Historical minor leagues

[Lukas Berger]

Originally Posted by swampdragon

That should be enough. You do realize you've opened a huge Pandora's box for future releases. The Negro Leagues, the Southern Association, the old PCL, etc ad infinitum. They will all have plenty of lobbyists.

Yeah, and I'll be the primary lobbyist for most of them

Not to mention the ***, KBO, CPBL, old Cuban League, Cuban Serie Nacional etc. etc. etc.

[Habsfan18]

Add the Negro Leagues to historical mode, and a playable WBC and that will officially be it for me. The greatest game of all time.

[Padreman]

Originally Posted by Habsfan18

Add the Negro Leagues to historical mode, and a playable WBC and that will officially be it for me. The greatest game of all time.

Hear Hear

[rjl518]

Originally Posted by lukasberger

You'll have to start a new game.

Well...maybe its time to restart my Mets and Expanded Playoffs Dynasties.

[Le Grande Orange]

I hate to be a party pooper/curmudgeon, but reality is reality...

Originally Posted by CubzFan73

I have been waiting for full and real minor leagues since I discovered OOTP. This is the coolest thing since I discovered OOTP!

You'll have to wait longer for the full thing—there's a ton of aspects that would still need to be done to get "full and real" minor leagues. (Quick example: OOTP still cannot recreate the actual playoff formats in the current California and Midwest Leagues.)

Originally Posted by lukasberger

Absolutely. Just one thing before you get too excited, the Southern Association isn't in the game, as it was primarily an indy league it's entire existence iirc.

And calling it "historical minor leagues" without the Southern Association isn't really accurate. It's "historical-ish minor leagues". Which is fine, but I think OOTP Devleopments needs to be VERY clear about what EXACTLY this feature entails so that users don't expect more from it than what it really contains.

For the record, here is the year-by-year breakdown of the number of affiliated clubs in the Southern Association (the total number of clubs in the league is in parentheses):

1932-1933: 1 (8)
1934-1936: 3 (8)
1937: 4 (8)
1938: 6 (8)
1939: 7 (8)
1940: 5 (8)
1941: 4 (8)
1942: 3 (8)
1943: 2 (8)
1944-1945: 4 (8)
1946-1947: 6 (8)
1948-1949: 7 (8)
1950-1955: 8 (8)
1956: 7 (8)
1957-1958: 8 (8)
1959: 6 (8)
1960-1961: 7 (8)

As one can see, the Southern Association was a majority-affiliated league post-WWII.

[Lukas Berger]

Originally Posted by Le Grande Orange

I hate to be a party pooper/curmudgeon, but reality is reality...

This is a fair point and it's worth enlarging upon.

This is more a feature intended to provide depth to MLB sims than to allow for absolutely perfect re-creations of, say, the 1938 Evangeline League season in complete and fully accurate depth.

Obviously to get every one of these leagues perfect in every year would be an impossible task. This is why the feature is only available within the context of an MLB league and you can't select individual minor leagues to simulate on their own, apart from MLB.

It's not perfect, and it's not 100% percent historically accurate, but it's 99% better than what we had before, and it will add an enormous amount of depth to the game. That's all that 99.99% of the commenters and buyers are looking for here anyway. More depth and more fun.

I really don't think anyone will demand a refund because we've taken a couple liberties to simplify say, the 1942 Illinois-Indiana-Iowa League so that it will fit easily in game or have given the 1954 Dodgers one AAA affiliate instead of the three or four they probably had in reality

[swampdragon]

Originally Posted by Le Grande Orange

I hate to be a party pooper/curmudgeon, but reality is reality...

Yes, I do agree with you about the Southern Association. Our local club was in the Southern Association for most of its existence, the league had as many affiliations during its existence as the included leagues did, and leaving it out is a bit of an oversight.

This is still a massive improvement over the status quo for historical replayers. I'm sure I'll be pushing to make it better next year, but it is a great start. I'm more excited about this one than I have been in a while. I thought OOTP 16 made major improvements in the feel of the game play, and OOTP 17 should continue the upward trend.

[Le Grande Orange]

Originally Posted by lukasberger

This is a fair point and it's worth enlarging upon.

