Alt-1915: A few more stadia and a few more thoughts

 

I've started on the Cloverland Series (Pittsburgh is up 2 games to 0), but I'm also at a point where I just finished one of the stadia for Alt-1915's Spring Training and thought I'd pause before jumping into the next one. Since my last stadium post, I've made five more: West Washington St. Park in Indianapolis, Pelican Stadium in New Orleans, Parkway Stadium in Louisville, Plant Park in Tampa, and Whittington Park in Hot Springs. The latter two figure to feature in Spring Training and I tried to set them up in their mid-1910s configuration when I could. The first three are more mixed--Indianapolis is definitely set up for mid-teens, while New Orleans is more mid-1920s and Louisville is a bit of a melange that's maybe more late 20s than anything else. 

I'm also not honestly sure when/if the first three will get used at this point. A mid-1920s expansion and a Peppers move could make one of them a viable landing spot, though if so I'd need to convince myself which one makes the most sense. By the next likely (to me) era for expansion/relocation, I think all would need to be revamped (and Indianapolis would already have moved to a new stadium, though one that somebody else has modeled already). 

Meanwhile, I'm thinking of plowing through three more Spring Training parks at this point--Barr's Field in Jacksonville, Katy Park in Waco, and Beach Park in Galveston. The first two have some decent documentation, but even well-documented parks still have proven to be more difficult than I might have anticipated...

As far as some of the things I was kicking around the last time I was posting about Alt-1915, I'm currently leaning against having the PCL come in as its own league, or at least not a full 8-team league. One of the questions I'm kicking around is how they'd handle territorial rules if they did go the third major league route--I'm imagining that the PCL as a major league wouldn't be allowed to expand into non-PCL regions, and in return the AL/NL wouldn't expand west of...the Rockies? So Denver and Texas are AL/NL regions, and cities that the PCL would be able to expand into would be Phoenix, Vancouver, and...I don't know. Riverside? Honolulu? Vegas? I suppose the PCL needn't get to be bigger than 10-12 teams. That might push the AL/NL expansion and/or the first wave of migration to the South, to Houston and Dallas and New Orleans (if not already taken) and Atlanta?  Again, though, lots of years of game time to get through before this is relevant...

The Cloverland Series About to Start!

 

I took a hiatus to enjoy the real baseball playoffs, and then was hit with various deadlines. Now that those are past (at least for now), I'm hoping to use the Thanksgiving break to play the Cloverland Series. I'm still poking at some Spring Training sites for Alt-1915, so I may or may not play that World Series--I suppose I probably should.

In any case, this is about the Cloverland Series, which pits the 2001 Seattle Mariners against the 1972 Pirates. Seattle took out the Twins in 6, with an insanely hot Edgar Martinez (.510 with 8 HR so far in the postseason) following up his ALDS MVP honors with an ALCS MVP, and Manny Sanguillen serving as the NLCS MVP after they defeated Atlanta in 7. 

The series starts in Pittsburgh, with Freddy Garcia slated to face Bob Moose (unless he's still not quite fully rested). 

Cloverland Leagues: Into the Playoffs!

After the huge set of core dumps about Alt-1915 and a lot of leisure time spent mulling whether a scenario where the PCL is promoted to MLB in the 40s (and eventually there's a fourth league split off so that each league doesn't get unwieldy), I figured I'd post about the original reason for this blog: The Cloverland Leagues.

I've documented here various frustrations with the stats that are getting generated (even though I blame nobody but myself), and am seeing this season as something of an experiment. I'll eventually do a recap of season stats for real (I suppose), but for now I'll reiterate that the offense was bananas.

I managed the Yankees, who faded badly. Again, a post-mortem will eventually come, but they would lose games they should have won, losing early and losing late, losing by blowouts and squeakers, by not hitting and by not pitching, the works. I think they finished in 3rd in the division, but they might have somehow stayed ahead of Boston. 

The AL division winners were the 2017 Blues, 2018 Astros, 2019 Twins, and 2001 Mariners. I'm not sure how fishy that is given how heavily weighted the team selection was to later teams, but I guess I will note that the oldest teams also tended to do poorly in the AL--I think the 1973 Orioles and 1982 Brewers finished in last. The NL division winners were decided pretty early and pretty emphatically--the 1972 Pirates, 2019 Dodgers, 1998 Firecrackers, and 1975 Reds. 

I've played through the first round of playoffs, and they were mostly drama-free: the Pirates and Firecrackers swept, the Twins won in 5 (or 4? I'd need to look it up), and the Mariners won in 6. Looking ahead, I think my final impression will definitely be shaped by who wins it all. If it's Seattle, I'd probably be satisfied that for all the frustrations and stat weirdness the end result made sense (and even matched the MLB Dream Bracket earlier in the year). I could believe that Atlanta, with multiple hall-of-famers and well over 100 wins, was the best team of the DH era. But the prospect of saying "the 2019 Minnesota Twins are the best team of the last 50 years or so" is nonsensical. 

Anyhow, on with the LCS!

How/Why/When Would Leagues Expand in an Alt-1915 Situation?

As noted a few times, the Alt-1915 league I'm running differs from reality by adding two teams to both the American (Kansas City and Newark) and National (Buffalo and Baltimore) Leagues. As a result of the backstory that gets us there, the court case that confirmed MLB's anti-trust exemption never happens. Also, instead of the Federal League ending pretty ignominiously, it can be seen as a partial victory since half of the teams survived. 

So, what does all this imply?  Obviously, details will depend on the records of various teams and I'm not making specific decisions yet, but... 

There are still the conditions in place for future challenges to MLB: There are still underserved parts of the country, and I think the reserve clause is still in place. On top of that, four fewer high-level minor league cities exist (so there will be fewer high-quality minor leagues?). Milwaukee will be by far the largest city, and the only one in the 16 largest US cities (by 1920 population) without an MLB team. However, there are a few other cities that seem like plausible sites for MLB teams based on 1920 population and 1930 population: Minneapolis was larger than Kansas City in 1920, and maintained that advantage through 1930. The same was true of New Orleans, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. Indianapolis and Seattle were smaller than Kansas City, but larger in 1930 than Kansas City had been in 1920.

Early expansion might be possible: Given that, and given the 10-15 year timeframe on which challenges to MLB had been happening, it seems like the mid-late 1920s would be when the next wave would occur. Maybe it would be another threatened league, maybe would-be team owners approach MLB and ask to buy in and replicate the Federal League results without going through the middle parts. Without an anti-trust exemption in place, maybe MLB is proactive rather than waiting for what they consider an inevitable challenge. The NL had been a 12-team league for most of the 1890s, so expansion to 12-team leagues might not be outlandish (though whether they'd split into divisions or not isn't clear to me). 

Where might they put teams? Milwaukee is the obvious spot. Minneapolis would be an obvious 2nd team. Would they expand just one league? Maybe. If two other teams were needed, where could they go? New Orleans seems tempting, but it also seems a bit far. The West Coast is definitely too far in the mid-20s. There are two other very large cities that I haven't mentioned so far, though--Montreal and Toronto. Both had 500,000+ inhabitants in 1920, which would make them the largest cities in North America without MLB. They grew even larger by 1930 (though LA would grow even faster and pass them). The International League existed in real life from 1915 or so onward, and had teams in both cities, giving the existence proof that the border wouldn't cause problems. They weren't terribly far from existing teams, but far enough to be distinct cities. They were on existing transportation networks. Given all this, a mid/late-20s expansion to Milwaukee/Minneapolis/Toronto/Montreal seems reasonable. 

Only one early relocation seems likely: I mentioned Harry Sinclair's future legal problems elsewhere. These would probably slightly predate (or maybe come at the same time?) as the possible early expansion. If Newark was coming off of a decade of terrible teams with poor attendance and was hemorrhaging money, a new owner might be eager to move out of Newark. Again, Milwaukee would be the obvious place to go, but given what I was just saying I might be talking myself into Toronto as the place to move. In any case, if there was a move, it'd require coming up with one more expansion site. And if Newark is doing really well, I don't see why they'd move. I don't see other moves as terribly likely before 1940, for the reasons I gave in previous posts--it took that long for the effects of radio to make clear that some cities could only really support one team and I don't see any obvious reasons for teams to bail out of their home cities before then.  

