Home Stretch, 1918

 

We're into the final month of the 1918 season. The Yankees hold a slim, 1-game lead over Boston, and have gone 33-21 since July 1st and picking up 4 games on Boston in the process.  The bad news is that it was a 3-game lead not very long ago. But in the sense that you'd rather be in first place by a game than second place by a game, it's all good.  Both teams are down some key players right now--Tris Speaker has another week until his return, and Larry Gardner may or may not come back before the season ends. Herb Pennock has been sitting at 18 wins since an injury took him out, and he still has two weeks left before healed. That unfortunately makes him unlikely to play in the big Yankees-Red Sox series coming up at the Polo Grounds in about 10 days--a series that may decide the pennant winner.

With 26 games to go, though, there's a series left with just about everyone. The Yankees finish up their games vs. the Packers in the upcoming series, and finish the season with 4 games against Philadelphia. The Red Sox finish against the 3rd-place Spiders. We'll see how it goes.

Over in the other league, the Cardinals are cruising toward their first-ever pennant. I'll talk more about them another time, I suppose!

All-Star Break, 1918

 

The National League took the All-Star Game, held at Allston Grounds this year, 1-0. The game was simultaneously a pitchers' duel and rather sloppy (3 errors per team, including one that led to the single run). The Yankees had five starters--all of the infielders (Pipp, Zimmerman, Peckinpaugh, and Baker) plus Charleston in CF. I think my voting had a bigger effect than I intended, so I may not vote in future elections. Or maybe I will, who knows?

The Yankees find themselves 2.5 games behind Boston at the break. On the one hand, this is great because Boston is still playing really well and the Yankees are more or less hanging with them.  On the other hand, the Red Sox have lost Babe Ruth and Larry Gardner for an extended period, and this kind of needs to be the period where the Yankees make a move if a move is to be made.  Unfortunately, they've been scuffling a bit, including against some not-great teams. So, in a sense, the break didn't come too soon. The NL has been a real scrum, with the Rustlers currently ahead of the Cardinals (I believe) by 0.5 games. The Phillies led for a while but have dropped back. The surprising Buffalo Blues are in 3rd place several games back. I'm not convinced this will be the final ordering of the teams.

Let's do a little bit of qualitative grading of the Yankees' first half.  As per my recent custom, I'm not going to call up the stats if only because it's a bit of a hassle to do while OOTP isn't running. 

Exceeded Expectations: The pitching, for sure. I never would have expected the Yankees to be leading the league in ERA, let alone leading it by a lot. I'm not even totally sure where this great performance is originating--Pennock is pitching great, but everyone else seems to be making me sweat every time.  And Reuther is out with a long injury again for the second year in a row.  Nevertheless, props to the pitching staff.  

Zimmerman has been a great acquisition for the team. He's been a great answer to the 2B problem that the Yankees have had since I've started playing--miles ahead of Baumann (who he drove into retirement) and Cree and, at least as of now, Dobie Moore. 

And Zimmerman has catalyzed a suddenly-great defense--every infielder is above average, and all but Pipp are substantially above average. Gilhooley and Heilmann are above average, with Heilmann substantially above average in RF. Of the everyday regulars, only Charleston is iffy in the field. 

Met Expectations: I'm going to put the offense here. Even with heightened expectations given last year, the main group have more or less come through (I should probably rest them more, though). I can't tell if there are fewer home runs this year or if it's statistics of small numbers, but while Pipp, Baker, and Charleston aren't dominating the leaderboards like they did last year, they're doing fine. Gilhooley is hanging in there (though new acquisition Cy Williams is biding his time and will likely ease Gilhooley into a 4th outfielder role before too long). Miller has 2 pinch-hit home runs already this year, which is bananas when Baker is leading the league in home runs with 5.  So, solid work there. And the team has more or less been beating the teams they're supposed to. They've dropped a few to Kansas City this year, but there are a lot of teams they're going 6-2 or 6-3 against, which is good.

