Historical Timeline - minors?

[entropyw65]

I am currently playing a historical replay from 1871 on.

It's 1883 and we still have a reserve roster. At what point will the game add minor leagues? Or do I need to do that?

Thanks!

[Spritze]

Originally Posted by entropyw65

I am currently playing a historical replay from 1871 on.

It's 1883 and we still have a reserve roster. At what point will the game add minor leagues? Or do I need to do that?

Thanks!

You need to do that.

[Le Grande Orange]

Originally Posted by entropyw65

It's 1883 and we still have a reserve roster. At what point will the game add minor leagues? Or do I need to do that?

Well, the historical answer to that is that minor leagues were around from the beginning. However, the manner in which they functioned was considerably different from how they function today.

OOTP pretty much only allows the modern-day version of minor leagues. So, you could either have them start in the 1920s, which is when the major league clubs began building their minor league farm systems, or have them start in the early 1960s. With the former, though the farm systems were being built, the rules under which they operated meant the minors were still largely independent. In 1963, with the replacement of working agreements with player development contracts, the minors as we now know them were indisputably born.

[entropyw65]

Thanks guys!

[Biggio509]

The more I think about this, the more I am convinced a Football Manager 2010 system would actually simulate the minor leagues prior to 1960's. Major teams had ownership in the minor teams but they were really more like the affiliations in FM 2010. I think it was more like modern European soccer where major clubs always had the first shot of signing a player from an affiliate. The early years were very much like the FM 2010 engine when teams signed players from other teams. Although teams were not compensated until the national agreement of 1903.

How do you guys handle rule 5. It was around very earlier so that teams could draft minor leaguers if needed?

[Le Grande Orange]

Originally Posted by Biggio509

The more I think about this, the more I am convinced a Football Manager 2010 system would actually simulate the minor leagues prior to 1960's. Major teams had ownership in the minor teams but they were really more like the affiliations in FM 2010. I think it was more like modern European soccer where major clubs always had the first shot of signing a player from an affiliate.

The thing is, there were a lot of independent minor league clubs, and even so-called 'affiliated' clubs retained a large degree of autonomy.

One of the earliest forms of affiliation were 'pick of the club' deals. This is where the major league club agreed to sell one or more of its players to a minor league club for the season with the right to buy, as seasons' end, any player from the minor league club's roster. It might be the player originally sold to the minor league club, or some other player on the roster. It also usually meant the minor league club had to give the major league club right of first refusal of any sale or trade it might make during the season.

The other form of early affiliation was outright ownership. The major league club would purchase the minor league club, this giving it the full freedom to sell players back and forth between the two. However, the generally unstable nature of minor league finances in those days meant the practice was usually a money loser for the major league club.

Later, working agreements came along. The major league club would offer a fixed payment and an assortment of players to a minor league club in exchange for the right to purchase a set number of players at season's end. The minor league club could still sign, release, trade, and sell players, but in the case of the latter three the major league club had the right of first refusal. So, for example, if the minor league club wanted to release a player during the season, it first had to offer him to the major league club. If the major league club didn't want him, then the player could be released.

Working agreements were initially limited in that the number of players the major league club could select counted against the 40-man limit, even though those selections didn't happen until the end of the season. So, if a major league team had a working agreement calling for the selection of five players, those five selections counted against its 40-man limit during the season, meaning it only had 35 open spots on which it actually could carry players. In December of 1932 this rule was changed and selections under working agreements no longer counted against the 40-man limit, greatly increasing the ability of major league clubs to enter into such agreements.

The other item related to player development in those days was the optional agreement, which worked quite differently from today. Originally, an optional agreement meant the major league club sold a player to the minor league club with the option to buy back that player after the season for a fixed price, and the minor league club could not sell that player to any other club without the major league team's permission. Such optional agreements did not count against the major league club's roster limits.

In 1907 the rule was changed requiring the player sold on an optional agreement to be repurchased on August 20, and he had to report to the major league club. Players could also only be sold once on an optional agreement. That meant if a major league club sold a player to the minors, it could only buy him back once, and the player had to remain with the major league club after being repurchased. If it decided later it wanted to send the player back to the minors, it could only sell the player outright, meaning once in the minors again any other major league club could purchase the player. Later, players were allowed to be sold on an optional agreement for a second time. Also, waivers were required whenever a player was sold to the minors, regardless of whether it was an outright or optional sale.

Eventually, optional agreements were made to count against the 40-man limit, the waiver limitations removed, the number of seasons a player could spend on option raised from two seasons to three, and players could be moved freely multiple times between the majors and minors during the season, rather than once only.

(I don't have exact timeframes for all these changes, but I'm trying to dig them up. )

[canadiancreed]

I'm wondering, could you have the independent leagues be entered as independent leagues and then linked at whatever level they would be comes the early 60s? Would MLB teams be able to purchase them at all?

[Carlton]

What I usually do is create 2 independent leagues the AA and the Eastern League until the 60's

They draft 3 rounds and have FA after 2 years, that causes some phenominal fake players to crack the MLB roster and it gives MLB castoffs a place to play

Makes it much easier frustration wise

[Biggio509]

Originally Posted by canadiancreed

I'm wondering, could you have the independent leagues be entered as independent leagues and then linked at whatever level they would be comes the early 60s? Would MLB teams be able to purchase them at all?

Actually you can link them and have them as independent leagues! What you do is set AAA or whatever level and set affiliation to none. Just like an independent league the teams will sign free agents from the FA pool. When you want to affiliate them you go to league settings and change affiliation. So you can set up historical minors, something I thought about but abandon when I realized how big of a pain it was, as minor league teams that are not affiliated and change them at the appropriate time. However, past the 1960's minor leagues are always changing so it is a hassle to keep up with because the game will not do it. I suppose you could build the teams in the teams.csv and give them IDs but I am not sure if it works if the game doesn't like anything other than NL or AL problem still exist it could be a problem.

NB: Affiliating minors will mean any players on the team will be now in the system of the affiliated team. You can also force full minor league rosters and block fictional players from the big leagues if you want. If you set minor league free agency to one year there should be free agents coming from the minors if you want to use them as stopgap measures. PCMs should keep these guys from being anything but average AAA fodder but that is just in theory I haven't tested it. The downside is if you don't block the players a lot of these guys might be better than the guys who actually played a few games and have terrible ratings. If you don't mind fictional players being in the spot of cup of coffee players it may not be a problem.