Alt-1925: All-Star Break

 It's 13 July, (Alt-)1925. The All-Star Game will be tomorrow, hosted by the reigning champions at Yankee Stadium. If there were Yankees doubters among any sportwriters or (anachronistic) hosts of wireless stations, they would presumably be silenced by now--after a 13-10 April the Yanks have gone 53-14, which is a 128-win pace. They are 1st or 2nd in basically every important batting or pitching category save extra base hits (4th), baserunning (8th), and home runs allowed (4th).  They lead the Kansas City Packers, themselves on a 107-win pace, by 6.5 games. 

There aren't as many Yankees on the batting leaderboards as you'd expect from that last paragraph. Eddie Collins is flirting with .400 and leads the AL in batting. Harry Heilmann is in 3rd, more about him in a bit. New acquisition Babe Ruth is only hitting about .300 but has a commanding lead in HR, SLG and RBI, along with a less commanding lead in runs scored and OPS.  The pinstripes are all over the pitching leaderboards, though--four Yankees are in the top 7 in ERA, three are in the top 7 in WHIP, and Luque and Pennock are leading or near the top of many other categories. 

The reason that there aren't more Yankees on the leaderboards has been the spate of injuries that has hit the team. Dazzy Vance had a pedestrian 5-4 record but was leading the league in strikeouts and K/9 before tearing an elbow tendon at the start of June. He'll be out for the year. Heilmann went down with a sore shoulder on June 24th, he's got another 3 weeks before he can return. Cobb missed 6 weeks and has of late been playing through a minor strain. Traynor missed most of May with a hip strain. Peckinpaugh missed 3 weeks. Others have had short or mild injuries.  So, this is where the Yankees' depth really comes to the fore--Cy Williams and Oscar Charleston filled in for Cobb and now for Heilmann, with Williams mashing the ball and Charleston much closer to his old form than he was in 1924.  Newt Allen and Tony Lazzeri ably filled in for Peckinpaugh and Traynor when they were both hurt, and since Traynor has been near replacement level this year they easily cleared a low bar. Vance's spot in the rotation has been itself in rotation--I went to a 5-man rotation this year after reading how it started to become dominant in 1925, but beyond Luque/Pennock/Fitzsimmons I've tried a few different folks. At the moment it's Rogan and Ruether, but they as well as Faber and Rixey have ERAs north of 5. Mendez, our ostensible closer, is also blowing a lot of saves, but he's been vulturing the wins.  Since the Yankees have been scoring 7 runs per game, even ERAs of 5 will be OK much of the time.

Over in the NL, the Cardinals are on a 113-win pace and have an even bigger lead over their closest competitors (10.5 over the Orioles). They might be dominating the NL even more than the Yankees are dominating the AL, sitting in 1st place in practically every pitching/defense category while still sitting 1st or 2nd in most of the batting ones. The Cards, who look to be en route to their 4th pennant in 8 years (and second in a row), probably deserve a more in-depth post at some point looking at how they were constructed--other than Hornsby, Hoyt, and Combs, the rest of their major players were acquired by trade. Their minor-league system is ranked 14th of 20 (the Yankees are 1st), and the only name I recognize in their system is Lyn Lary (though Hoyt and Combs are both pretty young, and even Hornsby is only 29).

As far as the individual stats in the NL, Torriente's season is mirroring Ruth's: average around .300 but running away with the HR and RBI races. Al Simmons is above .400, and I don't think anyone has ever hit .400 in consecutive seasons. But it's Rogers Hornsby who leads the league in WAR and who's as good an MVP candidate as anyone in that league right now.

OK, time to post this thing!

Alt-1925 At The Quarter Pole

 

I'm about 40 games in, and after a 1-4 start the Yankees have gone 26-9 and find themselves tied for first place with the Kansas City Packers. This is the case even though the Yanks have been hit with the injury bug--Ty Cobb only played 7 games before getting knocked out for a month, Santop spent two weeks on the IL, and nagging injuries have hit several other team members. Cobb's absence in particular exposed an awkward situation where the only people who could play CF competently (Arlett, Rogan, Charleston) weren't hitting particularly well and the only person who was hitting and could play CF at all (Cy Williams) was terrible out there. I've settled into a scheme where Williams starts the games and gets replaced in the 6th inning or so by Charleston, unless I need Charleston at 1B to spell Bill Terry (who also isn't hitting).  Traynor also got hurt, he'll have accrued about a month on the IL by the time he's back.

