The Edge of '17 But from the Other Direction

 

After a few months of real-life excitement (including a pause to follow the MLB home stretch and post-season here in meatspace), I finished off the Alt-1917 regular season. The Yankees closed to 2.5 behind Boston in the last two weeks of the season, but a couple of tough losses to Washington set the stage for a series loss to the Red Sox at Fenway to put things out of reach. In the end, the Yankees finished 4 games behind a Boston team that was just too good (and seriously under-performed to make it even that close). 

The Sox will face the Phillies in the World Series. After leading the NL through most of the season, Pittsburgh faltered a bit in the second half while the Phillies played better than anyone else in MLB after the All Star Game. The Phillies also outperformed their run differential by 5 games while the Pirates underperformed by 4--more than enough to change the results. 

I'll get into individual performances in a later post, but suffice to say for now that the Yankees dominated the offensive leader boards (except for batting average) and were absent from the pitching ones. I confess I didn't pay terribly close attention to the NL leaders, but Alexander and Rixey pitched very well for the Phils, and Cravath and another Phillie who's name is escaping me led the NL in home runs. 

I may play through the World Series before my next post here, so I'll put my prediction in now--Boston in 5. I'm probably biased by watching every AL game and basically no NL games, but the Red Sox seem too good. 

Standings below, click to make it a readable size.

Alt-1917: Start of the Home Stretch!

 We've just started the last quarter of the 1917 season. After a frankly mediocre July that included some awful bullpen meltdowns (and dropping Dick Redding back to the reserve list), the Yankees kicked it back up and have been playing well in August. They've been hanging 3-4 games behind the Red Sox, solidly in 2nd place but unable to get any closer. They do still have 6 games left with Boston, though, with a series at the Polo Grounds imminent!

After Oscar Charleston's incredibly hot start, he hit some serious regression and nearly dropped below .300 before a more recent recovery. During Charleston's horrific slump, the slack was more than taken up by Wally Pipp, Roger Peckinpaugh, and a resurgent Frank Baker. Peckinpaugh is easily the Yankees' leader in WAR, propped up by his defensive play at an important position but he's also doing rather well in traditional batting categories. Pipp has clearly been the best hitter on the Yanks, though, leading the team in all the Triple Crown categories as well as the triple slash categories. The Yankees pitching has been a lot more of a next-man-up kind of situation, especially since Jesse Barnes' season ended with an injury. Mogridge has picked it up and pitched well for several starts in a row, and a spot start by Dazzy Vance ended in a CGSO (against the awful Packers, but still). 

Let's look at the team stats!

UPDATE: I never quite managed to post this, so I'll do it now. We're currently in the first week of September, the Yankees are still 4.5 games back, and the Phillies and Pirates are neck and neck for the NL crown...

Alt-1917: All-Star Break

 It's July 9, 1917. The Yankees followed their 15-12 April and 17-11 May with an 18-10 June!  And followed that up with a 2-5 July so far. It's a 94-win pace for the whole year and nothing to sneeze at, but it leaves them 5 games behind Boston right now, and they had been tied for first relatively recently. So that's a bit frustrating. Plus a few games got away from us including one where Babe Ruth hit a 9th-inning 3-run home run to take the lead (which won it) and another where we couldn't hold a 7-0 first-inning lead. 

Still, we sit at the All-Star Break first in most of the batting categories that matter. Our pitching stats are mediocre, though. And while Dick Redding was Rookie of the Month in June, his last three starts have been disasters and I've sent him back to the reserves at least for now. 

As noted, it's the All-Star break, and we're getting ready for the inaugural game at Philadelphia's Shibe Park in just a couple of game days. Five Yankees made the team, all finishing first in "voting": Pipp, Baker, Peckinpaugh, Charleston, and Pennock. Charleston pulled ahead of Speaker at the last voting update, though to be honest Charleston has been in a pretty bad slide (as has Speaker, actually).  The Browns, Packers, and Peppers lack any representatives on the team. The National League All-Stars include former Yankee Ernie Krueger, who we traded for Chief Bender last year. So it goes. All 10 National League teams are represented on the team. If it goes with the fan vote, it'll be Cooper vs. Leonard as the starters. I'm going to let the AI play it out.

Post-break we go on a 9-game road swing through St. Louis, Chicago, and Newark. We're 13-13 aggregate against those clubs, which are 119-122 otherwise, so we really should hope to do better in these upcoming series. We're 5-5 against the Red Sox, so have plenty of games left to try to regain the lead if it's to be done. 

Alt-1917: Start of June

It is the close of play on 1 June, 1917--I meant to do this a day earlier but got excited. ;)  

The Yankees followed up a 15-12 April with a 17-11 May, and find themselves in second place, 1.5 games behind Boston. Not a bad place to be, though I remember them having a pretty good May in 1916, too... But the top four teams in the AL are all the same and all still within 4 games of one another.

The top NL teams are still the surprising (to me anyhow) Pirates and the Giants, still separated by 1 game. But the Cardinals and (to a lesser degree) Terps have fallen off the pace and the Phillies have stepped up. Don't count out the World Champions either, as the Rustlers followed up a 10-18 April with a 16-10 May. 

But back to the Yankees. As we'll see in a moment, the whole team has been hitting like crazy, but a few players in particular have really been pushing the team.

