Best player at each position for each team by year Project...

[Augetout]

Hello all,

For the bulk of the league project, I will be using the years 1978 thru 1994, (the first year I paid attention to baseball and the last year I was a full-on baseball geek---first go around). Thus no Nationals as the Expos are in.

For the Marlins and Rockies the years are 1993 thru 2000.

For the Rays and D-backs the years are 1998 thru 2000.

The 'league' will commence play in the year 2000, hence the end years of the 4 expansion clubs.

162 game schedule, no trades, no injuries, no interleague play. Fatigue is to be included. DHs, despite my belief that like interleague play it is blasphemous, seemed the best way to ensure fair results between the American and National leagues, thus will be used in both leagues...

Rosters are made up of the the best player seasons at each position. For example, in the given time period of 1978 thru 1994 Robin Yount's 1982 Season was the best performance by a Brewers Shortstop, thus he will be the starting shortstop, using his 1982 season.

Question: Does this sound like a project folks would want to hear about or no?

[68pirate]

Sounds interesting to me, as those years pretty much mirror my favorite era of baseball as well. As a Pirates fan, they didn't suck as much as they have from 94 on lol

[Augetout]

Well, 68pirate, here is what I came up with for the PIrates:

C 1983 Tony Pena 301 15hr
1b 1978 Willie Stargell 295 28hr
2b 1984 Johnny Ray 312 38double
SS 1993 Jay Bell 310 9hr 16sb
3b 1981 Bill Madlock 341
LF 1992 Barry Bonds 311 34hr 29sb
CF 1979 Omar Moreno 282 77sb
RF 1978 Dave Parker 334 30hr 20sb
DH 1980 Mike Easler 338 21hr
SP 1984 John Candelaria 2.72
SP 1984 Rick Rhoden 2.72
SP 1985 Rick Reuschel 2.27
SP 1988 Bob Walk 2.71
SP 1990 Doug Drabek 2.76
RP 1978 Kent Tekulve 2.33
RP 1990 Bob Patterson 2.95
RP 1980 Eddie Solomon 2.69
RP 1982 Rod Scurry 1.74
RP 1989 Bill Landrum 1.67
C 1992 Don Slaught 345 866ops
1b/3b 1993 Jeff King 295 35doubles
MI 1979 Phil Garner 293 11hr 17sb 32doubles
OF 1991 Bobby Bonilla 302 18hr 44doubles
OF 1988 Andy Van Slyke 288 25hr 30sb 15triples
UT 1986 Jim Morrison 274 23hr 35doubles

[Augetout]

Well crap, I forgot about realignment happening well after the 2000 season, so now I have to go back and re-do the damn time periods for the 4 expansion teams. Updates to follow...

[Charlie Hough]

You should use 1979 for Kent Tekulve. His ERA was lower in 1978, but his WHIP was lower and he had a bit better control in 1979. He also finished 8th in the MVP voting and set a record at the time with 3 saves in the World Series.

I would also choose 1987 Mike LaValliere over Don Slaught. LaValliere hit .300 and won the Gold Glove award, and he hit left-handed, which would be great for matchups.

[Augetout]

Well... I went with ERA for pitchers, frankly to minimize the variables involved. My hope is that given it is the same parameter for every team small issues will even out for the teams.

Slaught over LaValliere is purely due to my old stratomatic tournament days when he was a popular pick for platoon teams. I agree that LaValliere would present some matchup advantages, though...

Entering 750 players manually into the darn league is not what I would call a fun task, though, lol----and that isn't counting all the times I've had to go through multiple iterations before finding the right players. Perhaps the developers could add a separate year by year identifier for players instead of the piazzmi01 style, which makes players like Matt WIlliams, etc. rather difficult to locate. I am about 1/3 through the task...

[Garlon]

If you have the Steam version of the game try Baseball Greats on the Steam Workshop. That mod has the best players from each team based on their best 5000 AB and players will only appear on one team.

[Augetout]

Understood. If this project goes poorly I will look into it, although I believe it will be kind of cool to see the relatively infrequent instances where a player is on multiple teams---having had the best season at a given position for each team. It is, for example, a reminder of what a beast Eddie Murray was, etc.

[Augetout]

Ach, 68Pirate has caused me to re-think things a bit, thus I am going to go back and re-do the rosters. I'm going to add WHIP into the equation for pitchers, and I'm going to go a bit slower on the backups to ensure that righty-lefty matchups are more flexible for teams. Film at 11...

[timmcdonald]

Originally Posted by Augetout

...
Entering 750 players manually into the darn league is not what I would call a fun task, though, lol----and that isn't counting all the times I've had to go through multiple iterations before finding the right players. Perhaps the developers could add a separate year by year identifier for players instead of the piazzmi01 style, which makes players like Matt WIlliams, etc. rather difficult to locate. I am about 1/3 through the task...

I did something similar with Expo / Blue Jay players from the dawn of time through the end of each team. If you use baseball-reference and take the URL for each player it contains the short name used for import.

I used python to pull out the indicator from the URL with this:
"\/(\w+)\.shtml". You should be able to use the same regex with other languages/applications. If you can, it should save you HOURS of manual work.

I wrote a app to pull out all the players - check to see if they already to existed, etc... to do something similar to what you are doing.

[Augetout]

I'm not sure I will be able take your advice, given I am not Python qualified, and writing an application is well beyond my skill level, but I appreciate both your reply and the realization it has caused that I can probably gain some tips from those who have attempted/accomplished such projects before I began.