The early losses were also exacerbated by the bullpen, who was having one of their terrible stretches. Some of that is on me--I didn't realize right away that the new version of OOTP reset the defaults to require relievers to warm up, so I had a few games where I brought in relievers who were cold without realizing it. Happily, (most of) the starters have pitched very well, in particular Pennock and Luque. Terry, Lazzeri and Allen (called back up when Traynor got hurt) have been adequate but not great. Collins and Peckinpaugh have been lights out. Santop has been on fire. Ruth leads the league in home runs and RBI, but still feels a bit disappointing. Heilmann has also been performing up to what you'd reasonably expect, but he'd been living up to unreasonable expectations before. 

In the NL, the Giants got off to a crazy hot start, but cooled off considerably and the Cardinals are now holding down first place. The Maple Leafs are scuffling around .500, but the Pelicans are in first place and hoping to get their first-ever pennant. Lots yet to play, of course. 

One more thing to note--the draft pool was announced, and a whole lot of Negro League players who are already in the league were duplicated there. I think it's because of the change so that these players are now recognized as MLB players, but before then they only had Minor League IDs. I removed all the duplicates for players who hadn't retired, but before deleting them I copied their ratings over to the existing player profiles with the rationale that these shouldn't have the discounted ratings that they'd had before. So, OTL Negro League players basically all got boosted at some level. For the Yankees, that especially helped Charleston and Rogan in particular. 

I'll close here. I'm getting the vibe of those seasons where the Yankees take a little time to hit the right gear and then run away in the second half of the season.  There have already been a lot of injuries, though, and the bench is absolutely thinner than it might appear. So we'll see how it goes!

An immediate follow-up post about the Cuban and Dominican Leagues in Alt-1915

 

In the last post I discussed various things related to how I think baseball around the world looks, or should look, in Alt-1915. Since I've been thinking about it, I also figure I should write down some specifics about the Cuban and Dominican Leagues. 

There are something like 5 countries with national leagues coming into 1925: Mexico, Nicaragua, Japan, the Philippines (if only in Manila), the Netherlands. The number of MLB or minor league players in the sim from those countries is, I think, zero. When the World Cup comes around the players for those countries can be drawn from the stars of those leagues, and if I decide to do an Asian Championship, I can take the Philippine and Japanese champions to represent their countries. As far as Caribbean Series, though, certainly have Cubans in both MLB and the minors. Cuba has teams in the developmental league, and the players are mostly not Cubans, and the plans I have for an affiliated Antilles League will similarly have teams in Cuba and the DR with mostly North American rosters because that's what the minor leagues are. But I would like to give the chance for Cubans to play on Cuban teams and Dominicans to play on DR teams without divorcing those cities from the affiliated MLB system.

So, I think the way to handle it is to have winter Cuban and DR leagues, which I think would have to be run as tournaments (at least the Cuban one) so that the Cuban MLB/MiLB players could stay on whatever teams they were on and just be loaned out. I think I can do that?  So, the Cuban League would have four teams--Havana, Almendares, Santa Clara, and Cienfuegos? And the Dominican League would be the Tigres del Licey, Estrellas Orientales, Leones del Escogido, and Águilas Cibaeñas?  And so then there could be a Caribbean Series with not just the winners of the Mexican and Nicaraguan Leagues, but also the winners of these Cuban and Dominican Leagues, though it might be that I'd have to create those teams by hand for a Caribbean Series?

Some Alt-1915 Worldbuilding Thoughts

While I'd been thinking I'd start the Alt-1925 season right after that blog post, I instead decided to get a laptop repair before starting the season. So it'll probably be another week before that gets underway. That gives me a chance to write a bit about the various worldbuilding things that I've been mulling in spare moments here and there. Unless I wanted to treat this as a strictly mathematical exercise in simulation, in which specific parameter choices were going to be critical, the worldbuilding would flesh out the storytelling.

