Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Game On?

I decided, after some deliberation, to move into the 21st century in terms of the baseball gaming.  Seriously.  I've been playing APBA Baseball for Windows, which has been fun but was a Windows 95 game.  I've dragged it around from our old Windows 95 machine to my rootin'-tootin' dual-bootin' Dell running Windows 2000, to Virtual PC running on my ol' PowerMac.  That was where the problems started, and it's only gotten worse since getting my MacBook Pro.  I'm not interested in installing Parallels or Boot Camp or whatever it is-- I managed to avoid a whole bunch of tsuris at work because I didn't have even a virtual Microsoft machine on here when they got hit with a major cyberattack.  So to play the game I'd have to either play on the old machine (which was already problematic) or, the lazy option I usually would pick, would use a VNC connection to the old machine and play it that way.  But I...well, I don't digress but I'm clearly going on too long.  The game isn't abandonware, but neither has an upgrade or new version been made since 1997, despite sporadic hope. 

So I've decided to try Out of The Park Baseball (OOTP).  I've been messing around for a few weeks, playing an All-Time All-Star League that was available on the web.  So far so good, I'll post about that soon.  I'm not exactly sure that I'll have a 1:1 correspondence with the games/simulations I was doing with the old game, but so it goes...

Sunday, January 24, 2010

Northeast Corridor

Recent and upcoming action centers on the Acela route. I mentioned Baltimore in the last post. The Boston Red Sox play-in is finished, and the 1948, 1949, 1995, and 2003 teams join the 12 Red Sox pennant winners in the qualification league, which I'll start... well, I'm not sure. Sometime soon? I'm still debating which team to manage, I'm leaning toward one of the Babe Ruth-era teams.

Over in the NL, I'm also setting up the Mets QL. Once again, should start soon. I'm less certain which team to manage here-- maybe 1969? Or maybe 1999. Finally, the Phillies QL is underway. At a bit over the 1/3 mark (I'm playing them to 180 games), the 1980 Phils are holding a 3.5 game lead over the 1978 team, with 1901 and 1976 another couple of games further back. I'm not sure who I was expecting, exactly. The teams with the best winning percentage in modern Phillies history are 1976 and 1977, the latter team is in 15th place (out of 16). The current dynasty of 2007-2009 are in 12th, 13th, and 14th. In case you're curious, Gene Mauch won't have to worry about a late choke in this league-- the 1964 Phils are deep in last place.

Sunday, January 17, 2010

Back in yon saddle (or '69, dude!)

Multiple crashes later...

We're back! We have a new router, which should work better. Home network has been messed with and is working better (knock knock knock). So I restarted up some of the leagues that have been so rudely interrupted:

For the Boston Braves, the previous state of affairs left the 1897 team well in front after 100 games. I ran through a replacement league and ended up with the 1897, 1898, and in a suprise, the 1948 teams all within a game of each other atop the league. So I ran it again. This time, as the first time, the 1897 Beaneaters held a healthy league at the end of things. So we welcome back the 1897 Beaneaters. As is the case in the Cloverland Leagues, the Beaneaters scored a ton of runs (6.5/game), but they had a league-average pitching staff this time, no mean feat when competing with dead-ball era squads like the Miracle Braves of 1914.

I also restarted the Red Sox Play-in League. At this point, I'm thinking I'll take four teams to add to the 12 teams with byes (the 12 pennant winners for the Red Sox). About halfway through, those four teams look to be 1949, 2003, 1995, and 1948.

Finally, after wrestling with the Orioles for so long, and all the crashes, I decided to just going to let the computer managers play it out. So congratulations to the 1969 Orioles, winners of 109 games (though they might have traded some of those for an extra three wins against the Mets). Here, they handily defeated their next closest rivals (from 1971 and 1970). In fact, the top four teams were all from Baltimore's early 70s dynasty, as 1973 finished fourth.

The '69ers were second in the league in runs scored (half a run per game above average), and first in ERA (0.7 of a run better than average). Jim Palmer '71 had 27 wins, and Mike Cuellar '69 led in strikeouts. On the hitting side, Eddie Murray '83 led in batting, Boog Powell '69 and Frank Robinson '66 tied for the lead with 44 home runs, with Boog's 1964 version just behind with 43.

Next up? Continuing the Red Sox play-in, and I think I'll try the Phillies. I'm pretty clearly not going to get Season 4 started before the real season begins, but that's OK. It is, after all, supposed to be fun, not work. :)