OOTP Developments Forums - Blogs - darkcloud4579

San Jose Missions move to Oakland

darkcloud4579 — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 11:20:15 GMT

After a decade in San Jose, the Missions have announced a move to a new ballpark in downtown Oakland, California called Oracle Stadium. The Missions had been played in aging Morris Field since joining MLB in 1995.

The team will be named the Oakland Oaks after the major league club that played there from 1947-1958 before moving to Kansas City to become the Royals.

Like the Missions, that team never made the playoffs prior to it's move away from Oakland, now the city inherits a club 48 years later that has the same doomed history as their predecessors.

Will the Oaks be like the Beavers and win a World Series in their first year in a new city? The local faithful hope so, while also realizing that the name change and move without leaving the market they're in should bolster fan interest rather than diminish it.

Some records...

darkcloud4579 — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 11:01:46 GMT

The career wins record is 481 by Satchel Paige who played from 1926-1949. Number two on that list and gaining ground is Dwight Gooden, who currently has 452 wins, putting him just 29 wins behind the all-time record.

He's still pitching well and providing he continues at his current pace, he'll break the record by the 2007 season.

The all-time home run record is 978 by Babe Ruth who played from 1913-1936. Number two on that list is Hack Wilson with 697.

41-year old Barry Bonds is currently 5th on the all-time list with 621 home runs and it doesn't seem likely that he'll become the first player with 700 home runs, though there was a though at one time that he might be.

The single-season home run record is Babe Ruth's 57 set in 1915. The closest anyone has come was Lou Gehrig in 1924, with 53. Eric Chavez hit 52 this past season, but Ruth remains the only player to hit 50 more than once doing it in 1913, 1915 and again in 1922. Only four other men have done it, Gehrig, Chavez, Adrian Beltre in 2004 and Olmedo Saenz that same year.

2005 Season

darkcloud4579 — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 08:20:29 GMT

The 2005 season settled with the New York Yankees making their first playoff appearance since 1980. That year, they won the World Series. This year? It took an two extra games to get into the AL East Division Championship Series against the Washington Senators, after two ties forced the team to beat the Philadelphia A's and Baltimore Orioles to advance.

In the AL West, the Portland Beavers made good use of their first season in their new league and new city, making the playoffs after several decades as Los Angeles third team. The Dodgers also made the playoffs in the NL West as the wild card in that division.

The Giants ran away with the NL East, winning 111 games and the Cincinnati Reds stole the NL East wild card away from the Toronto Blue Jays on the last day, to advance to the postseason.

AL EAST:
Washington Senators (86-76)
New York Yankees (86-78)

AL WEST:
Houston Astros (98-64)
Portland Beavers (87-75)

NL EAST:
Tampa Bay Giants (111-51)
Cincinnati Reds (89-73)

NL WEST:
Milwaukee Brewers (92-70)
Los Angeles Dodgers (91-71)

PLAYOFFS:
AL EAST DIVISION CHAMPIONSHIP SERIES: New York def. Washington 4-2
AL WEST DIVISION CHAMPIONSHIP SERIES: Portland def. Houston 4-3

NL EAST DCS: Tampa Bay def. Cincinnati 4-1
NL WEST DCS: Milwaukee def. Los Angeles 4-3

AL CHAMPIONSHIP SERIES: Portland def. New York 4-0
NL CHAMPIONSHIP SERIES: Milwaukee def. Tampa Bay 4-0

2005 WORLD SERIES: Portland def. Milwaukee 4-2

This is the first title for the Beavers who moved to Portland this season, but who'd been in Los Angeles from 1965-2004. Milwaukee won their first NL pennant since 1978, which is also the last time they claimed the World Series. The Beavers franchise last made the World Series in 1991 as the Los Angeles Stars out of the NL, but lost that year to the Denver Bears.

An Alternate History of MLB

darkcloud4579 — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 07:46:16 GMT

I took over an old historical league file I had from a fast-sim alternative history league I ran for a while. Starting in the late 1920, I simmed pretty much all the way through 2004. I did expand the league several times, as well as induce some moves. For the most part, though, teams were to end up in cities that have them though not all of them are in that particular manner.

The history is interesting and I'll do some chronicling, but here's the alignment. It's currently two leagues with two divisions each of eight teams for a total of 32.

The top two teams in each division advance to the post-season and play in a best-of-seven game Division Championship Series, with the best-of-seven game LCS to follow and a World Series (best of seven) after that.

In 2000, we experimented with making the Wild Cards the two best teams in each league regardless of division, but went back to this format in 2000.

Prior to 1995, we simply had the division champions face off in the League Championship Series and 1962 is when division play officially began.

Expansion occurred in 1947, 1965, 1977 and 1995 each time with four teams being added to the bigs.