There's been a positive feedback loop for me in the game for quite some time, where making new ballparks makes me want to actually use them in-game, which then (at least sometimes) drives a need for more ballparks. And then some of the rationales for using these parks drive their own logic as far as worldbuilding. For instance, deciding to use a few ballparks for Spring Training led to also setting up the Caribbean developmental league, which in turn led to my needing a few more parks so that I could have a reasonable number of teams in it. Realizing I'd made parks for many (but not all) of the biggest North American cities and U. S. states made me want to finish the sets, which then led me to have barnstorming tours, which then led me to consider a Far Eastern barnstorming tour, which then led to needing period-appropriate parks in Japan, Manila, etc. That in turn led to setting up the non-US independent leagues, etc. 

The other worldbuilding driver, as I've mentioned in other posts, is the integrated nature of baseball. So, something had to happen to change one of the most openly racist periods in modern American history into  one that's accepting of Black ballplayers as some of the biggest (inter)national stars.  At a minimum, that seems like it would require a more complete and successful Reconstruction Era, and presumably Lincoln surviving it. The game plowed right on through the 1917 and 1918 seasons with unchanged rosters and schedules (as I expected), which means that canonically the US involvement in World War 1 was very different, if it happened at all. So, if I'm willing to accept changes to two gigantic influences on 1920s America, what else is in bounds? Is anything out of bounds?

And of course, the answer is yes--there are things I'm grounding the worldbuilding in. I only want actual historically documented baseball players to end up in MLB, though I grudgingly accept that some players who are poorly documented will be among them. This is true even though a timeline where Black Americans were uncontroversially accepted as equals in the 1920s is one where Oscar Charleston and Bullet Rogen (or Ty Cobb and Babe Ruth for that matter) might have chosen to go into business or do something other than be baseball players. I've also decided (as I'm pretty sure I wrote in some 2020-era blogpost) that technology is basically what we had in our timeline, which means no continent-spanning leagues until the 40s at the earliest, and no night games until the 30s. Some other related things I really don't care about, or am not checking in any case--schedules that have a team in Kansas City one day and Boston the next, or Mobile one day and Santo Domingo the next for that matter, aren't things I'm sweating.

I'm trying to keep team names correct for the period, save for those in Cleveland, Boston, and some minor leagues that are considered racist. I'm trying to keep period uniforms as well, again with the same caveat. I'm trying to have the right cities in the right leagues, more or less, but also not sweating that (especially since I've decided to try to have teams in all 48 states plus whichever provinces and other countries). I've also decided that I'm going to keep the cities at their historical populations, and so keep the relative sizes and rankings of cities the same. Despite all of that slack I'm giving myself, I am trying to keep the ballparks pretty close to what really were present in those cities at those times, even though there's no particular reason to be a stickler for that. In this case, I think it comes down to a combination of my wanting/needing something to work from rather than having no constraints at all, plus wanting to post things to the forum that really are historical. 

Bringing it back to the worldbuilding, all of this seems to point in some very rough, broad directions. The US is less racist, and so perhaps it's also less interventionist?  I do want baseball to still be popular in Nicaragua, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, etc., and perhaps in a universe where the US is less interventionist but baseball is still popular in all of those places, it'd also be popular in Haiti? That's definitely a retrofit from wanting a Caribbean League team in Port-au-Prince, though. But the logic seems to hold. Would the US still have the Philippines as a colony? I'm saying no, so having the Philippines as an independent republic that's close allies to the US. But what about Hawaii? Or Puerto Rico? Or other territories that were US possessions c. 1925 in OTL?  Would the Spanish-American War have happened? I suppose at the moment I'm letting some of those wave functions stay uncollapsed, but I've certainly been thinking of all of the OTL possessions (other than the Philippines) as being under US control. Maybe Puerto Rico becomes a state when Alaska and Hawaii do? Or becomes independent?  I think Canada still exists, though in some scenarios the lack of a US Civil War would remove the proximate cause of its existence (and potentially remove the example for uniting the Australian colonies later on?). However, I think the logic of a single Dominion of Canada still carries the day.

In Asia, I suppose I'm imagining China as a stable republic, with Korea and Taiwan independent of them and Japan. Hong Kong is still British, though, and I suppose I'm imagining the British Empire as more or less intact (other than Africa which I'll hit on below). I suppose I'm also imagining some of the foreign concessions in China still existing, which gives spots for teams in a Chinese baseball league. Australia and New Zealand are as OTL, with Australia providing another baseball spot.  I don't see any real changes to Latin America or the Lesser Antilles, I suppose.

