Alt-1924 Season Preview

The game calendar sits at Saturday April 5th, 1924. The regular season begins on Monday, 7 April. I've had a bit of a tradition of having teams play one of their minor-league affiliates (or a nearby team if the affiliates are too far) on the Saturday before the regular season starts, and so the Maple Leafs will host the Yankees as soon as this post is finished. I've put these games on the calendar as exhibition games before, and they have drawn terribly low attendance. That doesn't actually matter, but trying to keep a somewhat in-game character it's not clear why teams would keep doing this if the attendance is so low. This year I'm bookkeeping them as Spring Training games, we'll see if the attendance is more like what those games typically get. If only ~300 folks show up in Toronto again rather than 3000 I might revisit this and let the whole thing go. 

But this is all a sidelight to the main business of looking ahead to this season. The Yankees sputtered their way through Spring Training, as seems to be an annual experience. At least a few of the offensive stars are just fine--Heilmann and Williams tore it up with OPS > 1.000, and Cobb and Goslin weren't too far behind. Charleston and Santop were dreadful, though, and Charleston in particular is worrisome. His batting ratings have tanked (though his defensive ones are through the roof) just as he should be making history. Algorithm-wise, the game considers his real-life team to have been at AA level so maybe it's docking him for that?  Still, he hit .393 with an OPS near 1.200 so you think he'd get some credit for that. In-universe, it could be seen as him still trying to get over the broken hand he suffered in 1923. In any case, it's cause for concern. Arlett may also be turning into a pumpkin.  The pitchers were basically fine, though it felt like the games were a repeated scenario of most pitchers doing well and then someone giving up 3-4 runs in an inning (and the Yankees losing 5-2 or something like that). Fitzsimmons really pushed (as the kids say) and earned a spot in the bigs. Luque got hurt and I put him on the IL, where he's stay until mid-April. It's mostly a way to buy time, though, because I have some roster decisions to make about two players who've been with me since I started playing. 

The first is Frank Baker, who was the first splashy acquisition of my tenure (and also the very first one of any kind). In real life he retired at the end of 1922, and he arguably should have done so in this game, too--he would have gone out on a championship team in a year where he was clearly declining but still the starting third baseman, and it would have looked (in-universe) like he was going out on his own terms. Instead, he hung around and lost his starting job, and then the Giants beat them in the series (though Baker played decently in limited appearances).  His spring was pretty bad (though hopefully he had a nice 38th birthday), and he batted under .200. His fielding has deteriorated to the point that the game thinks he should be a catcher now, and he got hurt with a (mild) back injury with about a week to go in ST.  Needless to say, we don't need him as our 4th-string catcher and there's no way demoting him makes sense vs. releasing him.  So, I think with all of that I'm just going to have him retire after the first home game. That seems reasonably in-keeping with a storyline of him seeing the writing on the wall and the team wanting to have a Frank Baker Day, and is also consistent with how Birdie Cree went out. 

The second is Ray Caldwell, and he's a much stickier problem. His arrival on the Yankees predates me, and he's been a steady member of the pitching staff since 1911. He won 20 games for our 1918 pennant winners, but has been down at the 30 IP per year level for the last few years. He's still passable, but I'd just as soon give those 30 IP to someone else who's better than passable (and who might end up earning more than 30 IP).  He also refused to be demoted (not a surprise I guess), so we're at a bit of a fork in the road. I could have him retire as well as Baker, but while he was out of MLB after 1921 in real life, he kept playing at lower and lower levels until age 45 in 1933. So, I feel like I should maybe see if I can shop him around and release him if nobody offers anyone useful. It'd be a tough way to end his tenure (and the fans won't be happy), but that's the way the cookie crumbles.

As for the team itself, despite the uninspiring spring, there's not a lot for Yankee haters to hang their hats on. The Yankees should be able to withstand off-years from a few regulars, given who's on the bench and who's down in Toronto. We still have the top farm system, and a few ranks of reinforcements there. The Yankees had such a big lead over KC, Cleveland, and the A's last season that even if that gap was halved we'd cruise to a comfortable pennant. Babe Ruth looks to be back in form based on his Spring Training, but the Red Sox were a last-place team in 1923 and the Babe alone won't be able to solve all their problems.  But, as they say, this is why they play the games...

