20 straight years in last place

[lightgrenade07]

The fictional Pittsburgh Keystones sure had a rough 19th century...

[kq76]

I'm curious what the rest of the team names in your league are.

[Sizeman21]

That's some crazy bad luck. Or just bad players.

You should analyze the team and report back. Might be interesting to see what the root of Pittsburghs 20 year problem might be.

[lightgrenade07]

Originally Posted by kq76

I'm curious what the rest of the team names in your league are.

Well, Pittsburgh changed its name to the Bombers in 1919. It's a mix-and-match of historical names, culturally relevant names, old NBA names, and stuff I made up. I want this alternate world to feel different, yet familiar.

In the 1920s, going off the top of my head, it's something like this...

AL
Brooklyn Blue Sox
Chicago Black Sox (of course)
Detroit Barnstormers
Philadelphia Quakers
Washington Senators
Cleveland Cannons
St. Louis Athletics (formerly the Jersey City Atlantics)
New Orleans Pelicans (they just joined the AL in 1919 after ~15 years as the top-grossing minor league team in the game)
New York City Sluggers (they're going to bounce around the Midwest before winding up in Sacramento in the '80s)

NL
Boston Skippers
New York Mets
Buffalo Bulls
Milwaukee Mules
Baltimore Robins (just moved from Brooklyn)
Philadelphia Royals (they'll become the Kansas City Kings because...NBA fan)
Pittsburgh Bombers (formerly Keystones)
Cincinnati Giants (expansion team in 1919 to balance out the Pelicans)
Newark Mutuals (they're going to move to Minneapolis after WWII)

[lightgrenade07]

Originally Posted by Sizeman21

That's some crazy bad luck. Or just bad players.

You should analyze the team and report back. Might be interesting to see what the root of Pittsburghs 20 year problem might be.

So, I saved a couple Quickstarts as a back-up any time I had a major development (e.g. AL & NL form my equivalent of MLB, the "Professional Baseball Association," league expansion etc.).

Looking at 1896, year #16 of this streak, I see two things...

#1, the owner has a reputation for being "understanding" while also being a "penny-pincher" whose priority is "extreme profit." So basically he doesn't care about team performance - he just doesn't want to spend money, and as long as you give him that, he's chill.

#2, the pitching has been consistently horrible. The one time Pittsburgh was starting to move up in pitching - Harry Curtis's 2.48 ERA in 1886 lifted their pitching staff to 7th out of 8 teams - they traded their best pitcher for cash.

My theory is that this league in the late 1800s was basically a "superstar pitchers" era: if you had one or two good starters, you were unstoppable; otherwise, you weren't going anywhere. This made competent starting pitchers a very valuable asset; Pittsburgh's cheapskate owner either never wanted to pay to keep them, and/or saw it as more worth his while to ship those players off for money due to the price they could command on the trade block.

Given that I have reserve rules in place, there's not a whole lot of player movement going on. So it's easy to hold on to guys, but not easy to acquire them - so letting go of a solid player,especially a solid starting pitcher, is a HUGE blunder with this setup.

[kq76]

Originally Posted by lightgrenade07

Well, Pittsburgh changed its name to the Bombers in 1919. It's a mix-and-match of historical names, culturally relevant names, old NBA names, and stuff I made up. I want this alternate world to feel different, yet familiar.

In the 1920s, going off the top of my head, it's something like this...

AL
Brooklyn Blue Sox
Chicago Black Sox (of course)
Detroit Barnstormers
Philadelphia Quakers
Washington Senators
Cleveland Cannons
St. Louis Athletics (formerly the Jersey City Atlantics)
New Orleans Pelicans (they just joined the AL in 1919 after ~15 years as the top-grossing minor league team in the game)
New York City Sluggers (they're going to bounce around the Midwest before winding up in Sacramento in the '80s)

NL
Boston Skippers
New York Mets
Buffalo Bulls
Milwaukee Mules
Baltimore Robins (just moved from Brooklyn)
Philadelphia Royals (they'll become the Kansas City Kings because...NBA fan)
Pittsburgh Bombers (formerly Keystones)
Cincinnati Giants (expansion team in 1919 to balance out the Pelicans)
Newark Mutuals (they're going to move to Minneapolis after WWII)

Yeah, I had a feeling you had some interesting name choices. When people use the name Keystones it's often for a Philadelphia team and yet you used it for Pittsburgh which I can only recall an early negro league team using. Yeah, I know, "keystone state", and all, but still, it's not often used for PIT.