Timing of general relocations could be a bit earlier than in real life, but probably not that much: As I noted, I don't see teams moving before 1940. I have no idea how the game will deal with the Depression or WWII, but if they have an effect I'll try to adapt as the real teams did. And, again, if 1940 or 1950 or 1960 (assuming I get that far) finds both the Browns and Cardinals (for instance) in great shape, I don't see why they couldn't both stay in St. Louis.  Once the relocations do seem like they'd happen, though, I think they could go anywhere in North America that makes sense--the Browns' would-be move in 1942 shows that LA would have been doable then. People argue that it wouldn't make sense for just one team to move, but the Browns attempted move suggests otherwise. Still, even without any late 20's expansion or a move by the Peppers, there's not too many other places for teams to go other than the West Coast and there will almost certainly be 3-7 teams looking to move. The details might also differ, as I've probably beaten into the ground by now--the Dodgers and Giants shared New York for 60-70 years, and there was nothing inevitable about the most intense part of their rivalry occurring just as they were looking to move. So, maybe one moves but not the other, just like things were heading if Robert Moses gave the Dodgers a domed stadium in Brooklyn. Maybe it's the Cubs and the Cardinals that move together. Heck, maybe the Peppers and Athletics will have some intense multi-decade rivalry and also be the ones who have to move out of their cities. 

I have no idea how a second wave of expansion/relocations will go, but that's part of the fun:  So, I guess I'm outlining a scenario that gives MLB 24 teams by 1930, which is about 40 years before they had that many in real life. Alt-1915 will likely have teams in Buffalo and Toronto at its 24-team stage, which real-life MLB24 didn't, but MLB24 had teams in San Diego, Atlanta, and (eventually) Dallas, which I don't see Alt-1915 having in 1930 or even 1950. It's possible that early expansion will indicate a mindset that will lead to a much larger MLB than we have now--40 teams by 2000? Maybe the weakened minors in the East (especially if an early expansion takes up even more of the main cities of the real-life International League and American Association) would lead to a push for the Pacific Coast League to be a major league? When we think that a city is too small to host a major league team, that's based on a particular history and economic model that may not have been inevitable had different choices been made earlier. It's not terribly hard for me to imagine MLB teams in most of the places with NFL/NBA/NHL* teams that lack MLB: Memphis, Jacksonville, Nashville, Charlotte, Vancouver, Sacramento, New Orleans, Vegas, Columbus, Portland... Heck, Salt Lake City has had an NBA team for over 40 years. 

OK, I think it's time to close this post. In the last day or two I've been thinking about that second wave a bit more. Maybe I'll post more thoughts soon, even though it will likely be a few real-time years before they matter!

*The NHL also has a bunch of cities that clearly won't work, I think? Like, all the ones where it's going to be frigid at the start of the season. Maybe you could put domes in Calgary or Edmonton or something in the 70s, but I don't know if they win out? 

Why (in broad, speculative terms) have MLB teams relocated?

This will follow up the previous post that was looking at MLB team relocations/expansions. I'm ostensibly doing it for my OOTP solo league, but apparently I'm on a roll. There will probably be a third in this series, looking at the specifics of how that league will evolve given what I've been thinking in these posts... All of this is basically unreferenced at this point, some of it is speculative, and some of it is based on memory. I make no claim to be a historian, and I'm not looking for peer review. :)

Why did the Athletics, the Braves, the Dodgers, the Giants, et al. relocate? And why was there a big rush of relocations in the 50's/60's after a half-century of nothing?  Here, I think it's a function of the technology available and the nature of fandom at a given time, plus I suppose an evolving relationship between teams and their homes.

In 1950, five cities had multiple MLB teams. In 1960 only Chicago did. In 1950, four of the 13 largest U.S. cities were without an MLB team. In 1960 all 13 had a team. None of the moves in the 1950s left a city empty of MLB baseball. Several of the moves in the 1960s and after left cities empty--Milwaukee was empty 1965-1969, Washington was empty from 1973-2004 (if I remember right), and Seattle was empty 1970-1976.  Montreal's been empty since 2005. Several other city-emptying moves have been contemplated but not quite completed, including Minnesota and Tampa Bay to various spots. 

I think that first wave of moves had something of a different character than subsequent ones, presumably because it became impossible (or seen as impossible anyhow) for any but the very largest U.S. cities to host more than one team. I think that the Dodgers/Giants move was a harbinger of (many/most of) the more recent moves--teams moving not because they couldn't survive elsewhere but because they weren't making as much money as they'd like. But maybe more on that later?

There were a pair of relocations in the early American League, but those seem to fit the earlier discussion of "underserved places/underpaid players" more than modern-day relocations--the Milwaukee franchise moved to St. Louis and the Baltimore franchise moved to New York in order to put additional pressure on the National League. There was a Federal League relocation (Indianapolis to Newark) that had similar motivation. The first relocation discussion that I can find that is more of a modern one was the aborted move of the St. Louis Browns to Los Angeles for the 1942 season. So, by 1940 or so it became clear to at least some observers that relocation (even to the West Coast!) was an option.  

I think that the rise of radio and how it affected fandom led to the end of (most) multi-team cities, and TV hastened it. In 1920, teams could (and did) share ballparks. The only ways to be informed of baseball results in real time was to either be at a game in person or maybe go to one of the setups where people were connected by telegraph and updated an early version of Gameday. So, the Browns could let the Cardinals use Sportsman's Park because they weren't going to make any money from it that day, anyhow. And with average attendance at or below 10,000 (or even 5,000) per game, there was plenty of room for different teams in the cities (as long as they were cooperating on schedules and the like). 

Through the 1920s and 1930s, radio came in and provided additional revenue streams. Now, baseball fans in St. Louis had the choice of going to the park and watching the Browns or staying home and listening to the Cardinals (or vice versa). And folks out in rural Missouri (and as far as the signals would carry) could choose between listening to the Browns or the Cardinals on the radio (assuming the Browns games got broadcast at all). Given that the Cardinals were riding a string of pennants with Hall of Fame players and the Browns weren't, it isn't hard to imagine that the extra ad revenue from radio broadcasts helped the Cards cement their position as top dog in St. Louis by letting them invest in minor league teams and better players. I'm speculating here, but it seems to make sense. As far as other cities, I think the balance of power between teams was less obvious--the Athletics were much better than the Phillies in the very early 30s, but both were terrible and drawing terribly until just after WWII. I have read elsewhere that it was effectively luck of the draw that kept the Phillies in Philadelphia--both teams got attendance boosts for the first couple of postwar years, then the Phillies got good and the A's got worse and the attendance for the latter cratered. Boston seems to have become a Red Sox town starting in the mid-30s, and the Braves never outdrew them again even when winning the pennant in 1948. 

Once the bonds were broken between the teams that moved and their original homes, I think there was pretty clearly a period of much greater flux for them. Of the teams had not moved as of 1960, only the Washington Senators would ever move in the future (and they arguably found themselves put into a 2-team city given the proximity of Baltimore and DC, and they were immediately replaced via expansion).  So, while there were occasional attempts to woo Cleveland, Pittsburgh, the White Sox, or others, they clearly all found themselves insufficiently motivated to move either because they owned their cities, didn't have better alternatives, were afraid of lawsuits, or were content with their markets. 

A Unified, Broad, Vague Theory of Baseball Team Relocations/Expansions (at least for the purposes of Alt-1915)

 

This post is really intended for an audience of one: me. If you read it and think it interesting, great. But it's mostly so that I can get some thoughts down for the Alt-1915 OOTP league I'm running.  I'm trying to keep it realistic within the parameters I've set for it, and at least broadly historical. So, two of the overall questions to tackle is why the American and National Leagues expanded when they did and relocated teams when the did, and how would those events be altered in the setup I have?