Oh, you know. Just holding down multiple spots in the top 7 for batting average, home runs (all of the top 3!), RBI (#1 and #2!), OBP, slugging, OPS, WAR (#2, #3, and #5!) etc. etc.  Oscar Charleston won't start the All-Star Game because Tris Speaker has been amazing, but I wouldn't trade him for anyone right now. He's been on a crazy tear, and so has Wally Pipp. Heilmann started slow but hit something like .600 for over a week and is now flirting with .300. Even Baker has been in a zone. Miller doesn't appear on any of these lists, but he's chipped in with big hits. Nunamaker is at .300. Just great stuff. I also picked up Dobie Moore as a free agent, and he's waiting until I get sick of Luke Boone and bring him up. 

The Yankees pitching has been fine, but nothing to write home about. They're getting the job done, letting the hitters mash, and (mostly) not blowing big leads. I also was aggressive about bringing up players who I think will do well and trading some who I haven't liked much--I pulled off a Ray Fisher for Jesse Barnes trade, which I think will help us now and later. I brought up Dick Redding from the reserves, and he was Rookie of the Month for May. Adams and Russell have been fine. Pennock and Reuther have been good out of the pen (Pennock may make the ASG as a reliever), and Bender and Ragan have been good enough out of the pen, mostly.

For completeness, since I still haven't been following the NL much, here are their leaders. As with last year, the AL is more hitting-heavy or at least has better offensive numbers than the NL.

And here are the team stats--I had to cut off the top line to fit the totals at the bottom, but the categories can be seen in the red NL bar and read upward as well as downward...  The Yankees haven't quite caught the Red Sox in OPS but seem likely to, and their pitching is lower-middle of the pack, but closer to the middle than the bottom...

 

Alt-1917: Start of May Status

 I'm one month in to the 1917 season, and things are going better for the Yanks than I had hoped, if not as well as they could be. They remain their streaky selves but put a longer winning streak together than their losing streaks. Let's look at the predictions that the algorithm made just as the season was about to begin:

This assumes no injuries etc., but shows the Yankees as a 90-win team, within striking distance of the top if things break well. It also imagines us as having the best offense in the league by far, with middling pitching. As far as individual performances, it has Pipp leading the league in HR again, with Baker not far behind (and tied with Ruth for possibly the last time before the latter presumably catches fire). It has Babe Adams winning 28 games! It also forecasts the White Sox becoming a mediocre team and the Athletics becoming terrible.

At this point, we're 2.5 games behind the leaders (Cleveland and Boston). The AL player of the month was Oscar Charleston, who's up around .420 right now. Pipp also got off to a hot start, and he and Charleston are 1-2 in a lot of categories and are both in the top 5 of a lot of others. Baker and Heilmann are off to pretty slow starts, though. The pitching has in fact been iffy, and we've blown a few games we probably should have won. Still, at this point it's hard to complain too much. Let's see how the next few weeks go.

For completeness, here's the NL:

In reality, it's the Pirates and Cardinals who are battling for the top spot (with the Giants) while the Cubs are languishing. As usual I'm not paying super-close attention to the NL, at least as of now. But the predictions clearly think the Rustlers' reign is going to end this year, due to a truly anemic offense. I suppose we'll see...

Biggest metro areas: 1920/1930

 

Following up on this post about city populations, I found someone who calculated the populations of metro areas pre-1950 using the 1950 definitions. 

So here are the numbers from that site for the 25 largest US metro areas in 1920 and their Alt-1915 status (so to speak):

1. New York -- 8,490,694  (Yankees, Giants, Dodgers, Peppers)
2. Chicago -- 3,521,789 (White Sox, Cubs)
3. Philadelphia -- 2,714,271 (A's, Phillies)
4. Boston -- 2,315,111 (Rustlers, Red Sox)
5. Pittsburgh -- 1,759,989 (Pirates)
6. Detroit -- 1,305,798 (Tigers)
7. St. Louis -- 1,139,877 (Browns, Cardinals)
8. San Francisco -- 1,009,467 
9. Los Angeles -- 997,830
10. Cleveland -- 972,162 (Spiders)
11. Baltimore -- 852,051 (Terrapins)
12. Buffalo -- 753,393 (Blues)
13. Minneapolis -- 704,566 (expansion?)
14. Cincinnati -- 628,999 (Reds)
15. Washington -- 571,882 (Senators)
16. Milwaukee -- 539,449 (expansion?)
17. Providence -- 536,572 
18. Kansas City -- 528,833 (Packers)
19. Worcester -- 455,135
20. New Haven -- 415,214
21. New Orleans -- 413,750
22. Albany -- 408,598
23. Wilkes-Barre -- 390,991
24. Seattle -- 389,273
25. Portland -- 372,777

Montreal and Mexico City would fit between Cincinnati and Washington, Toronto between KC and Worcester, and Havana would be #28 in the USA or #31 in North America.  These will (probably obviously) have a different definition than the US boundaries.

