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?

Cloverland Leagues: AL Central

On we go to the AL Central. It's a bit of a funny grouping.

1982 Milwaukee Brewers: Harvey's Wallbangers! They won 95 games in real life, close to their Pythagorean projection of 96. The 1978-1983 period was really the only period of sustained success in franchise history. A couple of more recent teams (2011 and 2018) won 96 games, but had worse predicted records. Besides, when push comes to shove, how do you not go with these guys?




1984 Detroit Tigers: I wasn't quite old enough to be a baseball fan when the Big Red Machine was active, so this was the first team I remember that was touted as one of the all-time greats. And here it is. They outplayed their Pythagorean record by a few games, but are still pretty handily the best Tigers team of the past 50 years (but not the past 52). 



1994 Chicago White Sox: A strike victim, they were on a 96-win pace (with a 98-win Pythagorean projection) but of course got nothing. Frank Thomas had a monster year. I kind of feel like they're going to get killed in this league, but maybe not as badly as I feel like the Brewers will..



2019 Minnesota Twins: A 101-win team, and easily the best Pythagorean record of any Twins team since 1969, but damned if I could tell you anything about them (even though they're the most recent team in the league). The Yankees beat them in the playoffs, because of course the Yankees beat them in the playoffs. I suppose I'll learn more about them as the season goes on!

Cloverland Leagues: AL Northeast Division

So, I'm going to keep the Cloverland Leagues moniker, at least for now. As noted, I'm going to go through the teams and say a bit about each of them, starting with the AL's Northeast Division:

1998 New York Yankees:  Won 114 games during the regular season, which was an American League record to that point (the current record holder is in the AL West in this game), and went on to win the World Series. As a Yankees fan I'm rooting for them and will be managing them. At the time it was claimed that even though they were among the all-time greats they didn't have any Hall of Famers, but of course Jeter and Rivera proved that wrong.





2015 Toronto Blue Jays: Winners of only 93 games during the regular season, they scored and prevented runs at a clip that "should" have won them 101 games (i.e. their "Pythagorean record"). That's the best in Blue Jays history, and that's the metric we're using, so here they are. They also were involved in perhaps the single craziest inning I have ever seen in my 40+ years of baseball fandom. Josh Donaldson, Edwin Encarnacion, and Jose Bautista lead the hitters, and David Price makes his first appearance among the pitchers.  We'll see if they can keep out of 4th in this division.



2017 Cleveland Blues: I noted the name change in the last post. This team won 102 games in the regular season, but had an even better Pythagorean record (predicting 107.5 wins). This is another Edwin Encarnacion team--even given the sort-of compressed timeframe of this league I'm surprised at how many people show up on multiple "best-of" teams. Perhaps I'm used to the long tenures of the best recent Yankees? Or not acclimated to the late summer shuffle of good players from contending teams to non-contending ones?



2018 Boston Red Sox: Another recent team. This one is considered by a lot of folks to be not only the best Red Sox team of the last ~50 years, but the best of all time. In the old APBA game I used the 1912 Red Sox, it would be interesting to play them against one another (though perhaps hard to have a single group of game settings that could fairly apply to them both).  David Price makes his main appearance here, though I think he shows up on yet one other team. Mookie Betts was the superstar, of course...

Next up, we'll go to the AL Central.

Social Distancing and New (Baseball) Beginnings

Well!  It's been quite some time since I've updated this blog, and what a decade the teens were, eh? Whoo. I never got terribly far with the last league--I didn't have time to really learn a new game and make it do what I wanted, so I used a quickstart that was available rather than trying to replicate the kind of leagues that I wrote about earlier in this blog's history.  Eventually that petered out, though I don't remember whether it was work and travel ramping up or if other things just took up my free time.

With the COVID-19 pandemic currently underway and affecting sports around the world, including the start (and perhaps the entirety) of the Major League Baseball season, I thought I'd give this another go. Technology has advanced, and while my free time is structured very differently than it was when I was last successful at running a league like this, I'm game to give it a go.