I'm no historian, but I'm reasonably informed on baseball history. I think the two main interrelated issues were that there were an abundance of unserved/underserved places where money could be made playing baseball at a major league level, and that players were chronically underpaid. As a result, every 10 or so years, someone who realized the first part would try to take advantage of the second one--the National League was founded in 1876, but then the American Association in 1882, then the Player's League in 1890, then the American League in 1900, and the Federal League in 1913... Then, of course, there was the Great Depression and World War II, but almost immediately after that the Mexican League began poaching players in the mid/late '40s, and there was the threatened formation of the Continental League in 1960, which led to the first MLB expansion. By 1970 expansion and relocations were starting to take pressure off of the abundance of unserved places problem*, and the end of the reserve clause and institution of free agency later that decade got rid of the chronic underpayment of players (at least to the point that it didn't make sense to challenge MLB by starting a new league staffed with frustrated players). 

It also is striking to me that so much of the expansion were driven from outside MLB, at least until the expansions of the '90s. The Continental League forced the NL to expand to put a team in New York after the Dodgers and Giants departed (and to a lesser extent, to put a team in Houston) in defense. In order for the NL to put a team in New York, they had to agree to let the AL put a team in LA. The Athletics move to Oakland put Kansas City in a litigious mood, which led to a round of AL expansion the very next year to replace them with the Royals. Because they had to expand quickly, they had to put the Royals' expansion sibling, the Pilots, into Seattle before they were ready. Because the Braves moved to Atlanta, Bud Selig was heartbroken and determined to replace them. So he bought the Pilots and moved them to Milwaukee, a move that was possible because Seattle wasn't ready. But that led Seattle to sue MLB and that directly led to the 1977 expansion and the Mariners. And so on.

This got super-long, I'm going to cut here. I'd intended for this to be a series of posts, anyhow. I've cut and pasted a bunch of text into a follow-up post, read it here if you're interested..

*Added, 19 September: Upon reflection, I think that ~15-year cycle remained for at least a bit longer--once all the lawsuits etc. ended with the Mariners' expansion in 1977, the next (and voluntary) expansion was in 1993: 16 years later.  

Quick Check-In

 

The Cloverland League is skittering to its finish. I realized that I could check the "predicted standings" which indeed suggested that the runs scored were going to be through the roof and some of the other completely bananas aspects of things. The '98 Yankees have been steadily sinking, and Cleveland has won that division. I've been letting games autoplay once I realized things were set poorly.  I'll see this through, then re-assess.

Alt-1915 has been on hold, though for a reasonably positive reason--I've been making ballparks. With the pandemic going on and everything, I downloaded Sketchup about a month ago and have been messing around with it. Since I'd like the teams to play in these parks in Alt-1916, I've been holding off on the culmination of the 1915 season: the World Series to be played between the Chicago White Sox and the defending champion Boston Rustlers. 

I made ballparks for the four teams I mentioned in the last post, though not necessarily the ballparks that I mentioned. This was driven in part by the documentation that was available, and in part by the timing of things. I made Terrapin Park (aka Oriole Park (V)) first, since there was plenty of material on it and I knew the team would stay there for a while. I just finished Gordon and Koppel Field, which didn't have much documentation but had enough that I felt like I could get close. In real life, Buffalo played at a field for which I had basically no information so I modeled Olympic Park (II) instead, under the rationale that if they became a National League team they'd be able to kick the minor league team out of Olympic Park, which was the best field in town (and what will become Offermann Stadium in the early 20's). Finally, I kept waffling on Newark's ballpark--the real team played in Harrison Park because they couldn't get Wiedenmayer's Park. When the Peppers folded, the minor league team moved to Harrison Park for a year or two, but moved back to Wiedenmayer's Park after that, and the claim was that Newark fans didn't want to go to Harrison to see a game. In the end, that was how I rationalized putting the Peppers in Wiedenmayer's Park but again the available documentation about the park was what swung it.   These ballparks should hold these teams for a few years, though I expect all but Baltimore to move/upgrade in the early 20's: Buffalo and Newark's parks will upgrade in place, and Kansas City will move to Muehlebach Park. 

Alt-1915: The "expansion teams"

 

I wanted to write a little bit, if only for myself, about each of the four teams added from the Federal League, which is the point of departure from the real baseball in our timeline. Well, that plus the fact that it's all simulated, and the computer is handling transactions as it sees fit save for the team I'm running...I mean, the whole thing would be different anyhow, but this is a big catalyst.  There are four teams: the Baltimore Terrapins, Buffalo Blues, Kansas City Packers, and Newark Peppers.

I noted that I'm intending to write a post or two that generalizes about the factors that caused MLB to expand and teams to relocate. I'll include just a touch of my thoughts below, but only where relevant to the teams I'm discussing.

Baltimore: The Terrapins are clearly on the best footing of the expansion teams. They're owned by Ned Hanlon, a respected baseball man with Baltimore roots, who took things seriously enough that he sued MLB for antitrust violations, which ended up going all the way to the Supreme Court. The Terrapins have a perfectly good, new (if wooden) ballpark (Terrapin Park aka Oriole Park (V)), which was used all the way into the 1940s when it was destroyed by fire. Baltimore has a tradition of being a baseball town, and some of the greatest teams of all time (at least as of 1915) were the Baltimore Orioles of the 1890s, managed by Ned Hanlon (as it turns out), and well within living memory of many of Baltimore's adults. Baltimore itself was without a team since 1902 when the American League franchise folded and re-emerged in New York as the Yankees.  Since the all-time great time was in the National League and since the AL has a team in Washington, I figured Baltimore made more sense as an NL addition. The team itself has also been playing pretty well, all told. The Federal League teams had to make do with their existing rosters, whatever free agents they could pick up, and whatever trades they could swing. They're middle of the pack in most team categories (but 2nd in home runs!). They have a 20-game winner in Jack Quinn, and picked up Chief Bender who is probably their ace. Guy Tuteiler is leading the NL in slugging percentage thanks no doubt to his 33 triples (!!), and Miller Huggins has an impressive 105 BB as a batter, also leading the league. Though not contending, the Terrapins have been just a bit below .500 most of the year, and they're currently 76-83 with 3 games to go, 21 games out of 1st place but 13 games ahead of the next team behind them, who are...

Buffalo: The Blues had a decent record in the Federal League in 1914 and real-life 1915. Here, they're in 8th place, and will finish there either alone or in a tie with the Cubs. The Blues, as I understand it, sold shares to the public, so I'm not 100% sure who their owner is. This will, I think, make relocating this team unlikely in the long run (assuming I get far enough that relocations become relevant)--while Buffalo may seem like an unlikely spot for an expansion team or relocation destination nowadays, in this universe it'll be like the Pirates or Reds, and Buffalo is in a completely reasonable geographic position to retain a team. They're 8th in the league in attendance (ahead of the Terrapins and Cardinals), but very close to Cincinnati in 7th place and not so far behind Brooklyn and the Cubs ahead of the Reds. The Blues' current park (the International Fair Association Grounds) is a bit of a problem for me, there's not a lot of information about it.  Offermann Stadium would be built in 1924 out of concrete, I'm imagining in this timeline that will be moved up a bit. I put Buffalo in the NL mostly because that's what was left after thinking through the other teams. One could rationalize it by saying the NL didn't want the Great Lakes to just be an AL region (with Buffalo adding to Detroit and Cleveland), but really it's because it's what was left. Buffalo are a legit terrible team on offense, ranking last in the league in basically everything except home runs (they're 8th). Dave Davenport leads the team in WAR with 3.1, and has a 13-19 record to go with it. 

Kansas City: The Packers had kind of a funny history in a few ways that I think are relevant here. They were slated to be purchased and moved to Newark (see below), but people intervened (I'd need to look to remind myself whether it was the city or team management) and kept the team in town. That combined with the way that their politicians reacted when the Athletics moved to Oakland makes me feel like this team will never move. The Packers' home park is Gordon and Koppel Field, but Muehlebach Field was built in 1923 for the minor league team and like Offerman Stadium I'm thinking it'll get built a bit sooner here. The Packers are currently in 7th, but could plausibly finish in 6th depending on how the last weekend of games goes. Like Buffalo, they're terrible at offense, and are in 10th place in most categories (but 4th in home runs!). Their pitching has been decent, however. Elmer Rieger has been their best pitcher, though before the trade deadline I would have written George McConnell--McConnell had accrued a 10-4 record with a 1.70 ERA with the Packers before the Athletics acquired him for a couple of young players. Kansas City hasn't drawn a ton of fans, but that may be a function of where I have their market size set. I could bump it up.  For what it's worth, KC is in the AL because there's no history of an NL team in Kansas City and I just think of it as an AL town.

