1921

[David Watts]

I started a historical league in 1921. I'm going to use free agency instead of the reserve clause. No minors, just reserve rosters. Injuries are set to low for now. The American League is using the DH and in the NL pitchers bat. I'm using an amateur draft. 3 year recalc with development turned on as well.

I a couple weeks into August right now and Rogers Hornsby is hitting .440+ with 26 bombs and 104 RBI. I keep waiting for his average to dive, but so far he's shown little to no sign of a slump. I've had guys hit .400 before, but never this high. His team the Cardinals have the best record in baseball and are running away with the NL. Currently have a 10 game lead over the 2nd place Reds. The Cardinals as a team are hitting .320+ and have 2 pitchers with 20 wins in Bill Doak and Jesse Haines.

In the AL the Cleveland Indians hold a 2 game lead over the New York Yankees. Cleveland like St. Louis has a team average of .320+ with Tris Speaker and Riggs Stephenson leading the charge. The rookie Stephenson is challenging for a batting title hitting in the 4 spot for the Indians. Haven't checked his fielding stats to see if he's as dreadful as he was in real life though.

Babe Ruth has 40+ (I think 44(I'm at work)) home runs and 118 RBI. He's hitting .380. Home Run Baker is having a really nice season as well.

Both Ty Cobb and Harry Heilmann are drilling it for my Tigers, but they both have spent time on the DL. Cobb is currently in the first week of an injury that will keep him out of the lineup for 6 weeks. Basically all of August. The Tigers pitching is dreadful.

[mitchkenn]

Ruth is pretty much in line with his real life stats that year:
ab h 2 3 hr rbi sb bb so BA
540 204 44 16 59 168 17 145 81 .378

Hornsby is a little high - though in 22 and 24,25 he was over 400. He was ONLY .397 for 1921 with 42 HR.

pretty close to Real life, actually .... except the Cards lost by 10 to the Giants ... must be a bug somewhere! Life just doesn't follow the rules sometimes.

[David Watts]

Originally Posted by mitchkenn

Ruth is pretty much in line with his real life stats that year:
ab h 2 3 hr rbi sb bb so BA
540 204 44 16 59 168 17 145 81 .378

Hornsby is a little high - though in 22 and 24,25 he was over 400. He was ONLY .397 for 1921 with 42 HR.

pretty close to Real life, actually .... except the Cards lost by 10 to the Giants ... must be a bug somewhere! Life just doesn't follow the rules sometimes.

I'm having fun with this, but man is it hard to get used to entire teams hitting so well. I'm a 70's guy, so I'm used to much lower batting averages

[David Watts]

Cobb got hit number 3000 this season. I'll be interested to see how many hits he ends up with. Will he reach 4000? He's always a stud when I have him in random debut leagues, but he also tends to spend a ton of time on the DL. I'm using "low" as my injury setting, so maybe he will stay healthy, but who knows.

[David Watts]

Closing in on the end of August now. New York has been hot and just took 2 out of 3 against the Indians. The final game a 19-6 drubbing. The Yankees have went from 2 down to 3 up in the AL. Babe Ruth has 52 home runs and 140+ RBI. His average is up to .386. Meanwhile, the Indians are really missing the injured Riggs Stephenson. He went down with a 3 - 4 week injury. September should be very interesting.

Rogers Hornsby has slumped a little and his average is down to .429 His Cardinals are still cruising though with a 10 game lead in the NL.

[italyprof]

David do you sim through seasons? And if so by what increments? I like dimming one week at a time when I do so I can see the season develop and also adjust my team as needed. Sounds like you are not managing.

As to the hitters era, this is always an issue for me too. I like late 40s, the low scoring 60s, the 70s (like you that was my formative era) , the running and multi-strategy 80s. Yet...to play Gehrig say would be a blast. Or Honus but the deadball era stats get old.

What I would really like to do is replay history in a relatively neutral era without those notes ever changing - maybe 1948 or 1984-7. Neutral stats - though I have never understood if those refer only to park effect or also to neutralizing different eras.

