Adding Crawfords to MLB

[omg_pwnasaurus]

Wanted to try out a sim where I start in a year in the 30's and replace an MLB team with the Crawfords. I see where you can remove an MLB team in the league settings, then go into NEL league settings and move the Crawfords to MLB. When this happens it has a blank slate for all the financials, minors, etc which is fine I suppose I can add all that stuff still? My question is rolling forward I don't want the future NEL players to be funneled onto their NEL teams and able to be purchased by MLB teams but I want the new NEL debut players to appear in the amateur draft at the end of each historical season along with any other historical rookies.

Is this easily accomplished through settings or do I have to finagle something?

Ty

[luckymann]

Originally Posted by omg_pwnasaurus

Wanted to try out a sim where I start in a year in the 30's and replace an MLB team with the Crawfords. I see where you can remove an MLB team in the league settings, then go into NEL league settings and move the Crawfords to MLB. When this happens it has a blank slate for all the financials, minors, etc which is fine I suppose I can add all that stuff still? My question is rolling forward I don't want the future NEL players to be funneled onto their NEL teams and able to be purchased by MLB teams but I want the new NEL debut players to appear in the amateur draft at the end of each historical season along with any other historical rookies.

Is this easily accomplished through settings or do I have to finagle something?

Ty

As far as I understand it, if you have historical minors enabled and the color bar OFF then NeLers appear automatically in the Rookie Draft each year. Those who aren't picked and / or signed then either "go back to college" or enter as FAs. As the game itself recommends, you shouldn't try to combine historical minors with transactions and lineups as it gets real hinky from all reports. That would be the only factor that would cause NeLers to go onto their teams, unless I'm missing something. So with it off you should be OK.

The only complication I see here is the Crawfords element. Because if you have minors enabled I think it automatically restructures the league each year and would therefore move them back. But I'm not 100% sure, you'd need to test it or maybe someone has a more conclusive answer.

There's also THIS post re a workaround that enables you to get all the MiLB players in without having to keep historical minors enabled and allowing you to restructure at will, which sounds like it might be a viable option for you. Definitely at least worth a look.

G

[LansdowneSt]

Originally Posted by luckymann

The only complication I see here is the Crawfords element. Because if you have minors enabled I think it automatically restructures the league each year and would therefore move them back. But I'm not 100% sure, you'd need to test it or maybe someone has a more conclusive answer.

G

Turn off league auto-league-evolution to stop the Crawford from reverting back to the MLB team. You'll need to move the Browns to Baltimore and the A's to KC/Oakland and expand the leagues in the 60's and thereafter manually though.

[thehef]

What you could also do is:

a) Modify the teams.csv file to where historical evolution is modified to include the Crawfords and retain whatever real-life franchise moves, ballpark changes, etc., that you'd like.

b) Modify the milbteams and milbleagues csv files to where there are minimal (how minimal is up to you) minor leagues & teams, which will allow you to have access to all of the negro-leaguers, without having a large minor league structure (especially in the 40's & 50's, when minor leagues are massive in scope).

The steps for (a) are pretty simple, especially if the Craws are merely replacing an MLB team... (b) is a bit more-complicated but do-able... If interested, I can provide steps/links on how to do these, etc...

[omg_pwnasaurus]

Thanks all this is great info.

I think what I'm trying to decide now is how to handle the color barrier. I want to keep the spirit of having an NEL team try and win a title vs an MLB team during color barrier but I also kind of want to have an ammy draft, try out the new trade stuff in 24, etc.

What I'm leaning towards though is

1. Putting the 1932 or 33 Crawfords team into MLB

2. Turning off auto league evolution

3. Keeping color barrier on

4. Treating other NEL teams as almost like the Crawfords ammy draft where I pluck a 3 star potential player or whatever from the NEL and some other lower potential guys as my draft and "participate" in the regular ammy draft by picking the lowest ranked players and releasing them back into FA. To keep new players funneling in to the Crawfords but not like Turkey Stearnes or Beckwith or ready made superstars as I want it to be very challenging. Although foregoing Ted Williams, Feller or whoever in the ammy drafts should also keep it competitive I would think.


