The Level Playing Field: Alternate MLB History From 1884-Onward

[FuzzyRussianHat]

Greetings and welcome to a new OOTP project that I will be writing about in the coming weeks entitled “The Level Playing Field.” It is going to be a historical simulation with real-life players in their proper timeframes, but a very different fictionalized and normalized version of MLB.

One of the main goals of this alternative history is to create a consistent play style and world throughout all of baseball history. I tried a similar project on OOTP 22 (that I didn’t ever write-up) with some success, but there were limits on achieving the type of parity I was looking for. After getting OOTP 26 recently because of the sale, it looks like this version is far better suited to my idea. OOTP 26 also seems to give the Negro League greats far more heft than 22, which I think came out before those stats were officially declared Major League caliber (those players unfortunately ended up rated and treated largely like career minor leaguers in my original efforts). So after playing around with some tests with different settings, I believe I have everything set up right to achieve this unique experiment.

I’ll go more specific details on settings and the like in future posts, but the basic principles are below.

-The game begins in 1884 with plans of running up to and possibly beyond the present day. 1884 was chosen as one of the earliest years in the game where enough players exist in the universe to be able to field teams in the style I’m looking at. For anyone who has looked at how I’ve recently written the Baseball: The World’s Game universe, I’ll likely keep similar narrative structures for going year-by-year.

-MLB will be a much larger league from the beginning and will end up larger than the modern world, although the team names and looks will be a blend of modern and historical. At the start, the National League and American League will each have 12 teams split into two divisions. There will be later expansions that take place earlier than real life did, but also keeping in mind historical populations and trends. The plan is to eventually grow to 20 teams per league and maybe more. There aren’t minor leagues at the very start because there aren’t enough players in the world initially, but I’ll quickly add levels as soon as they’re able to be supported.

-There will not be any relocations of any franchises. For example, the Giants begin in New York and will stay in New York for their entire life. San Francisco will enter as a later expansion (the Seals, based on the historic PCL squad). I will also keep each franchise’s logo and look the same for all of history based mostly on personal preferences. Like even though the Athletics will stay in Philadelphia and they never wore the green/gold there, I’m giving them that look because I think it is sharp (and there’s already too many blue/red teams).

-The league will be fully integrated and the reserve clause will not be used. Free agency will exist from the beginning. I’ve got a customized player salary structure scaled for the initial year with inflation built in to increase to more modern values as the sim goes on. I will also adjust the attendance baselines as time progresses to partially mirror real life attendance trends and growth. I may adjust some figures at different points if things get out of whack, but I think I figured a good balance out. I set initial market sizes and gave the bigger cities a bit more starting cash (and will do the same for expansion teams), but won’t touch specific teams after that. Any growth or contraction will happen naturally and I won’t adjust owners either.

-The base league totals used for statistics are 1983; which I settled on as a good balance between not being too high/low scoring that combines some modern/classic elements. There are a few other tweaks to get to a play style that I just generally find aesthetically pleasing. The lock league total stats and auto-calc will be used, but I will also adjust some modifiers manually to achieve the consistency I’m looking for (mainly involving stolen bases and pitcher stamina, but also fielding success since it makes 19th Century guys have a crazy amount of errors if you don’t adjust it).

-I will adjust franchises to move to real life stadiums as time moves on using the game’s auto-calculation for park factors. Once a team is in a stadium, I’ll pick one set of historic dimensions I like and keep it throughout (not adjusting the fences every single time they moved in real life slightly just for brevity’s sake). I’ll also use real life capacity generally, but will boost up in the cases of cities using smaller minor league parks in their earlier years. For the starting teams, since some didn’t exist in 1884 or had brief stints in places, I chose one applicable 19th Century park to start (even if in some cases that facility might not have been built until the 1890s). My props to the folks on the OOTP board for having dimensions available for so many classic parks, I was able to find usable ones for all but one franchise.

-I will also make it a point to keep track and turn players who had real life prominent managing careers into coaches in the game once they retire. I’ll also probably juice the ratings up a bit on HOF-level managers so that they are more likely to be notable coaches in the sim as well, as opposed to the seeming randomness the game uses to decide who becomes a coach and their ratings post-retirement. I’ll also generally make players who had HOF or Hall of Very Good careers in the sim into coaches once they retire to continue their stories.

