19th Century Issues, to date

[Kelric]

I've only played up through the 1875 season, but here are some thoughts on historical play so far....

1) The schedules need to be corrected. Lumping all of the 30 or so games together in one month prevents the ability to just use one pitcher the entire time without the poor man's arm falling off after three or four starts in a row. Some of these starts require 200+ pitches (as it should be), so something has to give. The game plays the ball games well, so it should be the schedule that changes.

2) Not sure what can be done about this one, but with so many pitchers being imported into the league, a 1-man rotation doesn't cut it. Some of the best starters of the early years of baseball get shuttled off to the bullpen and never see action. Every season I have to go and re-adjust the rotation size to at least 2 men in the game setup, then go to each team and have the AI re-adjust the organization so there are the proper number of SPs. In 1874 I actually had to up this to 3 man rotations, which is extremely unrealistic. Poor Al Spalding and Tommy Bond get 10 starts a year now.

3) After four seasons of play, all of the players are still on rookie contracts since they've only accumulated one full current season of games. OOTP doesn't realize that these seasons are only 30 games long.

4) Why does the original Philadelphia Athletics franchise go inactive only to be replaced by... the Philadelphia Athletics? I was/am running the Athletics and had to submit a protection list, but am also drafting in the expansion draft with no players being listed for my organization. If I search for my old players, they show up as being listed on the.... Philadelphia Athletics. Yet, I no longer control any team and those players aren't in the free agent pool. So these guys that I just played four seasons with get sent off to nowhere and I have no organization and the dynasty I was building is lost? That's a horrible way to run things, I think.

Also with #4, the Cincy Reds are replaced by the Cincy Reds and the STL Brown Stockings by the STL Brown Stockings. Why bother replacing those franchises if they are going to continue with the same name? And why are all of their players apparently lost for ever?

[Spritze]

I don't have enough pitchers in my league to have even 3 per team during most of the 1870's. Some teams don't have any and have to use an OF who also pitched. I'm using the built in Lahman.

How do you get so many?

MOM!!! Kelric got more than me!

[Jah]

I don't have much to add, but I must say 19th Century play is disappointing in its current form. I realize several compromises had to be made with regard to expansion/contraction, number of teams, league size, etc., but using "modern day" scheduling (with few off days) effectively negates any chance of realistic pitcher usage.

I've read where realistic schedules are possibly in the works in a future patch, but there are several other issues as well, already mentioned by Kelric. It just seems like 19th Century play was added on without considering all of these details - I was really looking forward to it, but it looks like 1901 is still the earliest year we can start baseball history in OOTP.

[Kelric]

I'm using the Gambo DB. I didn't realize he added in so many 19th century players.

[Kelric]

Originally Posted by Jah

It just seems like 19th Century play was added on without considering all of these details - I was really looking forward to it, but it looks like 1901 is still the earliest year we can start baseball history in OOTP.

Agreed. I'm going to have to scrap this world and create a new one starting in 1901 with imported histories. Essentially losing everything I just played for for four (wow, how often does one get to type those three words?) years is unacceptable.

[Jah]

Originally Posted by Spritze

I don't have enough pitchers in my league to have even 3 per team during most of the 1870's. Some teams don't have any and have to use an OF who also pitched. I'm using the built in Lahman.

How do you get so many?

MOM!!! Kelric got more than me!

I've run into this as well using Lahman. Position players have to relieve frequently (guys who never even pitched in real life!) and all the starting pitchers are constantly "totally exhausted."

[Jah]

Originally Posted by Kelric

Agreed. I'm going to have to scrap this world and create a new one starting in 1901 with imported histories. Essentially losing everything I just played for for four (wow, how often does one get to type those three words?) years is unacceptable.

I scrapped my league as well (luckily I never got as far as the teams replacing themselves!) Very disappointing. I love OOTP and think this version was a huge step up for historical gamers, but it looks like 19th Century play was added just to say it was added. With all of these issues popping up, apparently playability wasn't a priority. Hopefully a patch will resolve some of these problems later on.