Newark: The worst team in the majors and one of the ones with the most question marks and potential influence on how this baseball world would evolve. When our story/league began, the Indianapolis team had just been purchased by Harry Ford Sinclair and moved to Newark. Perhaps I should have started while this team was still in Indianapolis, but I can rationalize that it was this move that forced the issue and led the leagues to make peace. In any case, the NYC area now has not three but four teams, though Newark is admittedly a bit further afield than Brooklyn from Manhattan. Naturally, rather than adding a 3rd NL team to the area, this meant that Newark had to be an AL team. 

What I've run across about Sinclair suggests that he enjoyed being a team owner, and either he didn't lose money on the team in the Federal League or didn't care that he was losing money.  I can't imagine he'd lose more money now that the Peppers were in the American League. In real life, Sinclair got embroiled in the Teapot Dome scandal in 1922, and after several years of legal trouble he ended up in jail in 1929. I have no reason to change any of this history, at least in the grand scheme. So, some time in the mid-1920s there's going to be a change of ownership because I can't imagine MLB being willing to have an owner in legal trouble like that in the 1920s. So, there will be an obvious decision point about what to do with the Peppers.  If it were the mid-50s (or plausibly even the mid-30s) rather than the mid-20s, it'd probably be obvious that they'd bail out of Newark and head to Milwaukee (or LA or whatever). But for reasons that I plan to write a whole post about (probably the next one about the Alt-1915 league), I don't think that a team would necessarily relocate in the 1920s. But it's way too premature to speculate in any case--for all I know the Peppers are about to establish some amazing dynasty and eventually drive the Yankees out of New York rather than vice versa. A plausible future for the Peppers does include one where they end up at the Meadowlands or some stadium built where Newark Airport is or something. 

As noted, the Peppers have the worst record in MLB, though they're only one game worse than the Cardinals. They have one real-life Hall-of-Famer on the team, Edd Roush, who's leading the team in batting average, slugging, and OPS. The pitching staff is "anchored" by Lefty Gervais, who is 10-24 with an ERA+ of 87 but still somehow has 3.7 WAR. In real life he had a total of 15.2 major league innings pitched in his career. He has 303.2 IP so far in Alt-1915. 

The Alt-1915 Project

So, in addition to the OOTP league with all-time great teams of the DH era, which I'm playing out a day at a time and have been blogging about in some detail, I also started another OOTP league at some point in the last couple of months (I don't remember when and don't know if it's easily retrievable). This league has a starting point in 1915 and I'm planning to play it out for a while (at least I'm planning that right now). I originally conceived it as a bit of a science experiment to test whether the Federal League should be considered a major league, but I quickly pivoted to the league structure I'm using, which can't really answer that question but will I think be more interactive and fun. I do hope to answer the original question at some other point, using a different setup (but still with OOTP).  For lack of a better, catchier name, I'm calling the league I'm running "Alternate 1915".

What Actually Happened: The Federal League, as you may know, was a challenger to the American and National Leagues that was founded in 1913, started raiding the major leagues for players in 1914, held two seasons, and folded at the end of 1915. There are lots of stories and books about the Federal League, suffice to say that they convinced some number of major leaguers to jump to their league, but not really big stars. The Federal League had a huge influence on baseball history, but ultimately they ran out of money faster than the established leagues and when peace was made after the 1915 season, it was without any of the Federal League teams surviving (though two Federal League owners ended up buying the Browns and Cubs as part of the aftermath). 

Premise: In real life, the Federal League sued the American/National Leagues, and the judge in charge of the case slow-walked things. In the end, that judge became baseball commissioner a few years later. Whether there were shenanigans involved or not, the premise here is that a different judge is in charge of the proceedings and conveys to everyone that it'd really be best if they worked it all out themselves because otherwise who knows what would happen. So, peace is hammered out shortly before the 1915 season begins, with the four Federal League teams in otherwise-unoccupied cities (Baltimore, Buffalo, Newark, and Kansas City) getting absorbed into the National League (the first two) and American League (the second two), and the four Federal League teams in cities with American and/or National League teams (Brooklyn, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, and Chicago) being dissolved with their players becoming free agents*. 

Peace came too late for Connie Mack, who had already begun dismantling the Philadelphia Athletics dynasty that had dominated the AL for several years. 

What I'm doing: I started a game with the 1915 teams and historical minor leagues, which for OOTP includes the Federal League. I promoted the four Federal League teams that I mentioned, then disbanded the Federal League and made their players free agents. I'm allowing the computer-run teams to do transactions as they see fit. Also, things will be integrated from the start. It's a better world than ours was. It's a 162-game schedule, with each team playing each other one 18 times. 

I'm a Yankees fan, so I'm managing the Yankees. I'm totally taking advantage of knowing the future, though I don't think the future necessarily must play out in the game the way it does in real life. Babe Ruth will clearly be an amazing hitter, but I don't know that the Yankees will get a chance to put him in pinstripes. I spotted Home Run Baker on the free agents list and (accidentally) made him the highest-paid player in the game. I also worked a low-level trade that netted Dazzy Vance. Both of them really were Yankees in 1916, so getting them a bit early doesn't tweak things too much. However, I also got Eddie Plank and Harry Heilmann as free agents. Plank is nearing the end of his career, while Heilmann was a well-regarded prospect.  Neither future Hall-of-Famer was ever a Yankee in reality. 

Current Situation: The real Yankees were pretty mediocre in 1915, finishing in 5th place at 69-83 and 32.5 games behind the pennant-winning Red Sox. Their Pythagorean record was 77-77, so they either got unlucky or had some other structural thing going on. Boston won the league with a .669 winning percentage. Here in Alternate 1915, the Yankees are 80-55 in late August, 12 games behind Boston and in 3rd place.  Boston has a fight on its hands, though, as they've been trading the lead back and forth with the Chicago White Sox. At the moment Chicago is 1 game back.  The Boston Rustlers have a comfortable lead in the National League, with the Giants 7.5 games back in 2nd place and the Phillies (who won in real life) mired in 5th 12 games back. 

The new teams have been bad, but not embarrassingly so. Newark is the worst and deep in 10th place, but certainly isn't historically bad. Kansas City is in 7th place, and is clearly better than the teams below it. Baltimore and Buffalo are in 7th and 8th in the NL, but are clearly of different caliber--Baltimore has been flirting with .500, while Buffalo is close enough to last place that it may end up there. 

The new Yankees have been a bit of a mixed bag. Heilmann has been great, and Plank has been the ace of the staff. Baker, however, has spent a lot of time on the Injured List and is not playing up to his usual standards. Vance has stayed on the reserve roster, though I plan to bring him up when rosters expand in a few days.  

Future: At this point, I'm imagining this as a long-term project. The real-life Yankees didn't win a pennant until 1921 and didn't win a World Series until 1923. I'm hoping to be able to get ahead of that schedule, but I'm not sure how realistic that is--while I took advantage of Connie Mack's fire sale I don't have any particular reason to think that the sweetheart relationship the Red Sox and Yankees had in the late teens (of which Ruth switching teams was just a piece) will actually be present in the game, nor will the Black Sox scandal. Nor am I guaranteed to get Lou Gehrig, say. So I need to keep an eye out for opportunities when I see them. Since I'm still a newb with OOTP we'll see how that goes. 

I've also put a bunch of semi-quantitative thought into how the majors might or might not expand or have teams relocate in this universe. That's fodder for another post or two, but having Baltimore and Kansas City already full in 1915 plus having not three but four teams in the NYC area seems like it'll certainly affect the first wave of relocations. I'm also debating if/how the not-awful conclusion of things from the standpoint of the Federal League could lead to further expansion much sooner than historically. 