This is more a feature intended to provide depth to MLB sims than to allow for absolutely perfect re-creations of, say, the 1938 Evangeline League season in complete and fully accurate depth.

Obviously to get every one of these leagues perfect in every year would be an impossible task. This is why the feature is only available within the context of an MLB league and you can't select individual minor leagues to simulate on their own, apart from MLB.

Which, again, is fine, but that needs to be made very clear to potential users so that they don't get a false impression of what this feature currently entails.

Originally Posted by lukasberger

It's not perfect, and it's not 100% percent historically accurate, but it's 99% better than what we had before, and it will add an enormous amount of depth to the game. That's all that 99.99% of the commenters and buyers are looking for here anyway. More depth and more fun.

You've already seen posts in this very thread of people expecting and asking for more of this feature

Originally Posted by lukasberger

I really don't think anyone will demand a refund because we've taken a couple liberties to simplify say, the 1942 Illinois-Indiana-Iowa League so that it will fit easily in game or have given the 1954 Dodgers 1 AAA affiliate instead of the 3 or 4 they probably had in reality

No, probably not. But do not underestimate the hardcore users here who want accuracy and detail in all things OOTP—they are loud and determined.

Just be up front with them about things, don't oversell the feature, that's all I'm saying.


(Also, the Southern Association was, post-war, a majority-affiliated league. It should have been included by the 'majority-affiliated' standard. Why wasn't the 1946-61 Southern Association included when other, sometimes smaller and/or short-lived leagues, were?)

[Lukas Berger]

Originally Posted by Le Grande Orange

(Also, the Southern Association was, post-war, a majority-affiliated league. It should have been included by the 'majority-affiliated' standard. Why wasn't 1946-61 included when other, sometimes short-lived leagues were?)

Yeah, I have no clue, I wasn't involved in those decisions. I agree with you personally.

[Lukas Berger]

Originally Posted by Le Grande Orange

Which, again, is fine, but that needs to be made very clear to potential users so that they don't get a false impression of what this feature currently entails.

You've already seen posts in this very thread of people expecting and asking for more of this feature

No, probably not. But do not underestimate the hardcore users here who want accuracy and detail in all things OOTP—they are loud and determined.

Just be up front with them about things, don't oversell the feature, that's all I'm saying.

Fair points, I can't disagree with anything you've said.

That being said, people are always going to ask more of any feature. OOTP will generally give them more too, but Rome wasn't built in a day, to use a cliche.

There's no doubt going to be improvement here in the future, but this is still a massive step forward that can hardly be oversold. 100,000ish players, millions of lines of stats, hundreds of leagues and thousands of teams added to the game all in one version. Where else would you find a new feature as robust as that?

[frangipard]

Originally Posted by Le Grande Orange

I hate to be a party pooper/curmudgeon,

I kind of doubt that....

And calling it "historical minor leagues" without the Southern Association isn't really accurate. It's "historical-ish minor leagues".

Moreover, they haven't included the 1943 Class E Twin Ports League. Honestly, I don't know why they bothered.

[swampdragon]

When any company makes as big a move as this is in the direction I want it to go in, I prefer praising the improvement to criticizing the imperfections. Yeah, the Southern Association of the 1930s-1940s was a heck of a lot more affiliated than the PCL was. Leaving it out is more of an oversight than a defensible decision. But I'd rather have the PCL anyway, and we may get the Southern Association next time. After all, I don't have any of them in the game I'm currently playing.

[Le Grande Orange]

Originally Posted by lukasberger

Yeah, I have no clue, I wasn't involved in those decisions. I agree with you personally.

Neither was I, obviously.

I have to wonder if perhaps the research involved, at least at the league level, relied too much on Baseball-Reference's minor league pages* (which gets its data from SABR) and not enough on printed reference sources such as the Encyclopedia of Minor League Baseball or The Sporting News.

*Funny thing about that. I've come across several instances of the league standings not balancing, as well as the number of games a club played as given by the standings not matching the number of games it played according to its team batting and pitching statistics. Whether this is a result of data entry errors on the BB-Ref web site or a failure to do basic cross-checking by SABR I cannot say.

[Le Grande Orange]

Originally Posted by frangipard

I kind of doubt that....

