Negro Leagues Question

[brigmcneil]

With MLB declaring the 7 canonical Negro Leagues as official Major League leagues in MLB history, will OOTP update their data to treat these leagues as Major Leagues and share in MLB leaderboards and records or will they remain as AAA leagues in historical replays?

[Antonin]

Good question. I hope so, but I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for it to happen.

[cmcgill]

This is just a guess, but I expect they might be waiting until there's a more complete statistical database available for the Negro Leagues, so that they'll have the best info from which to generate the ratings for the players.

Again, just a WAG.

[Antonin]

Seamheads has been hard at work compiling their Seamheads Negro Leagues Database for at least 10 years. It's a stat-lover's dream come true.

https://www.seamheads.com/NegroLgs/

[Charlie Hough]

The NeLs are already treated as major leagues for the purposes of calculating player ratings in OOTP. Their AAA status in league structure views is mostly just a cosmetic issue, and I'll explain that shortly. Improvements to NeL ratings calculations were made for OOTP25 and are ongoing, but the ratings are already based on the players' stats being considered MLB level. However, there are still some issues to be resolved. One big one in the past was due to adjust/weaken settings for pitchers and batters who have fewer IP and AB than OOTP's default thresholds. In the NeLs, there are star players who end up below these thresholds because the NeLs only played about half the number of official games as MLB teams did. This caused some problems with some players' stats being adjusted. A lot of this was fixed during beta testing for OOTP25, but I've found some continuing issues where some players are still a bit off, but thankfully they're now very close to where they should be.

However, what's causing the confusion over NeL status in OOTP is that the NeLs are still listed as AAA leagues when you're looking at the league structures. This is more of a cosmetic issue because the AAA status there doesn't determine how player stats and ratings will be handled. But the developers have mentioned that it's going to be very complicated and difficult to fix that and change that indicator to MLB because doing so will potentially have some kind of cascading effect and break some of the league structure functionality. I don't know the details, but that's the general issue and why the NeLs still show up as AAA on some screens.

Long-term, the developers want to get everything as close to perfect as possible, and there are people who've been involved in beta testing and research who've been pushing for continued improvement. Huge improvement was made with OOTP25, but unfortunately it's not a quick and easy fix to close the rest of the gaps.

[mitchkenn]

Seamheads has most of the Negro League players stats. (as well as a few books out there have a lot of the same numbers.)
To get those players numbers changed into OOTP, i edit those players numbers manually. Time consuming to say the least, but it helps get the effect i want. It's a never ending ritual each season - meaning i am editing more than actually getting the games played. Often having to redo many typos i get myself into once i notice them later on.

[Pelican]

OOTP makes a big distinction between MLB and AAA, or any minor league team. Only MLB has full financials. Which makes sense, from the standpoint of realism. It would be overkill to have full financials for every minor league team, when most of them are affiliated with MLB teams. (I would make an exception for unaffiliated teams, which function independent of the MLB system, and thus are on their own, in terms of finances.) However, this discrepancy does create problems for Negro League players. It can be problematic dealing with how MLB teams acquire Negro League players. The game does allow for setting up a purchase price for acquiring players from unaffiliated leagues and teams. And it would be difficult, if not impossible, to recreate the financial realities facing Negro League teams.

As others have said, OOTP has made tremendous strides in the challenging task of calculating major league equivalent ratings for Negro League players. This is really the recognition that many of these players were capable of succeeding, and more, in MLB. But since MLB players and Negro League players only competed head-to-head in the offseason, equivalencies are tough. It's a work in progress.

Yes, I would like to see OOTP designate the Negro Leagues as "MLB" in the game. I would also like to see the Federal League recognized as a major league, as MLB has officially done. Again, that change would mean that full financial structures would have to be created, no small task. And, with the color bar eliminated, users would have to devise a financial relationship between the Negro Leagues and MLB. (IRL Negro Leagues were rarely compensated by MLB for players who were signed.) Would MLB teams make trades with Negro League teams, or would player contracts be purchased for cash?

To me, OOTP celebrates the great Negro Leaguers by recognizing their talents in the ratings, which allow users to dissolve the color bar and integrate these players into MLB in the 1920's and the 1930's and the 1940's before 1947. We can't change history; but we can imagine and create an alternative history that could/would/should have been.