Here's 1930, as in the last post I'll pull out the Alt-1915 teams and stick in the other big North American cities:

• Los Angeles -- 2,327,166
• San Francisco -- 1,347,772
• Mexico City -- roughly 1,000,000
• Minneapolis -- 857,513 (expansion?)
• Montreal -- roughly 819,000
• Havana -- roughly 728,000
• Milwaukee -- 725,263 (expansion?)
• Toronto -- roughly 631,000
• Providence -- 616,495
• New Orleans -- 505,306
• Worcester -- 491,242

Of note, I think, is that Minneapolis sticks out as the most obvious expansion candidate that isn't on the west coast--better than Milwaukee, though Milwaukee is still an obvious candidate and closer to the other teams. Montreal also more than holds its own. Indeed, Montreal vs. Toronto is similar to MSP vs. Milwaukee in a lot of ways--Toronto is better integrated into the region, but Montreal is just plain appreciably bigger. Also, while I'd ben thinking that the Newark team would move as soon as there was an excuse to do so, that's no longer clear to me--the New York metro area is more than twice the size of Chicago, which has had two teams continuously for over a century. I'm now thinking that four teams in the NY metro area could be a stable configuration, at least until radio/TV kicks in. We'll see if the financial model points in some direction or not.

It's also interesting to me to see that many of the largest unserved cities are in the Northeast and are really non-starters for ever having MLB--places like Providence or New Haven. I expect I'll make stadiums for them anyhow, and maybe they'd be suitable for a random weekday game or series for one of the Boston teams just for a change of pace...

On the edge of '17

 The Caribbean Winter League has concluded (congrats to the champion Jacksonville Red Caps and to league MVP Rogers Horsnby), and all the players have had time off to recuperate (or in Hornsby's case to stare out the window and wait for spring). Now they've all gathered in their training camps, with the first games about to start. 

OOTP, for whatever reason, has some limitations with how it runs its spring training.  Rather than teams defining a spring training home, there's a common stadium used for all. And rather than playing any interleague games, only games against in-league teams are scheduled. I could go in and hand-derive a schedule or see if there's one to download, but last year I just ran with it and I probably will again this year. But these are minor quibbles.

Once again, rather than having the Yankees (and thus, any of the AL teams) have a single ST home, I'm taking them on tour. Last year started in Havana and worked its way through Tampa, New Orleans, Hot Springs, Louisville, and Indianapolis. This year we're going to start in California and work our way east. I'm planning the five weeks of ST to be spent in two cities per week: SF and LA; Tucson and Waco; Galveston and Memphis; Birmingham and Atlanta; Richmond and Atlantic City. All of these except Birmingham are originals, all but Richmond are done (and Richmond is close). 

I've tried to improve the Yankees over the course of the winter, at least a bit. I took advantage of my crystal ball and traded away Roxy Walters for Herb Pennock, which hopefully will help my pitching. I had to re-sign Cannonball Redding after the AI dropped him (I took over that particular AI duty afterward). I focused on drafting actual known MLB players, which included Pat Collins (who'll make up for trading away Walters) and Dutch Reuther. I also signed Lefty O'Doul, though that's looking a bit down the road (and of course he'll be a hitter not a pitcher). 

The real-life 1917 Yankees won at a .464 clip, which would give them 75 wins in a 162-game season. I'm reasonably confident we'll outplay that team. Their offense was 12% worse than average, not helped by an abysmal season at 2B by Fritz Maisel (who we traded to Brooklyn last year). Our 2B situation isn't great, but hopefully it's better than the OPS of 50 that Maisel gave that team. Our outfield should be substantially better, with Heilmann and Charleston in place of Tim Hendryx (who was actually pretty good that year) and Hugh High (riding the bench for us). 

Their pitching was about league average, and that's still our problem spot. Two of the OTL Yankees rotation aren't on my ATL Yankees at all: Bob Shawkey (good year) and Nick Collup (bad year). I'll have Alan Russell (good year) in the rotation rather than the pen. I'm hoping ST can sort out/help develop Dazzy Vance some more, but he looked terrible in Pensacola. Dick Redding started off well but had a few clunkers. Babe Adams is one of the pillars of the rotation right now, and in real-life 1917 he was in a random minor league. In fact, we're heading toward uncharted (for me) waters--real life WW1 took a bunch of people away from the game, but I'm playing with the development engine so they should keep playing. Whether the absences are seen as injuries or what, I don't know. 

Looking around the league: The OTL White Sox handily won the pennant over Boston. Here, Chicago is looking for their 3rd straight pennant. Their pitching looks to be mostly what it was in real life. They're missing Chick Gandil (not a big deal) and Joe Jackson (very big deal), but they'll clearly be the team to beat again. They added Pops Lloyd at shortstop and Fred Anderson, who won 20 games for Buffalo in 1916 but neither seems like a long-term solution. On the other hand, they're rich and don't show signs of getting less so. The Red Sox' pitching OTL was their main strength, and that looks to be completely intact in ATL. They also look like they're moving Babe Ruth to be their everyday first baseman in addition to taking a pitching turn, so they're going to be pretty formidable as well. They also still have Tris Speaker. 

So, the Yankees may need a miracle to get anywhere near first place. But hopefully we can at least finish above .500 and/or take advantage of what might come our way...

Atlantic City and All-Stars

 

I apparently enjoy gaming out various scenarios for this league and making ballparks for it as much as I do playing it.  Not that there's anything wrong with that.  As seems to have been the case all along, the new ballparks and gaming out parts are reinforcing one another. 

