Stopping historical expansion ONLY

[Brad K]

I want to stop my league at 28 teams. In the past I've done this by disabling historical expansion. However other historical things stopped too. Teams did not update to their stadiums. Teams didn't move, meaning they had the wrong team ID and their historical rookies didn't get assigned to them. I think there was some other stuff too. Just going through the FA list and figuring out who should be assigned to a team is a lot of work.

Anyway, what I intend to do this time is to leave historical expansion checked and uncheck automatic scheduling of expansion draft. Then when the league expands, instead of having a bunch of stuff to correct, all I need to do is delete the expansion teams, fix division alignment, and put in a 28 team no interleague schedule (there's one available).

Does anyone see reasons why this might not work or something else I need to do that I've missed? Thank you!.

[thehef]

This sounded interesting so I tested it.

- started with 1958 historical season
- no historical txns
- no trading
- no amateur draft
- no financials
- auto-expand ON, expansion draft OFF
- auto-import historical rookies ON

As the game transitions after the 1960 postseason into the offseason, the Angels and Senators franchises were added. Here's what I did:

- bulk released the 7 Angel and 9 Senator rookies**
- deleted the two teams from the league
- re-generated a schedule

The above moves literally took about 1-2 minutes total.

Then I simmed to the same point the following season. What I realized, though, is that stopping a specific expansion isn't a one-time effort: Even though I stopped the AL from expanding for the 1961 season, it expands by adding the Angels and Senators again for the 1962, along with the NL adding the Mets and Astros. So I basically repeated the process above:

- bulk released the 8 Angel, 7 Senator, 6 Met, and 9 Astro rookies**
- deleted all four teams
- re-generated the schedule

Simmed ahead to the next year, and it worked fine, but of course the four teams re-appeared as soon as moved past the 1962 postseason and entered the offseason.

So, it works, but there is annual maintenance - albeit pretty brief - each season, not just in the expansion seasons. And by the time you get MLB's current 30-team setup, you'd have 14 teams to delete.

I'll note that I didn't bother to do anything with the rookies that I released, but as free agents, and as per my settings, they were signed by other teams (some presumably were not if they weren't that good). And as for players who were part of real-life expansion drafts, with no expansion draft in OOTP, they generally stayed with their pre-expansion-draft teams.

** What I didn't realize until the offseason between 1962 and 1963 is that it wasn't necessary to release the rookies on the expansion teams. Simply by deleting those teams from the league, any players become free agents.

So to further test this with historical txns, I enabled them after the Oct 1962 transition to the offseason, and repeated the process for deleting the 4 expansion teams... But, for each subsequent year, I did not bother to do anything with the rookies who imported to the expansion teams and then became free agents.

The Braves still moved to Atlanta and into Fulton County Stadium for 1965... The A's moved to Oakland and into their park... As expected.

After the 1968 postseason, when the AL expanded to include KC and Seattle, I removed those two teams (along with the Angels and Senators) and then relocated Cleveland to the west in order to have balanced (4-team) divisions. I also removed the NL's Expos and Padres (along with the Mets & Astros).

What I noticed at this point, though, is that three of four previous expansion teams (Hou, Cali, Wash) - even though they didn't exist in the league structure - actually had players assigned to them. The Mets did not - no idea why they were different. I don't know when this started occurring - if it was happening all along or if it was a function of enabling historical txns. But right after I deleted the 8 teams, I found that those 3 previous-expansion teams had players assigned to them (9 for Calif, 20 for Wash, 21 for Hou). Then, as I progressed to the new year (1/1/69), the player counts were as follows:

Angels: 11
Senators: 21
Astros: 20
Mets: 0
Royals: 0
Pilots: 21
Expos: 24
Padres: 0

So this part was definitely weird...

Anyways, I released all of these "nowhere land" players, and ran the sim until May 1st, 1969. At this point some of the expansion teams (which, again, did not exist in the league structure but were somewhere out there - the teams themselves could not be found by me, but I could the players associated with these teams by using player searches) had a few players associated with them, as a result of historical transactions that occurred from approx mid-Oct 1968 thru May 1 1969. But some of the teams did not... A mystery.