[Spritze]

The included Lahman does not have Challenge #4. That is most likely caused by the Gamboling you are doing. I have played the 1800's 8 or 10 times and have never had this challenge. The first expansion is in 1884 and all teams stay intact. The weirdest thing that happens is both Chicago teams get named the White Sox but they maintain seperate histories.

Hopefully better 1800's schedules will be forthcoming. I know LGO has been pushing for this and maybe he will be heard.

To fix challenge #3 set every player to be eligible for arbitration after each year. That is actually how it worked then anyway. The arbiter was the GM or Owner but everyone got a yearly review.

[Kelric]

Originally Posted by Spritze

The included Lahman does not have Challenge #4. That is most likely caused by the Gamboling you are doing. I have played the 1800's 8 or 10 times and have never had this challenge. The first expansion is in 1884 and all teams stay intact. The weirdest thing that happens is both Chicago teams get named the White Sox but they maintain seperate histories.

Hmm... interesting. I'll have to play with that. Maybe I can try some database editing to fix the team issues.

To fix challenge #3 set every player to be eligible for arbitration after each year. That is actually how it worked then anyway. The arbiter was the GM or Owner but everyone got a yearly review.

Ah, but will that actually send them to arbitration or will I get stuck in the 'four seasons amount to one' problem?

[txmudcat]

I've started in 1880 and have some success. The only issue, other than the pitching rotation size I've mentioned elsewhere, I've faced of consequence was the expansion draft. The only way to get through this and have pitchers available for the new teams is to set yourself as commissioner right after the season has ended and do the lists yourself. I set mine to protect 18 (active roster size I'm using).

Kelric, check the franchise id of "teams" in the stat folder of ootp. You can pull that up via excel. Sort by franchise id then year and you should be able to see where the issue is. It's possible that in your case, one St Louis has the franchise tag of sl2 (or something) then the next year it has stl. Even though the names are the same, the franchise's will be different. To fix, just change the franchise tag to match

[Kelric]

Alright, I've figured out what some of the teams in 1875/76 become, now I just need to figure out when each team switches around and what they ultimately become all the way through 1901 when it probably stabilizes a bit.

I like the extra players (and the Negro Leaguers) that I get with Gambo, but this is going to be annoying.

Anyone think that maybe I can just switch out the Teams file with the original Lahman and be ok?

[Garlon]

Use the teams file that is included with OOTP.

You start with 8 teams in 1871, 4 in NL and 4 in AL.

Then it expands to 16 teams in 1882, 8 teams in each league.

I created the file myself for OOTP. No franchises will go defunct using this file. Teams are also linked to their spiritual predecessors so to speak. The Cubs are linked to the Chicago White Stockings of 1871-1875 for example...so team names will sometimes change, but the franchise remains intact.

[blubbla]

I've only made 1 trek through the 1800s thus far, as I'm trying to run my first OOTP9 FABL league to a near modern day finish (in the mid 30s in this sim). I do agree we need better schedules, especially for the NA days with few pitchers and probably all way up to the AA/AL expansion of 1882.

I regarded the contract issue as a wacky interpretation of the reserve clause, but also thought it gave my league about 8 seasons to build some good solvency before the pay scale started increasing. Arbitration every year is an intriguing idea, and I might consider using it. With a rebuilt schedule though, there should be more service time with more off days, and then it won't take the first 4 seasons to get 1 year of service.

Statistically it seemed to function pretty well, with the pitching issue being the major exception that started throwing everything else off course.

[Kelric]

Originally Posted by Garlon

Use the teams file that is included with OOTP.

You start with 8 teams in 1871, 4 in NL and 4 in AL.

Then it expands to 16 teams in 1882, 8 teams in each league.

I created the file myself for OOTP. No franchises will go defunct using this file. Teams are also linked to their spiritual predecessors so to speak. The Cubs are linked to the Chicago White Stockings of 1871-1875 for example...so team names will sometimes change, but the franchise remains intact.

Yeah, Gambo's DB started with 4/4 as well until 1876 when it switched to one league of 8 teams. I'll plug in the original team files and do a test sim right now I guess.