[actionjackson]

Originally Posted by italyprof

David do you sim through seasons? And if so by what increments? I like dimming one week at a time when I do so I can see the season develop and also adjust my team as needed. Sounds like you are not managing.

As to the hitters era, this is always an issue for me too. I like late 40s, the low scoring 60s, the 70s (like you that was my formative era) , the running and multi-strategy 80s. Yet...to play Gehrig say would be a blast. Or Honus but the deadball era stats get old.

What I would really like to do is replay history in a relatively neutral era without those notes ever changing - maybe 1948 or 1984-7. Neutral stats - though I have never understood if those refer only to park effect or also to neutralizing different eras.

I know for a fact that David Watts plays in "spectator" mode. He lets the seasons unfold and follows it like a fan would without managing any team.

I keep my stats output and strategy settings tied to 1984 for my random debut historicals because like you I like offense to be somewhere between deadball (think 1908 or 1968) and crazyball (think 1930 or 2000). It works rather well for me if I do say so myself.

I play with neutralized stats and this has resulted in dead ball era guys like Shoeless Joe and Home Run Baker showing off some HR prowess because 1984 allows for some HRs and they take full advantage. In 1984, the MLB had a slash line of .260/.323/.385/.708 and an ERA of 3.81 and a run rate of 4.26 runs per team game. To my taste that is perfect, and my numbers stay pretty close. I think I've seen batting average range from about .253 to .267 over the course of 52 seasons now. This was on OOTP16. I still have yet to take OOTP18 for a spin, but I'd imagine I'll get similar results.

You can tie your stat output and strategy settings to any season you want. I just happen to really like 1984 for my random debut historicals. Let me know if you want to know how to do this and I'll try to give you an explanation as to how to do it. One reason I really love it is everyone from history is on an even playing field, so the Shoeless Joes and Home Run Bakers hit homers like they might have in a modern era and McGwire and Sosa get deflated somewhat. I also neutralize the ballparks and the weather (no rain, no wind and 77 on average - wouldn't be good IRL, but it's great in OOTPland). My highest single season HR total in the 52 seasons has been Mickey Mantle's 63, and nobody else has been above 60, so it achieves for me what I want to see in my games.

[italyprof]

Actionjackson, thank you. Actually 1984 sounds about right. Do I just need to shut off the change league strategy function and reset the year under stats on league set-up for 1984 each preseason ? Or is there a permanent setting that works better?

[Jeff1787]

Originally Posted by actionjackson

You can tie your stat output and strategy settings to any season you want. I just happen to really like 1984 for my random debut historicals. Let me know if you want to know how to do this and I'll try to give you an explanation as to how to do it....I also neutralize the ballparks and the weather (no rain, no wind and 77 on average - wouldn't be good IRL, but it's great in OOTPland).

Yes please explain on how to do both....Thanks

[actionjackson]

Originally Posted by italyprof

Actionjackson, thank you. Actually 1984 sounds about right. Do I just need to shut off the change league strategy function and reset the year under stats on league set-up for 1984 each preseason ? Or is there a permanent setting that works better?

Originally Posted by Jeff1787

Yes please explain on how to do both....Thanks

Remember there are two boxes to uncheck for both "Automatically adjust league strategy..." and "Automatically adjust league totals modifiers...". For strategy settings, they are on 1) Game > Game Settings > League Settings > Historical > Historical Progressing Settings and 2) Game > Game Settings > League Settings > Stats & AI > Import Settings. For league totals modifiers, they are on 1) Game > Game Settings > League Settings > Historical > Statistical Accuracy and 2) Game > Game Settings > League Settings > Stats & AI > League Totals.

For league strategy settings, import the settings from 1984 using the "Select Year" tool under the Import Settings heading on the Stats & AI page, and adjust them to your taste. Once you've got the two boxes for strategy settings unchecked, these settings should remain static year over year, but you should of course check just to make sure every year during the preseason.

For adjust LTMs, every year on the day before Opening Day, go to Game > Game Settings > League Settings > Stats & AI > League Totals and in the "Totals from Year" box select 1984. Make sure you do this the day before Opening Day as it's the closest you can get to Opening Day without it being Opening Day and therefore rosters are as close to what they're going to be for the coming year as they're going to get in the offseason.