My biggest question now, is if I turn off color barrier and advance the year without auto league evolution on, will new players show up in the NEL on other teams still for me to grab for the Crawfords? Like will color barrier on, create ammy drafts for MLB with no NEL players but NEL players will continue to be created within the NNL, etc?

I guess in a nutshell I'm trying to spec out the best way to run a save where the Crawfords got a chance to play against MLB players over x amount of years and I'd like to GM them but GMing them seems like a kinda weird convoluted thing that I have to suss out.

[thehef]

Have you thought about maybe making one or two of the NeL teams an affiliate of your MLB Crawfords? That might be cool

[omg_pwnasaurus]

Ooooh. Damn, no I didn't think of that! That's a really good idea. Ty.

[thehef]

Originally Posted by omg_pwnasaurus

Ooooh. Damn, no I didn't think of that! That's a really good idea. Ty.

Just so you know, that would be a pretty simple edit to the milbteams.csv file. All you'd need to do is change the affiliate field to "CRW" (or whatever the abbreviation is that you'll be using for the Crawfords) for each NeLg team and season where you want the affiliation... So ya, you could change the Crawfords' affiliate from, say, the Newark Browns in '32 to the Detroit Stars in '33, and all the players should stay within the organization. I mean, some may be released due to other factors, but they won't be released due to Newark no longer being affiliated...

You might also want to have a) multiple NeL affiliates for the Crawfords, and/or b) assign some independent minor league teams to be Crawfords' affiliates. Otherwise, the Craws' will be at a disadvantage as the rest of MLB starts to accumulate minor affiliates in the '30's...

[omg_pwnasaurus]

Thanks, yeah I'm trying to find a way to still engage in the fun moments in the season, trade deadline, FA,Draft, etc while doing this save so it's a tough balance of figuring out how to accomplish it all

[thehef]

Originally Posted by omg_pwnasaurus

Thanks, yeah I'm trying to find a way to still engage in the fun moments in the season, trade deadline, FA,Draft, etc while doing this save so it's a tough balance of figuring out how to accomplish it all

Sounds like you have a fair amount of ideas & options mentioned by you and others in this thread. My only advice at this point would be to make sure you test stuff out and run it for a few years, without immersing yourself, adding logos & uniforms & ballparks. Don't invest in those things until you've tested it out and are happy with how things are playing out... IOW, you don't want to invest hours and hours of your time only to get halfway thru a season - or thru several seasons - only to wish you had done things a lot differently...

Good luck & report back!

[omg_pwnasaurus]

Thanks! Silly question but how do you create a new minor league team say in BC League or whatever and assign them a parent team (in my case the Crawfords). I see how you can create a new minor league team within a league structure and I see the team's parent id which I assume connects it with a parent club but it is not editable.

How do I assign a newly created minor league team within a given league to a parent MLB club? Something I have to do outside of OOTP within the minor league csv file?

[thehef]

First you need to determine whether or not you are going to have historical minor leagues enabled. If you are not, then you'll do these things directly in OOTP. However, if you are going to have historical minors enabled, then, first I would recommend, just to keep it simple, not adding any teams, but merely changing a team - that doesn't have a real-life historical affiliation - to be an affiliate of the Crawfords. Otherwise you're going to have to deal with schedules & stuff for those minor leagues (a minor league might have 8 teams and the schedule is defaulted for that; if you add one team you'll have to find or create a 9-team schedule; a 10-team schedule would be easier to implement, but then you'd have to bother with an additional team to add...)

For changing affiliations, if you open the milbteams.csv file in Excel and then add a filter, you can filter for all teams with "IND" in the Franchise/AffiliationID field. Just as random examples:

- The 1932 Southern Association has 5 of it's 8 eight teams without affiliations. So you could affiliate Birmingham or Atlanta (or one of the other three teams) with the Crawfords simply by changing the "IND" to match the ID you are using for the Crawfords.

