Deadball era

[Orcin]

I have zero experience in this era and I am thinking about trying a league starting in 1900 with an inaugural draft.

For those who play it, how do you handle finances, draft, etc.? Do you use free agency or reserve clause? How about the amateur draft or assign rookies to historical teams? Finally, I was thinking of using reserve rosters instead of minors because of lack of players - make sense? Any other tips?

[Reed]

Start in 1901, I think that is the yr the league’s became stabilized. Before season begins, I release all player and start with an inaugural drat. Use reserve clause, not minors. Turn injuries off for a few years or some teams will be short on players. I turn finances off but you should be fine if you use them anyway you want.

[Syd Thrift]

Originally Posted by Orcin

I have zero experience in this era and I am thinking about trying a league starting in 1900 with an inaugural draft.

For those who play it, how do you handle finances, draft, etc.? Do you use free agency or reserve clause? How about the amateur draft or assign rookies to historical teams? Finally, I was thinking of using reserve rosters instead of minors because of lack of players - make sense? Any other tips?

In 1900 the future American League *was* a minor league in and of itself. I'd probably start in 1901 and go from there, although what I did in my fictional/historical league was I started in 1893 and then in '01-'03 I had NLers jump from one league to the other in accordance with what happened in real life (Phillies players kind of jumped en masse to the A's, a bunch of guys from the Giants jumped to the Orioles and then jumped back a year later, etc.).

I feel like the "true feel" of the league circa 1901 was that the AL was halfway between what we'd think of as a modern major league and a AAA league. There's a reason why Nap Lajoie hit 40 points higher in '01 than in any other point in his career. The AL quickly evened itself up but yeah, those early years were wild and woolly.

As for minor leagues, I had them in there but I can understand why you wouldn't want to. You're right; the leagues were *extremely* small and what's more you don't actually have affiliated minor leagues for anyone until I think 1920, when the St. Louis Cardinals signed a working agreement with the Houston Buffaloes of the Texas League. Before that, teams might have made ad hoc agreements to loan a player they liked but couldn't fit into the lineup to a minor league for a year, and they'd definitely purchase, sell, and trade with those places, but the concept of the minor leagues as a place where you develop talent wasn't really put in place until the 1950s and circa 1901 the MLB was more of the first among equals than anything else.

Also, for the first year or two you probably want to dial injuries way down. Some teams used 5 starters the *entire year*. In real life I think what probably happened a lot is that guys just pitched through pain and the fact that they were never the same afterwards went pretty much unnoticed because a lot of them didn't really deserve to be there in the first place. But in a game sense, if you get unlucky and have like 3 of your pitchers out for 3 months, you're going to ride along with a 2 man rotation and that seems like a bad idea.

[Orcin]

Thanks for pointing me to 1901. I think I will like that much better.

I am hoping that an inaugural draft will correct the inequality between the leagues.

I read a post this morning about drafts in historical leagues being too focused on prospects. I wouldn’t think this would be as big a problem in 1901, but it has me thinking that I should wait for patch #1 before starting this or just go with real rosters.

I wonder how it would play out to have free agency in 1901. I need to research when the reserve clause actually started (edit: 1879) and what existed prior to the rule (edit: not enough money in the game to matter).

I also considered adding some fictional players, especially pitchers, to the pool in order to give teams decent roster depth to start. I want to avoid any of them being star players so I need to research how to tone down their created ratings.

Thanks for the help on this.

[Jerry Helper]

I actually think one of the funnest ways to play is to go back to any era from the reserve clause years and turn it off. It's so interesting to watch what happens when guys like Cobb and Ruth hit the free agent market

[rjl518]

I once started a dynasty using an expanded playoffs system in 1901.
had a lot of fun with it until the game crashed and I could not restore it.
playing back in those years really helped me admire players like Mathewson, Cobb, Lajoie, Shoeless, Delahanty, among many others.
I did not use free agency and I think at that time, that is what I happen to agree with.
remember also, my friend, that most rosters at that time had 17 batters and 8 pitchers, because pitchers could pretty much pitch every other day, hence the 400 wins that Cy Young has.
bullpen usage was rare, and some pitchers could hit really well.
of course, that was the "Deadball Era" and the homerun was an uncommon to rare occurrence.
seeing how free agency would work during that time would be most fascinating.
a player like Ty Cobb asking for more money from a team like the PHI Athletics, NY Highlanders, CLE Naps, BOS Beaneaters or the BKN Superbas, would be fun to see.