In summary, I think what you want to accomplish is do-able, with less manual maintenance that you had described as hurdles in your first paragraph. However, there would still be the following manual maintenance items:

1) Manually removing the expansion teams each offseason, regardless of whether there was expansion that year or not. (This is quick & easy.)
2) Generating an appropriate schedule. (Also quick & easy unless you are looking for certain schedules.)
3) Periodically checking for players who are assigned to the phantom expansion teams, and making them free agents and/or assigning them to teams, or however you want to handle them... (This could be a lot of work or not much, depending upon how much you care about this and want to dig into it.)

You might want to try a similar test for yourself, just to see if you find any differences than what I found, if you encounter the phantom team weirdness that I did, and/or to look for certain things that are important to you and that I didn't think of. (From beginning the test to posting this took about 2 hours.)

Good luck!

[Brad K]

I was aware I'd have to delete the expansion teams yearly.

Thanks for the test! I wasn't expecting anything like that. I was just hoping to find someone who had already tried it.

[thehef]

Originally Posted by Brad K

Thanks for the test! I wasn't expecting anything like that. I was just hoping to find someone who had already tried it.

No problem. These days I find myself doing nothing but testing. Can't remember the last time I actually immersed myself in an OOTP sim. But this testing has given me some ideas!

Originally Posted by Brad K

I was aware I'd have to delete the expansion teams yearly.

Actually, I might be on to something here. I just tried this:

1) Made a backup copy of the Teams.csv file that is located in the ... data/stats folder.
2) Opened the Teams.csv file and deleted the entries for the '61 Angels & Senators, and the '62 & '63 Angeles, Sens, Mets, and Colt 45's.
3) Started a historical sim in 1960.
4) Let it run.

After the 1960 playoffs ended and the game proceeded to the offseason, it did NOT add the AL expansion teams... I then generated a schedule (under the assumption that just because the expansion teams weren't added, the real-life schedule would still be imported) and ran the game until the offseason following the 1961 season: Neither the '61 AL nor the '62 NL expansion teams were added.

I had historical txns enabled and in this limited test I did not find the issue described above (where players would end up on the phantom/non-existent expansion teams).

I don't know enough about schedules & schedule settings to know if there's a way to have a historical game import a schedule that works for the current league setup - as opposed to pulling in the historical schedule - but otherwise it appears as though you might be able to make your historical world work with minimal manual intervention. You'd only have to deal with schedules and - optionally depending upon your preference - handling the transactions for the players who IRL ended up on the expansion teams.

Just be sure - if you try this - to make a copy of that Teams.csv file first.

[thehef]

One caveat I should add: I have no idea what the removal of the expansion teams will do the accuracy of statistics. This would be things to do with league totals, modifiers, era_stats... and I don't know enough about those to speak to them; I only know enough to know that it could be an issue...

In my testing, I was not looking really looking at stats so I did not notice their accuracy or lack thereof. I did check out which teams made the playoffs, mostly just out of curiosity, and those seemed to be realistic.

[Brad K]

Sounds like a great idea on the teams file.

When I turned off expansion in the past with historical rookies enabled I found historical rookies as FAs. However I don't know of all of them were.

Are the players you found on phantom teams rookies? I have a suspicion they're veterans.

With the settings I use there's an error with player retirement. Say in the game a player retires from PHI after the 1985 season, but in RL he didn't retire in after the 1988 season, and that 1986 - 1988 he played for ATL. As soon as he retires the game will put him in designated for assignment for ATL along with the historical rookies.

I've disabled auto expand several times usually to delay the 77 and 93 expansions. Sometimes after the delay I've expanded from 28 circa 1981 and 32 circa 1996. Obviously this doesn't work with historical rookies. This time I've let the 77 and 93 expansions happen as in RL and just want to stop the league at 28.

Thank you for all your effort and comments. Its given me some additional things to think about. I'm considered your comments on league totals. Without knowing the reason I suspect its not a problem as I believe that totals are converted to a percentage of PAs. I'm going to check into it further.

Thanks again.

[thehef]

Originally Posted by Brad K

Are the players you found on phantom teams rookies? I have a suspicion they're veterans.

They appeared to be veterans. Here's the timeline on how (I think) they ended up there, in the form of the offseason that follows the 1969 postseason:

1. Right after the game transitions to the offseason, I delete the expansion teams.
2. I run the sim into the new year and up until, say, opening day.
3. If a player appears in the historical transactions database - going to one of the expansion teams - he is sent to the phantom team. (But again, this did not happen with all of the expansion teams... didn't seem to happen with the Mets, for example.)