Has Not Met Expectations: First I'll note that the one baffling thing about the hitting is that we aren't scoring runs like I think we should. Boston is #2 in most offensive categories, but has been consistently scoring more runs than the Yankees have. Now, I don't know if they're overachieving, or if I'm being too conservative in terms of taking extra bases or (gulp) stealing, but it's been a (small) blemish on the offense.

To point fingers at individuals, Pat Collins has really had a terrible, terrible year so far. It took him close to (more than?) 30 at-bats to get his first hit, and he never really improved. after (I think?) 80 or so at-bats of a .100 batting average, I started looking for other options. That led to signing Negro League star Louis Santop (and having Cristobal Torriente become a free agent), and Santop is doing fine. Collins sat on the reserves for a bit, and I'm hoping he'll turn it around.

I'll also point to Jesse Barnes, who I was expecting to be a lights-out closer or great starter. He hasn't really done either and now is also sitting in the reserves. This may be unfair to him, so I'll give him some slack.

Fingers crossed that the Yankees can make up the ground on the Red Sox and bring home their first pennant!

One-third through 1918

 

I feel like I'm flying through the season--I guess that's what happens when you play 3-4 games a day. The Yankees are 1/3 of the way through their schedule, with other teams within 1-2 games of that. Since the last post, the three AL leaders have cooled off a bit, with the 4th-place Browns almost having caught the 3rd-place Spiders. The Yankees are actually in 1st place, with a slim lead over Boston and Cleveland just a bit further back. The Yanks dropped the most recent series they played (against the Spiders), but obviously have been playing well before then. 

The Yankees have been getting it done on offense, but their pitching has also been surprisingly (to me) excellent, with a league-leading ERA. I'm not sure if it's smoke and mirrors, but Pennock and Caldwell in particular are pitching very well. What concerns me right now is injuries--Reuther, Barnes, and Thomas have all spent time on the IL, and Pennock had to pulled from a game due to injury (though he was back the next day). The hitters have continued as in 1917, with Zimmerman serving as a great addition. The infield defense has been great, and the Yankees are averaging more than a double play per game, which is an amazing contrast to 1916 and certainly is much less frustrating. 

The other recent news is the signing of Louis Santop. This was driven by Pat Collins just not hitting at all. He started something like 1-for-30, and after something like 50-60 at-bats still only had maybe 5 hits. I started getting concerned that it might affect his development, but the team only has 3 catchers in the entire organization. So I cast around and realized a few Negro Leaguers weren't in the simulation, so I added them. Santop is a catcher, who I made an offer to (and who signed), and I also added Cristobal Torriente, who's a monster hitter and who I also made an offer to. Torriente knows he's a monster hitter, though, and wants to be the best-paid player in the game. So he's had offers but is still unsigned...

Over in the NL, the Phillies seem to be settling into spending the most time in first place, with a few teams (mostly the Rustlers) giving chase. 

End of April 1918

All right, just a quick note here before work starts. So I'm again going to go without looking at the stats, though I think I have a decent sense of what they say? 

We've gotten to the end of April 1918, teams have played 25-27 games. At the moment, the AL is split into a trio of teams playing roughly .700 ball (the Spiders, Yankees, and Red Sox), a mass of teams within a game or two .500 (presumably they'll differentiate as the season wears on), and the awful, awful Packers. Just a few game days before the end of April they were playing .154 ball, about a 135-loss pace. They've picked it up just a touch since then, but are still playing jaw-droppingly badly. 

The Yankees have been fun to watch/manage so far this year. At this writing they've won 9 in a row and are firing on all cylinders. Wally Pipp just won Player of the Week, Herb Pennock has thrown a couple of shutouts, and the defense has been good. I don't know how much of this can be laid at the feet of Heinie Zimmerman (not the pitching, obviously), but having a great-fielding second baseman who also can hit .300 has certainly helped a lot. There's a lot of the season left to go, and as noted the Yankees aren't running away with anything, but they're playing as well as I could have hoped.

I keep saying I need to pay closer attention to the NL, and that is still true. That league is much more bunched, with the Cardinals at the top at the moment just ahead of the Rustlers, Giants, among others. While the early going in the AL looks like it's setting up for a 3-team race, the NL looks like a total free-for-all. 