The thing that's on my mind right now is the All-Star Game. Historically, the first All-Star game was in 1933. But there's no particular reason they couldn't have been held earlier, and there are articles showing that the idea was being advocated back in 1915 or so (maybe I'll link them later). Scheduling an All-Star game might have been a logistical challenge, but since I'm not doing more than requiring things to be plausible, I think that's OK. So, I'm planning on an All-Star game starting in 1917.  Where should it be held?

The contemporary advocates for an All-Star Game back then said it should be in one of the biggest cities. Washington DC seems like another obvious possibility.  The newest, most impressive ballparks of the time were Shibe Park in Philadelphia, Forbes Field in Pittsburgh, and Comiskey Park in Chicago. Maybe Ebbets Field? In any case, the central location of Philadelphia relative to so many of the other MLB cities I have points to that as the location.

However, the idea of a neutral site has also occurred to me, especially with the rationale of getting major-league baseball out to places that don't typically get it and getting people excited about it.  So, I looked for stadia that were appropriately-sized and in a reasonable location that didn't already have an MLB team. Turns out there really aren't any. At one point I thought the Yale Bowl would work, and New Haven is a neat spot midway between Boston and New York. Yale Bowl was a big deal when it was built. The problem was that it was built pretty specifically as a football stadium, and there's no way to reasonably put a baseball field in there, especially for an event that's seeing itself as this important.  Another idea that occurred to me was holding it in LA after the end of the season (since a mid-season trip to LA did not strike me as plausible in 1917), but it struck me that that approach would be very unpopular in reality, both with most of the baseball-loving public and with the players. And also the owners. 

At that point, the new ballpark thing struck--I've been thinking about Negro League ballparks that I could model as a community service and had started doing Inlet Park in Atlantic City. At that point it struck me that Atlantic City would be a great spot for the All-Star Game--close to the major East Coast cities, geared toward tourism, willing to spend some cash, and looking for new stuff. The Miss America Pageant started in 1921. A sports complex was established at Bader Field in the early 20s, though baseball wasn't an early driver there as far as I can see.  One could imagine, though, the Atlantic City leadership approaching MLB after the ASG gets established and cutting a deal--we'll build a proper stadium (at Bader Field?) if you agree to hold the ASG there for 3 years or 5 years or whatever. I think some of the western cities might grumble, so maybe it'd be in Atlantic City 2 years out of every 3 or something. There's no obvious western counterpart to Atlantic City, so maybe it'd go to St. Louis or Chicago. Alternately, maybe it'd go to Brookside Stadium? It could be fun to hold the ASG there, even if the facilities are non-existent, just to have a 100k crowd....

Caribbean League Update

 

The Caribbean League is about 2/3 of the way through its 32-game 1916 season. At least, I think it's 32 games? That doesn't really make sense in terms of a 6-team league, but what do I know? The Yankees are associated with the Pensacola Pilots, in a division with Tampa and Jacksonville. The Southern Division has Santo Domingo and two Havana teams (Habana and Almendares, naturally). Each team has maybe 1-2 MLB stars on them--I limited MLB service to 3 years, but there are plenty of candidates. A few players were invited and passed (notably Babe Ruth), but it's been fun.

Pensacola has a heavy Yankees presence in its starting lineup--I decided to be hands-off (save in one case to be mentioned below) and let the AI do whatever. The 2-3-4 hitters all played for the Yankees last year: Watt-Heilmann-Charleston. Demoe is also usually a starter for the Pilots. Vance is on the team, as is Terry and Dick Redding. The meddling I did was to make them start Terry at 2B every other day (it is a development league after all), but it became clear that Terry will never be a 2B (at least not without some other things changing first) and I backed off on that. If I were trying to be in character as Yankees GM, I'd be concerned about Dazzy Vance, who has been awful. I'd be pretty happy with Dick Redding. The Pilots are in last place, largely due to their pitching. Oscar Charleston is hitting well over .400, Heilmann is doing fine. 

I was musing the other day about the version of Ken Burns' Baseball documentary that would come out in this universe, and imagining an oral history of "The Caribbean League Opening Season" where Oscar Charleston and Harry Heilmann are reminiscing. Or Allie Watt's interview in their Glory of Their Times, where he recounts being 16 years old and roommates with Vance and going to Cuba for the first time. Maybe I'll even write it myself. :) 

Alt-1916: What's left until 1917?

 

As seems typical, here's a post that I'm thinking will be short and only of personal interest and will probably end up somewhat long (and only of personal interest). Though the World Series is over (and congratulations to the Rustlers!), I've inserted a bit more baseball action before 1917's Spring Training starts because I apparently can't leave well enough alone (and as a way to learn how to use some other parts of OOTP).

First, I scheduled some exhibition games as post-season "City Series" or "State Series" sorts of things. I gave home field to whichever team had the better 1916 record unless I had some other reason, which included "I think it'd be cooler for the Yankees to play at Ebbets Field than the Polo Grounds".  Looking to the future I'm considering a NYC-area round robin and/or a Great Lakes Series, that sort of thing. 

