The InteGREATed Mod: Stars of the Negro Leagues in the MLB

[Garlon]

For Steam users, the mod is now available in the OOTP 25 Workshop. Once you subscribe the mod will download. You will then need to open OOTP 25 and select Workshop Central from the Main menu. From there select The InteGREATed Mod and install it.

If you do not have the steam version or would rather just download the files yourself and install them you can download it too.

Download Link: https://www.mediafire.com/file/k1ubz...Z-001.zip/file

Thank You LansdowneSt for hosting the download files.

Update Nov 17th: We are adding a historical draft cheat sheet with all players by debut season, including the NeL players, ranked by WAR. Spreadsheet available in this post.

We are providing a User Guide in pdf format for the mod that provides instructions on installation and recommendations for set up and play. Please read the User Guide carefully. Thank You luckymann for designing and editing the guide for us.


This mod for OOTP 25 will introduce 212 MLE versions of Negro Leaguers into historical games with a modified database.

The MLE versions of players are based on the work of Eric Chalek. Visit his site: https://horsehidedragnet.wordpress.com/
Eric Chalek: “Thank you all for using my work. It’s so cool to see it being put to good use”.

Two of the players were modified from the work of Makonnen: https://i9s.org/wp/

Special thanks to DrDoom for creating the OOTP Database Converter. The project would not have been possible without that program.


WARNING: You must install one of the provided era_ballparks files otherwise OOTP for some reason may set a stadium to having all ballparks factors of like 0.500 that it does not find in the default file for a given season.


It is highly recommended that you subscribe to and install the following community mods from the Steam Workshop. If you do not have the Steam version of the game, you will find these mods in the forum and can manually install them.
1. Complete Universe Facegen Pack
2. Historical Uniforms, Logos, and Jersey Fonts for OOTP 25
3. Historical Major League Stadiums (1901-Present)


The mod also redesigns the structure of 19th century baseball so that teams will gradually enter the league beginning in 1871 until all of the original 16 NL and AL teams from 1901 enter the league in 1892. No teams will fold during the 19th century.

We have also included four NeL teams joining the NL and AL beginning in 1911 and eventually turning into the Rangers/Angels/Astros/Mets franchises in 1962.

This will all happen automatically when using the automatically expand league option in the game.


We are also providing jerseys, ballcaps, pants, and logos to support the new 19th century structure and the new NeL teams. Thank You no pepper for your hard work in creating these for the community.

We are providing ballparks to support the new 19th century and NeL teams. Two of these new ballaprks are from Silvam14 and nineteen of them are from asrivkin and dfswans. Thank You all for your dedication to building the stadiums.

We are including custom era_ballparks files so that these new ballparks will automatically load with the mod.

The graphics and ballparks will all load automatically when automatically expand league is enabled and the modified era_ballparks file is substituted into the database folder.


We are including a custom era_stats file that sets the WWII seasons of 1942-1945 to the average level of offense in MLB from 1938-1941 and 1946-1949. You may want to use that if you want more offense in those seasons.

We have also included a custom engine file if you want more realistic distribution of innings pitched between starting pitchers and relievers.


There are Strategy Settings provided in the user guide for every era from 1871-2023. It is recommended that you use those strategy settings. To do this you will need to turn off "automatically adjust league strategy" in OOTP in the Historical and Stats & AI menus, yes there are two places where this needs to be deactivated. These strategy settings are of course optional and do require some work to monitor if you turn off automatically adjust league strategy in the game, but I have been getting very good results with them.


