Starting at 1871

[Shawnp0001]

I thought I'd start from the very first season, and when I loaded the historical season, it set it up in two division and the main screen said the league setting couldn't be changed because it was a Historical season. I wanted to setup one division with nine teams as it was in real life as opposed to two divisions with eight teams. Does the software preclude this setup?

[BaseballMan]

I think you just need to finish starting the league and then move the teams.
You might want to get an 1871 schedule and you will need to change the rotation and injuries settings if you want realistic historical results.
The 19th century is a little more difficult as far as the data available than modern leagues. So you wont have players on their original teams but they will be there in the game.

[kpkpkp]

Newb here, I am having problems setting up a league....with 30 teams, with historical teams ex.

1977 Reds
1978 Yankees
1919 White Sox
1961 Yankees

Help to the news...as wizards making no sense...and I keep getting wrong result

[kpkpkp]

I have tried 3x to make this work and keep getting error message, I have attached the screen...sorry to be needy, but want to play this sim very much...

thanks in advancehttp://3935462.r.cdn77.net/board/images/smilies/laugh.gif

[joefromchicago]

Originally Posted by kpkpkp

I have tried 3x to make this work and keep getting error message, I have attached the screen...sorry to be needy, but want to play this sim very much...

thanks in advancehttp://3935462.r.cdn77.net/board/images/smilies/laugh.gif

Can you give more information? For instance, at what point in the league creation process do you get the crash message?

[Biggio509]

Originally Posted by Shawnp0001

I thought I'd start from the very first season, and when I loaded the historical season, it set it up in two division and the main screen said the league setting couldn't be changed because it was a Historical season. I wanted to setup one division with nine teams as it was in real life as opposed to two divisions with eight teams. Does the software preclude this setup?

If you want to do this don't use the historical option. Create a fictional league and import real players you can check import real historical rookies too. The game can't auto the 19th century as it was. It has never been program to handle contraction. The database is quasi historical because the game sets up an AL and NL early and just expands over time rather than major expansions and contractions that happened in the NA, NL, and AL.

I have played from 1871 to about 1912 a few times and it is enjoyable but it certainly isn't autopilot and you need a lot of manual work. This is the process each season.
1. Check my historical spreadsheet first day of offseason.
2. Change league structure to delete teams that no longer exist.
3. Add teams that do enter.
4. Clear all reserve rosters for all teams.
5. Create additional free agents if teams entering> teams leaving. I create these guys as bench or average as to not add too much talent to the pool. So for 15 man rosters if I net 4 new teams in I will add 60 FAs to make sure I have enough players. Sometimes I might make one or two stars, a few good, the majority average, and the rest bench. Sometimes I just make them all average or bench.
6. Check Historical roster limits adjust if necessary.
7. Offer FAs
8. Sim to preseason
9. Load schedule if needed.
10. Adjust games in options to next year games so the schedule will auto load.

League ends
1. If you want the award history you can't delete the league until pre-season.
2. Name change history is lost when teams move leagues.
3. You can either keep a couple of defuct teams in the league until preseason. Clear active and reserve roster and check no AI changes on team settings or keep a couple of teams that will be moved in the league and move them before deleting the league.

This only happens 3 times.
1. NA ends.
A. I usually create the NL with Cinci and Louisville and let them run a draft.
B. Delete NA teams going them move the appropiate teams to the NL in the NA pre-season.
C. Delete NA
2. AA ends.
A. I move the teams over to the NL
B. Clear rosters of the two teams I keep until preseason.
C. Make sure no AI roster moves is checked.
D. Delete league after AA preseason.

AL forms.
1. Create AL in 1901
2. Let them run the draft.
3. Wait until NL preseason.
4. Create a subleague in the AL league.
5. Move all NL teams to subleague 2.
6. Delete NL.

I do this so modern stats are separate from 19th century stats. Alternatively I sometimes create the Western League in 1892 and move the appropriate teams to the AL in 1901.

Rules
Roster
This is debatable in the 1870s teams only carried 10 players. The rule was you had a 10 man roster on game day. There was no team control so players could be brought in or cut at any time. Theoretically a player could change teams during the season. It was pretty rare.

15 man rosters with unlimited reserves work well in the 1870s
As the pitching rotation increases I add a roster spot for each new pitcher.
I may experiment with an unlimited roster. 10 men was game day roster but teams sometimes employed a lot more than 10 guys over the season.

There was an agreement for the first year of AA and NL cooperation to have 25 man rosters.

Typically I set rosters to the reserve limit when > 15 and 15 when reserve limit is smaller. This is part of the logic in clearing reserve rosters. The 15 man is essentially the protected guys under the reserve clause and the reserve roster is the guys anyone can sign so I send them to the FA pool.

Financial
Default financials don't really work for the human in the reserve clause era. I have a house rule to max scouting and PD. You have way too much money.
1871- beginning of the reserve clause FA one year. Maximum contract one year extensions available.
1877- free agency reserve clause rules. Guaranteed contracts only for stars no compensation if cut.

I have tried to fiddle with financials to give me more challenge and only put the AI in the hole badly.

Minors
Not an easy issue. In 1892 I add independent minors and run them until the minors start becoming affiliated. This seems to cause problems with free agent creation though. So I generate young undeveloped talent every year. Each indepedent league is set to free agency no free agency. Why?
That allows you to set a price for the other leagues to buy players from them. I base this on cash available.
In this setup major league teams often get young talent but can't develop them because there is no way to put in options. At that time an option was a sale to a minor league team with an option to buyback the player.
Usually, what happens is the lowest leagues get the young talent and the majors buy them when they develop.

After minors are bought by majors.
This is the difficulty when to affiliate minors. The problem is reserve rosters are gone when you affiliate a team. So you have to set roster limit to unlimited before affiliating a minor. What is problematic is that even if you make a minor league affiliated and only have 2 teams with owned minor league clubs then every team loses the reserve roster. Setting active roster to 40 instead of having a 40 and a 25 man helps with this some but I am not sure it fixes it.

Option A.
Historic teams buy minors at an uneven pace. Until all teams have a minor you may need to tweak the active roster.

Option B.

When you want teams to own minors give everyone at least one minor league club even if it that is not historic.

Waivers I usually turn those on with the 40 man roster.
Waivers existed prior to this but were very different from modern waivers. Essentially a waiver was that a team had to notify all other teams when it wanted to release a player. Other teams could bid for him. Modern day waivers allow teams to place a bid when a player is moved from the 40 man to another roster.

Options
As soon as teams buy minor league clubs.

Other
Stadium size
Since stadiums won't automatically import you have to be aware of sizes. The starting stadium size in 1871 will be well below baseline in 1901. So these need to be adjusted in my spreadsheet I have a list of stadium changes and use a mod that has historic stadiums.

This is a lot of manual work to play before 1901 in a historical way. It can be fun but it is far from auto pilot. You will spend as much time tweaking the league from 1871 to 1901 as you do playing in that you have to expand and contract manually and change rules manually.

Once 1901 rolls around it is pretty smooth sailing. Even though it isn't on autopilot you only have to deal with name changes for over 50 seasons until expansion happens. Then it is a bit more automatic in that there is an expand league and hold an expansion draft budget. The game financials will feel off for the reserve clause no draft era. Instituting the draft will help and when FA rolls around the finances will start to iron out. So house rules for signing available free agents either new gens, cut players, or FAs from folded teams will be too easy to sign with the huge budgets the RC brings from 1877 to at least the point where good data is available is for salaries and revenue. The game's financials get more in line with reality then.