[scott1964]

Your missing half the fun if you do not start in 1871.

[italyprof]

There is some fun in playing the 19th century. BUT...it has nothing ro do with the deadball era. The 1890s was the all time offensive era. Comparable to the 1990s. But I second what most here have said; the game is much more stable from 1901 on. But there is a world before that.

[Syd Thrift]

Originally Posted by Orcin

Thanks for pointing me to 1901. I think I will like that much better.

I am hoping that an inaugural draft will correct the inequality between the leagues.

I read a post this morning about drafts in historical leagues being too focused on prospects. I wouldn’t think this would be as big a problem in 1901, but it has me thinking that I should wait for patch #1 before starting this or just go with real rosters.

I wonder how it would play out to have free agency in 1901. I need to research when the reserve clause actually started (edit: 1879) and what existed prior to the rule (edit: not enough money in the game to matter).

I also considered adding some fictional players, especially pitchers, to the pool in order to give teams decent roster depth to start. I want to avoid any of them being star players so I need to research how to tone down their created ratings.

Thanks for the help on this.

You could probably wind up with a realistic looking setup if you turned full free agency with no minimum service time on from 1901 to the winter of 1904 (01-03 is classically the War of the Leagues time but in '04 the Giants won the pennant and refused to play the American League champion Boston Americans so in a sense the wars continued. There were also quite a few players jumping from league to league in the offseason between '02 and '03, too, and really IRL the 1903 season and subsequent offseason was marked by a chain of events that represented probably the high-water mark of the league war:

1. John McGraw, who was always pretty salty when it came to the officiating, apparently went about 20 steps too far and eventually got himself suspended by the American League for umpire-baiting.
2. John T. Brush, the owner of the New York Giants, collaborated with the owner of the Reds at the time (Bill Herrmann?) to purchase the Baltimore Orioles AL team that McGraw played for. I'm not sure that it's ever been proven that McGraw played a part in this but needless to say, the timing is very, very suspicious.
3. The Orioles are sold and, as the first order of business, release all their players. The Giants immediately sign 5 of them, incuding McGraw, and the Reds snap up one more guy. These were the days when teams carried just a few pitchers, the lineup, and maybe an extra player or two. If memory serves, their catcher Wilbert Robinson is about the only person who stays with the old club.
3a. The league immediately takes the franchise, but the damage has been done. IIRC the Orioles do in fact forfeit a game because they don't have enough players to field a team, although I might be wrong about that.
4. The rest of the AL, knowing that dropping to 7 teams will probably sink the league, each contributes a player from their own roster.
5. The Baltimore Orioles in fact do play out the season and major league baseball is not seen in that city again until the 1950s.
6. That offseason, the AL finds itself a new buyer for the old Orioles franchise...
7. ...and they stick it in New York City, a city they'd stayed out of initially due to the presence of both the Giants and the Brooklyn Dodgers. This team, named the Highlanders, would eventually become the Yankees and drive their cross-league rivals out to the Pacific Coast. But that, of course, would be more than 50 years later.
8. The leagues head into the 1904 season with the owners rather split on the subject. Some guys - the owner of the Pirates, if memory serves, was a big player on this - want to reconcile with the upstart league while others - chiefly the Giants - refuse to acknowledge its existence.
9. As noted before, the Giants win the NL pennant and declare themselves world champions. This in spite of the fact that just the season before the Americans played the Pirates in the first-ever World Series. It's hard to call this series "canceled" but it marks the only last time until the 1994 strike that a year would go by without a fall classic between the AL and NL champions.