These warnings are in the User Guide but I want to reiterate them here:

WARNING #1: If you start a game between 1871-1883 the color barrier should already be off in OOTP. However, OOTP will automatically turn the color barrier on at the conclusion of the 1883 World Series. You need to turn off the color barrier manually after the World Series ends in 1883 and it will remain off in subsequent seasons. If you leave the color barrier enabled, then none of the NeL players will load into your game in subsequent seasons. If you start a game between 1884-1946 the color barrier will be enabled by default, and you have to manually turn it off otherwise none of the NeL players will enter your game. Note: OOTP will also try to set your active roster to 25 players in 1876, so if you want to use a lower roster limit you need to reset it to your preference. When you set your roster limit in 1876 the game will not attempt to change it again, so if you want to raise the limit at some point you will need to do it manually from the menu.

WARNING #2: When automatically expand league is enabled, OOTP will try to reset your Position Player Fatigue to Low at the end of the World Series each season. I am recommending you set Position Player Fatigue to High and turn off injuries. When you reset the position Player Fatigue to High after the World Series ends it will stay on High through the end of the World Series the next season. You could leave it at Low, but I think OOTP is more balanced on High with respect to bench players getting used.

WARNING #3. For the 1871-1900 seasons, OOTP will generate fictional schedules because the new league structure is different than what OOTP expects. When you get to the preseason of 1901 you should go to League Settings>Functions>Edit League Schedule>Actions>Load Default Schedule. This will then load the actual 1901 schedule since the league structure now matches the structure that OOTP expects. Once you prompt OOTP to load the default schedule it will continue loading them each subsequent season automatically. If you do not do this then OOTP will continue to generate fictional schedules and will probably continue with 140 games even after the 1903 season. From 1911-1961 OOTP will generate fictional 154-game schedules. You will also need to do this same step in the preseason of 1962 when the 20 teams in the mod match the 20 teams in major league baseball that season so that OOTP will again load the real schedules in 1962 and in all subsequent seasons. If you do not do this then OOTP will continue to generate fictional 154-game schedules each season.



This is the new structure and team progression for the 19th century. These teams automatically become the corresponding teams in the 1901 season.

Cubs
Chicago White Stockings 1871-1889
Chicago Colts 1890-1897
Chicago Orphans 1898-1900

Giants
New York Mutuals 1871-1882
New York Gothams 1883-1884
New York Giants 1885-1900

Braves
Boston Red Stockings 1871-1875
Boston Red Caps 1876-1882
Boston Beaneaters 1883-1900

Dodgers
Brooklyn Atlantics 1871-1884
Brooklyn Grays 1885-1887
Brooklyn Bridegrooms 1888-1890
Brooklyn Grooms 1891-1895
Brooklyn Bridegrooms 1896-1898
Brooklyn Superbas 1899-1900

Phillies
Philadelphia Athletics 1876-1881
Philadelphia Quakers 1882-1889
Philadelphia Phillies 1890-1900

Cardinals
St. Louis Brown Stockings 1876-1882
St. Louis Browns 1883-1898
St. Louis Perfectos 1899
St. Louis Cardinals 1900

Reds
Cincinnati Reds 1876-1881
Cincinnati Red Stockings 1882-1889
Cincinnati Reds 1890-1900

Pirates
Pittsburgh Alleghenys 1876-1890
Pittsburgh Pirates 1891-1900

Guardians
Cleveland Blues 1882-1888
Cleveland Spiders 1889-1900

Tigers
Detroit Wolverines 1882-1900

Athletics
Philadelphia Athletics 1882-1900

Yankees
Baltimore Orioles 1882-1900

Twins
Washington Senators 1892-1900

Red Sox
Boston Americans 1892-1900

White Sox
Chicago White Sox 1892-1900

Orioles
Milwaukee Brewers 1892-1900


Here are the NeL teams we have added for 1911-1961.

Kansas City Monarchs 1911-1960. They turn into the Angels franchise in 1961.

Birmingham Black Barons 1911-1960. They turn into the Rangers franchise in 1961.

Homestead Grays 1911-1961. They turn into the New York Mets franchise in 1962.

