Historical Work-arounds

[Dr. P.R. Park III]

In my conquest to reproduce a somewhat realistic historical replay, I'm trying to get together a list of sneaky work-arounds, for example: is there any way to alter trade behaviors so whereas in the early 1900's teams only trade a player for cash? This would in essence be simulating the purchasing of contracts, and would at least add an ounce of realism to the early pre-free agency, reserve clause mongering days. I think adding this layer with independent minor leagues of the time will definitely add some righteousness.

Also, anyone else have any suggestions for work-arounds, specifically in mind for historical play?

[Nukester]

I was doing a search for threads on what others might be doing to simulate some sort of reserve clause and found this, so I figured Id start the conversation up again (not that there was a conversation going on before )

So far the best thing for me has been to set free agency to 12 years, but also set arbitration to 1 year. So by doing that you pretty much lock in a player until he is way past his prime if you choose to keep him, but at the same time having to think about contract extensions vs arbitration so the player is still getting paid what hes worth for the most part.

I also set visiting team gate share to 30% just to even the playing field a little more, and I set to a fixed media contract for everyone, pretty much to try to recreate the fact the news wasnt really spread as fast as today, relying pretty much on newspapers, and to a lesser extent the radio a little later in history. Later in history Ill switch to a regional based media contract

What experiments are you others guys trying ?

[No Pepper]

Nukester, I had setup a league with free agency and arbitration settings like yours several months ago having the same intentions but the league never got off the ground for other reasons. Do players who have less than 12 years service time and whose contracts expire become eligible for arbitration multiple times?

[Nukester]

Originally Posted by No Pepper

Nukester, I had setup a league with free agency and arbitration settings like yours several months ago having the same intentions but the league never got off the ground for other reasons. Do players who have less than 12 years service time and whose contracts expire become eligible for arbitration multiple times?

Yes if a player has less than 12 years service time they are eligible for arbitration every year until they get to the 12 year mark. So if I draft a player when he is 20 years old, I have that guy locked in until hes at least 32 years old (or maybe 33 years) unless I cut him or trade him, depending on when I bring him up to the majors to start the clock, but he is arbitration eligible after his 1st year in the majors and every season after that. I still have to weight every year whether to let guys to arbitration or whether to sign them to an extension which might/might not be less than what they will get in arbitration.

If you have a long FA setting like 12 years, but set arbitration to something like 3 years, the player will make the same amount of money (usually league minimum I think) for the first few years he is in the majors. Thats why I set it to 1 year arbitration. It keeps player salaries somewhat near where they should be, so as to not render finacials completely useless, but allows teams to lock in players for a long time. Its been a great workaround for me

[Nukester]

Here is my current salary report. As you can see I have the young guys locked in for quite awhile, but have to decide between signing extensions for what the player wants (I always "meet demand" and dont bargin) or letting them go to arbitration. The older guys, or guys that came into the majors at a very young age, are starting to get to their FA years (like Willie Keeler and Jesse Tannehill)

[No Pepper]

Thanks Nukester. Are there more releases in your league with this setup, more trades? What settings are you running with, i.e., roster rules etc?

I also see you're using my Spalding menu. Thank you again! Reminds me I have to add a few more pieces (backgrounds, etc) to finalize that set for wide release.

[ctorg]

Originally Posted by Nukester

Yes if a player has less than 12 years service time they are eligible for arbitration every year until they get to the 12 year mark. So if I draft a player when he is 20 years old, I have that guy locked in until hes at least 32 years old (or maybe 33 years) unless I cut him or trade him, depending on when I bring him up to the majors to start the clock, but he is arbitration eligible after his 1st year in the majors and every season after that. I still have to weight every year whether to let guys to arbitration or whether to sign them to an extension which might/might not be less than what they will get in arbitration.

If you have a long FA setting like 12 years, but set arbitration to something like 3 years, the player will make the same amount of money (usually league minimum I think) for the first few years he is in the majors. Thats why I set it to 1 year arbitration. It keeps player salaries somewhat near where they should be, so as to not render finacials completely useless, but allows teams to lock in players for a long time. Its been a great workaround for me

Nukester,

How does the AI handle this? My concern would be that the AI would hold onto a lot of players and run its teams into the red. Does it actually release guys it doesn't want to give new contracts to?

