What type of league would you enjoy most?

[legendsport]

I'm looking for some feedback on a new league I'd like to create.

I've been very pleased with the 20th Century Challenge - my fast play historical league which began play with the 1901 season and is now about to move into the 1960s and the expansion era.

Using the basic framework of that league (a quick-paced league not necessarily using the firing rules), I'm contemplating a second fast paced league with one of the following formats:

1) historical starting with the debut of the NL in 1876. GMs would build fictitious franchises and would guide them through baseball history using real players. We'd have house rules for simulating reserve-clause era finances, franchise relocation, stadium-building, etc.

2a) hybrid-historical starting with 1884 (debut of the Union Assoc), using Translated statistics (from Baseball Prospectus) to make the players perform at a modern level. We'd start in 1884 so that there would be enough pitchers to flesh out 4-man rotations for 16 to 20 teams. Divisional play, finances (possibly), same house rules as above if no-financials, and house rules for franchise shifts & stadiums.

2b) same as above except starting in 1890 with the Players League giving us the extra players to start off with.

2c) same as above except starting in 1901

3) reverse historical league starting with the 2003 season (flipped to 1901) with the current players playing their careers in reverse (ie. rookie seasons would be their real life last seasons, older guys like Bonds would be young in first season while youngsters like Miguel Cabrera would be old and last only a season or two). Players normalized to the era being played (the 2003 players would be normalized to 1901 levels, and so on). Using the house rules from #1 until we reached the free agent era (1975) when we'd turn the game's finances on

4) reverse historical using translated statistics from Prospectus

A note on the translated stats - unlike most methods of "normalizing" players, BP's translations do not end up with players like Ruth getting ridiculously overblown HR numbers. Ruth's peak season, in translated terms of HRs, is 71 - a number we all now know is realistic. Bonds 2001 season translates to 72 - 1 better than the Babe. I recommend checking out baseballprospectus.com for more info on the Davenport Translations (named after their creator, Clay Davenport of BP).

Please feel free to give your thoughts on these various options. If you think they all stink, you can say that too - it won't hurt my feelings. After all, I can't run one of these as an online league if no one wants to give it a shot!

If you're interested in more info, you can post here or email me directly at commish@legendsport.com

Thanks,
Joe

[Cowboys3356]

Could you provide a link to the Davenport Translations? I went to baseballprospectus.com but did not find anything about that. Is it a database or an article? Also the only way a player would have "overblown" offensive or pitching stats is if your league totals are incorrect. I have actually never seen Babe Ruth even hit 71 home runs in any league and I have seen him in both online leagues & solo play leagues.

[sporr]

The ones that are most interesting I think are the reverse historical ideas. There have been so many traditional historical leagues, that this would offer a new angle.

[legendsport]

Originally Posted by Cowboys3356

Also the only way a player would have "overblown" offensive or pitching stats is if your league totals are incorrect. I have actually never seen Babe Ruth even hit 71 home runs in any league and I have seen him in both online leagues & solo play leagues.

I was referring to the stats of the player in the Lahman database (I've put the BP translations into a Lahman-style db so it could be imported into the game). I haven't actually used the translated DB yet, but do understand that the actual totals will depend in large part on the league settings.

For the Prospectus definition on Davenport translations go here: http://www.baseballprospectus.com/gl....php?context=7

They don't give a lot of info on how the translations are created (it's a secret formula) but does explain what they attempt to do

[metsgeek]

Joe, I'll sign up for ANY league you run.....and I especially enjoy the fast pace of 20CC

I've been interested in the Reverse League since you mentioned it a few months ago. Either option 3 or 4 would be fine. Translated stats would probably be best, though.

[Jeremy Weimer]

I'm for any league you decide to make Joe, you make pretty decent leagues.

[legendsport]

Thanks for the promos guys. I figured Pete would chime in voting for the reverse historical concept since we had a lot of discussions about that one over the past year or so.

[Jeremy Weimer]

Reverse historical would be an interesting league for sure. As long as it was done right and people stuck with it.

[Groovercat]

Life long Pirates fan and strat-o-matic (got it for my 8th bday) player would love to join what seems to be a very serious league. My email is: groover016@yahoo.com. Reverse historical sounds fun and challenging!!