Chicago American Giants 1911-1961. They turn into the Astros franchise in 1962

[Garlon]

Reserved

[LansdowneSt]

I got involved in this project because, recently, I’ve felt that the Negro League (NeL) part of the game had fallen behind. A trove of new statistical research has been uncovered by the folks behind Seamheads.com. On the centennial of the Negro National League’s founding, MLB announced its intent to research and then integrate select NeL stats into its record books. Baseball-Reference added those stats in June 2021. MLB made it official this year. OOTP has tried to apply patchwork solutions to improve the performance of NeL players, but it is hampered by the time and effort it would take to update their database, the League Total Modifiers built for only the AL/NL talent levels and their league-wide output, the Adjust/Weaken settings (a.k.a. “Make Bads”) that would hit NeL players and Al/NL part-time players alike, and other game limitations that reflect the fact OOTP was built to accommodate one MLB with two sub leagues, the AL and the NL.

As I thought about how to go about advocating for more focus on the NeL, I reached the conclusion that I’d rather just work with like-minded people so we could try and do it ourselves. OOTP’s game engine wants stats to reflect the talent of the player in that given year. It wants a reasonable sample size to take into consideration. For MLB players, it wants MLB stats. So why mess with old, incomplete stats and spend multiple game cycles making coding changes that require constant tweaking and may risk undoing some of OOTP25’s great advances in the historical game’s output. Why not just feed the beast what it wants? That’s where Eric Chalek’s Major League Equivalent (MLE) stats came in. They can found here: https://horsehidedragnet.wordpress.com/negro-leagues/

Using stats from his MLE’s we tried to present to the game how these select NeL players would have performed in the Major Leagues. We are enormously grateful to Eric for his hard work and are thrilled to bring more attention to his efforts. To account for the increased talent in the league we also imagined MLB expansion in 1911. Consider that: [Rube Foster’s] initial vision was that he would create a league that was so dynamic that he would force Major League Baseball’s hand to expand. So, if we were looking at it in a more modern-day context, think football with the NFL and the AFL merger, or for those who are basketball fans, the merger of the NBA and the ABA. Now, this was Rube Foster in the 1920’s, that’s how forward thinking and how much a visionary this man was. – Bob Kendrick, President, Negro League Baseball Museum from the 2023 documentary, The League

Now we had MLE stats for the game to read and value appropriately. We had also gotten around the LTM issue as the game accounts for additional teams. We were so happy with the results that we started adding logos, and uniforms, and messing with the 19th century… and so on. Finally, we were ready to share.

We welcome your feedback. We’re still looking over the results too – not “making the perfect the enemy of the good” – but still considering tweaks. The hitters come from an MLE publication Eric did about a year ago whereas the pitchers reflect the most recent edition. We also confess to putting our thumb a bit on the scale with the HOF NeL pitchers, adding a small oomph to Eric’s stats. Was that a good choice or too much? The HOF two-way players play like Ohtani before Ohtani - is that sustainable? We don’t quite have enough players in the game to assign them to particular teams every year, but with some additional players added (at or below league average) perhaps we could assign the stats lines to those expansion teams directly – eliminating the need for an inaugural fantasy draft in years 1911 to 1961. Maybe instead of just four NeL teams with the same city and team name over time, they could move and evolve into different iterations in a manner reflective of the dynasty teams that each had their day in the sun in the NeL, so you get the Pittsburgh Crawfords in the early 30’s before they merge into the Homestead Grays, and so on. Maybe there is enough talent in the late 50’s and early 60’s from Latin America and overseas such that additional expansion teams could be pulled forward in the same manner. Eric has MLE’s for them too and it’s been too long (ever since Spritze passed away) that a true historical database mod was maintained offering those players in a ready-to-play/import format. Maybe with this release. more folks will learn how to use Dr. Doom’s database tool to change something they don’t like and to customize the database or Teams.csv to their own preferences rather than be subject to our or OOTP’s best efforts.