As far as Africa, in keeping with the spirit mentioned above I'm imagining less colonial influences and no real Scramble for Africa. So, rather than the continent split up among European colonies, I'm imagining trading posts with European sovereignty in limited areas.  Maybe something like the Antarctic Treaty, though obviously the existence of tens or hundreds of millions of human beings would make that a very limited basis of comparison. I think South Africa is going to be more or less as it was OTL, and I think having one UK-associated country (with no apartheid) would probably be a happier outcome for the indigenous population than having the Boer Republics still in place. With a more liberal/progressive Germany, which wasn't defeated in WWI, they would still presumably have trading posts in Kenya and Namibia among other areas. So I think, and admittedly this involves some working backward, Liberia would be more important here--it would have US influence, and a less-racist US would be more willing to work constructively with them. While in OTL baseball isn't a thing in Liberia, I think in TTL it would be. Or, at least, I'm deciding it is. :)

That finally brings us to Europe. I think the way to get where I want to be, again with the proviso that I may retcon all sorts of things, is to have a short war confined to Russia, Austria-Hungary, and (I guess) the Balkan countries, with an aftermath of a dissolution of the Russian and Austro-Hungarian Empires and soft landings for all the constituent countries. Maybe Germany, France, and the UK not only stay out of the war but also broker the post-war...situation. Ideally the Ottoman Empire also breaks up at this point, again with minimal European colonization, though that may be too much to reasonably expect. 

All of this only would matter at the margins in terms of random extra leagues that are running, plus things like World Cups. So, I'm going to try not to think about it any more than it's fun to think about. But I guess those nations that are playing some form of baseball worth noticing in this scenario, based on reality and how this worldbuilding is looking c. 1925 are:

Top level: USA, Cuba

Second level: Japan, Canada, Dominican Republic, Philippines?, Mexico?

Third level: Netherlands (and Netherlands Antilles), Korea, Taiwan, Nicaragua, Panama, Venezuela, UK?

Working on it: Haiti,  Colombia, Australia, China, South Africa, Ireland?, Belgium?, Finland?, other Central America, Bahamas?, West Indies?

Dabbling: Liberia, France, Peru, Brazil, Argentina, India?, Dutch East Indies? Morocco? Malaysia? French West Indies?

And so presumably the Baseball World Cup, when it happens, would have a 12-team field (the first soccer World Cup had 13) of something like: USA, Canada, Mexico, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Philippines, Netherlands, Venezuela? 

OK, this has been long, so I should just post it!

Alt-1925: Preview!

I'm just intending this to be a short post since I'm on the verge of Opening Day.  The big off-season news is that the Yankees, coming off of a 125-win regular season and easy World Series victory, worked a straight-up swap of young up-and-coming stud Goose Goslin for Babe Ruth. In-universe, there's probably some amount of dismay, but not as much as there should be. Goslin is a Hall-of-Famer, and had excellent production through to the mid/late 1930s. Babe Ruth outproduced him until 1933 and in the process had some of the most historic offensive seasons of all time. 1925 was an off year for him, which in combination with his being on the cusp of 30 years old probably made the Red Sox ready to move him. 

The algorithm picks us to have a 111-win regular season and win the pennant by 11 games over the Packers. It has the Cardinals winning 100 games and winning the NL by 12 games over Baltimore and the Giants. It predicts a .418 season for Cobb and 43 home runs for Ruth, but only 220-inning seasons for the Yankees' main pitchers. 

Even with Ruth's real-life off year in 1925, the Alt-Yankees have many of the WAR and other leaders from our universe: Heilmann, Rogan, Luque, and Winters all make the top 10 in WAR, though the game version I ended up with discounts Negro Leaguers, and Winters is actually cooling his heels in AA. Looking at the top-10 WAR for position players removes Winters and Rogan and adds the now-absent Goslin, but also adds Cobb.

So, I'm looking for a big year again and our 6th straight pennant. Hopefully we'll get back-to-back World Series championships for the first time while we're at it. Besides the Ruth pickup, we dropped Mogridge, who wasn't going to get many innings anyhow. 

OK, let's do this thing. 