And then I started thinking about the parks I'm making and the 1917 Spring Training I'm imagining: For 1916, teams started in Havana and then moved through Tampa, New Orleans, Hot Springs, Louisville, and Indianapolis playing games until the season started. This year I'm planning a tour starting in San Francisco and making the way back east. But that leaves a few parks I've made still unused--Durkee Park in Jacksonville and Gimnasio Escolar in Santo Domingo. And then I started thinking about Winter Leagues and ran across how an Arizona Fall League-type setup was a template that was included. 

So, I set up a six-team league with a Florida division and a Cuba/DR division. Two of the teams are in Havana. I need to make sure it'll work right, but this strikes me as a way to get some development time for young players and also have a bit more fun in-world. In principle this could also be a fun way to have teams in some other random spots. In the future, I could see putting in a couple more teams--maybe Orlando, maybe Mobile, not sure about another non-US team but I can look at what the historic teams are (maybe the Estrellas Orientales? or the Santa Clara Leopards?).

Alt-1916 Final Stats, etc.

 

We're three games into the 1916 World Series, and the Rustlers are up 2 games to 1. They would have been up 3 to 0, but the White Sox had a big comeback in the 9th inning of Game 1 to tie it up and then won it in 11. Game 4 will be a rematch of the Game 1 starters, so we'll see how that goes. 

The stat leaderboards were dominated by the usual suspects. I'm going to ignore WAR because Roger Peckinpaugh was the AL WAR leader and I saw him every day and that's ridiculous. The AL leaders in the Triple Crown stats were Cobb (.354), Pipp (11 HR), and Veach (106 RBI). The only person to appear in the top 7 of each of those stats was Bobby Veach, though I don't know that his season was that impressive, exactly? The White Sox really didn't put anyone among the league batting leaders in anything, other than Eddie Collins finishing 2nd in WAR (which, again, is influenced by fielding such that being pretty good at an important position will make up for being a terrible hitter, not that Eddie Collins is a terrible hitter).  The real eye-popping performance was Edd Roush finishing 5th in batting, and 1st in slugging thanks to a near-record 34 triples. He'll get some MVP votes, though I suspect it'll be Cobb or Joe Jackson who wins it.

The pitching leaders also didn't have terribly many White Sox players, instead being dominated by the Red Sox. Dutch Leonard led the league in ERA and pitching WAR, and was tied for 3rd with 24 wins (Cicotte and Walter Johnson tied for 1st with 25). Babe Ruth led the league in innings pitched with 354.1. Rube Evans of Newark finished 2nd in the league in quality starts, one of a few players who had a short and/or poorly-documented minor league career but a really good Alt-1916. 

The National League batting leader, Zach Wheat, was way off of the pace the AL leaders set. On the other hand, Cy Williams nearly doubled the HR total of Pipp and Gavvy Cravath was only one behind at 19. Casey Stengel, of all people, finished 3rd in HR with 11. Maranville led the league in WAR much the way Peckinpaugh led the AL (but moreso). 

The NL pitching leaders were dominated by Reds and Blues, with Cincinnati placing 2 players in the top 7 in ERA (including Bunny Hearn on top) and Buffalo putting 3 in the top 7. But it was Hippo Vaughn who led in pitching WAR and strikeouts. 

While the pennant winners didn't place many individuals on the leader boards, they did rather well as teams: Chicago led the AL in OPS and SLG and finished 2nd in runs (behind Detroit) and finished 2nd in ERA and runs against (behind Boston in both), while the Rustlers finished 2nd in runs scored (behind the Cubs) while staying middle of the pack (4th) in most pitching categories and finishing 1st or 2nd in most fielding categories.

For comparison and completeness, the Yankees were middle of the pack in hitting and pitching, and were maybe a little bit better than average in fielding. 

The biggest North American cities without MLB: 1920/1930

 

I'm mostly putting this here as a resource for myself. 

Compiling the 1920 US Census, 1921 Canadian Census, Mexican data from 1921, the 1919 Cuban Census, and the 1920 Santo Domingo Census, the largest cities without MLB and their populations circa 1920 were:

1. Baltimore (733k)
2. Montreal (619k)
3. Mexico City (615k)
4. Los Angeles (577k)
5. Toronto (522k)
6. Buffalo (507k)
7. San Francisco (507k)
8. Milwaukee (457k)
9. Newark (415k)
10. New Orleans (387k)
11. Minneapolis (381k)
12. Havana (364k)
13. Kansas City (324k)
14. Seattle (315k)
15. Indianapolis (314k)

In Alt-1915 (Alt-1916 by now), four of these cities do have MLB: #1 Baltimore, #6 Buffalo, #9 Newark, and #13 Kansas City.  Some of the remaining cities are non-starters for teams before the 1940s for various reasons (I'm considering a post about the pros and cons of expansion to various cities).

I don't imagine expansion before the mid 20's, though. Here are the same numbers for c. 1930, with the Alt-1915 teams removed:

1. Los Angeles (1.2M)
2. Mexico City (1.0M)
3. Montreal (819k)
4. Havana (728k)
5. San Francisco (634k)
6. Toronto (631k)
7. Milwaukee (578k)
8. Minneapolis (464k)
9. New Orleans (458k)
10. Seattle (365k)
11. Indianapolis (364k)
12. Rochester NY (328k)
13. Louisville (307k)
14. Portland OR (302k)

So, again, some of these teams are non-starters but I'm including them for completeness. Houston isn't too far below Portland but doesn't necessarily offer much advantage. 