I'm using Out of the Park Baseball, the newly-released version 21. Rather than try to continue with what I was doing before, I'm basically rebooting. I'm using the best edition of each current team in the DH era, as determined by Pythagorean record (rather than real record). This is mostly for ease and so I don't have to deal with what's "fair" when the 1927 Yankees play the 1995 Indians (for instance). It turns out both the Astros and the Brewers have had their best seasons while in the AL, so the AL has 16 teams and the NL would have 14. To bring the NL up to a more aesthetic (to me) 16 teams, I've added the 1994 Expos (the Expos' move is the only relocation of the era) and a more fantastical choice, pretending that the Marlins moved to Charlotte in ~2006 or so and adding a "Charlotte Knights" team that's really the 2008 Marlins in different uniforms. They won't be competitive for the title or anything, so it shouldn't throw things off very much (I'm using a balanced schedule). It also seems like it'll be an interesting (perhaps only to me) experiment of how a not-great-but-decent team does when facing all-timers every day.

I did two other things of some (though perhaps little) note: I broke the DH-era rule for the Pirates and included the 1972 team. They're a bit better than any other Pirates team in the DH era, it's only off by a year, and that way Roberto Clemente can be included. Finally (I think), I rebranded the Cleveland team to be the Blues, one of the original names for the AL franchise. I figured since I objected to their current name (a feeling which has evolved over the decade this blog has been on hiatus) and I could do something about it, I would.

The next few posts will talk about the teams in each league. I certainly plan to have the time until that post be much less than the time taken from the previous test to this one. 

Game On?

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

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

Northeast Corridor

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

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

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

Multiple crashes later...

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

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

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

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

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

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

On the Backstretch

Well, maybe that's not quite accurate. But a bit more than 90 games are done in the Orioles League, with about 60 to go. The current standings:

Team W L GB
1979 52 34 -
1969 53 38 3.5
1971 49 39 6
1997 49 40 6.5

with the other teams trailing further, all the way to the 1980 club, 21 games back. My 1966'ers have been very hot and cold, following up a 7 game win streak by losing 9 of 10 (and counting!)...
Various Boog Powells and Frank Robinsons are leading the league in the important categories. The big shock (for me) is the 1970 team languishing below .500 and probably out of the running.

As far as the Red Sox Play-in League, the top four teams will make it to the next stage. At this point, those four teams look to be the 2003, 1999, 1949, and 1972 clubs. 1977 and 1995 aren't far behind, though. 1972 was not a particularly distinguished year for the Sox (2nd place, a half-game back in a strike-shortened year in circumstances that, frankly, I don't understand), and I might expect them to drop out of the running.

Red Sox Play-In, and Orioles Update

First! Started the Red Sox Play-In league. I've already forgotten whether I was going to take 2 or 4 teams, but that's an issue for a later date. The teams, as noted elsewhere, include the near-misses of the pre-Wild Card era (1948, 1949, 1972, 1977, 1978), most of the teams that made the playoffs but not the pennant (1988, 1990, 1995, 1999, 2003, 2005, 2008, 2009), and the only other team that finished over .600 and in 2nd place (1942). 10% of the way through, and the 1999 and 1949 teams are tied at the top.

Second! The Orioles League crept forward. The 1979'ers have a 1 game lead over the 1971 team, with 1997 and 1969 a half-game further back. The season's roughly half over.

Third! Rethinking the Rockies. The 2009 team was a good one, almost certainly at the same level as the 2007 team currently slated for inclusion. So, I'm thinking I'll run them against each other.

Where were we?

Let's see. Now that I'm probably done recording music for a little while, and crazy summer travel has slackened, and the Yankees have finished off the real season in style :) , it may be time to reconnect with stuff here. Having lost the Orioles season to the crash was something of a bummer, though, and has clearly sapped my enthusiasm for actually playing that season and managing a team. I'm now leaning toward just letting the computer finish it and moving on. In theory, I was also thinking of playing a Red Sox season and managing a team. We'll see how that goes.