- The 1933 Middle Atlantic League also has 5 of it's 8 eight teams without affiliations. So you could affiliate Charleston or Springfield (or one of the other three teams) with the Crawfords.

Going back to the idea of adding a team (rather than just affiliating an independent team with the Crawfords): You'd do that by just inserting a line in milbteams.csv file and then filling everything out... Most of the fields are obvious, and the statistical fields are not used for anything so they can be left blank... You'll need to come up with something for the MiLBFranchise. That would be used to track link the team's history year to year. Not that you'd want to do this, but if you created the "Anytown Bombers" in 1932 and wanted to "move" them and rename them as the "Othertown Gunners" in 1940, then you'd change the name, etc., for 1940 in the milbteams.csv file, but would use the same FranchiseID, and then OOTP would maintain continuity for that franchise's history... Hopefully that makes sense...

[omg_pwnasaurus]

Thanks much! I'm going to use real historical minors and turn off the auto-expand league so assigning an indy team instead makes a lot of sense. Gotta remember to bookmark this thread lol, I think I have enough to give it a shot. Appreciate all the help

[omg_pwnasaurus]

One more question, lol.

If I uncheck automatically expand league, will the rosters still update? For instance, will new players automatically appear on their respective NEL teams the following season according to history?

I assume so, but wanted to make sure the only thing that option does is keep the league/teams frozen in terms of structure but not in terms of roster.

Like if I uncheck automatically expand league and enable the color barrier, NEL teams will still get new players added to them and the MLB will still have the ammy draft with new players that made their pro debut the following season, etc. Really don't want to do manual imports of players if I can avoid it.

[omg_pwnasaurus]

Trying to affiliate the Philadelphia Hilldale Giants with the Crawfords. Not sure what I'm doing wrong.

Crawfords settings within OOTP

Historical Team ID: PiCr (screenshot)

.../data/stats/MiLBTeams.csv entry

1932 (current league year), Franchise/Affiliation for Hilldale changed to PiCr from IND, (column G).

Parent Team ID for Hilldale doesn't change.

Anything else I have to change? I rebooted OOTP, etc.

Also, since I moved the Crawfords to MLB using the front end, shouldn't the Crawfords show up in the teams file under 1932 MLB teams? I'm not seeing that file updated after using the front end.

[thehef]

If you want to manage affiliations within OOTP (and not via the milbteams.csv file), then you don't do it at the individual team level. Rather, you go to Settings > League Settings > Teams and edit affiliations there.

Also, not sure if you were asking this or not, but any changes you make in OOTP will not update the csv files.

[omg_pwnasaurus]

So here's how I decided to go about it lol. Though I'm going to grab '24 on Friday and do it there.

- Create 1933 historical mode
- Create 2 expansion teams (Crawfords and Whatever)
- Add 3 Minor League teams to Crawfords
- Delete the Whatever Expansion Team
- Auto run the Expansion Draft
- Refresh the MLB schedule since I think deleting 1 of the Expansion team messes it up
- Disable Owner Goals
- Keep Color Barrier Enabled
- Put the Expansion Draft players back on their original teams
- Manually add the 1933 Crawfords players to the new Crawfords Expansion Team
- Refresh Player Contracts since reserve clause isn't fun
- Use RNG for player adds. When amateur draft happens, pick the worst players, release them and use RNG dice rolls to manually put existing NEL players onto the MLB Crawfords to keep their roster evolving (as well as populate some minor leagues). I imagine IRL some players might want to stay in the NEL and not endure the trials and tribulations of this idea so RNG kinda stays true to that. Plus we're not automatically adding Jackie, Campy, Buck Leonard, etc which makes it tougher which I want. Probably 10-20 RNG dice rolls per year to add players or whatever makes sense.

This also allows us to have natural evolving of the league I think.

TL/DL - Drunken Joe Jackson shot Judge Landis in his home one night in the Winter of 1932 as retribution for his banishment. Chandler takes over and adds a NEL team to MLB. Greenlee sees the $$$ and convinces his Crawfords to be that team. We go from there....