Let's see if I can figure out transit times for some of these cities for the next relevant post. I think Minneapolis-St. Paul (St. Paul adds another 235k to the 1920 Minneapolis number and 272k to the 1930 number) may be somewhat further from other cities than I'd thought, though I still think it's much closer than New Orleans would be. 

Alt-1916: A quick thought about team names

 

I was thinking about this last night, so figure I'll put it here so I don't forget and/or so I get it out of my system.  

Established teams don't change their names often nowadays. The name change we're anticipating for Cleveland will be the first since the Colt .45s became the Astros over 50 years ago, and before that they'd happen every decade or so since the 20's. 1916 was near the end of a period of pretty frequent name changes, though, even if many of them were from one informal name to another one that ended up becoming formalized. So, if I were to change any team names, this would be a reasonably historical time for me to do so. The reason this might be of more than trivial interest is because of uniforms and caps, which is part of the fun (for me, anyhow). 

In real 1916, only one team didn't have their current name: The Brooklyn Robins. I don't see any particular reason to diverge from their historical path, where they adopted the Dodgers name in the 30's. On the other hand, they were already occasionally known as the Dodgers informally anyhow. 

The four Federal League teams are mixed group. The Buffalo Blues is a fine name, and I don't see any reason to change it. I prefer it to the historical "Bisons" name that the AAA team used, for what that's worth. The Kansas City AAA team was historically called the Blues, so uniforms exist with that name. Relatedly, I think I'll also keep the Kansas City Packers name--there have been various minor league teams called the Packers, and of course there's the NFL team so it's not a completely random name. If I decide to move away from the Packers name, Kansas City could become the Monarchs but I'd like to reserve the Royals for Montreal. I think Baltimore is another straightforward case--they'll become the Orioles before too long. That's the traditional Baltimore team name over the centuries, they can start using the historical Orioles jerseys/caps, the Terrapins name hasn't been used by other teams, and would only have been in use here for 3-4 years. Newark is a bit trickier--if I knew they'd be staying in Newark I'd have their name change to the Bears, a traditional Newark AAA team name and one that's not otherwise taken. The Eagles could also work. So, we'll see how it looks in the mid-20's and whether it makes more sense for Newark to move or change their name or what.

That leaves the Boston Rustlers and Cleveland Spiders. In both cases, the real uniforms only had a city name or a plain pattern for years--Cleveland doesn't get to be a problem until the late 20's and not really unworkable until the mid-40's.  Boston is workable from 1920-1926 and then 1936-1944, and changed their uniforms often enough that I can probably bridge various gaps. The Spiders is a great name, but there's no minor league team uniforms I can find for it. I can plausibly get something online or ask folks to make them for me, though? Boston became the Bees for a few years in the 30's, but never put that name on their uniforms. So, they could remain the Rustlers through that period. Or maybe they'll have changed their name to some other thing. If they go through a serious dynasty as the Rustlers, though, it may be hard to imagine them changing their name even if they relocate... So that might be another homebrew/request for the modders. 

Alt-1916 Season Recap, Before Looking at the Stats

 

The "Alternative-1916" regular season finished this morning with a meaningless game between Buffalo and St. Louis to determine who would finish in 6th place in the NL. The defending champion Boston Rustlers are looking for their unprecedented third consecutive World Series win, with the Chicago White Sox looking to avenge last year's loss. But I'm here to talk about the Yankees.

I managed basically* every inning of every Yankees game this season, and of course I made most decisions. I let the AI handle finances and eventually let it handle the transactions. It started out handling promotions/demotions before I took that over. I have a good sense of how the individual stats worked out, and of course an excellent sense of the overall narrative, but only an iffy sense of the team stats. 

Overall, this was a disappointing season for the Yankees. There was definitely a learning curve about all sorts of things though, so hopefully if nothing else I'm setting myself up to handle things better. But at the start of the season, coming off 90+ wins and 3rd place, I was not expecting to have the Yankees in 7th and consider myself lucky to finish at 82-80.  I'll try and give my impressions before looking at the stats in more detail to see if those impressions are correct...

Season Narrative: Started well enough, and things really went south a few months in before the team rallied a bit and then played terribly in August. We lost way, way too many games to bad teams. We'd have stretches of 12 games against the teams in 8th, 9th, and 10th, and win 5 of them. We got beaten 19-0 by a terrible Kansas City team that lost 20 games in a row to other teams immediately after wiping us out. We got hit by a spate of injuries and found ourselves 4 games below .500 in early September before recovering and finishing as well as we did. As an aside, in this universe we'd clearly be in a footnote about how the race for the batting title ended--Wally Schang of the A's had a several-point lead over Ty Cobb going into the final series but we kept Schang to 1 for 10 while Cobb went 7 for 10 in his last three games to handily take the title. 

Position Players: I feel like the position players, at least in terms of batting, mostly did ok to better than ok. Pipp had a great year, leading the league in home runs and batting about .300, and will probably get some MVP votes. Heilmann really blossomed and would have had a great chance to lead the league in hits if not for his late-season injury.  Oscar Charleston got eased into things via some pinch hitting and then occasional starts, but had taken over regular left field duties before too long. Baker had a nice bounceback year and was up at .320 before cooling off and ending up at .290 or so when injury ended his year. Frank Gilhooley did much better than I was expecting in center field, the catchers did fine (especially Nunamaker) and threw out a ton of baserunners, and Birdie Cree was a great 10th man. Baumann was ok. Peckinpaugh somehow lead the team in WAR despite batting about 20-30 points below what I was expecting. Elmer Miller did fine, and it's no dishonor to have lost your starting job to someone often considered one of the best 5-10 baseball players of all time. 

