Historical League Help

[And1pg2]

I've been an OOTP Players since version 5 but I have never been involved in creating a historical solo league nor have I ever played one at all. Recently, I've become interested in creating an OOTP league from 1871, as I see that is the first year you can start a league in. But, I have numerous questions on where to start? Is there a thread for newbies to see exactly what you can do with historical leagues, what logos to use, best database to use. Basically where do I start?

[scott1964]

I start an 1871 league right out of the box. Default everything and play away.

[thbroman]

Can the same be said for a fictional league? If I set up a fictional league using historical settings and walk it forward year by year, do the settings reproduce the evolution of the game fairly well?

(sorry if this is a partial hijack of the thread . . . .)

[AESP_pres]

It was also possible with OOTP 10. As Scott wrote you can start it with no real work from the game, but it won't the real 19th century. You can also with some works do it as it was for real as I do.

Let me know if you want to play it my way and I'll try to explain it the best I can (but some can do a better job than me). This isn't that much work (unless you want to be really real like having the players playing for the team they did).

Originally Posted by thbroman

Can the same be said for a fictional league? If I set up a fictional league using historical settings and walk it forward year by year, do the settings reproduce the evolution of the game fairly well?

Probably... My current simulation use a mix of real/fictional and everything looks fine. Of course everything is real as I manage all the team evolution as it was and I move the players manually to their real team each seasons (can't wait to be able to let the computer do it). What I mean is that I've created the National Association as an historical league in 1871, deleted it in 1876, created the National League in 1876 (historical again), Created the American Association in 1882 as a fictional league based on the 1882 modifier and finally, presently I create the Union Association (fictional with 1884 modifier). BTW this is quite a lot of works for a league that did disapear after one season only

[Biggio509]

Originally Posted by thbroman

Can the same be said for a fictional league? If I set up a fictional league using historical settings and walk it forward year by year, do the settings reproduce the evolution of the game fairly well?

(sorry if this is a partial hijack of the thread . . . .)

I have noticed the 19th century numbers look about right but you don't get as many really high scoring games as were in real life. There are too few errors. Players have modern type fielding rates instead of almost no TDP and low error ratings like historical players do. The 20 error games seem to be missing. Errors are distributing more like modern glove wearing numbers rather than old school gloves are for nancy boys play.

[Biggio509]

Originally Posted by AESP_pres

Let me know if you want to play it my way and I'll try to explain it the best I can (but some can do a better job than me). This isn't that much work (unless you want to be really real like having the players playing for the team they did).

The easiest thing I found in 11 was to copy the teams from Lahaman prior to 1900 onto your teams.csv file. I am not sure why but it seems the right players import to the right teams if you do that. You do have to change NA to NL and AA to AL but that was the extent of it. I think it may be that the source files for 19th century players maybe different in the combined file as compared to the .cvs file.

The main problem in 11 is when teams contracted they would disappear but keep their players. You had to go to free agents show all players and manually release these players from the contracted team. Manually expanding and contracting is probably preferable.

Curious did you make the AA a subleague so you could have the world series or a separate league?

[AESP_pres]

Originally Posted by Biggio509

Curious did you make the AA a subleague so you could have the world series or a separate league?

I did it as a separate league mostly because I was too lazy to combine the NL and AA schedule to make one big one

At the point I am the evolution was like that :

1871 : National Association created
1976 : National Association deleted
1876 : National League created (as the single sub-league of the ML)
1882 : American Association created (as a separate league)
1884 : Union Association created (as a separate league)

Future

1890 : Create the Player League (against a lot of work for one season)
1892 : erase the American Association
1901 : add the American League to the Major League
1914 : add the Federal League
1916 : erase the Federal League

Not many works to do after that except for moving the team and the players.

Also depending of when the PCL database will be completed it's possible that I add it too.

[Biggio509]

Originally Posted by AESP_pres

I did it as a separate league mostly because I was too lazy to combine the NL and AA schedule to make one big one

You can import by subleague but it is a little tricky some years because they played different number of games. You have to import the NL first because the AA had an early start date. So you have to change number of games before importing the AA. Actually thinking about it might be easier to combine the schedules.

I just wish the schedules had the AL as subleague 2. You have to move the NL to subleague 2 when you add the AL because most schedules use the OOTP convention of AL is subleague 1 alphabetically even though it was called the junior circuit for a long time.

[thbroman]

Originally Posted by Biggio509

I have noticed the 19th century numbers look about right but you don't get as many really high scoring games as were in real life. There are too few errors. Players have modern type fielding rates instead of almost no TDP and low error ratings like historical players do. The 20 error games seem to be missing. Errors are distributing more like modern glove wearing numbers rather than old school gloves are for nancy boys play.

Thanks for this and the answer from AESP_pres. It's encouraging. My only followup question is to ask whether the higher error rate clould be manually tweaked some. It can be done, no? I'm not so devoted to 100% historical realism that I would demand having 20-error games -- at least none that I would want to be playing myself! -- but I could see hiking the error rate some.

[Germaniac]

Originally Posted by Biggio509

I have noticed the 19th century numbers look about right but you don't get as many really high scoring games as were in real life. There are too few errors. Players have modern type fielding rates instead of almost no TDP and low error ratings like historical players do. The 20 error games seem to be missing. Errors are distributing more like modern glove wearing numbers rather than old school gloves are for nancy boys play.

Well, I started a historical league over the week-end, starting with the 1871 season ... I can't agree with you, at least not from the one season I completed.

I had my share of low-scoring games, but also quite a few high-scoring games, and also lots of errors.

As I want to take this thing into the modern era and disable team movement and expansion (because I want to change history and keep the Dodgers in Brooklyn ), I took over the Brooklyn Atlantics.

One game from that first season comes to my mind - we, the Brooklyn Atlantics, lost a home game 27:11, with my team committing 27 errors while our opponents made 17 errors.

The box scores regularly have 8 - 10 unearned runs, and Al Spalding had something like 120 unearned runs over the course of the (short) season, we played only 30 games.

[Germaniac]

A problem I came across - did somebody else have this, too ??

When rosters expanded on September 1, I regularly had that error that "Team X has a illegal number of players on their roster".

I guess it was caused because "we" didn't have enough players when rosters expanded (I didn't change the default settings, so I ended up with 40-man rosters in September, and so there weren't enough to supply the big league team with 15 additional players) and I also created minor leagues from AAA to A.

To be able to continue, I had to "act as manager of Team X" and demote a few players from AA to A - unfortunately, I had to do this every other day, for some reason it wasn't saved.

It took me quite some time to get through September/October ... I just hope this won't happen again in 1872.