Historical minor leagues

[Eugene Church]

Originally Posted by lukasberger

Just a word of caution, as I mention above the Southern Association isn't included, at least for this year.

Bummer, I know, would love to have it and the old PCL myself, but I can deal with that given all that we're getting this year! There's always the possibility of mods as well

Oh, well... I'll just have to wait on my second dream to come true... I was a ball boy in the right field bullpen for the Mobile Bears in the mid to late 50s... got to know Gary Bell, Bill Dailey, Dick Stigman and Dick Brown... they all played for the Bears and eventually made the Major Leagues.

I was really excited about playing out the Southern Association and the Texas League seasons... then having the champs play in the Dixie Series, the Double A championship.

Still... this new feature is a step forward.

As we all know... Rome wasn't built in a day.

[HRBaker]

Can any league - such as the pre-1958 Pacific Coast league be loaded as major league clubs?

[Lukas Berger]

Originally Posted by HRBaker

Can any league - such as the pre-1958 Pacific Coast league be loaded as major league clubs?

Not by default.

You could probably make it happen either by clever use of the editor in game or by editing the db manually. It would take a bit of work either way though, it wouldn't be automated.

[Le Grande Orange]

Originally Posted by lukasberger

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.

You may recall that I have a long-standing focus on league-level matters. Most people focus on the players; for me it is the leagues which are more interesting. So I always view things from that perspective.

I also have a long-standing desire to see OOTP stop treating the minors as a smaller version of the major leagues, and instead treat the minors as the truly unique entity they were and are in the way they operate. The minors are just different from the majors—scheduling, tie-breaking, playoff formats, handling postponements, short doubleheaders, attendance and its patterns, etc.

Did you know I've recorded the attendance for every single individual regular season ballgame played in the affiliated minor leagues over the last three seasons? (I added the four main independent leagues in 2014 and the Mexican League in 2015. I'm adding the *** and KBO to the mix for 2016—I'm curious to see how attendance and rescheduling works in those leagues. I'm also going to turn the 2016 file into a rudimentary game log by recording the final score and the game length, both in terms of time and outs, in addition to tracking the attendance, for each game.)

[Le Grande Orange]

Originally Posted by 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

I've still got a bunch I have to send you way. Been too occupied with other things to go through them and get them fixed up.

I think I did send you the reference I had put together which listed a breakdown of the weekly TSN issues which published a league schedule, and which league schedule was in which issue.

[Orioles1966]

I wouldn't mind seeing Minor League schedules loaded with doubleheaders.

How will the game handle demotions and promotions for teams in the past that had more than one Triple A team?

[Le Grande Orange]

Originally Posted by Orioles1966

I wouldn't mind seeing Minor League schedules loaded with doubleheaders.

The 1929 Texas League schedule had clubs playing 164 games over 152 days. There were also NO scheduled off days in the schedule. It was 152 consecutive days of play. (Of course postponements added some.)

The 1932 International League schedule called for 168 games over 152 days. It was shortened from the usual 159 days in order to free up some time for the newly-adopted post-season league playoffs.

[IStillDream]

Originally Posted by lukasberger

It'd be doable, if tricky. Mostly we'd have to create a second American nationality for African American players and do a couple other things as well.

Not sure if it'll ever happen or not, though I'd bet it will at some point. Gotta save something good for future releases, right?

Honestly, this is the kind of thing I'd happily buy as OOTP DLC. Give us fully realized negro leagues (ideally with stadiums, uniforms, and facegens where possible), and the option for a color line that would stand either until 47 or until the player chose to break it early, and I'd happily pony up an extra $10 or 15 on top of the regular game to pay you guys back for the work it would take.

[joefromchicago]

Originally Posted by Le Grande Orange

I've still got a bunch I have to send you way. Been too occupied with other things to go through them and get them fixed up.

That's OK. I'm busy with something else right now, but I'll get back to doing more schedules down the line.

Originally Posted by Le Grande Orange

I think I did send you the reference I had put together which listed a breakdown of the weekly TSN issues which published a league schedule, and which league schedule was in which issue.

I'm not sure if you sent me that. Even if you did, could you send it again?

[Le Grande Orange]

Originally Posted by IStillDream

Honestly, this is the kind of thing I'd happily buy as OOTP DLC. Give us fully realized negro leagues (ideally with stadiums, uniforms, and facegens where possible), and the option for a color line that would stand either until 47 or until the player chose to break it early, and I'd happily pony up an extra $10 or 15 on top of the regular game to pay you guys back for the work it would take.

