Fictional League Ideas

[ctorg]

I'm always creating new fictional leagues for OOTP, and I've had several that have been really cool. Just wondering what ideas others have had that they used and liked?

I've done:

Leagues of completely fictional places that I've made up.

An alternate history that starts with the setup of the teams in 1901, but with fictional players, and deviations from real baseball team histories (like expansions and movements) from 1901 on.

Leagues where all the teams are based on neighborhoods in and around New York City.

An alternate history that starts in 1901 with made up teams in real cities, even if those cities didn't really have teams at the time (or ever).

A league starting in 1974 with the story that it was started by a millionaire from Brooklyn with a grudge against the majors for letting the Dodgers go. The two leagues were the Continental and Federal, in honor of two leagues (one of which never formed) made to compete with the majors.

A league starting in 1982 with the idea that the recent strike killed MLB and this new league replaces it.

[joncarlos]

You should create a league where all the big market teams are in one league (like the AL) and the small market teams are all in the other (like the NL).

[DreamTeams]

1) Try setting up the current MLB clubs in correct geographic divisions, then fill them with fictional players. Start in any year you like.

2) Take the original 16 clubs and pretend that expansion never happened. But, the moves did. Use fictional players. Start any year you like.

3) Try a European league. Get the Euro names files and have it.

4) Go with the current Canadian baseball league. (Check it out at www.canadianbaseballleague.com) Fill it with fictional players. Expansion should be fun as it currently has only eight clubs. (4 in the Western Div., 4 in the Eastern Div.)

[CBL-Commish]

Here's some random ideas I've thought about but never implemented:

How about a league like the Scottish Premier soccer league where two teams have Great fan loyalty and Huge market size, but everyone else is in an almost nonexistent market, and fair loyalty.

Or a league sort of like the 1890s NL, where one owner owns two or more teams and is free to transfer any and all good players from his teams to the one he thinks will make more money.

Or a league placed mainly in the largest North American cities denied major league teams, mostly consisting of fictional players, but with a good number of real failed prospects and others who went on to success in foreign leagues, indy leagues, or were big stars in college who never became pro stars, etc.

A league that adopts radically different, but plausible, playing conditions. Such as:
1. Adopting those little pink rubber balls as the official ball, and simulating this with many times the homers, higher batting averages, doubles, triples, etc. Few strikeouts (no seams, so curves hardly break).
2. Move the mound in to 40', and simulate this with TONS of Ks, very low batting averages, lots of bunting and one-run strategies.
3. Make the use of gloves illegal. Keep all the other stats the same, but use fielding stats similar to the 1870s, with fielding percentages for some positions in the .850 range.
4. Eliminate fences. Few doubles, many triples, and the only players allowed to have decent homer ratings would have to be really fast.

I've actually run a league on an indy-league premise. I set all the market sizes very low, made the stadiums seat a couple thousand, and set the salary cap as low as allowable. Players would play a few years, then if they were any good they'd demand salaries far beyond what any team could afford, so they'd go into the free agent pool forever (pretend they were 'signed' by a major league organization).

I've also though of the idea of a 'prequel' to my long-running fictional league. I started the Continental League in 1988, but I thought of starting a fictional league in the 60s or 70s and making a new Lahman database with my fictional league. Then when I got to the '80s I'd start importing real rookies. The whole making a new Lahman DB has stood in the way of that one.

[Gastric ReFlux]

Fictional league populated by characters from the X-Men. Of course it would help if Markus coded in the superpowers module.

[ctorg]

CBL, those are some really cool ideas that I've never thought of before. I'll have to try some of them out.

[spleen1015]

Edit all of the names files and just have Matt in the first names files and Mays in the last names files. You could call it the Matt Mays Memorial League.

I guarantee it'll be a fun time.