To be fair, it is kind of fun. But, more practically, there needs to be a jaded eye kept on things. Criticism—at least, good, reasonably constructive criticism—is what makes things better.

Originally Posted by frangipard

Moreover, they haven't included the 1943 Class E Twin Ports League. Honestly, I don't know why they bothered.

It had only four clubs, all unaffiliated, and the league died before it even finished its inaugural season*. On that basis, it's an outlier that can be disregarded.

*That does raise a point. Should a season in which a league started but failed to finish, due to it folding before the end, be included? An argument could be made that only league-seasons in which the league completed its season should be included.

[Lukas Berger]

Originally Posted by Le Grande Orange

Neither was I, obviously.

I have to wonder if perhaps the research involved, at least at the league level, relied too much on Baseball-Reference's minor league pages* (which gets its data from SABR) and not enough on printed reference sources such as the Encyclopedia of Minor League Baseball or The Sporting News.

That's possible, I don't know.

You have to understand though, this came about because of two guys who were willing to break their backs to collect, sort and setup the info they could quickly and easily get access to. They spent hundreds, maybe thousands of hours doing this, basically because of their love of the game and of its history.

Now that there's a solid base to build on thanks to Spritze and Bigrod (and Markus as well for sure, I know he sweated blood in coding this, I was a recipient of some of the emails discussing the issues getting it in-game ), the perfecting of stuff, use of secondary sources, other improvements etc. can come with future versions. Now we have an incredible base to build on.

That's most of the battle. The additions and tweaks and perfections will come over time, but it took a herculean effort just to get us to the point where we could even contemplate arguing about the importance of the Southern Association in the 1940's in an OOTP historical sim.

So I'm all for enjoying the moment a bit before we start the sisyphean task of pushing the boulder even further uphill.

[joefromchicago]

Of course, if anyone wants some authentic schedules to go along with their authentic minor leagues, they can always check the link in my signature line

[Ravi]

Originally Posted by rjl518

will the historical minor league show up in games that I am already playing or do I have to start the dynasty over in order to get the minors to show up?

Originally Posted by lukasberger

You'll have to start a new game.

I'm super excited by this feature, but I'm a bit confused by this. Given all the customisation options in OOTP, isn't there a way to get the historical minors to show up for an existing MLB league, say in the offseason?

For example, I'm currently in my 3rd season as GM of the Cardinals in Sep 1921. In the post season couldn't I delete the fake minors I have now and have the real historical farm teams with the real rosters added to the league for the start of 1922? Or is this just wishful thinking on my part?

[frangipard]

Originally Posted by lukasberger

So I'm all for enjoying the moment a bit before we start the sisyphean task of pushing the boulder even further uphill.

Like many, this is a feature I've wanted for years. I assumed that IF you ever did it, it would be in stages; one year you have minors as far back as 2000, next year back to 1980, etc.

The fact that you guys did all this all in one go is flabbergasting. I fully expect there to be all kinds of omissions and bugs to start. That doesn't make it any less impressive.

[Lukas Berger]

Originally Posted by Ravi

I'm super excited by this feature, but I'm a bit confused by this. Given all the customisation options in OOTP, isn't there a way to get the historical minors to show up for an existing MLB league, say in the offseason?

For example, I'm currently in my 3rd season as GM of the Cardinals in Sep 1921. In the post season couldn't I delete the fake minors I have now and have the real historical farm teams with the real rosters added to the league for the start of 1922? Or is this just wishful thinking on my part?

I don't know. It might be possible if you link your old game to the new db and import from that.

Then again, it might not be possible. Maybe someone with more knowledge than I have can help.

[Lukas Berger]

Originally Posted by frangipard

Like many, this is a feature I've wanted for years. I assumed that IF you ever did it, it would be in stages; one year you have minors as far back as 2000, next year back to 1980, etc.

The fact that you guys did all this all in one go is flabbergasting. I fully expect there to be all kinds of omissions and bugs to start. That doesn't make it any less impressive.

Yeah, absolutely!

Spritze, BigRod and Markus just put in some superhuman effort to make this happen. I can't even comprehend all they did.

I know they spent countless hours and had to deal with a ridiculous amount of hurdles to get this implemented. I don't think it's possible to give them enough credit.