-2015, 04:57 PM

Very interesting. I was working no a league with the 16 best teams of all time and see what happened, though with this pitching issue, I'm not sure I'll continue that idea.

mainstreet · 04-18-2015, 07:32 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lekta

Very interesting. I was working no a league with the 16 best teams of all time and see what happened, though with this pitching issue, I'm not sure I'll continue that idea.

I'm sure this issue is solvable though. I'm waiting and hoping to hear from a more experienced user who knows what to do about it, or can at least suggest some possible things I did wrong.

Lekta · 04-19-2015, 01:29 AM

Did u change the pitcher stamina before creating the league. I think it's an option just before finalizing league

mainstreet · 04-19-2015, 01:44 AM

Possibly not. That might help.

glcarter7 · 06-02-2015, 08:53 PM

This is an awesome idea. How would I download each individual team? Would the manual help?

mainstreet · 06-02-2015, 10:48 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by glcarter7

This is an awesome idea. How would I download each individual team? Would the manual help?

Create a fictional league in a custom game (or, use the default fictional league). Set your alignment, then in step 2, click "Switch to Historical Team Selection". Set your year, then set the franchise/team.

You can either use all historical teams or a mix of historical and fictional, though I don't know how the teams will be filled if you try the latter.

fishpole33 · 11-25-2015, 03:54 AM

Hey, just wanted to comment, this is a great idea, and one I have had myself, but was trying to figure out what format to do it in.

That being said, for your league format, for the logos, did you set those up individually, or did you make a different folder with the logos in it?

When I tried to play a season with teams from different seasons, it gave me stock logos, yet when I play a one-year simulation from 1915, say, the real-life logos are in. Any idea what I'm doing wrong?

mainstreet · 11-25-2015, 10:45 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by fishpole33

Hey, just wanted to comment, this is a great idea, and one I have had myself, but was trying to figure out what format to do it in.

That being said, for your league format, for the logos, did you set those up individually, or did you make a different folder with the logos in it?

When I tried to play a season with teams from different seasons, it gave me stock logos, yet when I play a one-year simulation from 1915, say, the real-life logos are in. Any idea what I'm doing wrong?

Did you use a fictional league first? I think attempting to start with a historical can screw that up.

fishpole33 · 11-25-2015, 12:44 PM

Yeah, and I never changed any of the logo folders or anything like that. I am guessing all the logos are named correctly. And I downloaded the All-in-one mod. Maybe I need to download a different set of logos? But all the different logos are showing up in the correct folder and labeled as a gz.raw extension.

I also don't have any of the old jerseys, but that's a different story.

mainstreet · 11-25-2015, 02:03 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by fishpole33

Yeah, and I never changed any of the logo folders or anything like that. I am guessing all the logos are named correctly. And I downloaded the All-in-one mod. Maybe I need to download a different set of logos? But all the different logos are showing up in the correct folder and labeled as a gz.raw extension.

I also don't have any of the old jerseys, but that's a different story.

I'm... not sure, honestly. I don't recall the logos being an issue. I'm pretty sure I used generic jerseys and caps though, rather than images.

dannybessette · 12-01-2015, 04:24 PM

I have been working pretty much exact thing, very cool to see it played out. I used some different teams as you did as I picked at my discretion. I also used the best team from each city so for example the Dodgers had 2 teams '55 Brooklyn & '88 LAD, Braves 3 teams ('14 Bos, '57 Mil, '95 Atl) so I ended up w like 40 teams.

Few questions maybe you or other people can clarify for me:
1: Managers. Is there a way to get the actual manager for that past team, or at least for the more current ones such as 2004 Red Sox & Francona.

2: Player Ratings: I have yet to grasp how the ratings are pulled. I would ideally like it to be a mix of that players specific year and the rest of their career .... is there a way to do this?

3. Logos/Unis/Caps/Stadiums: I downloaded all the extra files, but never can seem to get them to load right at the start so I have to manually assign each. Am I just missing something obvious?

4. Faces: Same as above, not sure if I just don't know how to assign the right files in setup but I eventually just turn on faces because I can never get it right.

Would appreciate any input from those who know. I am also putting together rosters to mimic this for MLB 15 the show.