[84CubsFan]

I've got a fictional league that started (er, will start) in the year 2101 with all amateur players (all AAA level or worse, everyone started with no ML experience and the minimum salary), blank record book, 20 teams (which had to expand to 28 in 2115 due to an abundance of talent). Premise is that 40 years after the collapse of old MLB, a popular movement in North America, wishing to "get back to the values of yesteryear," got the money together to start a new league, .

[Night2000]

Create either a 12 or 24 team Zodiac League where you go by the month the players were born. You could have a NL and AL with 12 teams each like Capricorn, Aquarius, Scorpio, Etc...

[joncarlos]

Start a women's league

[Ray K]

Originally posted by CBL-Commish
I've actually run a league on an indy-league premise. I set all the market sizes very low, made the stadiums seat a couple thousand, and set the salary cap as low as allowable. Players would play a few years, then if they were any good they'd demand salaries far beyond what any team could afford, so they'd go into the free agent pool forever (pretend they were 'signed' by a major league organization).

Wow, I think that is an awesome concept!

I will try this one. I can imagine trying to lock up young stars as long as possible before they split for the majors.

[Tiger Fan]

My current league is a combined fictional-historical league.

<b>THE PREMISE</b>

WINTER 1921-22
Baseball has reached unprecedented popularity thanks to the mighty bat of Babe Ruth. Fans are heading out to ballparks everywhere, major and minor league, to get a taste for the game. The Black Sox scandal of a couple years ago is a distant memory thanks to the likes of Ruth and his Yankee teammates. However, nowhere is baseball more popular than in California where the Pacific Coast League, although not a 'major' league, reigns supreme.

The PCL owners see this surge in popularity as their opportunity to declare themselves a 'Major League'. Naysayers among them warn of the ill-conceived Federal League but those in the know explain that one of the Federal League's biggest errors was choosing to go head-to-head with the big boys. "Our league," they counter "will focus only on untapped cities and exist primarily west of the Mississippi.

In 1921 the Pacific Coast League had teams based in Oakland, Sacramento, Salt Lake, Seattle, Portland, Los Angeles, Vernon and San Francisco. All except Sacramento and Vernon will join the new Western Baseball Alliance. In addition San Diego, Hollywood and Vancouver will be accepted to the loop. The Kansas City Blues bolted the International League to join the new professional alliance. Other larger centres were approached and as a result teams were awarded to Dallas, Houston, Alburquerque, Denver, New Orleans and Phoenix bringing the alliance total to 16 teams.

The 16 clubs would be arranged in 2 leagues:

MOUNTAIN LEAGUE
Alburquerque Arrows
Dallas Texans
Denver Bears
Houston Buffaloes
Kansas City Blues
New Orleans Pelicans
Phoenix Roadrunners
Salt Lake Bees

PACIFIC COAST LEAGUE
Hollywood Stars
Los Angeles Angels
Oakland Oaks
Portland Ducks
San Diego Padres
San Francisco Seals
Seattle Rainiers
Vancouver Mounties

Play will commence with the 1922 season. All initial players will be fictional as generated by the OOTP5 engine. Rookies will be imported using CTorg's fictional database. This will allow others who use the same database to compare their players results with mine.

It will be classic baseball: 154 game schedule with a best-of-7 Western Series to determine the winner.

At the same time the major leagues will be simmed in a seperate league. Finances will be turned off initially and all rookies will be assigned to their original real life team. I will be using Ankit's modified Lahman 5 database for this.

Using Pierre's player and team import utility, several players will begin jumping leagues in the late 1930's. By the forties, free agency is turned on and both leagues will be in a bidding war for many players. Salaries will begin to spiral out of control and by the early 50's the Major Leagues will see the value of western expansion and the two leagues will merge.

The Dodgers and Giants will not head west in this alternate history, as several existing Western Alliance teams will be absorbed by the major leagues. It will result in a single 24 team organization combining real life rookies and fictional rookies I will add each season.