I actually did role-play all of that in the OOTP17/18 league I did. I don't know, I found it pretty fun at least, but, well, I'm kind of nerdy about this stuff. I also did all fictional players, started (as noted) in 1893 so that I could treat the AL as a true minor league (incidentally this wreaked havoc on that league's stats), and as a sop to the fact that the AI is not great at evaluating players on its own I set two of the top minor leagues to be affiliated.

As for the 1890s vs the 1900s... it's true that the previous decade was super-high offense vs. the super-low offense you see in the middle part of the next decade especially but I feel like those two periods are not as far off as you might think...

[Orcin]

Thanks for all the help and ideas on this.

I did start a league in 1901 as GM only for the Cardinals. The first thing I did was trade to retrieve Cy Young from the Americans. I couldn’t let that theft stand. I was also able to trade for Deacon Phillippe. I got both without giving up either Jesse Burkett or Bobby Wallace. The improved pitching gave me the pennant in a close race with the Pirates, and a sweep of the White Sox in the World Series even though Wallace missed the event with an injury.

I went with reserve clause and no draft (import rookies to historical teams). I also used the pure development engine (with no recalc). I like doing this in historical leagues to somewhat negate the human knowledge advantage. You still know who the good players are, but you can’t peek into the future and see what the stats will be in three years with confidence.

So far, I am really enjoying it.

[scott1964]

Originally Posted by Orcin

Deacon Phillippe

He tore it up for me in version 16.

[The Game]

Originally Posted by Orcin

I have zero experience in this era and I am thinking about trying a league starting in 1900 with an inaugural draft.

For those who play it, how do you handle finances, draft, etc.? Do you use free agency or reserve clause? How about the amateur draft or assign rookies to historical teams? Finally, I was thinking of using reserve rosters instead of minors because of lack of players - make sense? Any other tips?

i use FA but after 10 years until 1970's. Players come in as FA. I didnt get up to the era for minor leagues on 18. Got too frustrated with the stats.

[Orcin]

Yeah, forgot to mention I was using reserve rosters with a 15-player limit (so 40 available players). That left some free agents which AI teams that were short of players happily grabbed. I didn’t see anything I wanted in those free agents, which meant the AI was making pretty good roster decisions.

[joefromchicago]

Teams in that era would typically carry 18-20 players on their rosters, even though I think they were allowed 24 or 25. Some teams might even travel with fewer players, especially at the end of the season, just to save some extra cash. Teams would have 5 or 6 pitchers, 2-3 catchers, and 9-11 fielders. Teams weren't allowed to have a bullpen catcher that wasn't on the roster, so a lot of teams carried a third catcher on the roster whose main job was warming up pitchers and who seldom if ever got into games.

My recommendation is to set the typical pitching rotation for your league to equal the typical pitching staff. So, for instance, if the default pitching staff is set at 6, then you should have 6-man rotations as the norm for your league. My reasoning is set forth in this thread.

[The Game]

Originally Posted by joefromchicago

Teams in that era would typically carry 18-20 players on their rosters, even though I think they were allowed 24 or 25. Some teams might even travel with fewer players, especially at the end of the season, just to save some extra cash. Teams would have 5 or 6 pitchers, 2-3 catchers, and 9-11 fielders. Teams weren't allowed to have a bullpen catcher that wasn't on the roster, so a lot of teams carried a third catcher on the roster whose main job was warming up pitchers and who seldom if ever got into games.

My recommendation is to set the typical pitching rotation for your league to equal the typical pitching staff. So, for instance, if the default pitching staff is set at 6, then you should have 6-man rotations as the norm for your league. My reasoning is set forth in this thread.

roster limits

[Orcin]

Pittsburgh nosed me out of the pennant by one game in 1902. Phillippe won 25 games, but it wasn't enough. This has been more fun than I expected.

I knew about the high number of errors in the small glove era, but it is still a little unnerving to have a third baseman with 62 errors. Maybe I need to improve my defense there. He had twice as many as my shortstop, but my shortstop (Bobby Wallace) is one of the best in the league. Still, you would think I could find someone else to hit .250 with half that many errors.

