[PH2]

I did a quick search and didn't see anything that addresses these questions, so I thought I'd throw them out there to see if anyone has gotten further with this than I have (I don't mind trial and error, but I'd rather not re-invent the wheel if I don't have to)...

I'm interested in setting up the Federal League as a counterpart to the MLB in an historical replay universe. I didn't realize this was also the case in OOTP9 (I'm fairly certain it wasn't in v8 because I spent a lot of time manually re-creating the FL), but I see that in OOTPX, when you create a 1914 historical league, all 8 of the FL teams with complete rosters are placed into the NL. Now, I assume if you don't want the FL, you just release all of those players into free agency or delete them and delete the teams. But what if you want to create the FL?

I've been playing around with the right set-up and it looks like the best (only?) way to do this is to create a fictional league, release all the fictional players and delete them, delete the teams, and then move all the FL teams into the new FL league. One of the issues I've seen with this is that if you want to do this, you need to wait to create minor leagues until after the league setup is completed, because the minor leagues that are created for all 24 teams are not neatly divided into 8/AL and 16/NL as they are in the ML setup. So, if you trace the minor league teams to their affiliates and move them, you end up needing to do more work to reconfigure the ML minors the way they should be (for instance, after doing this once, I ended up with 4 ML minor league teams in one division and 12 in the other). Plus, there are so few FL minor league players, having a minor league is probably not going to work anyway, so a reverse roster is probably the way to go there.

Assuming the leagues are set-up and configured properly, what I think I would then do is allow the leagues to share FAs so the FL can pick up the ML's leftovers. The real question I have is, what happens at the end of 1914? Are the 1915 FL team rookies just dumped into the ML FA pool, or would the game recognize the FL and assign the players to the correct team?

Anyone tried this or have any thoughts/feedback on the best (or better) way to do this? Thanks.

[Spritze]

Originally Posted by PH2

The real question I have is, what happens at the end of 1914? Are the 1915 FL team rookies just dumped into the ML FA pool, or would the game recognize the FL and assign the players to the correct team?

OOTP uses the team name abbreviation in the Lahman database to place rookies on the proper teams. If your Federal League team abbreviations match Lahman the rookie players will go to the appropriate team.

You can set the Federal league up as a ML division/league if you wish using the Edit League Structure screen in game setup. Just move the teams from the NL.

[PH2]

Thanks. I don't really want the FL to be a division or league within the MLB structure, if that's what you are suggesting. I am setting it up as a separate major league. I guess I have to do that as a fictional league? In the league settings for that fictional league that I'm turning into the FL, do I need to cllick the "automatically import historical players" button, or does it matter, seeing as though I am unable to define a path for it to look for the players?

Or will what you are suggesting only work if I tie the FL directly to the MLB as a division/league within the MLB structure? I tried this once today creating the FL as a separate league, and 2 things happened that I don't want - (1) it added fictional players, and (2) the historical players did not import. I'm going to mess with it again tonight.