The Level Playing Field - (2017-2130)

jaysdailydose · 11-23-2016, 10:07 PM

This, and all further entries in this dynasty, was originally posted on my blog at Jason's Baseball Simulations -- and I'll be sharing box scores from each game (played or simmed) on the new Twitter I made for the purpose at @TheBoxScoreGuy -- hope you'll follow along!

Welcome, friends!

I am going to be an extremely long-term series of posts on my newest baseball project, “The Level Playing Field,” using Out of the Park Baseball 17 by OOTP Developments. It is a new project, but it is one of my oldest ideas, one that I was never able to bring to full fruition in previous versions of the simulator.

One of the greatest things about the sport of baseball is the statistics, and how we can use those statistics to compare players from different eras. Even without being alive while they were in their primes, many of us are confident when we say “Ted Williams was the greatest hitter who ever lived,” or “There will never be another player like Babe Ruth!” We know that Babe Ruth is still third on the career home run list, even though he retired in 1935. We know that Ted Williams is still the last man to bat above .400 in a season.

While it is great that we have so many statistics, they alone don’t tell us the full story. Babe Ruth’s accomplishments are even more amazing when you take a look at the era he played in. In 1920, the Bambino hit 54 home runs, and those 54 homers were more than any other TEAM in the American League hit that season. In fact, only one National League team hit more than Ruth, as the Philadelphia Phillies hit 64 blasts as a team that year!

We now live in a different era and we’ve seen almost 100 years of baseball since Ruth’s amazing year in 1920. There are quite a few players who have hit more than 54 homers in a season (including Ruth himself) and it is impossible for us to know how a player like Ruth would fare in today’s MLB environment, the same as we’ll never know how an athlete like Mike Trout would have fared in the Dead Ball Era.

That’s where our project comes in…

“The Level Playing Field” – The Project:

The “Level Playing Field” is a random debut, alternative history of MLB. The random debut feature in OOTP essentially takes the database of every player to have ever played in MLB and hits the “shuffle” button. Historical players from all eras will make up our inaugural draft pool and our amateur drafts for each season to come.

What our project seeks to do is provide “The Level Playing Field” for all players to play on in the seasons to come. The idea is simple. I lock all league strategy settings, financials, and gameplay settings to one set of settings. As far as the league strategy settings, the environment will be very similar to the 2015 MLB season.

I use a set of financials that I have tweaked now over several versions to provide as realistic an MLB environment as I feel is possible under the OOTP financial system. I will not be using the inflation feature as I'll be trying to keep the financials fairly static over the years, but I am confident and have tested my system over several versions now and think it will provide an extremely competitive environment for the 114 seasons of this simulation.

With locking the league totals and strategy settings, ballparks, and teams — you establish ONE competitive environment for all of the players who will play in your league! Our league is going to start in 2017 and I will be playing it (and importing to new versions of the game) until 2130. This is 114 years, which is the same amount of seasons that have been played in the World Series era. There have now been 112 World Series Champions, and we’ve had two World Series that were not contested — the 1904 World Series and the 1994 World Series. The 1904 World Series was not played due to unrest, especially from the National League’s representative in the New York Giants, who refused to play against the American League winner. The 1994 Series was cancelled due to an extremely long player strike, and was unquestionably one of the most destructive things that has ever happened to the sport. We’ll be able to re-write the history of those two dark years and have a FULL World Series era of our own!

This combination of settings, players, and the competitive environment will enable us to take a look at who would rise above the rest, and in this world, there will be no “Well, look at the era he played in, of course he hit 50 homeruns!” debates. All accomplishments can be measured against all other accomplishments, and that is what I was looking to achieve.

There was also one big wrong I was looking to re-write, and that was the lack of minority involvement in the sport until Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier. It isn’t a perfect solution, but I’ve turned on the International and Independent free agents, as well as international scouting discoveries, to add extra players to the environment. Some of these players will still “present” as white players, but I felt it was important to add a controlled amount of additional players to the environment to represent the millions of young men who would have never had the chance to play Major League Baseball simply because of their race.