[Nukester]

Hey, thank YOU for the Spalding picture !

Here are some of my league setup parameters:

- 1 minor league (will add more once I get a few more players into the league...maybe in 1910 I will add AA)

- 25 man rosters - 30 man extended rosters - no "active" roster (or whatever its called). I wanted to play with smaller roster limits, but whenever I would set the rosters to less than 25, I would run into the sign and release problem every single time. Leaving it at 25 has seemed to stop that problem.

- 6 year minor league free agency. I think that is the default. I left it like that because I wasnt sure what it did. Now I see that anyone with 6 years service time and is in the minors can apply for free agency (at least I think thats how it works). 6 years is fine with me, but you could raise that too if you want.

- I have trades set to low and am still seeing alot. At low it seems about right to me. Leaving it at average seemed to me like there were too many trades

Really, Im not seeing any more releases than I normally do, unless its an old player looking for big money, and most guys that are free agents are in the 32-36+ year old range. I figure most guys hit the majors at probably 24 years old, so most players arent eligible for FA until they are 36 years old.

[Nukester]

Originally Posted by ctorg

Nukester,

How does the AI handle this? My concern would be that the AI would hold onto a lot of players and run its teams into the red. Does it actually release guys it doesn't want to give new contracts to?

Yes the AI seems to be releasing older players that are asking for big money, and others are signing those guys, and they are releasing players that do not approve a demotion to the minors. I think the real test will be in the next season or 2 when the Boston Doves have to pay both Ty Cobb AND Tris Speaker (whom is currently in the minors). So far no one has run out of money, but there are a few teams that are definitely running low.

Its something I will definitely keep my eye on, but for the first 4 seasons, it seems to be working well.

[OWill40315]

Where can I download the Spaulding menu? I'd like to give it a try.

[No Pepper]

You can find the Spalding Base Ball Guide menu here, near the bottom: Historical Minor League Uniforms

[OWill40315]

Thanks, No Pepper. I remembered seeing it, but I just couldn't remember where.

[Kelric]

Here's a question I'm afraid I already know the answer to, but...

Is there a way that I can run a historical league with all of the proper on-the-field changes, but keeping financials at the same all the way through? Basically I'd like to run the entire history of MLB at the same salary level, but let everything else develop as the historical database says it should.

[Nukester]

Originally Posted by Kelric

Here's a question I'm afraid I already know the answer to, but...

Is there a way that I can run a historical league with all of the proper on-the-field changes, but keeping financials at the same all the way through? Basically I'd like to run the entire history of MLB at the same salary level, but let everything else develop as the historical database says it should.

In the options tab of the game setup, there is a toggle for "import adjusted financial settings after each year", which according to the manual does this:

uses a set of historical financial data stored in OOTP Baseball 2007data\database\financials.txt to realign your league finances after each season with actual historical numbers

If you uncheck this, it may do what you want, but Im not sure. I dont know if it just doesnt import from the actual numbers, but does make some kind of changes. I guess one way you could do it is to make all of the years in your financials.txt file have the same numbers for every year (after backing up the original file of course).

[Kelric]

I always forget about that option for some reason. Thanks. I'll give it a go.

(The answer I was afraid of was having to edit the financials file for every season.)

[ctorg]

It's actually really easy to edit the financials in Excel. I did a huge edit to create my current league, where financials are much different than in real life. In your case, you could copy the row of cells for whatever year you want (e.g. 2007) to all the other rows (making sure you leave the year for each one). Not that you actually need to do it, but it's not that difficult if you do it in Excel.

[Purple Cowboy]

I'm still pretty new at historical simming so was wondering if those more experienced could help me out: I'd love to try a historical sim that doesn't have the inflated home run totals of the modern era. Basically a "no-steroids" league. Is there a way I can manage this but also have the rest of the regular historical changes occur?

[Nukester]

You could either edit the league modifiers after each season, or you could go into the text file that holds the yearly stats information (era_modify or something like that...I dont have the game in front of me) and change the HR totals down to whatever you want. So if you think the steriod scandal has increased HR's by 10%, then lower each season HR totals in that file by 10%. Maybe something like that would work

[Purple Cowboy]

Thanks Nukester. I think I'll have some time this weekend (and perhaps Monday if the weather is bad) to poke around and fiddle with some settings to see how it comes out.