A (Watsonian) New Year's Message from the Commissioner

Happy 1925!

I wanted to send this message out to all of our fans, more than 18.5 million of whom came to see a game this year, nearly two-thirds coming to an American League or National League game. We were proud to bring Organized Baseball to thirty-eight states and Washington DC, as well as three Canadian provinces. Through our developmental league, fans in Puerto Rico, Cuba, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic also were able to see high-level baseball, and though a post-season tour we were able to bring baseball to Japan, Korea, the Republics of China and the Philippines, and Taiwan. Below, I'd like to share our plans for sharing baseball with even larger audiences in coming years.

I want us to commemorate the coming sesquicentennial year in 1926 by reaching out and bringing baseball to every part of the United States.  Initial work has been done to establish several new affiliated leagues in parts of the continent that currently don't have Organized Baseball. It is my hope that in the 1926 season, every state in the Union will enjoy Organized Baseball, as well as most of the Canadian provinces, Mexico, Cuba, and Hispaniola, and as many of the American territories as possible. 

We have just finished our tenth season since the American, National, and Federal Leagues made peace and the the major leagues expanded to twenty teams. In that time, the population of the United States has increased by many millions, and the largest cities of Canada are similar in size as some of the largest ones in the USA. We're thus making plans to again add teams to the American and National Leagues, not to put an end to a baseball war but as a consequence of the benefits of baseball peace. We will be undertaking the process of identifying the right cities for expansion and preparing for four new teams to join Major League baseball in time for the 1928 season. 

Finally, we congratulate the independent baseball leagues in the Philippines and Japan on very successful seasons, and look forward to the upcoming seasons in those nations and in the leagues in the Netherlands, Nicaragua, and Mexico. In order to reinforce and encourage the international nature of baseball, we are beginning to explore a World Cup of Baseball. Because we are in the initial stages, we cannot yet say when this tournament would be held--it could be as early as the Fall of 1926, associated with the Olympic year of 1928, or in 1930. We will of course keep our fans around the world informed!

We wish a harmonious and peaceful 1925 for all, even football fans.

Yours,

-The Commissioner

Worlds Left to Conquer

 It is 22 November in alt-1924. Thanksgiving will be coming up this coming Thursday, when the first Macy's Thanksgiving Parade will be held in New York City. The players on the Barnstorming Tour will enjoy a day off, sailing from Hong Kong to Taipei. The Caribbean Developmental League will have nearly a full slate of games, though all the US-based teams will be in the USA on the holiday. 

Out of game, I've been mulling the next goals the Yankees would have, and also what goals I might have for the game. The Yankees are on top of the mountain--reigning World Series champions, winners of five straight pennants and record holders for most wins in a season as well as highest winning percentage in a season. As I've said in a few recent posts, the team seems pretty well set for the better part of the next decade. Is that challenge enough?

I think the answer is yes, actually. Even in the near-term, I think members of this Yankees team and the management would find some unfinished business.  The Yankees have never won even back-to-back World Series, let alone the three in a row that the Rustlers have done. Five pennants in a row was accomplished in real life by the Yankees of the 50s, but six in a row has never been done. 

I've also got some thoughts about setting up additional affiliated and non-affiliated leagues, which aren't in-game challenges but still things to actually do. Plus I'd like to commemorate the in-game sesquicentennial somehow, which I plan to talk about more in a later post. Plus, expansion to 12 teams per league (and two divisions per league) is coming up soon enough. It should be imminent by this time next (real) year...

Your Alt-1924 Champions

 

In the end, the Alt-1924 Yankees could not be denied. In the 1923 World Series they came in heavily favored but also heavily injured, and while their replacements did well, the Yankees missed Santop, Collins, and Charleston more than the stats might show (or maybe I'm being Watsonian here). This time, they came in with a fully-healthy roster, and handily defeated the Cardinals 4 games to 1.  

Harry Heilmann was the MVP, hitting .455 with an OPS of 1.069 -- not as high as Goose Goslin's, but in 21 rather than 16 at-bats. Hotter still was Joe Harris, who went 12 for 21 and slashed .571/.591/.619 in a losing cause. Sam Rice also had a big series for St. Louis.  As a team, the Cardinals had almost as high a batting average as the Yankees (three fewer hits in two more at-bats, and about the same number of walks), but the Yankees hit for more power (slugging at .438 vs. .356 for the Cardinals) and were able to turn those advantages into more runs (6 vs. 3.8 per game). While it wasn't necessarily a deciding factor, the Yankees defense also held, with the team giving up zero unearned runs vs. four for St. Louis. It felt like there were a few errors in big situations for the Cardinals, too.

