How do you all handle 1884?

[Syd Thrift]

I'm doing a fictional/historical league that's currently in the middle of 1883 and I'm looking forward with some trepidation to next season. IRL the NL fielded 8 teams and the AA tried to field 12 but one folded in midseason, another team rose up to take its place through the remainder of the year, and so there were technically 13 teams there. Technically speaking there's also the Union Association but as this league is basically a minor league plus the Maroons I'm going to ignore them.

Already the 1883 season had some issues in that I had to import the schedules for the subleagues separately (and as a result both are playing the NL's "no Sundays" schedule). How does 1884 work for the AA? Do I need to set 13 teams, and if so can I leave the Richmond club uninhabited? I'm going to guess this won't work because the team IDs are bound to be different so... if I just have an 8 team NL and a 12 team AA, can I import the as-scheduled rather than as-played schedules separately and expect them to work?

Is there anything else I need to watch out for? I have a big minor league that takes on undrafted free agents (the draft has talent for 4 rounds but is only 1 round long; the remaining players should be enough to keep the minors running) and with expansion in the past I've just raided teams. When the 4 teams in the AA contract for 1885 I'll probably just release those players and let the minor leagues snap them up.

[BaseballMan]

About to start 1884 in my current league.
I play with the same league setup as the real leagues so i dont know as much when you use the game's setup.
I also import schedules for each league.
You may have to watch for a team that has finished its schedule but still signing players. I have to to turn on don't allow ai to m ake roster changes
or leave a human manager in charge of the team.

I do know it was one of the longest seasons to run in my sim.Lots of transactions to do manually for that year and i think 92 or 93 as well.
I do not use the Union Association as i agree that its not worth the time. Not much chance of St. Louis losing and hardly affected any player's career chance at the hall.
You may want to keep an eye on Old Hoss Radbourn if you are gonna try and see if he can duplicate the 59 wins.
To do so you are gonna have to control the rotation.

I do find the game seems to have a problem with starting pitchers. Iv'e seen where it will rate a guy as a starter that started 5 games while putting a player that started 31 games at 2b.
The game's setup may allow for a better representation of positions.
I don't worry too much about it. I just look at it as fielders would often play many positions. But pitching you do have to keep an eye on.
Still in most of the sims i ran the good teams like Providence and New York Metropolitians were usually close to the top.

1884, 1890, and either 1892 or 1893 are the three longest seasons to run. 1885 -1889 and 1894-1900 are quicker.
Curious to see how Radbourn does in your league.

[Syd Thrift]

I do fictional/historical (league structure, etc. is the same but the players are all fake) and the guy I brought in to be the Old Hoss comp (I like to generate legendary players and tweak their abilities to match their stats every now and then - I've done the same with King Kelly) completely lost his stuff about a year after he debuted in (I think) 1880, so if I decide to make someone the lone man in the rotation over the second half of the season the way Providence did with Radbourn, it will be someone different and probably won't be Providence.

Incidentally Joe "King" Fletcher hit .393 in 1882, the highest mark in league history to date (the league started in 1876). His current team, the Chicago White Stockings, won the league the first 3 years it existed but then got old and, in spite of a new batch of youngsters, hasn't been able to get another pennant since.

[Syd Thrift]

Yeah, so the 19th century schedules that come with the game are definitely NL only. Where are the AA ones available?

[Syd Thrift]

Just to update... I found the 19th century schedules with a forum search and plugged them into my 1884 league. I had to include both Richmond and Washington for even the "as scheduled" option to work, but I'm happy to report that the game figures the schedule out based on alphabetical order, not team ID, so Washington stops playing in July and Richmond takes over in August.

The other bit I was worried about was the league totals calculator. A quick glance at the numbers the AI came up with indicates that it might have been a *little* messed up but the big thing I was concerned about - that it would throw an error because Richmond has an empty roster right now - turned out to not be a worry so much, and on further reflection it appears that, a week in, the stats are pretty in line with RL numbers.

In fact, my biggest concern, which is that so far Ks are way, way up, is based on reality - in 1883 pitchers averaged 3.4 K/9 and in '84 it was 5.0. A quick look at the rules indicates that IRL the National League allowed pitchers to throw overhand that season. The AA still required them to throw sidearm but K rates rose in both leagues. A *further* look indicates that the UA, which I decided not to run in this season (21 teams is enough for me to keep track of as it is) fueled much of that increase, but ah well, I'm OK with strikeouts being around 10-15% higher than they should be for one season, especially since it's due to quirky issues like this one.