I'm impressed you have it mapped out what you're going to do decades from now! I saw someone else, an online league IIRC, do that recently too. I'm sad to hear that the Sluggers will be leaving NY! I figured they must be your Yankees.

I think my favorite are the Milwaukee Mules though! Other than the alliteration, who would opt to call their team the Mules, but I love it!

You might want to consider doing a dynasty. I'd follow it.

[lightgrenade07]

Originally Posted by kq76

Yeah, I had a feeling you had some interesting name choices. When people use the name Keystones it's often for a Philadelphia team and yet you used it for Pittsburgh which I can only recall an early negro league team using. Yeah, I know, "keystone state", and all, but still, it's not often used for PIT.

I'm impressed you have it mapped out what you're going to do decades from now! I saw someone else, an online league IIRC, do that recently too.

Yeah, this is an alternate baseball universe that I've been developing since I first got hold of OOTP 2 as freeware...15 years ago? So there's been a lot of thought as to how I want this thing to evolve.

The deal with Pittsburgh is that I didn't really know what to call them in the 1800s, so I just went with whatever name I could find attached to some old time-y logo available in either the Cephas James packs or a historical logo pack. It's interesting, that history you point out - I wasn't aware of that at all. Very cool.

I'm sad to hear that the Sluggers will be leaving NY! I figured they must be your Yankees.

Sorry to disappoint! So, the Mets will probably wind up being my Yankees, (a) as a shout-out to my mother, who's been a long-time Mets fan (they were "born" the same year she was), and (b) as a small way of flipping the bird to the real-life Yankees.

As for the Sluggers, their story is actually based heavily on the history of the NBA's Sacramento Kings: a lofty-sounding nickname for a hapless franchise in the state of New York, bouncing around the Midwest before landing in northern California in the '80s.

Sacramento Kings: Rochester Royals -> Cincinnati Royals -> Kansas City/Omaha Kings -> Sacramento 1985 ***longest active championship & playoff droughts in basketball!

Sluggers: New York Gothams -> New York City Sluggers -> Indianapolis Sluggers, 1930s -> Oklahoma City/Omaha Sluggers, 1950s -> San Jose or Sacramento, 1980s (haven't decided which city yet)

The operative word here is "hapless." For the time that I'm operating as commissioner, I am intervening for only two purposes:

1 - expanding leagues as necessary; and
2 - keeping the Sluggers down!

I can't really think of a baseball equivalent - maybe if you combine the historical performance of the Phillies with the franchise travel record of the A's?

I think my favorite are the Milwaukee Mules though! Other than the alliteration, who would opt to call their team the Mules, but I love it!

You might want to consider doing a dynasty. I'd follow it.

Ooo, I actually have a backstory for this! That team had been the Baltimore Colts (), and experienced a 15-year playoff drought before and after WWI. (Nowhere near as bad as Pittsburgh in the 1880s, though - the Colts would finish between 3rd & 5th year after year). Local fans were described as being "stubborn as a mule" for continuing to support the team despite its lack of success, and the name would kind of stick - becoming the official nickname after the team moved to Milwaukee. It's in the same tradition of self-deprecation as the real-life Pittsburgh Pirates (as well as the white elephant featured in many Oakland A's logos for the "white elephant" franchise).

At the moment, I'm simming through while doing intermittent setup; I find that it's hard to really immerse myself in the game if I also have to focus on expanding leagues every few years or whatever. There's going to be a lot less editing after WWII, though, as I'll have all my minor leagues and international leagues set up, so I plan to start doing an actual dynasty at that point.