I appreciate those who read on and hope you enjoy this alternate history of professional baseball. I am grateful of course to the folks behind OOTP and all of the various mods that make the game even better. These fictional worlds provide a much needed escape from the absolute tire fire that is the real world these days.

[FuzzyRussianHat]

Below are a run through of some of the settings being used for this adventure.

-The full coaching system is used and teams can hire coaches from other squads. Owner goals are also enabled. I will not follow along trying to match real life owners to franchises; teams are stuck with whatever the default game gives them in that regard.

-Short injuries are High (Realistic Modern Day) but long injuries are Normal (OOTP Classic). I found in my tests that under high for long injuries, there is a tremendous amount of pitchers who amount to nothing from multiple blowouts. Obviously there’s truth to that in the modern game, but I felt it would be more fun if those injuries aren’t quite as common. Position player fatigue is set as high.

-Personality ratings and chemistry are in use. As I recall, the game assigns them randomly in historical games. I generally don’t think I’ll touch these but may decide to in extreme cases with known real-life scumbags. Unfortunately though with real life history, if you removed all of the scumbags, bigots, abusers; etc, that probably sadly gets rid of a large swath of guys.

-Player development settings are default values, same for the development lab. Ratings are based on neutralized stats and entire careers with a five year recalculation base. Negro Leagues equivalencies is a yes. Otherwise though, players do not retire or miss seasons according to history, so it is a crap shoot on how guys actually will perform relative to their real careers.

-The initial setup includes 24 teams split between the National League and American League. Both teams have a six-team East Division and six-team West Division. There will be expansions later in history, but this group will hold until the 1920s. There aren’t minor leagues initially due to a lack of players in the world, but minor league levels will be added once they can be supported.

-The American League will use the designated hitter, but the National League will not. No reliever minimum batters and no Manfred Man. Ties are only used in spring games. Active roster size is 25 players with a 15-man reserve roster initially. That will be adjusted once minor league levels are added. IL length of 15 days and 60 days.

-Trade deadline at the end of July, 10/5 rule, draft pick trading, and trading injured players all allowed. Amateur draft at the end of November with major league deals allowed for draft picks. No lottery system.

-I started with the 1884 financial figures as was, but then adjusted them into a fictional setup with 2% to 10% yearly inflation. Attendance baseline is only 4000 with $0.25 tickets to start, but I will increase the attendance baseline as history advances to somewhat mirror reality.

-No reserve clause or color barrier. Minimum service for free agency is six years, three for arbitration, 25% for Super 2. The A/B system is used for free agent compensation. No purchasing of contracts or posting system. No salary cap or cash maximum. Soft cap is 150% of average payroll with a 20% tax above the soft cap. Salary baselines range from $300 as the minimum, $1,000 for an average player, up to $4,000 for a good player and $10,000 for a superstar. Obviously these fictional players will be wealthier than their real life versions were. In my tests, I’ve been happy with the general competitive balance that has come with these starting numbers.

-Hall of Fame info is the default, season lasts 162 games. Using the schedule making tool, the setup has each team playing 24 games against each of their divisional foes. The remaining 42 games are against the other division; six games against some teams and nine against other. There isn’t interleague play and the all-star game is midway through the season.

-The postseason setup has the two division champs advancing to a best-of-seven League Championship Series. The winners go to the World Series. Both are HH-AAA-HH formats. No tiebreaker games used for divisions. The team with the best record gets home field advantage in the World Series. I haven’t decided yet how/if I’ll expand the postseason later on once more teams are added.

-The year used as the baseline for league totals is 1983, using lock league total stats and use of auto-calc. I will tweak a few other statistical modifiers though each season to get a consistent result, since the auto-calc does throw some things out of wack if left untouched I found. The roster settings and strategy are more in line with the 1980s style with some tweaking for personal preference. I found it to be a good middle-ground type style that isn’t too high/low scoring.

-Teams use five-man rotations and start highest-rested by default. Teams generally have a four-man bullpen and 16 position players. I appreciate the aesthetics of great aces regularly going deep into games moreso than the heavy bullpen usage of the modern game. I do still have closers set for heavy use, but I have noticed that in the earliest years regardless, teams won’t use closers/relievers too much simply because relievers didn’t exist in that style back them (and the ones that do exist aren’t good enough for the AI to give much time to). The starters are the stars though in this universe. This world will also have a higher amount of stolen base tries than the current game; again just a personal preference.