As noted, Harris and Rice were on fire for the Cards, but few of their teammates pitched in. Cardinals pinch-hitters were 5 for 11 with a couple of walks and a couple of RBI, and helped St. Louis win Game 2. However, Hornsby hit .235, Wright hit .250, Witt hit .222, and Meusel hit .158, so Harris and Rice's efforts were rarely rewarded.  

The Yankees' lineup, on the other hand, performed well up and down. Traynor hit .375 with a home run and a triple, Collins hit .368 out of the leadoff spot, Santop rebounded from a terrible start to go 4 for 7 with two doubles and 5 RBI in the last two games, Cobb hit .333, Terry was hitting .385 when he was sidelined with an injury in Game 4, and Pipp went 3 for 5 as his replacement.  On the pitching end, Pennock pitched brilliantly to notch two wins, Vance pitched well to grab another one, and Fitzsimmons was in the right place at the right time to grab the Game 5 win. He and Luque threw the only real clunker for New York in Game 2.  For St. Louis, Padron pitched OK but was tagged with two losses. Hoyt pitched a little bit better and got St. Louis' one win. Coveleski was a disaster in his start, and Toney was also a disaster in his start. 

Are the Alt-1924 Yankees the best team in baseball history (in this timeline)?  I think it would be hard to argue otherwise. The Spiders managed to win 7 of 18 against the Yankees, more than any other team.  The Yankees swept the season series against Newark. Winning 125 games in a 162-game regular season feels like it won't be easy to repeat, though I didn't think that beating the 1923 team's 121 wins would be doable. This team has now won five consecutive AL pennants and six out of the last seven years, and done so with a very stable lineup--Charleston, Collins, Heilmann, Pipp, Santop, Cobb, and Peckinpaugh all played in the Series-clinching games in both 1920 and 1924, and Williams, Faber, and Pennock also played in both 1920 and 1924 for the Yankees. Several other players were on the World Series roster both years but only played one of them. 

As I've mentioned in other posts, what would be particularly terrifying for the fans (and owners?) of other AL teams is that the Yankees do not seem to be nearing the end of any sort of window of contention. Collins is aging, but his real-life 1925 and 1926 were just as good as his excellent real-life 1924, though his playing time decreased. The same could be said for Cobb, though he rebounded from only playing half of 1926 to going back to full-time duty in 1927. The same can also be said for Cy Williams. Heilmann can be expected to play at a high level through 1930. Terry has yet to hit his real stride, and should be productive until 1935. Traynor should be above-average until 19 32 or so. And for those who do start to drop off due to age or injury or whatever else, there are replacements ready--Cronin should only be a few years away from being our starting shortstop, Lazzeri is sitting at AAA, as are Pepper Martin and Lefty O'Doul. It may be that an expansion draft in 1928 will take some wind out of the Yankees' sails, but it's as likely as not just going to free up some logjams and let new blood come in.

On the pitching side, the story is much the same--Pennock, Rixey, Luque, and Faber probably have a few more years of effectiveness, Vance is probably good into the early 30s if he follows his historical path, Fitzsimmons is already in the rotation and is likely to be productive into the mid 30s (if not necessarily _every_ year in that span), and the Yankees notably have Lefty Grove stashed at AAA (along with Flint Rehm, who also had a decent MLB career if not one like Grove's).

As for how Alt-1924 will end, the Barnstorming Tour will be starting soon and will be heading to East Asia, with games in Hawaii, Japan, Korea, China, and Hong Kong before finishing in the Philippines. Relevant to the worldbuilding discussion I've had elsewhere, I'm imagining the Philippines as a US ally that got their independence following the Spanish-American War (or its equivalent) rather than becoming a US colony, and I'm also imagining Korea maintaining their independence. I guess I still imagine Hong Kong as British?  Anyhow, that will play out, and the Caribbean League will have its usual season. I'll probably upgrade to the new version of OOTP after that...