I’m currently starting the inaugural draft now, and I’ll be on to gameplay very soon! I am planning on playing every 6th game, as I plan on rotating through all five starters. For example, for the first turn through the rotation, I’ll play the 1st game (Opening Day) and then simulate the rest of that turn through the rotation. I’ll also simulate the #1 starter’s second start, to where my second played game will be the #2 starter’s second turn. It’s essentially play one, sim six, play one. This will keep me in-tune with how the team is playing, and also give me a look at all of my starting pitchers. With 114 seasons to be played, it is simply not feasible for me to play out every game, and I’ll save this for a different save.

If you are a longtime OOTP Forums veteran, you’ll undoubtedly recognize me and this project. I believe this project is finally truly feasible and we’ll actually have a chance of completing it and providing an extremely interesting alternative MLB history. I hope you’ll be following along!

I'll be playing as the Detroit Tigers for the duration of this dynasty, and I'll be attempting to achieve several personal goals. When I play games out, I've only ever done substitutions and pitching changes, so my impact on the game environment is limited to player changes at best. Definitely not a person that will throw the base-stealing numbers out of whack.

Thank you for checking out The Level Playing Field (2017-2130)!

jaysdailydose · 11-23-2016, 10:28 PM

First Overall Pick - Cincinnati Reds select Pedro J. Martinez

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Third Overall Pick - Detroit Tigers select Sandy Koufax

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The draft will take some time, but I wanted to show the first overall pick and my first selection with the Tigers. It was a really hard selection as a 26-year-old Rogers Hornsby was sitting there as well... but I decided to build around a stud pitcher first and foremost.

I hit the "Random Draft Order" one time and was given the third pick with the Tigers, but this means I don't have a second selection for over 55 picks!