Mods are a lot of work. There’s at least two years of effort and testing behind this. We will endeavor to improve and expand upon it as best we can. Thanks to luckymann and Makonnen for your collaborative efforts and especially to Garlon who carried, by far, the bulk of the load in creating this mod.

There are a ton of suggested settings and explanatory notes in the user manual but to just dive into the NeL part of the mod: Load the database. Go to 1901 for an easy starting place. Turn off the color barrier, let lots of people be available in the 1911 expansion draft, and adjust settings to reflect your play preferences. ... Have fun!

[luckymann]

The work the two of you have done on this is nothing short of magnificent and hopefully the devs find a way to make this an official game option sometime very soon.

Can't wait to get cracking with it and have my new universe all set up awaiting the official release.

Many thanks to you both.

G

[dawg1isclear]

Tuned...

[stevezog1]

Will this be posted in the Steam Workshop?

[LansdowneSt]

Originally Posted by stevezog1

Will this be posted in the Steam Workshop?

The goal is to get it up and running in Steam as a simple Subscribe and Install mod. Takes a little more work on the front end to get stuff up in Steam and the uniform additions, ballpark additions, and logo additions - all that stuff goes elsewhere and not the where the database itself goes. First priority on Steam will be to get the database up. More details on that will be forthcoming - both here and in the eventual Steam Workshop posting.

But in the meantime, the "drag and drop" approach to installation that Fast Spring users employ will work for Steam users as well. Those instructions are in the pdf user's guide in the zip file.

[thehef]

This is really amazing stuff. I haven't had a chance to test it & play with it yet, but am looking forward to it!

I recommend we get a mod to sticky this thread

[dawg1isclear]

there goes my Saturday!

[dawg1isclear]

Adjust Pitchers with fewer than X Innings: approximately 32 per year of recalc (IE 32/98/162)...found this while reading through pdf...98 should be 96 and 162 should be 160...

[luckymann]

Originally Posted by dawg1isclear

Adjust Pitchers with fewer than X Innings: approximately 32 per year of recalc (IE 32/98/162)...found this while reading through pdf...98 should be 96 and 162 should be 160...

No, even though the math is imprecise, they are the numbers. Note the "approximately" and it is regressive from 162. You can use 96 and 162, the difference will be incremental.

[Cod]

Thanks for taking on this project and sharing it with the community.

[sprague]

First off guys, thanks for doing this, which is more what I had hoped when negro league players began to be available, to make the main DB more like the old Spritze DB which worked off ML equivalents and not raw stats. I think this is how it should be for minor leaguers as well. The raw stats can be there as a separate section to just import previous stats with the player but the actual ratings come from all the MLE.
Adding the extra teams has been what I have been doing with my historical games, and I too add 4 teams like you have done to accomodate the negro league players (as I don't use any historical setups, even minor leagues I create manually through history) so this is also a smart way of working with the additional available player pool



Question 1 So the color barrier has to be OFF during the game, in essence reading all players entering as "white." Have the negro players had their facial features section changed for this to happen to accommodate this, or are they listed now as hispanic for example (curious about Facegen look in the game if we don't import actual FG) or has some other tweek been done to the file.


Question 2: Any thought of adding a longer career to a few of the players from the "Island we can not say" such as Ichiro where he could enter the game with MLE in the early 90s for example. I think that could be another useful addition to the DB

[Garlon]

1. I think you are confusing yourself about the color barrier. These players are not being read as "white" by the game. If we had listed them as Caucasian, then they would import regardless of whether the color barrier is on or off, but we did not do that in the files. The color barrier needs to be turned off otherwise these players will be excluded from your league.

2. No.

[sprague]

Originally Posted by Garlon

1. I think you are confusing yourself about the color barrier. These players are not being read as "white" by the game. If we had listed them as Caucasian, then they would import regardless of whether the color barrier is on or off, but we did not do that in the files. The color barrier needs to be turned off otherwise these players will be excluded from your league.