*In reality, it doesn't necessarily make sense that the players became free agents, but it was an easy way to handle things at the start. 

Cloverland Leagues: July 5th Update

OK, since most everything is just the same but a few weeks later, I'm going to keep this relatively short. The All-Star Game itself was actually a really good game, with a 3-0 AL lead turning into a 5-3 NL lead over the course of innings 4-5, and an improbable 9th inning comeback starting with two outs when Bret Boone singled, Jose Canseco was hit by a pitch (with 2 strikes), and Xander Bogaerts hit a 3-run walkoff home run to seal it for the AL.

Otherwise, as noted, things are kind of status quo in the big picture sense: the Red Sox and Blues continue to battle for first place in the AL Northeast with the Yankees hanging a bit behind; the Twins, Tigers, and White Sox continue to battle in the AL Central while all remaining firmly below .500; Texas has the best record in the AL and has a stranglehold on the AL Southeast; Seattle has the advantage in the AL West, with the A's and Royals close behind. The NL races, save for the Central battle between the Reds and Cardinals, appear basically over, as they have for weeks. 

I will add few general statements, which again I have made before, but feel compelled to reiterate. I clearly need to change the run environment. I don't know if that's the only problem, but it can't help. I'll also need to see whether things are weighted too heavily toward...well, whatever Atlanta does well. It is bananas to have a team playing at a 115-win pace (over 162 games) when 14 of its 15 opponents are among the best teams of all time and the 15th is at least a .500-level team. 

By that same token, the Knights have been an interesting control. They are the worst team in the NL, for sure, but not by much. Also, they are doing just a bit better than the 1982 Milwaukee Brewers over in the AL. There are all sorts of ramifications for what that implies about luck in this game. It also is interesting to see that while there are no teams in the AL doing nearly as well as in the NL (The Rangers would be in 4th in the NL) the Brewers are clearly getting it from all sides--they are just playing so, so much worse than the next-worst AL team.

To close for now, I'll note that I've also started a different OOTP project.  I'll write about it here soon enough I'm sure, but for now I'll note that it's a replay starting in 1915 with a bit of a change in history with respect to the Federal League.

At The All-Star Break

There've been 9 games played since the last update, with a tiny amount of shuffling (Texas has put a bit more distance between themselves and the pack, Oakland has caught KC, the Reds have taken firmer control of the NL Central) but the story is more or less the same. Toronto had a good stretch (7-2) to get them a bit less deep in last place, Atlanta is on an 11-game winning streak.

69 games have been played by most of the teams, so we're a bit shy of half-way through. I don't have any additional insights that I've developed over the past week and a half, though I have begun another OOTP project that maybe will help me figure out the ins and outs of the game. I expect I'll devote some posts to it as it gets further underway.

But for the moment, I'll just mention that the Cloverland Leagues All-Star Game is tomorrow at Candlestick. The Home Run Derby was today (congratulations to Nelson Cruz!) and is something of a mini-game that was amusing enough to play.

The starting team for the National League are: Manny Sanguillen (C), Matt Adams (1B), Joe Morgan (2B), Chipper Jones (3B), Troy Tulowitzki (SS), Luis Gonzalez (LF), Al Oliver (CF), and Cody Bellinger (RF). Florida's Kevin Brown will get the start.

For the AL the starters are: Jorge Posada (C), Mike Young (1B), Lou Whitaker (2B), Alex Bregman (3B), Robin Yount (SS), Kirk Gibson (LF), Dave Henderson (CF), Ichiro Suzuki (RF), and Edgar Martinez (DH). The starting pitcher will be Gerrit Cole. 

Cloverland Leagues: 4 June Update

Well. The world around seems to be getting increasingly unpredictable with each update, and it seems very self-indulgent to keep posting these. But these simulated players keep plugging away, so I might as well keep posting.

We are now 60 games in, a good 40% of the way through the season. Before running down the results of the last fortnight or so, a few scattered notes as bullet points:

• I renamed the Atlanta team to be the Firecrackers. This is in the spirit of naming the Cleveland team the Blues, I just hadn't thought it through as well as I might have at the start. The AAA team in Atlanta was called the Crackers, but for obvious reasons I figured I'd go even further back to a less-iffy name.
• I also instituted a pitch count after seeing Chris Sale have one too many 130-pitch games. It's pretty coarse--120 pitches for teams from this decade, 130 for teams from the decade before, and 140 or no limit for teams before that. We'll see how it works.
• I also noted, but didn't do anything about, those players who are used differently from historically. The APBA game I had had a batters faced limit, which served to keep pitchers from getting used way, way more than they really were. I haven't found such a thing in OOTP, which probably means I'm not looking hard enough? But since this isn't really a historical league by their accounting, I don't think I can use historical lineups or transactions. So I'm just suspending that particular disbelief. 

OK, to the standings. In a sentence, the AL has remained...not stable, but consistent with what was going on before, and in the NL the leaders have just increased their leads with one very, very notable exception.

The Red Sox remain tied atop the AL Northeast, though now it's with the Blues. The Yankees have dropped two games off the pace after going 5-7 during a stretch when they frankly should have been cleaning up. Lots of time left, but definitely a missed opportunity. Boston went 7-5 and Cleveland went 8-4.  In the AL Central, the Tigers rode a 8-4 record over the stretch to take over first place. Chicago had a decent 7-5 stretch, Minnesota a bad 5-7. The 2011 Texas Rangers are currently the best team in all-time AL history, just was we all suspected. They had a torrid 9-3 stretch, as good as any team, and extended their AL Southeast lead over Tampa Bay and Houston to 5 and 6 games, respectively. Texas' last 12 games included a 21-run outburst over the Angels (who they swept) and a sweep of division rivals Houston. In the AL West, Oakland has spent time in and out of first place (even briefly holding it outright), but finds themselves one game back. Seattle is one game further back.

In the NL, the big news is in the Central, where Cincinnati has taken over the division lead from St. Louis. The Reds were 8-4 in this stretch, the Cardinals 5-7. The other divisions remained more or less as-is: Pittsburgh was "only" 7-5, and maintained their 9-game lead over Philadelphia. Both Atlanta and Los Angeles went an impressive 9-3 and now have double-digit leads in their divisions. Atlanta has the best record in the Cloverland Leagues by 3 games, with 44 wins out of the 60 games they've played.

Highlights of the upcoming 12-game stretch include The Blues hosting the Yankees and Rangers with a road trip to Boston in-between, Detroit facing division rivals Chicago and Minnesota, Atlanta looking to pad their record vs. the Knights, Marlins, and Giants, a Pirates-Reds series starting tomorrow, and looking forward a bit more--the All-Star Game on 15 June. 

We turn now to the stats!

Manny Sanguillen continues his hot hitting, dropping a bit since last time but still comfortably above .400 at .411. The folks below him have shuffled quite a bit, with Luis Arraez of the Twins leading the AL at .406 and the leader as of the last update, Eric Aybar, dropping 25 points since then. Pat Burrell and Rafael Devers lead the majors with 27 HR (which is a 68 HR pace for the 150 game season). Mike Schmidt leads the NL with 24. Bret Boone and George Brett are tied with 74 RBI (Troy Tulowitzki leads the NL with a mere 62). Carlos Correa, Alex Bregman, and Chipper Jones are all tied with 3.6 batting WAR. 

Looking at the pitchers, Kevin Brown of the Marlins had two iffy starts in a row, his ERA rising to a still-league-leading 1.70 as a result. His closest competitor, John Smoltz, is nearly a half-run behind. Jack McDowell of the White Sox leads the AL at 2.67. 4 pitchers, all in the AL, have 9 wins, while 3 NL pitchers lead that league with 3.  Kevin Brown of the Padres has 4.9 pitching WAR, demonstrating that I have no idea how WAR works. And Randy Johnson's ridiculous season continues, he has passed 207 Ks (which projects to 518 in the 150-game season).

Cloverland Leagues: 22 May Update

Friday was an off-day, so it's time for another update.