Depending on how the season plays out for the Packers (and the other former Feds), I could see it having some repercussions for the worldbuilding around the next round of expansion, too, which I'm still imagining for 1927 or so, which would put it at something like...2025-2026 given my pace of play? I guess I have time to think about it. :) 

Thoughts from 1917 about a third major league

 

Here's another piece that I thought I'd stick here so I don't lose it.  I actually ran across it a while ago while working on making Omaha's Vinton Park. It's a piece from the Omaha Bee from...October 7th? 1917. At least I think that's right--there's no date on the top of the page, and the most recent articles on this page are dated October 6th.

In any case, there's a discussion about the way the war might affect the minor leagues in the coming 1918 season, which is of local interest since Omaha played in the Western League, and it wasn't clear if that league would survive and/or if the Omaha team would move up or down a level. 

What's of most interest to me here is that one of the drivers is what happens to the major leagues. There was some amount of intrigue going on with the American League in general at this point, which isn't mentioned in the article, but they claim in the article that Ban Johnson (president of the American League) thinks a third major league was on the way. The further claim, though not ascribed to Johnson, is that such a league would have teams in Providence, Baltimore, Toronto, Buffalo, Newark, Columbus, Indianapolis, and Louisville. I've already got c. 1917 parks made for many of these cities, and Providence and Toronto were next on my list. So, I suppose I should hit Columbus after that... 

A few more thoughts about a few more team names

 

I figure I'll put this here so I don't forget about it.

I've changed the name of the Baltimore Terrapins to the Orioles (and even added a news story to the league news feed for it!), which has me thinking of other teams. I did run through this once before, including the possibility of renaming the Packers to be the Monarchs, which I'm now leaning more toward.  Perhaps at the time when the real Monarchs were formed in 1920?

I'm also still kicking around what to actually do with the Rustlers, driven for better or worse with what the team uniform situation is. In real life the team used neutral city name and/or "B" on their jerseys in 1915, then 1921-1924 before spending a few years with B on the home jerseys and "Braves" on the road ones. They then went back to full Boston/B from 1936-1944. At the pace I'm going it'll be a while before I need to worry about that, I suppose, but I have been thinking about alternate team names--there is potential for the Bruins, actually, since the founder of the NHL team owned the Braves a few years after founding the Bruins. Bears would be more obvious, except I'm saving that for Newark in case they stay. Bulldogs would be possible, but at another point the owner was the Harvard baseball and football coach, and he might not want the Yale mascot to be the name of the team. I'm also kicking around Shamrocks. But as 3-time World Series winners under the Rustlers name, they may not be changing it any time soon.

One other thing that I'll add here as an update--they could go with the Boston Rabbits as an homage to Rabbit Maranville, their very popular perennial All-Star and MVP candidate, who was the sparkplug of those three-time champions. It'd be consistent with some general practice at the time, even if it might just end up kicking the can down a bit (and I'd need to commission someone to make appropriate uniforms)...

1918: Halfway through Spring Training

 I thought I'd post a bit of an update. Spring Training got off to a little bit of a slow start due to ballpark making (as usual). San Diego continues to be the most glaring omissions from these tours since there's no suitable ballpark, which was also true in real life. They used City/Balboa Stadium for barnstorming tours, which suffers from very short foul lines. So, I'm going to keep putting off visits to San Diego.  I did build Maier Stadium in Vernon, and learned about the bizarre history of that location, though, and brought the Spring Training Tour through there. I also built parks in Dallas and Charlotte, and will have the Yankees end Spring Training in New Haven, another new one.

The Yankees started ST well, but have been scuffling of late. I'm hoping it's because I'm going with a very extended rotation so some pitchers are only now getting a second start after 18 games or so, and the pitchers are still rusty. The offense has also been a bit streaky, which of course has been a bit of a long-term issue anyhow. While the Yankees are at 10-8 along with a lot of other teams, the Red Sox are something like 14-4, which is somewhat ominous. Babe Ruth has been on fire this spring, perhaps presaging a monster season (also ominous). 