[swampdragon]

You're going to need two things before 19th century baseball can be properly simulated. One is the schedules, as both of you mentioned. The other is a fatigue reset button on the editing screen. If I can edit a career ending injury, why shouldn't I be able to clear Al Spalding's fatigue so he can pitch six games in seven days as he actually did? Even if you had the as-played schedule files, these guys would still not be able to pitch their full complement of games. The idea of the starting rotation didn't come until the early 1880s. Given as-played schedules (or properly spaced ones) and a fatigue reset button, the game will simulate 19th century baseball just fine.

[Lee]

I pretty much agree with the rest here on 19th century. Though there seems to be random other things that pop up when you auto sim.

Here are my thoughts:

Schedules
As others have mentioned space them out to allow the limited rotations. So I would propose the following set up. (Is it possible to tweak the game settings to do something like this in a patch for those on Beta?)

1871 - 1875
The game should automatically use a 1 man during these Seasons, with a 30-40 game schedule with 10-15 games a month beginning in May.

1876 - 1881
2 man rotation, 66 game schedule over 3 months beginning in May

1882 - 1899 (expansion to 16 teams occurs)
3 man rotation, 140 game schedule beginning in April, normal spacing for games.

1900 - 1910
3 man rotation with high spot starter percentage, RL 154 game schedule. (this could also be auto 4 man rotation due to high pitcher endurance that would still give top 3 most of the starts)

Then go to a 4 man rotation in 1911 on, as the CPU will still use 3 man rotations whenever possible for a few years due to high Pitcher endurance.

I obviously can do all this manually each year, but it would be nice to be able to quick sim a whole history from 1871 or 1876 with the Computer keeping things more realistic.

Other things
I have had a couple of other anomalies when simming, mainly with strikeouts fluctuating wildly, as well as SB totals. I think there should be a maximum percentage that league totals can fluctuate each season that tops out at say 25%. That way we don't have a pitcher striking out 137 one year, then 317 the next over the same number of innings. This way, if you came up with solid modifiers your first season, things would progress a lot smoother instead of the up and down we still get.

Here is the weirdest thing I have ever experienced through the 8 versions of OOTP I have owned. Simming from 1880 forward, things were looking fairly decent, then 1893 came and all hell broke loose. I had 12 players hit over 40 homeruns (Leader had 50) and teams started committing 30-60 errors a game!! I had scores that Season of 112-62, 58-47, 72-49, but as errors were so high most pitchers still had sub 2.00 ERA's....Very strange.

I haven't done any simming after 1900 yet as I really want to be able to get out of the 1800's just letting the game do it's thing. It is close, but the, schedule spacing, rotations staying at 1 man for so long and the weird one season anomalies that pop up skew the results too much.

I am going to start in 1900 and see how that goes

[Kelric]

Well I used the original Lahman team files with the rest of the files being from Gambo's DB and, on the surface, everything seems to have worked fine.

The overall leaderboard numbers appear to have worked just fine. Ted Williams had the most VORP, Mark McGwire had the most HRs, not a lot of guys hit 500 and only 20somethin' got 3,000 hits.

I simmed one season at a time for the 1870s and part of the 1880s and I will also say that the strikeout numbers would fluctuate big time from year to year on occasion. Most of my stolen base leaders played from the 1880s to the early 1900s, though I don't know if that is normal or not. The same guys got caught a lot, too.

Looking at the career numbers and the spread of World Series and playoff appearances among all of the clubs, I'm actually pretty happy. I need to do a little more tweaking, but I think it should work out if I continue to remember to adjust the rotations and whatnot during the 19th century. I still dislike the schedules and whatnot though.

[silentrob]

In regard to your original post, Kelric, about players needing about 4 seasons to acquire 1 year of ML service time, you can fix that manually. Under game setup -> league setup -> rules tab, just change the number of days required for a full season of service time.

[Kelric]

I never remember some of the work arounds OOTP has. Thanks. Now I just need to remember to change that when the schedule changes.

[blubbla]

I honestly forgot that feature too - but then again I think I'd forget to fix it as the schedule gets larger.