19th Century Improvement Thread

[guamyank]

Originally Posted by joefromchicago

I'll add my own vote here for revamping the way OOTP handles pitchers in the pre-reliever era.

Thats a good point. Almost every pitcher is a starting pitcher. They should be marked as such. Either the rotation needs more options, or the bullpen pitchers need more options. I usually end up making the bullpen all emergency starters. But the only 2 sub options there are normal use and avoid high leverage. Might be nice to see some more options there.

[Spritze]

Originally Posted by joefromchicago

Well, that's not entirely true. Some of the regular schedules (as opposed to the as-played schedules) appear to be accurate, but only for the NL. The game does not include any AA schedules at all, so when you open up, e.g., the major league schedule files for 1885 (both regular and as-played), they say that there were only 8 teams in the majors that year. That's wrong - there were 16. And that's not even addressing the regular schedules from 1871 to 1882, which, as far as I can tell, are completely fictitious.

So yes, you can say that they do not work.

Does anyone have as played and real life schedules in the current format to replace the ones in the game so it can ship with those as options?

[joefromchicago]

Originally Posted by Spritze

Does anyone have as played and real life schedules in the current format to replace the ones in the game so it can ship with those as options?

Yes, everyone who still has the files from OOTP prior to version 13 or 14 has the real major-league schedules for the 19th century. Which means that the developers have those schedules too. If you want to know why the game doesn't ship with those schedules, you might want to ask them.

[Spritze]

Originally Posted by joefromchicago

Yes, everyone who still has the files from OOTP prior to version 13 or 14 has the real major-league schedules for the 19th century. Which means that the developers have those schedules too. If you want to know why the game doesn't ship with those schedules, you might want to ask them.

Well, I don't have those versions. I suspect the files were inadvertently lost on the journey from OOTP 13 to 19. I was just going to send them to the development team so they could be advertently reincluded. Or not.

[BaseballMan]

Originally Posted by joefromchicago

Yes, everyone who still has the files from OOTP prior to version 13 or 14 has the real major-league schedules for the 19th century. Which means that the developers have those schedules too. If you want to know why the game doesn't ship with those schedules, you might want to ask them.

I believe the schedules i use may be the ones you are talking about. I know i didnt make them and they didn't come with 19.
They work quite well. I like them. However there are a few seasons in which
the schedule is not correct. Like in 1873 it has the Philadelphia and Baltimore team schedules backwards. It has the Canaries with 6 games instead of the Marylands. I've tried editing the schedule but never could get it to work so i just manually edit the schedule in the game. 1875 is probably the worst one as i just edit the whole schedule in the game.

Even so for the most part the schedule seem to match up correctly in the other years. I use as played schedules so im not sure about the regular schedules.

[joefromchicago]

Originally Posted by guamyank

Thats a good point. Almost every pitcher is a starting pitcher. They should be marked as such. Either the rotation needs more options, or the bullpen pitchers need more options. I usually end up making the bullpen all emergency starters. But the only 2 sub options there are normal use and avoid high leverage. Might be nice to see some more options there.

There shouldn't be any relievers in the 19th century. None. Zippo. Nada.

OOTP forces any pitcher on the roster who exceeds the rotation limit to become a reliever. The best solution, then, is to make the rotation limit equal the number of pitchers on the staff. That way you shouldn't get any relievers.

Which also brings up another point: roster limits. There weren't any roster limits in MLB until the 1890s, and even then teams rarely carried as many players as they were permitted. Players were expensive and team owners were cheap, so most clubs carried the bare minimum. Through the 1880s, teams typically dressed around a dozen players for a game. It wasn't until pitching staffs started to expand in the 1890s that teams approached the 15-player limit that is the smallest roster allowed by OOTP. Realistically, then, the roster limit should be lowered to at least 12 to reflect the way teams operated in the 19th century.

[joefromchicago]

Originally Posted by Spritze

Well, I don't have those versions. I suspect the files were inadvertently lost on the journey from OOTP 13 to 19. I was just going to send them to the development team so they could be advertently reincluded. Or not.