I was actually thinking I wanted another update anyhow, and hadn't quite gotten around to one in the last 2-3 days. Taking a Doylist look at things, the runs per game (and home runs) are rather too high. I'm not sure if it's one problem or two different ones. It's worse in the AL than the NL, which maybe is DH-related? Not sure. I think there are also too many strikeouts.

In any case, let's just pull out a few players. We're very close to one-third of the way through the season. David Cone is 4-4 with a 5.35 ERA (which is actually good for a 106 ERA+) and 12.7 K/9. In the real 1998, his ERA+ was 125. It's not unreasonable to think he'd suffer when facing stiffer competition in a league of all-time greats. His real 1998 K/9 was 9.1, though. So he's striking out more than 33% more batters.  Kevin Millwood of Atlanta is 4-3 with an ERA+ of 92 and 12.6 K/9. His ERA+ in real 1998 was 102 and he had 8.4 K/9. Once again, he's striking out more people in this all-time league than in real life.  Turning to batters, Ichiro is hitting .398 with an OPS+ of 132 and a 16-HR pace. In real 2001 he had an OPS+ of 126 and 8 home runs. So, against all-time pitching staffs he's doing better than he did when he got to face a bunch of terrible staffs a bunch of times a year.  I could go on, but you get the point. Maybe this is something I could go in and tweak (or could have gone in and tweaked) before starting the league, but so it goes. Maybe this is why the MLB-sponsored  games are tournaments rather than full seasons--it works for seasons with a reasonable distribution of talent but not what I'm doing.  In any case, it's perfectly fun and there's no real ground truth, so that's all fine. But I don't think it's "realistic" inasmuch as we can reasonably form expectations.

Anyway.

We've now got 48 games played, putting us close to 1/3 of the way. Here are the current standings:

Basically, the AL remains very close and the NL still looks pretty settled. In the AL Northeast, Boston and Cleveland have more or less maintained their previous pace while the Yankees went 8-4 to gain a share of first place. The Yankees' stretch included a frustrating sweep by the Angels where they were outscored 43-14 and had a bench-clearing brawl with the Angels in a game that was mercifully cut short by rain. Minnesota's mediocre 6-6 run was enough to let them gain sole possession of the AL Central, as the other teams have been playing abysmally badly (the Tigers and Brewers were 4-8, the White Sox 3-9). In the AL Southeast the standings have been kind of static, but the teams have (mostly) been playing well: Texas and Tampa Bay at 8-4 and Houston at 7-5. On the other hand, Baltimore had the worst stretch of any team in either league at 2-10. In the AL West, Seattle and Oakland inched closer to Kansas City but it was the Angels who had the best stretch at 8-4 during a difficult run of games (the Yankees, Red Sox, Blues, and Rays).

Over in the NL, the story seems to be that the teams in the drivers seats are still more or less there: Pittsburgh, Atlanta, and the Dodgers all extended their division leads. However, there does appear to be some action in the NL Central.  St. Louis' lead has shrunk from 4 games to 2. They've played OK at 7-5 in the most recent 12-game stretch (the same as the Dodgers), but the Reds have been playing much better of late: 10-2 in the last 12 and with an overall Pythagorean record that would put them 1st in the division. I'd suspected they'd do well, so the question will be whether they can sustain this over the next stretch--it starts relatively easily against Florida and San Francisco before they host the juggernaut Atlanta team.

Turning to the individual statistics: The overall leader in batting is Manny Sanguillen at .416 and Eric Aybar leads the AL at .399.  The leaders last time have cooled, with Bregman down to .390 and Clemente at .379. Bregman and Chipper Jones still lead their leagues in WAR, both by a significant margin. Pat Burrell has taken over the lead in the HR race, with 8 in the last 12 games and 11 in the last 15 games. Even that is not quite as hot as George Foster, who has 12 HR and 27 RBI in the last 14 games. Stargell leads the NL in HR with 20 to Foster's 19. 5 AL players have between 59-62 RBI, with Bret Boone leading the way. Matt Adams of the Cardinals leads the NL with 53.

As noted above, the NL seems to be a lower run scoring environment, or has better pitching, or something. So as you'd expect most of the pitching leaders are in the NL.  Kevin Brown of the Marlins lowered his ERA to 1.20 since last time, giving up 1 run in 18 innings. John Smoltz also has his ERA down under 2.00 now. Jack McDowell leads the AL in ERA with 2.27 after a couple of nice starts including a 1-hit shutout of the Twins. Don Gullett and Garret Richards both have 8 wins to lead the majors (and their leagues). Kevin Brown of the Padres is now at 3.8 pitching WAR, with Smoltz not too far behind at 3.6. Meanwhile, the Randy Johnson strikeout parade continues, he's up to 163 after striking out 36 in 16 innings including tying his all-time record with another 21-K game.

That's all for now, see you at @CloverlandLeag1 on Twitter! 

Cloverland Leagues: 10 May Update

It's another off-day! Time for another update.

We're twelve games further in, with each team having played 36 games. I'm not crazy about the schedule, to be honest--every team plays a bunch of games in a row, kind of in lockstep. I feel like it might really end up wreaking havoc on some pitching staffs, though maybe the AI can handle it since OOTP is pretty well established? In any case, with just a 150-game schedule, we're nearly 1/4 done!

Here are the current standings:

The Red Sox' winning streak ended just after the last update, and they lost 2 of 3 to the Yankees, were swept by Oakland, and lost 2 of 3 to Detroit (though they won a series with Oakland). New York (7-5 since last time) and Cleveland (8-4 since last time) have made up most of the deficit. Between now and the next off-day update (22 May), Boston will play Seattle, Milwaukee, Baltimore, and LA, the Yankees play most of those same teams (playing Toronto instead of just-visited Seattle), and Cleveland faces LA, Toronto, Houston, and Kansas City.

Over in the AL Central, the White Sox went 8-4 to take over the division lead, sweeping Baltimore and taking 2 of 3 from Milwaukee and LA before losing a series to Toronto. They're within shouting distance of .500, the only division leader below that mark. Milwaukee had a disastrous stretch, going just 2-10 and are now tied for the worst record in this simulation.

The AL Southeast has remained more or less static. Tampa Bay and Houston went 7-5 and narrowed the gap between them and Texas to 1 game. Baltimore had a very difficult stretch and dropped to 5 games back. But none of these teams strike me as out of it.  Texas' schedule next has them playing Detroit, Seattle, Milwaukee, and Baltimore. Tampa Bay will play Baltimore, LA, Toronto, and Houston, while Houston faces Chicago, Minnesota, and Cleveland before the showdown in Tampa Bay.

Kansas City remains in first place in the AL West, slightly enlarging their lead after a 7-5 run. However, second place now belongs to Seattle, who swept Minnesota and won series with Tampa Bay and the Yankees (while losing a series to Cleveland) to go 8-4. Oakland also went 8-4, and has taken over 3rd.

The story in the NL is more of good teams extending leads. The largest divisional lead in the AL is 3 games (Kansas City in the AL West), while the smallest divisional lead in the NL is 4 games (St. Louis in the NL Central). Pittsburgh went 8-4, St. Louis went 9-3, Atlanta went 10-2, and the Dodgers went 9-3. On the flip side of this, Montreal, Colorado, Charlotte, and the Mets went 3-9, and Arizona and the Giants went 4-8.  Atlanta had a 13-game winning streak, which was snapped by Pittsburgh in a showdown of the league's best teams (Atlanta won the series). St. Louis has the longest active winning streak at 8, Charlotte owns the longest active losing streak at 6.

Looking at the statistical leaders, Alex Bregman has been very hot, and now leads the AL in batting at .429 and WAR at 3.3. Roberto Clemente is at .414 to lead the NL in batting average, Chipper Jones has a WAR of 2.5 to lead th eNL. George Brett remains the AL home run leader at 17 despite only hitting 2 in the last 12 games--Pat Burrell and Darryl Strawberry (Yankees edition) are just behind him at 16. Cody Bellinger leads the NL with 15.   Brett continues to drive in runs, however, with 18 in 12 games to maintain his RBI lead with 15. Matt Holliday of the Rockies leads the NL with 43.  Brett's RBI pace remains close to where it was (229 on the season), though his home run pace is down to "only" 71 (in a 150-game season, though)...

