Doubleheaders still don't work well with 6.03

[fearofmimes]

I just tried the 6.03 patch to see if there was anything new with doubleheader support, but nothing has changed and all the same problems remain. This seems like it could be a relatively simple fix, but I could be wrong.

I've been waiting for this to be addressed for almost as long as I've been playing (since OOTP4). I'm wondering if it is even considered a problem that would be fixed. I stopped playing soon after OOTP5 came out because I was so frustrated by the inability to use real MLB schedules after I put a lot of work into researching MLB schedules and building a schedule importer. I had high hopes for OOTP6, but nothing changed. I thought that the ability to import schedules meant that there was more interest in supporting the use of real MLB schedules (meaning double headers up until the early eighties).

Is there a timetable for supporting doubleheaders with OOTP (preferrably OOTP6)? I would be happy with incremental support, with a sequence roughly as follows:

• Update fatigue-related variables (for pitchers at least) after games rather than at the end of the day.
• Detect two games between the same teams on the same day and setting an order for the games even when the start times are the same so that the second game will start after the first game (like 30 minutes, perhaps) unless the start times on the schedule are sufficiently far apart (like 5 or 6 hours) to indicate a day/night doubleheader.
• Increase fan interest for doubleheaders (or treating them like a free promotion) where attendance might increase even though there is only one gate for two games (assuming the game detected a doubleheader).
• Tweak pitching rotation management to provide for more realistic usage of spot starters and the opportunity to use other pitchers in some of the strange situations teams were placed in with doubleheaders.
• Indicate doubleheaders on schedules.
• Provide access to boxscores and game logs for both games when a doubleheader appeared on the schedule.

I recognize that there were cases in MLB history where pitchers threw both ends of the doubleheader. I wouldn't be against this happening with OOTP when supported by era settings and pitcher endurance, but the present situation is realistic. Pitcher usage for doubleheaders right now is almost entirely deterministic (except for spot starter) and even when a pitcher throws both ends of a doubleheader he is not affected in the second game by pitches thrown in the first game.

I think this is a real defect. I guess if the game is not intended to support doubleheaders, it would be more honest to throw an exception of some kind if two games between the same teams are detected on a day rather than to allow corrupted results.

[Le Grande Orange]

Keep the faith, brother, and keep preaching to the flock. We'll convert the masses to our ways eventually!

I agree with most everything you said. Personally though, I'd be more than happy if just the fatigue issues and pitcher usage items were resolved. These are the biggest impediments to doubleheaders in the game; the other items could wait for OOTP7 (and probably require a reworking of the game engine to some degree).

One point about the attendance boost for scheduled doubleheaders - it shouldn't be consistent through time. The reason scheduled doubleheaders today don't happen is because there is no financial benefit to them. Back when however average attendance was lower, the attraction of a Sunday or mid-week twilight-night twin bill did indeed make it worthwhile for a team to schedule them.

The attendance boost feature of a doubleheader should probably be tied to the era settings. The scheduled twin bill was mostly limited to holidays until the early 1920's, after which they began to scheduled more and more frequently. The peak occurrence was during WWII, but in the post-war years the numbers were still high, and exceeded those of the pre-war period by a fair amount in most cases. The gradual trend downwards in the numbers began in the late-1960's, and by the early 1980's the scheduled doubleheader had all but ceased to exist.

I've done a bit of work analyzing the effect on attendance of weekday vs. weeknight games, and single games vs. doubleheaders, but the data needed isn't available in a convenient form that I could find. Retrosheet has boxscores back to the late-1960's, but for earlier decades there aren't any so the only way attendance data could be tracked for individual games would be to look up and record the attendance figures from the boxscores printed in The Sporting News. Even this is not pefect, since their boxscores didn't start including attendance figures until after WWII if I recall correctly.

[sporr]

Originally Posted by fearofmimes

[*]Provide access to boxscores and game logs for both games when a doubleheader appeared on the schedule.[/list]

I know that this isn't exactly what you're looking for, but both games of a doubleheader WILL appear on the box.html file if you generate HTML for the league. From there you will have access to both game boxscores and game logs.