Here is the current setup as of the 2005 season:

Quote:

AL EAST
Baltimore Orioles
Philadelphia Athletics
New York Yankees
Miami Marlins
Minnesota Twins
Chicago White Sox
Boston Red Sox
Washington Senators

AL WEST
Texas Rangers
Houston Astros
Denver Bears
San Jose Missions
Kansas City Royals
Portland Beavers
Seattle Tigers
Anaheim Angels

NL EAST
Tampa Bay Giants
Philadelphia Phillies
New York Mets
Cincinnati Reds
Pittsburgh Pirates
Toronto Blue Jays
Cleveland Spiders
Atlanta Braves

NL WEST
Chicago Cubs
Arizona Diamondbacks
Milwaukee Brewers
St. Louis Cardinals
San Francisco Seals
Los Angeles Dodgers
San Diego Padres
Detroit Wolverines

With the Angels moving to Anaheim, ownership sold the club and the AL and NL agreed to allow a league swap of teams for the first time in modern baseball history, which moved the Dodgers to the NL and the Portland Beavers to the AL.

This was done to ensure that the AL didn't have a monopoly on the Los Angeles area with both the Dodgers and Angels in the same league and gave the moribund Seattle Tigers a regional rival in the hopes it'd ignite their fanbase.

The expansion era franchises are:

Quote:

Anaheim Angels (Los Angeles Angels) 1947
Kansas City Royals (Oakland Oaks) 1947 (Moved to Kansas City in 1959)
San Diego Padres 1947
San Francisco Seals 1947

Milwaukee Brewers 1965
Portland Beavers 1965 (Los Angeles Stars) (Moved to Portland in 2005)
Chicago White Sox 1965
Houston Astros 1965

Miami Marlins 1977
Cleveland Spiders 1977
Texas Rangers 1977
Detroit Wolverines 1977

Arizona Diamondbacks 1995
Philadelphia Phillies 1995
Minnesota Twins 1995
San Jose Missions 1995

Here are the team moves in this particular universe:

Toronto Blue Jays
(Philadelphia Phillies became the Philadelphia Blue Jays in 1958 and moved to Toronto in 1959. A stadium and ownership dispute sent the team packing for Jersey City in 2000 and Hartford from 2001-04. They moved back to Toronto for the 2005 season.)

Tampa Bay Giants
(The New York Giants moved to Minneapolis in 1947 and moved to St. Petersburg, FL in 1993.)

Atlanta Braves
(The Boston Braves moved to Milwaukee in 1947 and to Atlanta in 1965.)

Denver Bears
(The Chicago Whales moved to Denver in 1959 and became the Denver Bears.)

New York Mets
(The Brooklyn Dodgers became the Cleveland Blues in 1923, a vestige of a move from the online league phase of the file. In 1949, the Blues moved back to New York and became the New York Metropolitans and shortened it to the Mets in 1962.)

Los Angeles Dodgers
(The Louisville Black Caps moved to Brooklyn in 1927 to become the Brooklyn Black Caps. In 1932, they adopted the departed Dodgers moniker and in 1995, the Dodgers moved west to Los Angeles after only two playoff appearances since 1970 and their last title coming in 1964 wore down the local faithful who balked at building the team a new stadium, while an investment banker in Los Angeles agreed to build the team a gleaming new ballpark near downtown.

Seattle Tigers
(The Detroit Tigers moved to Seattle in 1965. Detroit rejoined the bigs in 1977 with the expansion Wolverines were granted to the city. The Tigers franchise remain the only original franchise to never win a World Series. They've won five AL pennants in franchise history, in 1917, 1958, 1960, 1962 and 1988.)

Dynasties once again

darkcloud4579 — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 20:24:00 GMT

After a few years of running and participating in online leagues, I'm back to a place where solo play is on my brain and where I'd like to develop a nice immersive dynasty for the winter months.

I've almost always trended towards fictional because it makes life a bit easier for me, especially in recent years, but in the past I liked to start with a real base set of players and then delve into fictional after those guys retired.

I hadn't looked at any of the OOTP historical features in this most recent iteration of the game, save for importing a database and doing it on my own and I've noticed how easy it is to start a new league from any era in history with a few clicks. It's a nice addition and as such, I've decided to take over the Montreal Expos in 1994 and operate the franchise in perpetuity to see how successful we could be over a long period of time.

I'm debating some other tweaks such as changing the 1998 expansion teams, pondering realignment and wild cards. I figure if you're going to do it, you might as well do it with the best possible alignment and circumstances you can rather than mimicing bad history.

So I'll mess around with this a bit and then come back with what I hope will be my first dynasty in a long while.

Dynasty link

darkcloud4579 — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 03:18:05 GMT

http://www.ootpdevelopments.com/boar...m-dynasty.html

It's just easier to post it there, ultimately.