The pitching leaders include Kevin Brown of the Marlins, who has a 1.63 ERA, Kevin Brown of the Padres, who has 2.8 pitching WAR, several folks tied with 6 wins (Don Gullett is the only NL player among them, though), and Randy Johnson maintaining an insane strikeout pace, now at 127 for the season and averaging 19.1 K/9. That puts him on a pace to strike out 529 people on the season.

Thanks again for reading, and you can get daily scores and highlights on the league Twitter feed at @CloverlandLeag1, which I retweet at my personal feed at @asrivkin.

Cloverland Leagues: 26 April Update

Today's an off-day, so it seems like a particularly good time for an update. I was due to post one anyhow. :)

Since the last update, Boston has been absolutely on fire, going 12-1 with all 12 of those wins in a still-active streak. Here--let me post the standings:

Boston going 12-1 combined with Cleveland scuffling and the Yankees treading water has put the Red Sox in excellent shape. Of course, we're still in April.  Elsewhere, the standings haven't shuffled too much--the best teams last time (Pirates, Atlanta) have continued to play well, the teams struggling last time (San Diego, the entire AL Central) have continued to struggle.  I will call out Charlotte as hanging in there, taking 2 of 3 from Atlanta and Arizona before getting swept by the Pirates just before this post.

Boston's streak has been built on sweeps of the White Sox, Twins, Blues, and Rays. Of these teams only Tampa has a winning record, but it's early enough that that may be tautological. Their next three series are against the Yankees, A's, and Rangers, the first and last of which are playing well.  Beyond Boston, the Mets have also turned it on, with 8 wins out of the last 9 as they swept Colorado and Chicago and took 3 of 4 from the Reds.

Looking at individual statistics, Chipper Jones continues to lead the NL in batting but has "cooled off" to only .414. Meanwhile, Carlos Correa has been on an amazing hot streak (do I hear trash cans getting banged?) and is batting .453 on the season--.650 with 13 hits in the past week.  As far as the other Triple Crown stats, George Brett has 15 HR and 37 RBI. Ichiro Suzuki has a 23-game hitting streak active. Sid Fernandez has a 1.26 ERA on the season, several folks have 4 pitching wins at this point. Randy Johnson has an astonishing 81 Ks in 39 innings pitched (yet he's only 3-2). Johnson is now on pace for "only" 506 Ks. The projected batting records have also come down, though are still way above record pace--Brett is on pace for 94 HR and 231 RBI.

As a bit of a reality check on things, the league is averaging 5.4 runs per team per game. In 2019 the real number was 4.83, and only once in history was the number as high as 5.4 (it was 5.5 in 1930). So my expectation of a high-scoring league is being met as of right now. Again, it could settle down...

Cloverland Leagues: 12 April Update

It's the second Sunday of the Cloverland Leagues season. I'm going to try two different ways to post updates--first, I've made a Twitter account (@CloverlandLeag1) where I've been posting daily scores and performances of note. I'm also planning to do weekly, broader updates here. Knowing how I am, it'll probably be a mix of in-game and real-life perspectives, but I'll try to keep them separate. :)

The game itself has been running fine, though I did have to replay one day a few times because it kept crashing. Frustratingly, it would crash after playing that day's games, so it in theory had an affect on the final results--when I resolved things, the Yankees had definitely lost a game that they won the previous 3 times they played. But so it goes.  I'd been anticipating an unrealistically good year for the hitters, and I think in the early going that's being borne out. I can almost see why that might happen--every team has great hitters (these are [almost] all historically-great teams),  but even the best teams have some so-so starters. So, great lineups are hitting every day, sometimes against iffy pitchers. However, there are also ridiculous performances by pitchers on occasion--Randy Johnson struck out 21 on Opening Day against the 1976 Philadelphia Phillies. Since the single-game record is 20, Johnson's performance seems...dubious.  But it's fun, which is all we can ask for.

Standings:

It's obviously early, but I suppose it's also pushing 10% of the way into the season. I'm not sure how seriously to take performances so far, especially since the only games I've seen are the Yankees games. If I had to guess, though, I guess I'd believe the Pirates and Atlanta are "real", and that the Angels aren't.  I also find it hard to believe that Cincinnati, the Mets, and Yankees will finish under .500. We'll see.

Obviously, individual statistics and leaders are also (presumably) not (necessarily) where they'll end up, but for the record Chipper Jones is leading the NL with a .476 average (Michael Young leads the AL at .465), Hanley Ramirez of your Charlotte Knights leads the NL with 8 HR so far (Bogaerts, Brett, and Kepler have 7 to co-lead the AL), George Brett leads the AL with 21 RBI (Richie Hebner has 19 for the NL), and Richie Hebner has an OPS of 1.596 to lead the NL (John Olerud has 1.513 to lead the AL).

As far as pitching, Jack McDowell and Jim Palmer both have 3 wins (many folks are tied with 2), Sid Fernandez leads the NL with a 0.71 ERA (James Shields has an ERA of 1.06 to lead the AL), and Gene Garber and Joe Smith each have 5 saves and lead their respective leagues. Somehow, 11 games into the season, Kevin Brown has two shutouts and Randy Johnson has 48 Ks (in 24 innings).

Projecting over an entire season at this point is always folly, but always fun. So at this point Ramirez is on pace for 109 HR, Brett is on pace for 286 RBI, Garry Maddox is on pace for 286 hits, Edgar Renteria is on pace for 41 triples, Garber and Smith are on pace for 68 saves, Johnson is on pace for 533 strikeouts, and David Wells is on pace to give up 123 HR. All of these, needless to say, would be all-time records in real life.

On to the next week!

Cloverland Leagues: NL Southeast and West

OK, here's a few words about the remaining two divisions, the NL Southeast and NL West.


NL Southeast



1997 Marlins: I am not a fan of the Marlins franchise. Even having Mattingly and Jeter on board has only blunted my dislike. Still, this league needs a Marlins representative, so here they are. This was their first World Series team, from a time before they'd built up a lot of bad karma. This team could even be seen as plucky, knocking off the big Atlanta dynasty and then squeaking out a World Series win over a not-great Cleveland team. There was plenty of star power on the team, from Kevin Brown and Gary Sheffield to Bobby Bonilla and even Al Leiter!  I think this team is going to get killed.






1998 Braves: This was not only the best team of the 90's Atlanta dynasty but the best team this franchise produced in the entire 20th century. They won 106 games, and would be predicted to win 106 games. They got tripped up by San Diego (see below) in the playoffs. The famous members of the team were all there--Maddux/Glavine/Smoltz, plus this was when Kevin Millwood was one of their main pitchers. Chipper Jones and an aging Andres Galarraga led them on offense, along with a still-young Andruw Jones.




2008 "Knights":  This team needs a bit of explanation. As I said in the opening post for this season, if we took the best editions of all 30 current teams, we'd of course end up with 15 in each league in theory.  However, two teams have switched leagues in the DH era--Houston and Milwaukee. It turns out the best year for both of those teams occurred when they were members of the American League. Since it doesn't make sense to stick a DH team into a league where they can't use the DH, I put them both into the AL.  And rather than have one 16-team league and one 14-team league, I opted to add two teams to the NL--the 1994 Montreal Expos and this team, the "Charlotte Knights".  Basically, it's another Marlins team (which is ironic given how much I dislike the Marlins), pretending that they actually went through with a relocation in 2007 as they threatened. I was going to put them in Portland, but the divisions were more compact geographically if I put them in Charlotte, so here they are. The Knights are the name of Charlotte's minor league team. This was a mediocre team in real life, and by all rights they should lose 110+ games facing off against all-time greats every day. But more about that in a season preview post I plan.





2012 Nationals:  Well, here's another case where I misread and took the wrong team--both the 2014 and 2016 teams had higher Pythagorean winning percentages than this team.  Oh well.  Those teams were only a tiny amount better than this team, which has a 19-year-old Bryce Harper and Steven Strasburg just back from TJ surgery. I'll fix it next time around.