A Watsonian Post with Doylist Footnotes

 

As we hurtle toward the end of February 1924 and toward the start of spring training, it's time for a quick look ahead at the season to come and our coverage here. 

Baseball has already been meaningfully played this in 1924, as the newly-expanded Caribbean League championship was decided in two early-January games in Tampa. The Smokers got off to a fast start in the Northern Division, and though the Pilots caught them with a week or so to go, Pensacola tumbled while Tampa took care of business. The Southern Division once again was won by a Havana team, though this year it was the Leones who unseated Almendares. The newcomers of Violette AC will need to wait their turn for glory, in line with the Stars and the long-suffering Tigres del Licey.

There will be yet more newcomers in 1924 in addition to Haiti's Violette EC and their Carribean League Southern Division counterpart St. Petersburg Saints: The Cotton States League joins the MLB system, though it is not clear if or how they might join the Eastern Classic competition between the American Association and Eastern League.  Nevertheless, this brings the number of teams at the A level to 22, which is a likely harbinger of affiliating the teams in A-class leagues with MLB teams¹ and also looking ahead to the anticipated expansion of the AL and NL about 3-4 years hence.  The Cotton States League serves to proudly plant the flag of the MLB system in two states where it was heretofore absent: South Carolina and Mississippi, and it adds Florida as well for those who consider the Caribbean League an aberration. With those additions, every state east of the Mississippi River has a team in the MLB, AAA, AA, or A levels. One can already travel the Victory Highway from New York to San Francisco and never stray far from baseball, with the Nevada portion the only state unable to offer high-quality games.

Beyond the wide Pacific, we will also be able to offer coverage of games and leagues thanks to the interests of far-off stringers. We will be able to give you results of "The Big Six" league, offering the finest baseball being played in Japan today. We have also agreed to provide coverage of the Manila Bay League as a tribute to the fine folks serving in our military and the military of our close Philippine allies who play in that league. Even though we don't imagine they'll ever play in the Polo Grounds or Comiskey Park², we're happy to include them. 

Remaining on the topic of ballparks, we can look forward to play in two new stadia in 1924: the new Buffalo Baseball Park, and Spiller Park in Atlanta, which replaces Ponce de Leon Park. These come on the heels of 1923's new parks for the Colonels, the Packers and the Yankees, and rumors of more ballparks on the horizon from Los Angeles to Dallas to Toronto.

We return to both 1924 and the Yankees presently, however. The Ruling House of the American League find themselves in a position similar to two years ago at this time, and perhaps five years ago as well--exceedingly well-positioned for yet another pennant but on the wrong end of a thrilling, 7-game World Series and thus unable to fully claim honors as 1923's Best Club.  In 1922, they responded by gutting out a win in one of the greatest pennant races we have ever seen, and went on to make Brooklyn a speed bump. In 1919, they fell back to second place as a resurgent Red Sox team took the pennant.   As winners of the AL by 28 games, one can hardly imagine a competitor challenging them for the league championship, but stranger things have happened, and they perhaps used up some of that margin by trading away popular infielder Dobie Moore for veteran pitcher Jose Mendez in an effort to shore up their bullpen³. But they remain stocked with talent and more likely to leave great players on the bench than be lacking them. How manager Rivkin will juggle Cobb, Williams, Faber, and Baker when Goslin, Arlett, Pennock, and Traynor are ready to play every day is yet to be seen. 

For now, though, that question sits on the other end of  Spring Training. So make sure you're tied in for what's sure to be a great season!

1. This is correct, I do intend to affilliate the teams either in 1925 or 1926, and ideally the expansion teams of 1927/1928 will just inherit the rosters of those teams (and then do whatever with them). 

2. They will never play in those parks, no. I've set those leagues to have fictional players and I'm not allowing fictional players to come to the MLB. In principle, they also shouldn't be on the A, AA, or AAA levels. 

3. OK, good guess by the writer, but wrong. I wouldn't pick up a 38-year-old reliever, but Tony Lazzeri was being offered, and I'm already trying to make sure as much as I can that the Yankees are competitive if not dominant in the late 20s/early-mid 30s.