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.