19th century play questions

[RMc]

Now that the 19th century is playable, what will it look like? Will the league automatically expand and contract as teams are added/drop out? What about the not-National Leagues (AA, UA and PL)? Four balls for a walk wasn't standardized until the 1880s; will the game reflect this?

[Kelric]

Originally Posted by RMc

Four balls for a walk wasn't standardized until the 1880s; will the game reflect this?

I doubt it. That'd call for changing the entire game engine to replay just a short period of time. Keep it at 4 balls to a walk and forget historical accuracy on that issue.

[Cryomaniac]

Originally Posted by Kelric

I doubt it. That'd call for changing the entire game engine to replay just a short period of time. Keep it at 4 balls to a walk and forget historical accuracy on that issue.

Just have less walks.

[swampdragon]

Originally Posted by RMc

Now that the 19th century is playable, what will it look like? Will the league automatically expand and contract as teams are added/drop out? What about the not-National Leagues (AA, UA and PL)? Four balls for a walk wasn't standardized until the 1880s; will the game reflect this?

Here's my take as an observer who has been trying to get the same answers from people who actually know what they're talking about. This all could be wrong, but I'm fairly confident of most of it. I am not a betatester, and I'm actually trying to bait anyone who knows into correcting my errors.

1. The game engine won't change. 4 balls will still be a walk. That's too much trouble for too little benefit. OOTP does have historical modifiers that will ensure that the total number of strikeouts, walks, errors, etc. in the organization will be reasonably accurate. Sometimes the first year is a bit off, but this will be no different from starting a league in 1901.

2. The only way you're going to get the UA and PL as separate leagues is going to be if you create them yourself. Stats from those leagues won't be included as major league stats in your history. The UA was way too fluid to recreate, anyway.

3. The National Association years will be included, but the National Association won't. We'll start out with eight teams in two subleagues and gradually expand from there. This means that teams such as the Middletown Mansfields that had a lifetime of a couple of months will not be represented, although I imagine its players will be available in the game as free agents. I don't know whether the original 1871 team names will be used, and moved from city to city, or whether we'll just start with the original 1876 lineup of franchises and 1871 players. I suspect the latter.

4. The American Association is very likely to be in the game as one of the subleagues, although it may be called the American League. I expect it and the National League will each have eight teams for the duration of the 19th century after 1883. That means the majors will not contract into one league in 1892 and that we'll have sixteen teams throughout the period. (This is the guess where I'm most likely to be wrong.) You won't get the 12 team 1884 American Association and there will be too many teams in the 1890s.

5. We may or may not be able to alter these things manually in order to more adequately mirror the actual league structures during the period. I've about decided that an idealized National Association with eight teams will be more fun than the real thing. On the other hand, I don't really care for not being able to contract to 12 teams in the 1890s. If I can make that change, I will.

[swampdragon]

Also, I'm very happy that Markus has decided to allow 1871 historical leagues, regardless of what the structures are and whether or not I can modify them. It's the improvement I'm most anticipating.

[Le Grande Orange]

Originally Posted by RMc

Now that the 19th century is playable, what will it look like? Will the league automatically expand and contract as teams are added/drop out?

Historical leagues in OOTP can expand as necessary, but they cannot as yet contract as needed to properly recreate history (it's a coding issue). So that means the pre-1901 structure in OOTP has to depart from reality for some of the years.

Originally Posted by RMc

What about the not-National Leagues (AA, UA and PL)?

No third major leagues (UA and PL, nor the FL either for that matter). Two major leagues are required given the limitations in league structures, so the AA or an equivalent will be there throughout the pre-1901 time period.

The rest is pretty much as swampdragon described in post #4.

[StyxNCa]

I have no problem manually creating the other leagues.

[swampdragon]

Originally Posted by Le Grande Orange

The rest is pretty much as swampdragon described in post #4.

One of the reasons I think the idealized 8 team NA will be better than the historical chaos that was the real NA is that I'm counting on the LGO schedules to be friendlier to the one man rotation than the as-played ones. Teams would play 6 games in seven days and wouldn't play again for a couple of weeks. Those 9th, 10th, and 11th teams in real life also lost a lot of 24-3 games.

[Cryomaniac]

Originally Posted by swampdragon

One of the reasons I think the idealized 8 team NA will be better than the historical chaos that was the real NA is that I'm counting on the LGO schedules to be friendlier to the one man rotation than the as-played ones. Teams would play 6 games in seven days and wouldn't play again for a couple of weeks. Those 9th, 10th, and 11th teams in real life also lost a lot of 24-3 games.

This is more a question for LGO I suppose, but will the league strategy default to a one-man rotation in this period?

[Le Grande Orange]

Originally Posted by swampdragon

Teams would play 6 games in seven days and wouldn't play again for a couple of weeks.

Yeah, there's quite a bit of that sort of thing in the NA years. But starting in 1877 (and even for much of 1876) the NL had a schedule where games were set up on a much more orderly plan. Games were generally scheduled for Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays.

The 1885-1891 period in OOTP will use schedules almost identical to the real world ones except that I'm going to remove some of the split doubleheaders in them since the cities used for OOTP's version of those years is a little different.The difficult years are 1871-1883 where things largely have to be created from scratch while trying to capture the flavour of the schedules of the time. The 1892-1900 years will probably use a variant of the schedules from seasons just before or just after that period.

Originally Posted by Cryomaniac

This is more a question for LGO I suppose, but will the league strategy default to a one-man rotation in this period?

I'm not sure, I'm not really a stats guy. But there are stats guys looking over the pre-1901 period with an eye to putting in the proper defaults.

[Cryomaniac]

Originally Posted by Le Grande Orange

I'm not sure, I'm not really a stats guy. But there are stats guys looking over the pre-1901 period with an eye to putting in the proper defaults.

Cool. Is it reasonable that someone would get close to 59 wins in a season during a sim then?

Of course it's possible to do that as a reliever, but it's hardly likely.

[SittingDuck]

What are NA years?

[ctorg]

Originally Posted by SittingDuck

What are NA years?

1871-1875. Pre-National League, there was the National Association.