Pitchers: This was the real problem, I think. Plank came down to Earth in a serious fashion--he was in the running for the Cy Young Award in 1915 but I can only assume that being on the wrong side of 40 led to his steep decline. We picked up Chief Bender, but after a reasonably good start he hit a rough patch he never got out of. Ray Fisher was awful. Caldwell was hurt all year. Alan Russell was the one bright spot, winning 23 games. He'll clearly get some Rookie of the Year votes. We picked up Babe Adams and Pat Ragan from Brooklyn for Fritz Maisel (who was having a terrible year and not starting), and while Adams did all right Ragan was up and down and found himself in the bullpen. Bender and Fisher ended up in the reserves. Mogridge was all right until our awful August, part of an overall relief pitching problem we had--I don't know how many games we lost in the 8th and 9th, and how many of those were 3+ run leads, but it seemed like an awful lot. I made the big changes just as we were turning things around (not sure whether there's cause and effect or not), I figured the cake was basically baked and I might as well see if Dazzy Vance was ready to join the staff or not. Vance did all right, mostly in relief but with one start in the season's penultimate game. 

Defense:  Maddeningly bad. I think we actually were middle of the pack with defense, but it felt like we made 2 errors per game more often than zero, and they were always at the worst possible times. I recognize this is confirmation bias, but we had a 7 error game. Eddie Plank wasn't good, but I feel like he was always down 5-0 or 6-2 because the team had given up 3-4 unearned runs. Harry Heilmann was an absolute butcher in right field, as mentioned above.  The bright spot was that we threw out a ton of people trying to steal second. I'm giving myself partial credit since a great many of them were on pitchouts that I called. 

Injuries: Compared to 1915, 1916 was mostly injury free other than losing Caldwell's season early on until the wheels suddenly came off near the end of August. Baumann was hurt, which meant Cree now was pressed into being a starter. Then, Baker was hurt, which meant Boone had to play 3rd base every day. Then, Heilmann was hurt, so Miller got a starting job again in right field. Then Miller got hurt and Cree moved to the outfield. At that point, Allie Watt was the starting 2nd baseman at 16 years old. Watt's first start, though, was at 3rd base when Peckinpaugh was too tired to play and Boone, our only other shortstop, moved over and we had nobody who could play 3rd base. So Watt's first career major league start, at 16 years old, was at a position he had never played before. Amazingly, this was after the team had started to turn things around in terms of winning.

Meta Issues: As I've mentioned here before, the butterflies have already started to flap. In real life, every AL pennant of the 1910s went to the A's (1910-11, 1913-1914), the Red Sox (1912, 1915-1916, 1918), or the White Sox (1917, 1919). The White Sox seem to have shown up early in this simulation, perhaps in part because the A's didn't fully tear down--the 1916 A's were one of the worst teams in real-life history, but they finished with 90 wins in 3rd place in Alt-1916. With some of the players that fueled Boston in 1915-1916 still with Philadelphia, the White Sox' window opened early (maybe?) and the Red Sox' late-decade window may not open at all.   There's no particular reason to think that that's going to change, and some of the pitchers who I would have liked to have on my staff went elsewhere because I didn't understand the draft or the way that player development was going to work (maybe I still don't). We've got excellent pieces for a great team (especially as we get toward 1920) but I can't imagine we're going to get Babe Ruth. 

Plans for 1917: I should probably delay details until I've looked at the stats. I've signed Cannonball Dick Redding as a free agent, we'll see if he can help. Vance will help. But I missed out on Shocker, Hoyt, and Pennock in last year's draft. On the other hand, it turns out I had Bill Terry in my reserves as a pitcher. I'm going to see if he can play second base, otherwise he'll be heir apparent to Pipp in the early 20s or maybe I'll have an outfield of Heilmann, Charleston, and Terry...

*The reason it's only "basically" is because during a particularly frustrating game in a particularly frustrating stretch I simmed out the last 3 innings of a game rather than play through it. My headcanon is that I got myself ejected. 

Alt-1916: A quick post about the NL

 It'll be a quick post because I honestly haven't been paying terribly close attention to the Senior Circuit. The Boston Rustlers, winners of the 1914 and 1915 World Series in this timeline, have been in the driver's seat during the 1916 season thus far as well.  Brooklyn, the pennant winner in real life, had a short stint atop the league, but Boston was never far behind and when Brooklyn had a mediocre June they were able to step back up to the top. 

The NL batting leaders are, honestly, mostly people I'd never heard of other than HR leader Gavvy Cravath. Max Flack of the Giants leads the league in batting at .333 and real-life leader Jake Daubart is nowhere to be seen on the leader boards. A presumably-clean Hal Chase on the Buffalo Blues is in the hunt for various awards and leads the league in hits.  Rabbit Maranville leads in WAR via whatever formula it is that seems to make anyone who can play shortstop well into a WAR leader. 