@Jeff1787: You wanted to know about neutralizing ballparks and weather and this is what I do. There are two files in your "database" folder that I change (I'm going to upload them with this post actually). What you want to do is overwrite the two files in your database folder with the two files I'm uploading. I also remove Career Ending Injuries from the injuries.txt file in the database folder, and I'll upload that file as well. It's this year's injuries.txt file with career ending possibility bools changed from "1" to "0" where applicable. Create a new folder called "modified database" within your OOTP Baseball 18 folder and store them these three files there. From there copy (not cut)/paste each one of them to your "database" folder. You're going to want to keep a copy of each of them in your "modified database" folder in order to overwrite the changes that will happen every time new patches are issued for the game, so be sure to copy/paste and not cut/paste these files into your database folder. I think that's it, but lemme know if you have any questions because that's a lot of info.

[actionjackson]

Keep in mind that the ballparks and weather files will only work in the normal MLB setup because they specifically address the cities and ballparks in use in the typical OOTP MLB setup. If you use a different setup (different teams/cities), you're going to have to do the same thing for yourself if you want to get those effects. It's not that hard. For weather just make the average monthly temperature 77 for every month you play your league's games in, and the average wind speed 0 and the average chance of precip at 0 for the same. For ballparks, you want to set all the ballpark factors to 1.000 for every ballpark you use if there are any outside of the ones I've done. I also set Madrid, Spain to neutralized weather because it is the city that is used when the game can't find a city in the weather.txt file. I guess because it's the last city in the list, not sure why. I've just seen it happen for Brooklyn and other cities not listed in the weather.txt file. I've already done that for the one I uploaded though, so it should work.

[progen]

Where do you find the option for free agency. The manual says under the rules tab when setting up a game, but I don't see it? Starting a league in 1945, and will more than likely keep things at default with no free agency, but would like to know where that option is located? Thanks!

[actionjackson]

Originally Posted by progen

Where do you find the option for free agency. The manual says under the rules tab when setting up a game, but I don't see it? Starting a league in 1945, and will more than likely keep things at default with no free agency, but would like to know where that option is located? Thanks!

Game > Game Settings > League Settings > Financials

All kinds of options on that page including the option to have free agency be the order of the day from the get go in your league rather than the reserve clause, no matter what part of history you're playing.

[italyprof]

Action Jackson, thank you. I followed your instructions and set up an interesting league, starting in 1901 with random debut but with 1985 parameters.

[actionjackson]

Originally Posted by italyprof

Action Jackson, thank you. I followed your instructions and set up an interesting league, starting in 1901 with random debut but with 1985 parameters.

Have fun with it. I love 1985. Favourite historical season of my lifetime.

[italyprof]

What a contrast that era is with today. Now baseball is just the "3 true outcomes" - walks, strikeouts and home runs in succession, like a miracle mile in Texas - bar, barbecue joint, whorehouse, aerospace firm, gunshop. One after the other. Then the endless pitching changes.

The 1970s game was in transition. So it had a little of everything: power hitting, onside baseball with slap hitters and base running and speed ( I hate to say it but the aesthetic negatives of artificial turf may have been, together with the fences back, outweighed by the positives of steals, triples, etc), starters that pitched complete games, relievers that saved while pitching 2-3 innings - more variety in strategies than any other time probably. Today sabermetrics he taught everyone not to but, not to steal, to take pitched to raise OBP, and not to worry about strikeouts while learning that pitchers are less effective the second and third times through the order so no complete games and as many pitching changes a possible. No bench cause you need 14 pitchers and can bring people up from triple A anyway. None of which can be unlearned. So how will we ever exit from the current period? But at least we know that the game was less predictable once.

[italyprof]

I meant to type the 1980s game not 70s. Stupid cell phone thinks it knows baseball better than I do. The 70s had those elements too. But the 80s saw a dramatic rise in the importance of base stealing, while home runs remained important - a nice balance now lost.