Fully realized Negro Leagues would be difficult, at least at the league level, due to the paucity of thorough historical sources. If I recall correctly there were sometimes disputes even as the leagues operated as to whether a given club won the half of a split season due to the often wildly different schedules clubs played. League games seemed to get dropped often in favour of more financially rewarding exhibition games.

[joefromchicago]

Originally Posted by Le Grande Orange

Fully realized Negro Leagues would be difficult, at least at the league level, due to the paucity of thorough historical sources. If I recall correctly there were sometimes disputes even as the leagues operated as to whether a given club won the half of a split season due to the often wildly different schedules clubs played. League games seemed to get dropped often in favour of more financially rewarding exhibition games.

That's putting it mildly. The Negro Leagues were a disaster in terms of organization and statistics. I've been trying to piece together schedules for the Negro Leagues and it's a nightmare. The teams definitely treated league games as a distraction from more lucrative barnstorming.

[Spritze]

In 1871 the other MLB team based in Washington wound up playing zero league games until 1872 because there was more money to be made elsewhere. So that had been going on for 50 years.

[Le Grande Orange]

Originally Posted by joefromchicago

That's putting it mildly. The Negro Leagues were a disaster in terms of organization and statistics. I've been trying to piece together schedules for the Negro Leagues and it's a nightmare. The teams definitely treated league games as a distraction from more lucrative barnstorming.

I came across a couple of published schedules for the Negro Leagues. How closely said published schedule was adhered to when the season was actually on is another matter entirely.

It's a damned shame though that probably a good chunk of the data for the Negro Leagues is simply lost to history...

[The Wolf]

Originally Posted by Le Grande Orange

I came across a couple of published schedules for the Negro Leagues. How closely said published schedule was adhered to when the season was actually on is another matter entirely.

It's a damned shame though that probably a good chunk of the data for the Negro Leagues is simply lost to history...

No one will ever be able to build a reliable data set, because the data simply doesn't exist and cannot be replicated. The best anyone can ever do is educated guesswork, and that's just not good enough.

[Lukas Berger]

Originally Posted by swampdragon

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.

Originally Posted by Eugene Church

Oh, well... I'll just have to wait on my second dream to come true... I was a ball boy in the right field bullpen for the Mobile Bears in the mid to late 50s... got to know Gary Bell, Bill Dailey, Dick Stigman and Dick Brown... they all played for the Bears and eventually made the Major Leagues.

I spoke with Spritze and Markus and it seems that leaving the Southern Association out was indeed an oversight, not a design decision. There are just too many darn leagues to keep track of!

So the Southern Association will indeed make it into the game, as the oversight is currently being corrected

[Orioles1966]

Back in 1969 the Omaha Royals(American Association) and Vancouver Mounties(PCL) had split affiliations with Omaha having Kansas City/San Diego and Vancouver having Montreal/Seattle. How does this look on the League Set-up page that lists minor league team affiliations because it wasn't possible in the past too do this situation(or something)?

Will it now be possible to have minor league teams to have split affiliations or will it only happen under special circumstances?

Also back in 1968 didn't a few expansion teams(that weren't going to play until 1969) have minor league teams? How will this be possible with OOTP17 since the expansion teams had yet to play a game(almost a year away)?

[bwburke94]

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 one AAA affiliate instead of the three or four they probably had in reality

Regarding the 1942 Three-I League, B-R doesn't have much data for it, and it was the last year before it folded for WWII. Also, there was a team in Wisconsin for some reason.

As for the 1954 Dodgers, neither St. Paul nor Montreal can reasonably be dropped.

[ra24mpa]

Thank you, thank you, thank you. I have a reason to play historical now. I just wish, given that the developers had probably known this would be implemented eventually, that they would have said it was on its way. I started working on a full-roster 1990 QS back in early September not knowing how long it would take to complete, and I've reached the point where the only reason I've continued working on it is to justify all the time and effort that I've already put into it. Now, I can finally stop working on it (if I understand what's going on here correctly) and get back to playing actual baseball. I just hope that with the historical drafts the players have draft ratings like they did when they were drafted in real life and not those given on an ex post facto basis. Once again, thank you OOTP developments. At some point this year, you will be getting my money.

[Caporegime]

This is definitely the surprise feature of this edition. I've seen people request this feature before, but it didn't seem like one of those things that was doable. It must have been a veritable nightmare researching data on minor leaguers from the 1920's-30's, not to mention trying to calculate and translate to OOTP what their abilities based on stats from now defunct Class-D and C levels might be.

[swampdragon]

Originally Posted by lukasberger

I spoke with Spritze and Markus and it seems that leaving the Southern Association out was indeed an oversight, not a design decision. There are just too many darn leagues to keep track of!

So the Southern Association will indeed make it into the game, as the oversight is currently being corrected

Thank you! That's very good news.