Here is the likely layout of this new super league although depending upon franchise performance some teams may changed. Taking a page from the NHL, which in 1970 moved only the original 6 Chicago Black Hawks to the west division, the baseball execs will opt to move the Chicago White Sox to the newly formed Western League where they will join 11 WBA teams. The National and American Leagues are no longer, as the league with 12 'real' MLB teams will be called the Eastern League.

                  <b>WESTERN LEAGUE

Pacific Division              MidWest Division</b>
Los Angeles Angels            Chicago White Sox
Oakland Oaks                  Dallas Texans
Portland Ducks                Denver Bears
San Diego Padres              Houston Buffaloes
Seattle Rainiers              Kansas City Blues
San Francisco Seals           Salt Lake City Bees


Folded teams: Albuquerque Arrowheads, Hollywood Stars,
 Phoenix Roadrunners, New Orleans Pelicans, Vancouver 
 Mounties
       

<b>            EASTERN LEAGUE

Central Division              Atlantic Division</b>
Chicago Cubs                  Boston Red Sox
Cincinati Reds                Brooklyn Dodgers
Cleveland Indians             New York Giants
Detroit Tigers                New York Yankees
Pittsburgh Pirates            Philadelphia Athletics
St Louis Cardinals            Washington Senators

Folded  Boston Braves, Philadelphia Phillies and St Louis Browns    

I am documenting this league's progress in the Dynasty section and have reached the early thirties in both leagues now.

[GForce22]

Originally posted by Ray K
Wow, I think that is an awesome concept!

I will try this one. I can imagine trying to lock up young stars as long as possible before they split for the majors.

I've toyed with an idea kind of like this with my U.S. Baseball Alliance dynasty thread. I will be starting a major league thread as well to run concurrently. Basically, as a startup league, the USBA locks its players in through 2005. But the league has a salary cap of $80M. After 2005, I'd venture a guess some very good players won't be signed, and I will move them to the major league free agent list to see if anyone signs them.

You can read about my USBA in the Dynasty forum.

GH

[Le Grande Orange]

Here's one idea I've had:

Take your other favourite major sport, and play out its league history in MLB's place. In my case I was thinking of following the NHL's history in terms of league sizes and cities, expansions, alignments, etc., only the teams would play baseball instead of hockey.

This way you have your cities, alignments, and expanions already laid out for you, but you get to create new history with the baseball scores. You do have to make some changes (i.e. you can't really duplicate the 21 team NHL years for example) but overall you can follow this other league's history but with them playing baseball instead of the original sport.

[Carlton]

Originally posted by Tiger Fan

SNIP

Folded Philadelphia Phillies

[/B]

This was a great ide until I saw THIS...and I used to like you Tiger Fan...(sob)

my poor Phillies, no Robin Roberts, Carlton, Schmidt, Luzinski...umm well I could do without Luzinski..

in Seriousness, if that is indeed a word, my signature has a link to Dog Days Baseball, with no offense to anybody elses' ideas...is bar none the most innovative league to date.

[Tiger Fan]

Originally posted by Carlton
This was a great ide until I saw THIS...and I used to like you Tiger Fan...(sob)

my poor Phillies, no Robin Roberts, Carlton, Schmidt, Luzinski...umm well I could do without Luzinski..

that is just projected. If the Phillies are successful at the time of the merger they may survive. Only time will tell.

[ctorg]

I was just going to start a league based on a fictitious merging of independent leagues in 2000.

I will take the Northern League, which was combined with the Northeastern League at the time, as one league, and combine the Western League (which I believe is defunct ?) with the Atlantic League to form the United League. All players will be fictional.

[LedgerSko]

Well I have two fictional leagues based on the indy league premise. The Northern League and the Frontier League. If anyone is interested in those set up files I can send them to you.

[ctorg]

Originally posted by LedgerSko
Well I have two fictional leagues based on the indy league premise. The Northern League and the Frontier League. If anyone is interested in those set up files I can send them to you.

I actually got the idea from looking at one of your leagues.

[LedgerSko]

You should join one of them then