[Orcin]

I did swap my third baseman for a better fielder but, despite the defensive improvement, the 1903 Cardinals were in fourth place playing listless .500 ball at mid-season. So I shook things up with a couple of big trades, acquiring SP Jesse Tannehill from the Pirates and 2B Jimmy T Williams from the Highlanders. I traded most of my depth and all of my prospects to get these two stars, but the gamble paid off with a 42-22 record down the stretch. Tannehill went 12-2 in 15 starts and Williams hit .363 with 58 RBI in 51 games, leading us to the pennant by four games over Pittsburgh.

We beat Nap Lajoie and the Philadelphia Athletics in the World Series for our second championship in three years. Lajoie hit .413 in the regular season (his second time over .400 in three years) but we held him to a paltry .375 in the series. Tannehill was injured in late September and did not pitch in the series, but Cy Young, Deacon Phillippe, and rookie Mordecai Brown got the job done.

[warneke]

Originally Posted by Syd Thrift

In 1900 the future American League *was* a minor league in and of itself. I'd probably start in 1901 and go from there, although what I did in my fictional/historical league was I started in 1893 and then in '01-'03 I had NLers jump from one league to the other in accordance with what happened in real life (Phillies players kind of jumped en masse to the A's, a bunch of guys from the Giants jumped to the Orioles and then jumped back a year later, etc.).

I feel like the "true feel" of the league circa 1901 was that the AL was halfway between what we'd think of as a modern major league and a AAA league. There's a reason why Nap Lajoie hit 40 points higher in '01 than in any other point in his career. The AL quickly evened itself up but yeah, those early years were wild and woolly.

As for minor leagues, I had them in there but I can understand why you wouldn't want to. You're right; the leagues were *extremely* small and what's more you don't actually have affiliated minor leagues for anyone until I think 1920, when the St. Louis Cardinals signed a working agreement with the Houston Buffaloes of the Texas League. Before that, teams might have made ad hoc agreements to loan a player they liked but couldn't fit into the lineup to a minor league for a year, and they'd definitely purchase, sell, and trade with those places, but the concept of the minor leagues as a place where you develop talent wasn't really put in place until the 1950s and circa 1901 the MLB was more of the first among equals than anything else.

Also, for the first year or two you probably want to dial injuries way down. Some teams used 5 starters the *entire year*. In real life I think what probably happened a lot is that guys just pitched through pain and the fact that they were never the same afterwards went pretty much unnoticed because a lot of them didn't really deserve to be there in the first place. But in a game sense, if you get unlucky and have like 3 of your pitchers out for 3 months, you're going to ride along with a 2 man rotation and that seems like a bad idea.

Excellent ideas and thoughts in this post. Just wanted to add that for replays I often start in 1902 rather than 1901 just because of Lajoie's "ridiculous" .426 in 1901 (Which just seems like a 19th century average; and I just don't like that BA in my replay league history). And it was 50 points higher than the next guy (Jesse Burkett's .376). I guess another option, for me at least, is to dial down Lajoie's ratings for 1901 using the player editor.

[warneke]

Originally Posted by The Game

i use FA but after 10 years until 1970's. Players come in as FA. I didnt get up to the era for minor leagues on 18. Got too frustrated with the stats.

I also like using a ten-year mark before guys become FAs. And I think I have I did have real rookies come in as draft picks, though, as that seems a better way for weaker teams to improve (rather than to have to fight with probably more limited resources for the best/better rookies).

[Orcin]

I have played five seasons now. I was in the upper division with a winning record in 1904 and 1905 but did not threaten to win.

I think I will start again with an amateur draft and free agency this time. One thing that bothered me about this last run was the lack of financial work. I enjoy managing the budget, but the reserve clause held salaries down and resulted in all of the teams being way under budget. Maybe free agency would help increase the salaries to a level where teams would actually spend their budgets and give me more to manage.

I also plan to wipe out the records prior to 1901 in order to see who actually leads the stats in my own league. I apologize to those pre-1900 fans who would consider this blasphemy.

I am using Challenge Mode, so I am uncertain about minor leagues this time. I can only add them at the start, because that option is unavailable after the game is created. I can go with historical minors though, and that might be an option. I would be able to create unaffiliated minor leagues and buy/trade with them. Still mulling this over...