FireMe Tool v1.5

darkcloud4579 — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 21:09:38 GMT

Here's a tweaked version of the Manager Firing tool (I've dubbed it FireMe)

It's been updated to award points if you win 20 games more than the previous season, so if you go from 30 wins to 50 wins and so forth, you get 25 points. And I've edited the instructions so you should give 50 points to 3rd place teams in non-playoff leagues and 100 points to 2nd place teams in non-playoff leagues, though people can do whatever they want with those bonuses if they think they're too high or something.

Award names (1898)

darkcloud4579 — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 18:08:36 GMT

The Pitcher of the Year award is named after Nelson Mares. While he may no longer be the all-time wins leader (that's now an honor that's bestowed upon David Bowman), this guy's career was insane.

Considering he spent most of his years playing on a below average Colorado City team, he has SIX seasons of ERAs under 2.00 during his career. He had thirteen 20+ win seasons.

The MVP is named after Lars-Erik Johansen, given his performance as both a starting pitcher AND a hitter during his illustrious career, as the only guy to win pitcher of the year AND an MVP during his career. (No one has ever done it the same year.)

1897 Expansion

darkcloud4579 — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 08:11:31 GMT

12 teams from the Union League have split and created their own league called the Presidents League starting with the 1897 season.

As a result, the UL went and added two more teams for that season. The new schedule will include interleague play and for the first-time ever, an All-Star Game between the leagues.

The new playoff format is 3 division champions and 1 wild card from each league.

Union League
East
New York Gothams
Boston Yanks
Philadelphia Baseball Club
Wilmington Quicksteps (EXPANSION)

Central
Minneapolis Millers
Chicago Blue Collars
Pittsburgh Grays
St. Louis Perfectos
Eau Claire Paws

West
Fresno Haymakers (Expansion)
Santa Rosa Peauts
Victoria Cougars
Salt Lake City Elders
Los Angeles Seraphs

PRESIDENTS LEAGUE
East
Carolina Wrens
Buffalo Blue Wings
Bantam Originals
Cleveland Broncs (formerly Evansville Triplets)

Southern Division
St. Petersburg Pelicans
Memphis Elephants
Washington Maroons
Jacksonville Red Caps

Western Division
Santa Ana Oranges
Colorado City Gold Sox
Houston Buffalos
Shreveport Gassers

Keeping it in the family

darkcloud4579 — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 05:08:42 GMT

Mat Johansen's son and Lars-Erik Johansen's grandson Thom Johansen was drafted in the 1st round (9th overall pick) by the Los Angeles Seraphs in the 1892 draft. He's a pitcher like his grandfather was and I doubt he'll be as dominating, but..I thought it was neat that was good enough to go in the 1st round like his dad and that he fell to the 9th pick to the same team that both of those guys played for. Again, wish I could've orchestrated it, but I didn't...it was just the magic of the game.

All the better, really. And yes, I do intend to keep the Johansen family saga going for pretty much the entire dynasty, because it's kinda fun. I've even edited their player cards to indicate they relations. I just edited a guy who was already in the draft to be Thom Johansen and had him born in Houston (since Mat played there for the bulk of his career)

There will be another son who'll show up when this iteration of sim stops in 1900, too. Probably an infielder, but I haven't decided yet...maybe a full-time outfielder. Not sure, though.

Alou brothers eat your heart out.

Also, I'm going to at some point in the first part of the 1900s, create a second league and move some of the teams from the UL over to this new one. I just think it looks a little better and better to do it now than to wait 50 years, I figure. There might be an expansion team or two as a result, but we'll just see.

1890 Changes

darkcloud4579 — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 03:04:52 GMT

For those of you scoring at home, at the end of the 1890 season, a few changes happened in the league.

The San Rafael Keepers folded and were replaced by the Santa Ana Oranges. The Keepers players went to Santa Ana.

The Boulder Profs merged with the Colorado City Gold Sox. But only some of their players went over. Basically their best prospects and major leaguers who weren't FA to be went to Colorado City, the minor leaguers who weren't stayed in the minors to be shifted to a new club and the rest of the major leaguers were all released.

The team that replaced the Profs are the Salt Lake City Elders.

Playoffs format has also been changed slightly. Instead of there being 3 wild cards and 1st and 2nd place teams from each division qualifying for the playoffs, it's now division champs from the 3 divisions and 5 wild cards. Meaning that tougher divisions could qualify more teams, squeezing out fluke teams from weak divisions that advance as a result of that.

Moving on...

darkcloud4579 — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 00:18:20 GMT

I've retired my human manager, will sim into the 1900s and then start with a new guy. What's nice about fast-sim solo is you can go as fast as you want to.