Originally Posted by Brad K

With the settings I use there's an error with player retirement. Say in the game a player retires from PHI after the 1985 season, but in RL he didn't retire in after the 1988 season, and that 1986 - 1988 he played for ATL. As soon as he retires the game will put him in designated for assignment for ATL along with the historical rookies.

What settings do you use (that you think might be causing this)? And why is a player who retired after 1988 IRL retiring after the 1985 in OOTP? (Perhaps that's the question you are asking by bringing this up, but just checking to see if you have any inkling.)

Originally Posted by Brad K

Thank you for all your effort and comments.
Its given me some additional things to think about.

YW!

Originally Posted by Brad K

I'm considered your comments on league totals. Without knowing the reason I suspect its not a problem as I believe that totals are converted to a percentage of PAs. I'm going to check into it further.

You could be right. Let me know what you find out

[Brad K]

Originally Posted by thehef

What settings do you use (that you think might be causing this)? And why is a player who retired after 1988 IRL retiring after the 1985 in OOTP? (Perhaps that's the question you are asking by bringing this up, but just checking to see if you have any inkling.)

I don't have retire according to history enabled.

[thehef]

Originally Posted by Brad K

I don't have retire according to history enabled.

My experience is that Retire Accdg to History (and Miss Seasons Accdg to History) - checked or unchecked - has no effect if you are playing with historical txns. This was an unfortunate, IMO, change implemented several versions ago, where - even if unchecked - players will retire as soon as they run out of real life stat lines and/or when the historical txns file tells OOTP to retire them.

At any rate, for your scenario...

Originally Posted by Brad K

With the settings I use there's an error with player retirement. Say in the game a player retires from PHI after the 1985 season, but in RL he didn't retire in after the 1988 season, and that 1986 - 1988 he played for ATL. As soon as he retires the game will put him in designated for assignment for ATL along with the historical rookies.

... I'm assuming this happens when you have historical txns off. But I was unaware that in that scenario and with RAH off, players would retire earlier than IRL. I mean, I guess that makes sense, but I didn't know that until now... Probably because I hardly ever play without historical txns...

[Brad K]

I'm into the start of spring training in the 94 season. I moved the teams out of the newly created central divisions to their prior east and west location.

Seems like there's always something else. Since the game created three divisions per league it also set for a wild card. The playoffs per league would be 3 division winners and a wild card.

Killing the central divisions didn't break the game. It set the playoff for division winners plus the second place team in each division. I fixed that of course. Nobody in my OOTP makes to post season without winning something!

[Brad K]

Originally Posted by thehef

... I'm assuming this happens when you have historical txns off. But I was unaware that in that scenario and with RAH off, players would retire earlier than IRL. I mean, I guess that makes sense, but I didn't know that until now... Probably because I hardly ever play without historical txns...

Yea, players might retire early even without a career ending injury. Usually not by much and usually only players over 30.

Some big name players hang around well beyond their RL retirement dates playing in the minors. Usually guys who can hit a bit but have fielding ratings of 3 on a 20 scale. Maybe they heard a rumor I'm going to authorize a DH.

[Brad K]

I played 98 and 99 with 28 teams. All of the entries on the statistical accuracy chart for those years are green. May not mean much though as the accuracy appears very stable. Does it get better with time? I started 1951 and haven't had anything in the red since 1975. I suppose I should do some testing though as percentage wise having 28 teams instead of 30 isn't much of a change.

Adaptation has been quite simple. At the end of a season when the expansion teams are created I

1. Release the historical rookies assigned to the expansion teams
2. Delete the expansion teams
3. Move teams to East or West Divisions and delete Central Divisions (And, dammit, Milwaukee is an AL team no matter what anyone says!!!!)
4. Correct the playoffs to no wild cards.

This all happens first day of the off season.

then on the first day of the following pre-season

5. Generate a new schedule from the existing 1993 schedule that's still loaded. (Division realignment and reloading the 1993 schedule has to start 1994.

I've notice no problems. The first year players who become FAs go into the normal FA pool and some has for ML contracts. I don't allow myself to sign any of them.