04-10-2015, 07:27 PM	#1
mainstreet Minors (Single A) Join Date: Apr 2015 Location: California Posts: 66	Every (Current) Franchise's Best Season Results So I decided on a bit of a lark to use the team importer to create a league that was similar to the modern structure, but rather than use 2015 teams, pick out the best season from each franchise and run them against each other. Rules for picking seasons: 1. Only 1901 and later were considered -- I've noticed OOTP seems to have problems loading earlier teams and I didn't want to deal with that, still being new to the engine. Maybe once I get more comfortable I can redo it for those handful of teams. 2. Teams that won the World Series were always chosen unless the franchise had no World Series winners OR the season in question was one in which there was no World Series (notable: 1902, 1904, 1994, all saw a representative make the league.) 3. For teams that have no World Series wins (or equivalent as mentioned above), consider pennant winners only. 4. Highest winning percentage of teams that could be considered by rules 1-3. 5. Select the 2001 Seattle Mariners, 116 regular season wins. Seattle and Washington are the only existing franchises that have no pennants to their claim, and the 1994 Expos were admitted from the OR clause in Rule 2. Alignment was kept similar to 2015. The only change was that Houston and Milwaukee were flipped as both teams were selected when they were playing in the opposite league. I was tempted to change for geography as well (Brooklyn and New York in the West?!), but decided against it. I decided to not use the DH at all although 8 teams out of 15 in the AL (after Milwaukee's move) were DH era, figuring teams were more hurt by adding an unused one than dropping a used one. Modifications made: From playing around with fictional and 2015, I can say with confidence that if a pitcher's stamina isn't yellow or better, they have no business starting -- lasting 5 innings will be a challenge. Too many teams failed to bring 5 pitchers that had sufficient stamina, I looked at the real-life stats and bumped a handful of pitchers up to 43 stamina. (Also, Kansas City was benefitted by me giving bad, but nonzero, defensive ratings to Hal McRae and Jorge Orta, the only "true DH" players I managed to import -- as they would be useless otherwise in this no-DH league -- positions given by checking their career numbers.) A few teams failed to have 25 players, I searched their franchise history the few years after to add pitchers that were likely minor leaguers at the time, created "Undeveloped, Bench" fictional relief pitchers and assigned them those names. The AI doesn't seem to understand this fact, though, and started these bad-stamina guys over my bumps or over legitimate (if weaker) starters anyway. Being a game manager, in 2015 mode, that always carried 6 starters because of stamina issues (the 6th starter being used for long relief), this was sort of irritating. My original plan was to pick a game each day and play it as both teams. After I accidentally autoplayed the first two weeks of the season, and saw that the game hosed all my changes anyway, to carefully make sure the SPs could actually do it, I said screw it, and let the regular season play without me in its entirety. (As the season progressed, the game kept generating fictional players to replace injuries. I might have wished for more control over this.) I would do the "one game per day" method during the wildcard and division series, then turn off live sim and play every game of the ALCS, NLCS, and World Series manually. I still had to fight the sim every game when it kept insisting that Marcelino Lopez (27 stamina) and Alexi Ogando (37 stamina) could actually start a game, or that I would want to do this anyway. Ironically, the World Series was played between two teams that did not actually win the World Series during their year -- though for one team, the WS did not exist. Standings from the regular season: (Note: Spoiler, see bottom of images.) Batting leaders: Pitching leaders: Playoff tree: ("Spoiler" note: No, I didn't take over Texas, they were just my "Act As" team at the end. I didn't want to post that in case you didn't notice the significance, spoiling the playoffs for you to reveal they made the World Series. I only used "Act As" to give me access to the games in the playoffs -- I always managed both teams and played them optimally (in my mind).) Conclusions: 1. I do need to figure out how to make teams not make stupid miscues like with the whole starting pitching thing, unless someone wants to make the case to me that orange (or worse, red) starting pitchers can, in fact, start and go 5+ innings without getting tired and still make their starts... because with some teams I was fighting this every damn game. Also teams in the playoffs need to realize when they have days off and not panic and add another SP because no one will be ready to go the next day, when there's no game then. 2. I am contemplating now running 30 leagues along these same lines, this time focusing on a single franchise at once. This would serve as a qualifying round to retry this with teams that might be more optimized for OOTP to give each franchise its best shot. 3. Injuries might have played a significant factor here. Not sure if there's a way to turn them off or if I want to. Notably, Texas's only CF active (Borbon) got injured in Game 3 of the World Series, forcing a 0-def Josh Hamilton to finish the series there -- I did add a few points of defense, because in real life I would be allowed to make a move to bring up Endy Chavez, but a 3-def is still very bad. 4. Fictional players are as good as bench players on many teams, and did end up getting on them despite me not wanting them created. I suspect injuries may also have caused a problem. 5. Old-time teams that sit back with a bunch of green and blue stamina guys can be OP in the postseason (or just in general) because they have more options, compared to modern teams that need to carefully watch their stamina and pitch counts. Or perhaps staminas are just too low for modern teams across the board. 6. FaceGen is racist. Well, maybe not, but it does seem to assume most everyone is white. White Frank Robinson made me headdesk when I first saw it. Too many non-white players for me to bother going through and changing every single one. 7. Despite all this, hard to argue that we might have a case to declare the 1904 New York Giants the best team ever, or at least the best team in the 1901+ era. They did, after all, beat every other franchise's top team. (Of course, even one season is a small sample size, but alas.)