NL West




1993 Giants: Two teams tied for the best Pythagorean record in the DH era, I opted for 1993 since they had more real wins and since Barry Bonds was, well, not under a cloud. This team famously missed the playoffs although they won 103 games, and were led by Bonds, Matt Williams, and Will Clark.




1998 Padres: This Padres team won the most games in franchise history and also has the best Pythagorean record, in both cases by rather a bit. This was a pennant-winning team, led by Tony Gwynn putting in a typical Tony Gwynn season and Greg Vaughn putting in a 50-HR season (that was overshadowed by the McGwire-Sosa race).  Kevin Brown and Trevor Hoffman also show up on this team in major roles.




1999 Diamondbacks:  This team, not their World Series winner, was easily the best of the franchise. Jay Bell and Luis Gonzalez led the offense but the story was Randy Johnson and an absolutely monster year he had as a pitcher--364 Ks and an ERA of 2.48. He easily won the Cy Young Award.




2019 Dodgers: Winners of 106 games, their Pythagorean record suggests they "should" have won 107. It's always interesting to me when these franchises that have been around for ages and ages produce one of their best players or best teams just now when we're watching, but it definitely happened--this was the best team in the 60+ years the Dodgers have been in Los Angeles. Joc Pederson had a great year, but may only have been the 4th-best person in the lineup.  Cody Bellinger had a huge year, and Max Muncy and Justin Turner weren't tooo far behind.

Cloverland Leagues: NL Northeast and Central

Though the National League has no DH (of course) and thus in principle I had more flexibility, I still decided to keep the teams to the DH era for consistency (with hobgoblins of little minds noted).  I have no doubt that the Cubs, Pirates, and Cardinals, for instance, have better representatives from the pre-1972 time period, though I think the other teams here have a decent case to be made (in many cases because the teams themselves didn't exist pre-1972.

A case could be made to rearrange these teams (and the AL teams) into chronology-based divisions. But that's not what I did, at least not this time around...

NL East

1972 Pirates: As noted in another post, I pushed the allowable time range for this team, which had the best record of any Pirates team back to 1925 and the best Pythagorean record of any Pirates team going back to 1901. Since they only missed the cutoff by a year, that seemed fair enough. However, this team, though the reigning World Series winners, couldn't beat the Reds in the NLCS.





1976 Phillies: The start of a pretty successful run for Philadelphia, which eventually resulted in a World Series winner in 1980. This edition of the Phillies won 101 games, and had the best Pythagorean record in franchise history going back to 1883. The big stars were Mike Schmidt and Steve Carlton, and Tug McGraw makes an appearance.





1986 Mets: I was a high-schooler when this team made its appearance, and growing up outside NYC (even as a Yankees fan) there was no getting away from them. The 1969 team may have more sentimental value, but this is clearly the best team in franchise history, led by Gooden, Strawberry, and Carter.





1994 Expos: One of the great what-if teams, they were on their way to cruising to a division title and possibly more when the strike hit and wiped out the rest of the season. They had two hall of famers, but the team was dismantled after the strike and the team moved within 10 years.


NL Central



1975 Reds: The Big Red Machine is generally considered one of the dominant dynasties in baseball history, and this was their best year. Their pitching staff wasn't famous, but their batters included Hall-of-Famers Bench, Morgan, and Perez, and some argue Pete Rose should also be in the Hall of Fame.  I expect this team to do well.




2007 Rockies:  This team had an absolutely bananas stretch run, winning 14 of their last 15 games to clinch a tie for the Wild Card, then went on a winning streak that took them to the World Series (where they got swept by the Red Sox). The Wild Card game was a legit classic, even if it ended on a dubious call.  I honestly expect this team to do very poorly in this league, but it's just a gut feeling.




2013 Cardinals: The Cards have been in an extended period of success, with only a few years out of contention this century. The 2013 team has the best Pythagorean record by a little bit, and that's what I used to choose, but I could have gone with the 2004 or 1985 teams and not degraded team quality much if at all. The franchise seems to have a pattern of winning the World Series with mediocre teams (2006, 2011) and losing (usually to the Red Sox) when they have especially good teams (2013, 2004, 1985). Perhaps that's karma for 1946 and 1967. In any case, Pujols had moved on by this time, so it's a Beltran/Holliday team. 




2016 Cubs: Not only was this team famous for breaking the long World Series drought for the Cubs (as maybe you'd heard), but they also are certainly the best Cubs team since the 1930s and possibly since the previous time they'd won the World Series. It seems silly to mention the main players since this was so recent, but for completeness the team was led by Bryant, Rizzo, and Lester. 

Cloverland Leagues: AL Southeast and AL West

On we go, counting down to Opening Day and moving (probably too slowly) though the divisions. So, I'll start doubling up...


AL Southeast Division:  I claimed in the last post the I thought the AL Central was a funny grouping, but really these are all funny groupings.



1973 Baltimore Orioles:  The very best Orioles teams were pre-DH, but this team from the very first year of the DH has many of the same players--Brooks Robinson, Boog Powell, and the pitching staff. This team also has a Pythagorean record just a bit better than the 1979 team, which was the other reasonable choice. The 1997 and 2014 teams, the best of the post-1979 years, don't come particularly close.





2010 Tampa Bay Rays: This division-winning team won 96 games, one less than the 2008 pennant winners, but had a better Pythagorean record. David Price shows up again for this team, and is probably the biggest star (other than maaaaaaaaaybe Evan Longoria?). I honestly don't think this team is going to do very well.





2011 Texas Rangers: The best team in franchise history both by real number of wins and by Pythagorean record, they had a heartbreaking finish in the World Series that year. Nelson Cruz seems to have shrugged it off, though.





2018 Houston Astros: Sandwiched between two pennant winners, it's this team that had the best Pythagorean record, which "should" have given them 109 wins on the year instead of "just" 103. One of the reasons this is a funny grouping is because I can kind of imagine how Tampa, Texas, and Houston might all do against each other--all are recent. I think Houston is clearly the best of those teams. But throw in Baltimore, and I have no idea. I think Baltimore is better, but I have no idea if it's because I've heard about those great Baltimore teams my entire sentient life and it's tough to believe that a team from two years ago can really compete?  I guess we'll see. And of course, there are no trash cans to help the Astros hitters here...



AL West Division:  So, this is an interesting division in that unlike the other AL divisions, all of these teams are spread in time from one another. That exacerbates the issue I just mentioned in that I have no idea how these teams will stack up against each other, though two of them are alums of the solo computer APBA leagues I ran in the past.



1977 Kansas City Royals:  The Royals, for instance. This franchise has been around for 50+ years, and has had their share of competitive teams--a mid-70s to mid-80s stretch that was consistent, and then a handful of mid-2010s teams. They won two World Series in that time, and appeared in two others. This team missed out on the World Series after the Yankees knocked them out of the playoffs, but was a great team--the greatest Royals team. How do they stack up against the greatest of other franchises?  I expect them to lose consistently.





1988 Oakland A's: Oakland has had several stretches of excellent play, with their best team (while in Oakland) coming just before the DH era. Their best team since 1973 is nearly as good, from the late '80s-early '90s dynasty. On paper, this looks like a dominant team.  In the APBA league, they regularly had trouble scoring runs and ended up a doormat. We'll see how this goes.





2001 Seattle Mariners: There is no other credible choice for best Mariners team of all time. The all-time record holder for most wins in a season for an AL team, plus the league as a whole would miss out if it had no Ichiro. I managed this team for APBA one year, which was a somewhat frustrating experience. I got them into 2nd place, but the 1995 Cleveland team was just too strong and we couldn't catch them. Again, I don't know how this will go. It could go well.





2014 Los Angeles Angels: I have no sense of what this team is about. I don't remember them as they were happening.  I also realize, as I'm writing this, that the 2002 World Series-winning team had a better Pythagorean (and real) record than this team, by a bit. Sorry about that, Angels fans. At least this way we get Mike Trout involved?