No need to. As I mentioned, the developers undoubtedly already have those schedules.

[Spritze]

Originally Posted by joefromchicago

No need to. As I mentioned, the developers undoubtedly already have those schedules.

Sorry, just trying to make it easy on the developers who have lots of things developing developmentally speaking..

PLUS baseballman says they are somewhat wrong anyway so no point to asking since some of them are bad anyhoot.

If anyone has correct and functional schedules please post them here and/or send them to the developers. Thanks.

[Le Grande Orange]

In regards to the early 19th century schedules, even if the OOTP versions of the schedules in question no longer exist, the original schedule files still exist over at Retrosheet or on my hard drive, and could be converted to OOTP format without much trouble.

Originally Posted by joefromchicago

Which also brings up another point: roster limits. There weren't any roster limits in MLB until the 1890s, and even then teams rarely carried as many players as they were permitted. Players were expensive and team owners were cheap, so most clubs carried the bare minimum.

It's also worth remembering prior to the implementation of the reserve clause, players were free agents after their (usually one year) contracts were up. And when the reserve clause started it only covered a portion of the roster (the limit was later raised to include the effective number of players a club would carry).

[BaseballMan]

Actually the schedules I'm using aren't all bad.
It's just a few seasons. I can make a note of which ones.
The only thing I'm not sure of is if it's a problem with their numbers the game assigns the teams.
The reason I ask is because I use a the original teams file in which the teams are not tied to modern teams unless they actually were.
So I dont use the one in the game due to that.

[BaseballMan]

To me, the key to 19th century replay is
Correct teams, schedules and transactions that
match up as closely as possible.

For example if you schedule the Marylands for 60 games when they only played 6 you could have pitchers pitching more than they should.
If you sign a player to the Maryl as ndsu after they folded that player would never have the chance to play for them.

[joefromchicago]

The Union Association and Players League schedules can be found here

EDIT: I'll also put in a plug for my 1870s city/team name randomizers

[BaseballMan]

So checking the schedules it seems like it was a problem with the National Association schedules.
These are the years i found problems with.

1872 Switch Washington Nationals and Washington Olympics.
1872 Switch Brooklyn Eckfords and Brooklyn Atlantics.
1873 Switch Philadelphia Athletics and Philadelphia White Stockings.
1873 Switch Baltimore Canaries and Baltimore Marlands
1874 Check May 21st, June 1st and June 2nd games.
1875 Check whole schedule.

I dont believe there were any if any after 1875.
I restarted a league and i am currently at 1880.

[Le Grande Orange]

The National Association had no fixed schedule. Clubs arranged their schedules individually with other clubs by mail correspondence. Also, membership was not restricted, meaning teams could enter or exit the NA during the season. These are the major stumbling block for the NA years. How should these be addressed? (If I recall correctly, the idea behind the NA was that each club would play the others in what effectively was a best-of-five arrangement. The clubs would schedule five contests, and once either of them had won three, the remaining games, if any, were not played. Standings were ordered by number of wins, not winning percentage.)

The National League, in contrast, had a fixed schedule; the earliest one published which I could find was for its second season in 1877. The schedule for the 1876 season does not seem to have been published anywhere, at least, I was never able to locate it. The 1876 NL schedule can largely be reconstructed from the as played schedule, with the exception of the late season games involving New York and Philadelphia, which decided not to make their road trips. Unlike in later years, newspaper mentions of future games is extremely sparse in this time period.

[swampdragon]

The schedules were screwed up for OOTP14. Schedules for OOTP13 are correct. That's one less thing to worry about. That makes league structure and use of the correct teams the primary stumbling blocks.