04-18-2015, 04:57 PM	#3
Lekta Minors (Rookie Ball) Join Date: Mar 2003 Posts: 46	Very interesting. I was working no a league with the 16 best teams of all time and see what happened, though with this pitching issue, I'm not sure I'll continue that idea. __________________ "Are you gonna bark all day, little doggie, or are you gonna bite?" - Mr. Blonde

04-19-2015, 01:29 AM	#5
Lekta Minors (Rookie Ball) Join Date: Mar 2003 Posts: 46	Did u change the pitcher stamina before creating the league. I think it's an option just before finalizing league __________________ "Are you gonna bark all day, little doggie, or are you gonna bite?" - Mr. Blonde

04-10-2015, 07:31 PM	#2
mainstreet Minors (Single A) Join Date: Apr 2015 Location: California Posts: 66	Not sure how the double thread post happened. Please keep this thread and delete the other one. (If you delete this reply as well that's fine.)

04-19-2015, 01:44 AM	#6
mainstreet Minors (Single A) Join Date: Apr 2015 Location: California Posts: 66	Possibly not. That might help.

06-02-2015, 08:53 PM	#7
glcarter7 Minors (Rookie Ball) Join Date: Jul 2004 Posts: 27	This is an awesome idea. How would I download each individual team? Would the manual help?

11-25-2015, 03:54 AM	#9
fishpole33 Minors (Rookie Ball) Join Date: Jul 2015 Posts: 39	Hey, just wanted to comment, this is a great idea, and one I have had myself, but was trying to figure out what format to do it in. That being said, for your league format, for the logos, did you set those up individually, or did you make a different folder with the logos in it? When I tried to play a season with teams from different seasons, it gave me stock logos, yet when I play a one-year simulation from 1915, say, the real-life logos are in. Any idea what I'm doing wrong?

11-25-2015, 12:44 PM	#11
fishpole33 Minors (Rookie Ball) Join Date: Jul 2015 Posts: 39	Yeah, and I never changed any of the logo folders or anything like that. I am guessing all the logos are named correctly. And I downloaded the All-in-one mod. Maybe I need to download a different set of logos? But all the different logos are showing up in the correct folder and labeled as a gz.raw extension. I also don't have any of the old jerseys, but that's a different story.

12-01-2015, 04:24 PM	#13
dannybessette Bat Boy Join Date: Jul 2015 Posts: 8	I have been working pretty much exact thing, very cool to see it played out. I used some different teams as you did as I picked at my discretion. I also used the best team from each city so for example the Dodgers had 2 teams '55 Brooklyn & '88 LAD, Braves 3 teams ('14 Bos, '57 Mil, '95 Atl) so I ended up w like 40 teams. Few questions maybe you or other people can clarify for me: 1: Managers. Is there a way to get the actual manager for that past team, or at least for the more current ones such as 2004 Red Sox & Francona. 2: Player Ratings: I have yet to grasp how the ratings are pulled. I would ideally like it to be a mix of that players specific year and the rest of their career .... is there a way to do this? 3. Logos/Unis/Caps/Stadiums: I downloaded all the extra files, but never can seem to get them to load right at the start so I have to manually assign each. Am I just missing something obvious? 4. Faces: Same as above, not sure if I just don't know how to assign the right files in setup but I eventually just turn on faces because I can never get it right. Would appreciate any input from those who know. I am also putting together rosters to mimic this for MLB 15 the show.