Pitching-wise, it's more familiar faces like Pete Alexander and Tom Hughes leading the league in important categories. 

Taking a step back and looking at the former Federal League teams, the Newark Peppers are hanging around in 7th place and only a few games below .500 thanks to a recent 4-game winning streak. The Packers with their 22-game losing streak are deep in last. This is a bit of a reversal of fortune compared to 1915 for these teams. Similarly, Buffalo is playing...not well, but well enough to be a long-ish winning streak from .500 while Baltimore is pretty firmly in last place. And also similarly, this is a reversal from last year, though Buffalo escaped the cellar. 

Alt-1916: Status at the "All-Star Break"

Since last time, I've plowed forward with running the 1916 season.  I've gotten to the July break where the All-Star Game would go if there were to be one, though of course there isn't. So it's a bit more than halfway through the season. Last season's pennant winners, the White Sox and Rustlers, are in good shape to repeat (in the Rustlers' case, it'd be three in a row). The Yankees have had a very streaky season, and to my dismay the streaks haven't made any sense--we had a rotten April (11-14), a great May (18-11), and a mediocre June (14-12).  The Yankees have a winning record against every team in the league except Chicago (3-10) and the 9th-place St. Louis Browns (4-8), and they've lost 6 in a row against the Browns. Indeed, if the Yankees were 8-4 against St. Louis instead of 4-8 they'd be hot on the heels of the White Sox.

The Red Sox have overcome a slow start and are now sitting in 2nd place, a few games ahead of the scrum that the Yankees are currently leading. The Philadelphia Athletics had a torrid start and were 35-19 at the end of May, though they've gone 12-24 since then. Since the 1916 A's were historically bad the more recent performance is more what I was expecting, though the fact Mack's dismantling of the team was interrupted in this timeline is clearly one of the major points of departure--a lot of players who ended up fueling the Red Sox pennants in 1916 and 1918 may stay in Philadelphia. Looking further ahead, the presumed lack of a Black Sox scandal may keep the Chicago team strong into the 20s. Since the White Sox have already won a pennant ahead of schedule and are on track to win in 1916, they may dominate for a while...

At the other end of the American League is the Kansas City Packers.  They're on pace for a 108-loss season and endured a 4-24 June, which mostly included a jaw-dropping 22-game losing streak. This losing streak would have been the longest in the 20th century, and has only been exceeded in real life by the 1961 Philadelphia Phillies and a few 19th-century teams. 

Stats-wise I'll just put up a few images with the American League batting and pitching leaders, and then call it a post. Click on the images to see the whole thing rather than the crop that shows up otherwise.

Alt-1915: 1916 Spring Training is Underway!

 

First, some closure:  The 1972 Pirates defeated the 2001 Mariners in 5 games (or was it 6?). I started playing the quick-start for all-time players in each franchise, got about 45 games in and I think I'm quitting in dismay--the Yankees are 3 games under .500, can't beat the all-time Mariners or Angels, and the bullpen (which should be amazing) is absolutely a train wreck. I believe they "balanced" the teams so that random franchises might have a chance, but I'm again finding that setups like this just aren't passing the sniff test for me right now.

So, instead I'm just focusing on Alt-1915, which is now in March 1916. Even here, though, I've had to mess with some of the bells and whistles. I've turned off the player morale/team chemistry as simply too distracting for me when I'm still learning the GM side of things, and not terribly realistic. For instance, I signed Oscar Charleston as an 18-year-old in mid/late-September 1915. The season ended shortly thereafter, and we have not played a real game since.  Nevertheless, when I checked his morale it had bottomed out because...I'm not sure why. He didn't play the last week of the season as an 18-year-old? He didn't make the depth chart that didn't mean anything? Similarly-ish, Dazzy Vance got left off of the Yankees Spring Training roster by the AI (despite being a regular request from would-be trade partners) and his morale was awful. After reading that bad morale would potentially slow or stop player development I decided to turn it off rather than wreck two hall-of-fame careers for reasons I couldn't understand or control.  That also frees me up in a few other ways--I'd been carrying a replacement-level player most of 1915 because he was a "captain" personality and would keep the clubhouse happy. But he also clogged a roster spot. And a trade I made with Washington brought back someone who's "disruptive", which led to some concerns. With the morale system turned off, I'm not going to have to worry about either of those things. Maybe I'll turn it on eventually? Don't know.

In any case, as noted we're in Spring Training. I've decided to treat this as they did back in the day and do a "tour" so that I can use more of these ballparks. Of course, it's not quite right since I'm playing real MLB teams and they'd have to tour along with us, but that's OK.  I played the first several games in Havana at Almendares Park, then went up to Tampa. After a few more games there we'll set things in New Orleans, then Hot Springs, and finally make our way to Indianapolis and Louisville for the final week before the regular season starts.

Things are looking pretty good, and I'm tickled with the games being held in the stadia I made.  Here's a tweet with a link to a video made during one of the games:

So! In case you're curious to see what these things look like in action, here's a view of Almendares Park in Havana, hosting my 1916 Yankees vs. the Newark Peppers during spring training. pic.twitter.com/IYXoN1XQV8

— Andy Rivkin (@asrivkin) February 3, 2021

 

I'll try to do a preview of 1916, and tie up any loose ends for 1915 that may still be around...