[legendsport]

Groovercat - I'll email you when we've got a consensus on what's going to happen. It looks like reverse historical - the main question now is whether to normalize to the target year (ie. 2003 players normalized to 1901) or just use translated stats for everyone, for every year removing "eras" from the league.

[Cowboys3356]

Originally Posted by legendsport

I was referring to the stats of the player in the Lahman database (I've put the BP translations into a Lahman-style db so it could be imported into the game).

Would you be willing to make that BP translated database available? Might be an interesting third option for people to consider if they don't like the original Lahman or the Ankit DB.

[legendsport]

I definitely will make it available (I just haven't finished it yet). When it's done I will post it on my site for download.

One of the great features of the BP player pages is that they give estimated games played (based on at-bats) for all defensive positions and break out the OF stats by RF, LF and CF all the way back to 1871. This, in my opinion, helps make the fielding ratings more accurate in OOTP.

[Jeremy Weimer]

Joe might have something on his hands here.

[legendsport]

I hope so - this looks like it may be a go

[metsgeek]

I think my air conditioning must be on too high, because my nipples are hard

[legendsport]

OK, here's what I'm thinking right now (and feel free to give me some feedback):

we'd start off with a initial setup of 32 teams split into 4 divisions (2 leagues). Each division would act as a seperate league (there'd be no interdivisional play). For example, National League, American League, Pacific Coast League and International League (just to use common names), playing 154 game seasons, using the translated database with era settings for 1901.

Now, here's something that may be controversial (and I'm not 100% wedded to this either, nor do I mean to offend anyone - this is just an idea): we follow the historical "color line" and put African-American and Latin players in one league, approximating the Negro Leagues, and everyone else in the other league approximating the Major Leagues. Then we'd integrate the game when we reach 1947 (which in this reverse format equates to real-life 1957) and introduce the real-life Negro Leaguers as they come along (also reversed). This would basically mean that Barry Bonds would spend his career in the "Negro Leagues" while Josh Gibson would spend his career in "MLB" and the color barrier could conceivably be broken by Jackie Robinson again - he'd be a rookie in the right season reversed as well (his last MLB season was 1957) - the Negro Leagues and MLB would have seperate player pools for rookies until integration.

The thing I like about the above is that it would allow a GM to run 2 teams - an "MLB" team and a "Negro League" team, meaning we wouldn't need to scrounge up 32 guys, but only 16. Obviously the Negro League teams would need to be exchanged for expansion teams once we integrate, but by then we'd hopefully be able to find some new blood to join the fray and we wouldn't necessarily be carrying 32 teams either (more like 24 or 26).

I understand that this is a lot to digest, but please let me know what you think.

[tategter]

I'm in no matter what your next project ends-up being.

The idea above sounds good. I was wondering how you were going to start-out with 32 teams and work your way down to 16 in 40 seasons. My only problem is the negro league stats when the Josh Gibsons and Satchel Paiges get into the league. I always understood the stats to be skewed because of the barnstorming nature of the league. No doubt these were great baseball players, but I am not sure their stats can be translated 1-for-1 with MLB stats. Please correct me if I am wrong.

Out of curiousity, is there a quick reference you can use to sort players from the last 43 seasons into negro leagues and MLB?

If this doesn't work, or is considered offensive to people, you can always go with your first split of AL, NL, PCL, and IL. The AL and NL could be the majors and the PCL and IL could be the alternate league and never the two shall play. If you have the time you could keep the 1910-1950 league structure and have players from the west coast and foreign countries only available to the alternate league, and players from east of the Mississippi available only to the MLB. Teams could trade between the MLB and alternate leagues, but obviously not by teams owned by the same person.

Just throwing ideas out there.

[Matt from TN]

I liked 2b, but 3 and 4 would be my favorites... We had a dynasty thread that started this but never got far... I was hooked & really wanted to see how it would go.

[legendsport]

Matt - that dynasty was mine (sorry for not going further with it). It was a "test run" for option #3, which I think is the one that's going to happen. Just have to decide on a format for splitting the 32 teams into leagues - and then start asking people to sign up for the thing.

[Jeremy Weimer]

I love the idea of the MLB/Negro/Mexican split league idea. That would be rather interesting and unique and overall fun to play.