Where fiction & history converge (1901-present)

[darkcloud4579]

I started a historical resim in 1901 where players join at their normal times, but I didn't take over a team. I removed the MLB color line in 1920 and basically simmed all the way through. I expanded when I felt like it, moved teams in an alternate history fashion and we're currently at 30 teams and the year is 1997.

Here's the way I've evolved history thus far: https://imgur.com/a/45JhKrV

(Normally, I'll write stuff out but that's a lot to write...)

With some minor exceptions, I've mostly let players careers exist unabated leading to some interesting outcomes. The other thing is, I eventually added foreign leagues because it's one of my favorite OOTP features, but the foreign players aren't real. I imagine them as facsimiles of what could've happened had Asian & Cuban players started coming to MLB earlier.

I'll probably spend a bit of time recapping what's happened before I get into the story at present. I'm considering taking over a franchise while there are still real players that I recognize in-game, as I intend to keep simming well into a fictional reality.

A recent story:

1996: Buffalo Red Sox won their first-ever World Series title. 11 post-season appearances before they finally got the job done. Boston ended up being uninterested in replacing creaky Fenway Park, so they moved 6 hours away to Buffalo where a gleaming ballpark awaited them. In this universe, finances aren't regionally controlled so think of it like the NFL where it doesn't matter where a team plays.

The other thing is, we've had a decent amount of franchise movement and probably more to come. Much like the NBA where teams can abandon bigger markets for smaller ones, you might see inexplicable franchise moves impending because I like the storyline and usually because I can find a diverse set of uniforms to go with them. I also want to balance the geography of our majors, because right now there's too many teams in Eastern time zone, except apparently according to real life, my fictional universe has one more team in the west and central than MLB.

The Seattle Pilots were a 1968 expansion franchise. They've won 3 AL West titles, have made 6 post-season appearances in history but have never won a pennant or a World Series. In this storyline, the success of Vancouver (who have dominated the 90s) and more recently, Portland who moved from Texas in 1991 (Portland previously had an expansion team, the Stags, who moved to Carolina that year to become the 2nd incarnation of the Carolina Twins) have just broken through and also won a World Series in just 8 years (and only 6 in PDX.)

Mariners ownership -- they changed names in 1977 -- are dealing with city leadership who refuse to build them a stadium and they're exploring other options.

The Baltimore Orioles were a 1961 expansion franchise who have made just 3 post-season appearances. They've never won a division title, nor a pennant or World Series. Family ownership have been trying to sell for years, but to no avail.

So far, my trend has been to either resurrect IRL franchises in new (or existing) markets, but I'm considering alternatives as we get closer to the future.

[darkcloud4579]

League evolution through 1997 & champions since 1963

[darkcloud4579]

1997 season standings & post-season

[darkcloud4579]

1997 OFFSEASON

I've already decided we won't have proper expansion again until 2020, the last expansion came in 1989 but with teams moving, I'd like to operate the league this way for a while before considering adding two clubs.

I wanted to do all of the moves I'd been pondering at once and it took me most of tonight to figure out where to send teams:

Florida White Sox left Tampa for Oklahoma (after being bought by one of the 500 richest men on the planet)
Oakland Oaks move to San Jose (A's). (The San Francisco Seals are the original A's, their new owner was able to purchase the identity and reboot them)
Baltimore Orioles move to Albuquerque, NM
Buffalo Red Sox move back to Boston (Buffalo was supposed to build a new stadium, never got it done after 5 years & Boston delivered on a promise to bring
them back after they finally won a World Series albeit in Buffalo)

[darkcloud4579]

Last day of the regular season in 1998 and we've got a potential 3-way tie in the NL Central of three teams under .500 playing for a spot in the post-season. (I do have the 3rd wild card activated precisely for these scenarios, though. Meaning the winner of this scrum will end up playing a 90-win wild card in a best-of-3 for a shot at the division series.)

[darkcloud4579]

A lot of dynasties end up focusing on being good or eventually being good. I'm wondering what it might be like to write a story about a team where you're never good, where you're constantly treading water or dealing anyone good for more prospects. The perpetual rebuild. While I've historically found those kinds of stories -- or the thought of it -- very boring, I'm sort of intrigued on the mindset of trying to maximize wins for as little money as possible, basically doing what the Rays are doing except maybe being less concerned with winning and more concerned with being frugal. I'll need to figure out what the "hook" is to keep me going and not tempted to change the storyline at a certain point out of boredom -- besides going fast -- but if I can figure it out, that's what I'm going to do.

[darkcloud4579]

It's 2026 in my current save and I'm going to try an experiment where I take the Top 25 pitchers and hitters and suspend them for the entire season, then see who takes their place for the year. My actual plan was to suspend the entire league -- all of the major leaguers across the league -- and see how the "replacement" players do, but it's very tedious to suspend entire 25-man rosters.

I might still try it, though. Because I didn't want to ruin the recordbooks of my active league entirely, I create a spinoff version of the main league to try this out. I might still do it in the main league at some point but i don't want to wreck everything and not be able to revert.

There's a statsplus instance for this league now.

[darkcloud4579]

As I suspected, the teams where I didn't "send their rosters off to war -- Toronto, Vancouver and the expansion clubs in Miami and Monterrey are outperforming the rest of the league. Toronto dominated their division. At the trade deadline, I did to Toronto and Vancouver what I did to the rest of the league as I'm super curious to see how it ends the season as a result. Toronto had a 28 game lead in their division, so they're not gonna have any issues, but Vancouver only had 7 and might get chased down.

I'm debating whether i'll bring this season into my main league file, it's been a lot of fun seeing how this plays out. I kept the original files too from after I froze all the rosters so I might go back, freeze Toronto and Vancouver from the start and then see if it changes things. I might eventually use this file for my actual league, even if it does take a year away from guys - akin to a World War - because it'll be an interesting storypoint as I reflect on the careers of these guys.

[darkcloud4579]

Second time re-simming and it's a lot better this time when I suspended the players from Toronto and Vancouver too, so they don't get to run roughshod over the whole league like this in my first instance. I decided to replace my main league with this version, because I sort of love the strange storyline like a World War of taking out the whole league.

I'm probably going to spend a bit more time going slowly over the players that have emerged in this "lost" season, I'm super curious to see how many of them can sustain their levels of success after this season.

[darkcloud4579]

I've had the DH turned off for the past two years because my league is already pretty juiced offensively, but I'm considering turning the DH (in both leagues) on only for the playoffs because I'm curious how that'd change the dynamic of roster construction and make things interesting. (I ended up not doing this, though. I figured they'd played under the same conditions all year, changing it up now would be weird.) I might bring the DH back next season, though. The pros of the DH outweigh the cons (mostly the lack of opportunities for other hitters to get to add to their career totals, lol.)