2. No.

Once i read my first question again I saw made no sense whatsoever. The answer was obvious
Thanks for responding, even when it seems I was too many hours before morning coffee in writing it.

Really looking forward to see what has been created here
Cheers

[LansdowneSt]

Glad you found the thread, sprague as you and I have talked NeL stuff on various threads for a few years now.

In general, for those starting the game in 1871, the user guide explains when the color carrier rule comes on in-game (after 1883 - oddly before Fleet Walker's one year). For those starting games after it is already on, you just need to turn it off once, it won't reset to "on".

The db could, in theory, be expanded and saved under a different name to just be an import db where greats outside the era could be placed - but that'd be additional work that is not under discussion at this time (we're still recovering from this work!). I too would someday love to have an iteration that pulled two other teams forward to see players like Hector Espino play or, Oh, I dunno, "other" players from outside the MLB in a balanced LTM environment.

[Garlon]

Here is an example of Mule Suttles. His "real" stats are the MLE versions we put into the DB and you will see the team is listed as NEL.

In this game he ended up playing his entire career for the Yankees.

Mule Suttles

Real vs OOTP

AB: 9790 vs 9840

H: 2910 vs 2898

2B: 553 vs 540

3B: 128 vs 141

HR: 391 vs 346

BB: 903 vs 1016

SO: 1371 vs 1388

BA: .297 vs .295

OBP: .360 vs .361

SLG: .500 vs .484

OPS: .859 vs .845

[No Pepper]

Suttles looks real close! Thank you all for pulling up your bootstraps on this.

I loaded up this mod to run its course beginning in 1871, following the user guide.

The graphics and ballparks will all load automatically when automatically expand league is enabled and the modified era_ballparks file is substituted into the database folder.

I did not see this in the inaugural season, for ballparks at least that I remember. This is probably known, but perhaps not universally known. These files would need to be manually updated to work year one. Does this also apply to the era_stats, era_ballpark files?

WARNING #3. For the 1871-1900 seasons, OOTP will generate fictional schedules because the new league structure is different than what OOTP expects... From 1911-1961 OOTP will generate fictional 154-game schedules.

Do you have schedule files that could be used to replace the fictional schedules? For instance, the fictional schedule created in 1871 for the 2 subleague, 4 team structure has teams only playing its single subleague rival, and not the other 2 teams.

For 1911-1961, I suppose one could cycle between real life MLB 1962-1968 schedules, but you'd lose the feel of earlier eras. Also, there does not appear to be suitable 10 or even 20 team, 154 game schedules availabe here in the schedule subforum.

Lastly, what era_ballpark file are you using (of the three you supply)?

[Garlon]

No Pepper, the ballparks should all load if you have the custom era ballparks file swapped into the database folder before creating your league and be should update every season with automatically expand league enabled.

Did you remember to put all of the new ballpark models into ballparks>models folder?

The era stats file is optional if you want more offense from 1942-1945. Everything else in the file is the same as the default file.

I do not have custom schedules. A working interleague schedule would be great for the mod for 19th century play. I will add it to the list of things for a possible update if we ever update this more.

For 1911-1961 unfortunately using a 162-game schedule will not work when automatic expansion is enabled. The game will look for 154 games in the schedule for those seasons and reject the schedule if it does not match the structure and games it expects. I tried this.

For the era ballparks if you like the one that games with OOTP then use the discrete version. With that file everything from 1901-2023 is the same as the default file but the 1871-1900 are all set to 1.000 factors as well as for the NeL teams.

I have not used the quadratic version for a while but I think I will return to those. I generally use the neutral factors.

[thehef]

Just curious re this part in the manual:

• Enable Amateur Draft: CHECKED
▪ If you disable the amateur draft, the game will send players to their historical teams as the years go by. In this case, you are going to have the NeL teams without any players at all (or very soon).

So if the Amateur Draft is unchecked, MLB players would import to their historical teams and the NeL players would import as free agents. Correct?