[BaseballMan]

Originally Posted by Le Grande Orange

The National Association had no fixed schedule. Clubs arranged their schedules individually with other clubs by mail correspondence. Also, membership was not restricted, meaning teams could enter or exit the NA during the season. These are the major stumbling block for the NA years. How should these be addressed? (If I recall correctly, the idea behind the NA was that each club would play the others in what effectively was a best-of-five arrangement. The clubs would schedule five contests, and once either of them had won three, the remaining games, if any, were not played. Standings were ordered by number of wins, not winning percentage.)

If you use the as played schedules then everything should match up. As long as you make your transactions match. Like not scheduling a historical trade after a team has folded.
If you are using the actual schedule instead of the as played, then how much does it matter? Because you will now have players and teams playing far far more games than they really did. At that point you may be on a more loose historical anything can happen replay than a strict historical replay. Doing it that way would be easier and less work but not as close to the real historical 19th century play imo.

[joefromchicago]

Originally Posted by Le Grande Orange

The National League, in contrast, had a fixed schedule; the earliest one published which I could find was for its second season in 1877. The schedule for the 1876 season does not seem to have been published anywhere, at least, I was never able to locate it. The 1876 NL schedule can largely be reconstructed from the as played schedule, with the exception of the late season games involving New York and Philadelphia, which decided not to make their road trips. Unlike in later years, newspaper mentions of future games is extremely sparse in this time period.

The reason you can't find a schedule for the 1876 NL is because the league didn't have one. Instead, it pretty much left it to the teams to work out their own schedules, as had been the case with the NA. That, no doubt, is one of the reasons why the New York and Philadelphia clubs thought that they could forgo their final western road trip - after all, that's exactly what they would have done had they been in the NA. But they didn't reckon on Bill Hulbert, who was determined that the NL was not going to repeat the NA's mistakes. So NY and Philly were kicked out of the league and the NL took over the responsibility for drawing up the season schedules from then on.

[Le Grande Orange]

Originally Posted by BaseballMan

If you use the as played schedules then everything should match up. As long as you make your transactions match. Like not scheduling a historical trade after a team has folded.
If you are using the actual schedule instead of the as played, then how much does it matter?

It matters in the sense that clubs which do better in a sim, had they done as well in real life, might have stayed in the NA longer. Conversely, clubs which do worse in a sim, had they done that in real life as well, might have left the NA earlier than they actually did. There is no way to account for this in a sim due to using the as played schedules—you are locked into clubs staying in the league for the same length of time and playing the same number of games as was the case historically, no matter how much better or worse they do in a sim.

This isn't an issue with the National League, since it was a closed/franchise league model, and played out a set, fixed schedule.

[Le Grande Orange]

Originally Posted by joefromchicago

The reason you can't find a schedule for the 1876 NL is because the league didn't have one. Instead, it pretty much left it to the teams to work out their own schedules, as had been the case with the NA. That, no doubt, is one of the reasons why the New York and Philadelphia clubs thought that they could forgo their final western road trip - after all, that's exactly what they would have done had they been in the NA. But they didn't reckon on Bill Hulbert, who was determined that the NL was not going to repeat the NA's mistakes. So NY and Philly were kicked out of the league and the NL took over the responsibility for drawing up the season schedules from then on.

Thanks—it's been a long time since I worked on digging up the schedules, and remembered some of that in bits and pieces.

[BaseballMan]

Originally Posted by Le Grande Orange

It matters in the sense that clubs which do better in a sim, had they done as well in real life, might have stayed in the NA longer. Conversely, clubs which do worse in a sim, had they done that in real life as well, might have left the NA earlier than they actually did. There is no way to account for this in a sim due to using the as played schedules—you are locked into clubs staying in the league for the same length of time and playing the same number of games as was the case historically, no matter how much better or worse they do in a sim.

This isn't an issue with the National League, since it was a closed/franchise league model, and played out a set, fixed schedule.

If you are replaying history with recalc and historical transactions on, wouldn't you want teams to be locked in to the schedule they actually played?

I can see your point if you go more of a what if route. But if you change the amount of games teams played you are either going to have to eliminate some teams or accept some players playing way more games than they did or should have.