11-23-2016, 10:07 PM	#1
jaysdailydose Hall Of Famer Join Date: Nov 2012 Posts: 2,325	The Level Playing Field - (2017-2130) This, and all further entries in this dynasty, was originally posted on my blog at Jason's Baseball Simulations -- and I'll be sharing box scores from each game (played or simmed) on the new Twitter I made for the purpose at @TheBoxScoreGuy -- hope you'll follow along! Welcome, friends! I am going to be an extremely long-term series of posts on my newest baseball project, “The Level Playing Field,” using Out of the Park Baseball 17 by OOTP Developments. It is a new project, but it is one of my oldest ideas, one that I was never able to bring to full fruition in previous versions of the simulator. One of the greatest things about the sport of baseball is the statistics, and how we can use those statistics to compare players from different eras. Even without being alive while they were in their primes, many of us are confident when we say “Ted Williams was the greatest hitter who ever lived,” or “There will never be another player like Babe Ruth!” We know that Babe Ruth is still third on the career home run list, even though he retired in 1935. We know that Ted Williams is still the last man to bat above .400 in a season. While it is great that we have so many statistics, they alone don’t tell us the full story. Babe Ruth’s accomplishments are even more amazing when you take a look at the era he played in. In 1920, the Bambino hit 54 home runs, and those 54 homers were more than any other TEAM in the American League hit that season. In fact, only one National League team hit more than Ruth, as the Philadelphia Phillies hit 64 blasts as a team that year! We now live in a different era and we’ve seen almost 100 years of baseball since Ruth’s amazing year in 1920. There are quite a few players who have hit more than 54 homers in a season (including Ruth himself) and it is impossible for us to know how a player like Ruth would fare in today’s MLB environment, the same as we’ll never know how an athlete like Mike Trout would have fared in the Dead Ball Era. That’s where our project comes in… *“The Level Playing Field” – The Project:* The “Level Playing Field” is a random debut, alternative history of MLB. The random debut feature in OOTP essentially takes the database of every player to have ever played in MLB and hits the “shuffle” button. Historical players from all eras will make up our inaugural draft pool and our amateur drafts for each season to come. What our project seeks to do is provide “The Level Playing Field” for all players to play on in the seasons to come. The idea is simple. I lock all league strategy settings, financials, and gameplay settings to one set of settings. As far as the league strategy settings, the environment will be very similar to the 2015 MLB season. I use a set of financials that I have tweaked now over several versions to provide as realistic an MLB environment as I feel is possible under the OOTP financial system. I will not be using the inflation feature as I'll be trying to keep the financials fairly static over the years, but I am confident and have tested my system over several versions now and think it will provide an extremely competitive environment for the 114 seasons of this simulation. With locking the league totals and strategy settings, ballparks, and teams — you establish ONE competitive environment for all of the players who will play in your league! Our league is going to start in 2017 and I will be playing it (and importing to new versions of the game) until 2130. This is 114 years, which is the same amount of seasons that have been played in the World Series era. There have now been 112 World Series Champions, and we’ve had two World Series that were not contested — the 1904 World Series and the 1994 World Series. The 1904 World Series was not played due to unrest, especially from the National League’s representative in the New York Giants, who refused to play against the American League winner. The 1994 Series was cancelled due to an extremely long player strike, and was unquestionably one of the most destructive things that has ever happened to the sport. We’ll be able to re-write the history of those two dark years and have a FULL World Series era of our own! This combination of settings, players, and the competitive environment will enable us to take a look at who would rise above the rest, and in this world, there will be no “Well, look at the era he played in, of course he hit 50 homeruns!” debates. All accomplishments can be measured against all other accomplishments, and that is what I was looking to achieve. There was also one big wrong I was looking to re-write, and that was the lack of minority involvement in the sport until Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier. It isn’t a perfect solution, but I’ve turned on the International and Independent free agents, as well as international scouting discoveries, to add extra players to the environment. Some of these players will still “present” as white players, but I felt it was important to add a controlled amount of additional players to the environment to represent the millions of young men who would have never had the chance to play Major League Baseball simply because of their race. I’m currently starting the inaugural draft now, and I’ll be on to gameplay very soon! I am planning on playing every 6th game, as I plan on rotating through all five starters. For example, for the first turn through the rotation, I’ll play the 1st game (Opening Day) and then simulate the rest of that turn through the rotation. I’ll also simulate the #1 starter’s second start, to where my second played game will be the #2 starter’s second turn. It’s essentially play one, sim six, play one. This will keep me in-tune with how the team is playing, and also give me a look at all of my starting pitchers. With 114 seasons to be played, it is simply not feasible for me to play out every game, and I’ll save this for a different save. If you are a longtime OOTP Forums veteran, you’ll undoubtedly recognize me and this project. I believe this project is finally truly feasible and we’ll actually have a chance of completing it and providing an extremely interesting alternative MLB history. I hope you’ll be following along! I'll be playing as the Detroit Tigers for the duration of this dynasty, and I'll be attempting to achieve several personal goals. When I play games out, I've only ever done substitutions and pitching changes, so my impact on the game environment is limited to player changes at best. Definitely not a person that will throw the base-stealing numbers out of whack. Thank you for checking out *The Level Playing Field (2017-2130)!* Last edited by jaysdailydose; 11-23-2016 at 10:16 PM.

11-23-2016, 10:28 PM	#2
jaysdailydose Hall Of Famer Join Date: Nov 2012 Posts: 2,325	First Overall Pick - Cincinnati Reds select Pedro J. Martinez Third Overall Pick - Detroit Tigers select Sandy Koufax The draft will take some time, but I wanted to show the first overall pick and my first selection with the Tigers. It was a really hard selection as a 26-year-old Rogers Hornsby was sitting there as well... but I decided to build around a stud pitcher first and foremost. I hit the "Random Draft Order" one time and was given the third pick with the Tigers, but this means I don't have a second selection for over 55 picks!