A data-free look back and ahead for the alt-Yankees

 

First, congratulations to the 1917 World Champion Philadelphia Phillies. They handled the Red Sox in 5 games, without too much trouble. Dutch Leonard was awful in two starts for Boston, to the extent that if it were real life there might be some whispers about whether he threw the games. But no such worries here.

Following the World Series I took the Yankees on a barnstorming tour along with the Pirates. I decided that it would culminate in a 3-game tournament in Hawaii to decide MLB's bronze medal (so to speak). I also scheduled 1-day tournaments to determine city/state championships for Ohio, Baltimore-DC, St. Louis, and Chicago. I only realized after 2 games' worth of the 3-game tourney that these games were counting in the regular season stats. I don't think there's any real problem, just a weird quirk that I'll need to handle differently.

Meanwhile, it was a very tough couple of weeks for the American League and no doubt this universe's Ban Johnson is stewing at home. Bad enough that the favored Red Sox lost easily, but every single city/state series also went to the NL, and after winning 2/3 of the games on the barnstorming tour and game 1 in Honolulu, the Yankees dropped both game 2 in Hilo and game 3 back in Honolulu to let the Pirates claim 3rd place. This also marks the 4th straight year that the NL has won the World Series. Maybe perceptions of the AL get skewed because of the Packers--certainly going 18-0 against them changes perceptions of the Yankees. 

Which may be a good segue into a "what went wrong/what went right/what happens next?" discussion.

Outside the 18-0 record, the Yankees weren't particularly dominant against anyone.  I do think they mostly had winning records (I'm not going to look--the title says "data-free") but they were 10-8 or so. So, as an estimate let's say they were 10-11 games over .500 in 144 games. That's...77-67 or so? An 87-win pace? Not bad, but nothing to write home about. So, it's good they got the job done against the worst team (and part of the reason KC was the worst team was that they were 0-18 against the Yankees), but they definitely will need to step it up against everyone else.

Offensively, basically everything went right. The core of the Yankees lineup (Peckinpaugh, Baker, Charleston, Pipp, Heilmann) was basically healthy all year long. Heilmann was a mild disappointment at the bat, but Peckinpaugh hit about 30 points higher than I could have hoped for. Gilhooley was right around .300, and Baumann and Nunamaker were adequate or better. The Yanks were the top offensive team, and if they weren't that much better than Boston, it's hard to separate from the pack when the pack has prime Tris Speaker and a blooming Babe Ruth. Nevertheless, we can hope for Heilmann (and Charleston for that matter) to continue to develop and for the others to stay at their pace. We've also significantly upgraded 2B by trading for Heine Zimmerman. We sent the Cubs 4 players, but none of them are brand names and I don't think any of them had any realistic shot at making the Yankees lineup--Lou Guisto is maybe our 4th or 5th-best option at 1B after Pipp, Heilmann, Terry, and possibly Moore or even O'Doul at this point. So, with a recent All-Star at 2B, we can hope to give the offense just a bit more of a boost and/or hedge against regression.

Pitching was middle of the pack, and is the most obvious place to improve. This is also something I'm not sure I see a great path to improve. There's not a bunch of great pitching in the draft this year (or IRL MLB players at all), so at the moment I'm looking at the same gang as this year but hoping for a full year of Ruether and Barnes plus some improvement from Vance and a bit more consistency from Redding and the others. Vance is back down in Pensacola again this winter so hopefully he'll come along. I don't particularly want a short bench, but since Redding and Caldwell are great hitters I could use them as pinch hitters (or even in the field?) and have a couple more pitchers around. On the other hand, if I don't have great pitchers it's not clear if that will help. 

Looking a few years out, I think the team is set up to be excellent in the early/mid-20s. On the other hand, there's no reason to think I'll have any of the top historical 1920s Yankees--Ruth, Hoyt and Meusel are already on other teams, and I have a sneaking suspicion Gehrig will go first in that year's draft and go to someone other than me... On the other other hand, it's not clear that Gehrig would even have a place to play with all those first basemen I already mentioned...

OK, this has gotten long enough. Let's see how Pensacola does and how 1918 (free from war!) starts.

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.