Just so you know, there will be another expansion sometime in the 1900s too that will expand the league from 24 teams to 30 teams. We'll go from 3 divisions to 5 divisions and the playoffs will go from Top 2 teams in each division + 2 wild cards to division champs only and 3 wild cards.

That should be probably 50 years away, but...just an FYI.

1872 playoffs

darkcloud4579 — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 00:14:14 GMT

Here's the 1872 Regular Season Final Standings

Code:

Union League Standings
Eastern Division	W	L	PCT	GB
Buffalo Blue Wings	92	70	.568	-
New York Gothams	92	70	.568	-
Philadelphia Baseball 	84	78	.519	8.0
Boston Yanks		82	80	.506	10.0
Bantam Originals	77	85	.475	15.0
Jacksonville Red Caps	74	88	.457	18.0
St. Petersburg Pelicans	74	88	.457	18.0
Pittsburgh Grays	67	95	.414	25.0

Central Division	W	L	PCT	GB
Washington Maroons	107	55	.660	-
Carolina Wrens		96	66	.593	11.0
Memphis Elephants	91	71	.562	16.0
Minneapolis Millers	81	81	.500	26.0
Evansville Triplets	80	82	.494	27.0
Chicago Blue Collars	68	94	.420	39.0
St. Louis Stars		66	96	.407	41.0
Eau Claire Paws		62	100	.383	45.0

Western Division	W	L	PCT	GB
Los Angeles Seraphs	112	50	.691	-
Boulder Profs		90	72	.556	22.0
Colorado City Gold Sox	84	78	.519	28.0
Santa Rosa Peanuts	84	78	.519	28.0
Victoria Cougars	79	83	.488	33.0
Houston Buffalos	74	88	.457	38.0
Shreveport Gassers	70	92	.432	42.0
San Rafael Keepers	58	104	.358	54.0

Here are the results from the ORS:

Los Angeles def. Santa Rosa 4 games to 0
Buffalo def. New York 4 games to 1
Carolina def. Memphis 4 games to 2
Washington def. Boulder 4 games to 3

DIVISION CHAMPIONSHIP SERIES MATCHUPS

Los Angeles v. Boulder
Washington v. Carolina

Los Angeles def. Buffalo 4 games to 1
Washington def. Carolina 4 games to 3

Los Angeles 1872 Daylight Series Champions
Friday, October 25th, 1872: At Angel City Stadium today Los Angeles outclassed the Washington Maroons 7-3 and won the FOOL-Daylight Daylight Series for the 1st time in its club history.

The Seraphs rounded out the 1872 season with a 112-50 mark and wound up in first place in the Union League Western Division pennant chase.

We won the Series 5 games to 4, after being up 4 games to 1 in the series.

Last year in LA

darkcloud4579 — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 03:06:19 GMT

This is surely the last year in LA for me. We've got too many holes really to try to rig this hitch for another few years, at least at the level we've been at and I'm going to retire my current GM guy and create a new one, since having a guy exist for over 100 years would be strange.

I think we'll be fine qualifying for the playoffs, the real story is going to be whether I've arranged the team appropriately to outlast everyone else in a playoff run. It's a crapshoot, but...I'd like to go out on top.

On Firing...

darkcloud4579 — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 01:51:47 GMT

ON FIRINGS...

I took a cue from this thread about firings in multi-player to create a formula for myself to determine how I keep my job from year to year.

It's developed from the start of my career, though if I wanted to, I could start from scratch after each gig too. I'm not yet, but could in the future since I've had such a long career.

In any case, the formula starts like this:

(Season Wins + 50) - (Previous Season Wins + 75)

After that first season, it's like this:

(Season Wins + Playoff Bonus + Previous Yr Score) - (Previous Season Wins + 75)

If a team wins over 100 games, the bonus you get for making the 1st round of the playoffs is negated. The playoff bonuses are:

1st round: 50
2nd round: 100
League Finalist: 150
Champion: 300

So over my fairly long career, I've won 3 titles and made the finals six times. Still, at present I only have 157 points.

The reason? I've been on a team that's won a lot, so if you can't maintain that standard in the post-season, then your numbers dwindle quickly and you're in jeopardy of losing your job. Once you're in the negative, you lose your job.

For instance, if I managed to win 92 games this year and miss the playoffs (unlikely, but go with it) and won 87 games next year and did the same thing, I'd get fired.

But that's really because I've built up quite a bit of credit over the years. I wasn't using this formula until now, but had I been using it earlier in my career, I'd have been canned twice. In 1802 after seasons of 73 wins, 71 wins and 70 wins in Victoria and again in 1808 after seasons of 75, 68, 64 and 77 wins in Victoria (and mind you, during that time I had a title and a finals appearance the following year. So I'd have been fired four years after making the title series.)

So the formula is neat, a nice solo twist and I'm going to start using it now. If you want the excel spreadsheet I made, lemme know and I'll upload it.