Alt-1925: All-Star Break

 It's 13 July, (Alt-)1925. The All-Star Game will be tomorrow, hosted by the reigning champions at Yankee Stadium. If there were Yankees doubters among any sportwriters or (anachronistic) hosts of wireless stations, they would presumably be silenced by now--after a 13-10 April the Yanks have gone 53-14, which is a 128-win pace. They are 1st or 2nd in basically every important batting or pitching category save extra base hits (4th), baserunning (8th), and home runs allowed (4th).  They lead the Kansas City Packers, themselves on a 107-win pace, by 6.5 games. 

There aren't as many Yankees on the batting leaderboards as you'd expect from that last paragraph. Eddie Collins is flirting with .400 and leads the AL in batting. Harry Heilmann is in 3rd, more about him in a bit. New acquisition Babe Ruth is only hitting about .300 but has a commanding lead in HR, SLG and RBI, along with a less commanding lead in runs scored and OPS.  The pinstripes are all over the pitching leaderboards, though--four Yankees are in the top 7 in ERA, three are in the top 7 in WHIP, and Luque and Pennock are leading or near the top of many other categories. 

The reason that there aren't more Yankees on the leaderboards has been the spate of injuries that has hit the team. Dazzy Vance had a pedestrian 5-4 record but was leading the league in strikeouts and K/9 before tearing an elbow tendon at the start of June. He'll be out for the year. Heilmann went down with a sore shoulder on June 24th, he's got another 3 weeks before he can return. Cobb missed 6 weeks and has of late been playing through a minor strain. Traynor missed most of May with a hip strain. Peckinpaugh missed 3 weeks. Others have had short or mild injuries.  So, this is where the Yankees' depth really comes to the fore--Cy Williams and Oscar Charleston filled in for Cobb and now for Heilmann, with Williams mashing the ball and Charleston much closer to his old form than he was in 1924.  Newt Allen and Tony Lazzeri ably filled in for Peckinpaugh and Traynor when they were both hurt, and since Traynor has been near replacement level this year they easily cleared a low bar. Vance's spot in the rotation has been itself in rotation--I went to a 5-man rotation this year after reading how it started to become dominant in 1925, but beyond Luque/Pennock/Fitzsimmons I've tried a few different folks. At the moment it's Rogan and Ruether, but they as well as Faber and Rixey have ERAs north of 5. Mendez, our ostensible closer, is also blowing a lot of saves, but he's been vulturing the wins.  Since the Yankees have been scoring 7 runs per game, even ERAs of 5 will be OK much of the time.

Over in the NL, the Cardinals are on a 113-win pace and have an even bigger lead over their closest competitors (10.5 over the Orioles). They might be dominating the NL even more than the Yankees are dominating the AL, sitting in 1st place in practically every pitching/defense category while still sitting 1st or 2nd in most of the batting ones. The Cards, who look to be en route to their 4th pennant in 8 years (and second in a row), probably deserve a more in-depth post at some point looking at how they were constructed--other than Hornsby, Hoyt, and Combs, the rest of their major players were acquired by trade. Their minor-league system is ranked 14th of 20 (the Yankees are 1st), and the only name I recognize in their system is Lyn Lary (though Hoyt and Combs are both pretty young, and even Hornsby is only 29).

As far as the individual stats in the NL, Torriente's season is mirroring Ruth's: average around .300 but running away with the HR and RBI races. Al Simmons is above .400, and I don't think anyone has ever hit .400 in consecutive seasons. But it's Rogers Hornsby who leads the league in WAR and who's as good an MVP candidate as anyone in that league right now.

OK, time to post this thing!

Alt-1925 At The Quarter Pole

 

I'm about 40 games in, and after a 1-4 start the Yankees have gone 26-9 and find themselves tied for first place with the Kansas City Packers. This is the case even though the Yanks have been hit with the injury bug--Ty Cobb only played 7 games before getting knocked out for a month, Santop spent two weeks on the IL, and nagging injuries have hit several other team members. Cobb's absence in particular exposed an awkward situation where the only people who could play CF competently (Arlett, Rogan, Charleston) weren't hitting particularly well and the only person who was hitting and could play CF at all (Cy Williams) was terrible out there. I've settled into a scheme where Williams starts the games and gets replaced in the 6th inning or so by Charleston, unless I need Charleston at 1B to spell Bill Terry (who also isn't hitting).  Traynor also got hurt, he'll have accrued about a month on the IL by the time he's back.

The early losses were also exacerbated by the bullpen, who was having one of their terrible stretches. Some of that is on me--I didn't realize right away that the new version of OOTP reset the defaults to require relievers to warm up, so I had a few games where I brought in relievers who were cold without realizing it. Happily, (most of) the starters have pitched very well, in particular Pennock and Luque. Terry, Lazzeri and Allen (called back up when Traynor got hurt) have been adequate but not great. Collins and Peckinpaugh have been lights out. Santop has been on fire. Ruth leads the league in home runs and RBI, but still feels a bit disappointing. Heilmann has also been performing up to what you'd reasonably expect, but he'd been living up to unreasonable expectations before. 

In the NL, the Giants got off to a crazy hot start, but cooled off considerably and the Cardinals are now holding down first place. The Maple Leafs are scuffling around .500, but the Pelicans are in first place and hoping to get their first-ever pennant. Lots yet to play, of course. 

One more thing to note--the draft pool was announced, and a whole lot of Negro League players who are already in the league were duplicated there. I think it's because of the change so that these players are now recognized as MLB players, but before then they only had Minor League IDs. I removed all the duplicates for players who hadn't retired, but before deleting them I copied their ratings over to the existing player profiles with the rationale that these shouldn't have the discounted ratings that they'd had before. So, OTL Negro League players basically all got boosted at some level. For the Yankees, that especially helped Charleston and Rogan in particular. 

I'll close here. I'm getting the vibe of those seasons where the Yankees take a little time to hit the right gear and then run away in the second half of the season.  There have already been a lot of injuries, though, and the bench is absolutely thinner than it might appear. So we'll see how it goes!

An immediate follow-up post about the Cuban and Dominican Leagues in Alt-1915

 

In the last post I discussed various things related to how I think baseball around the world looks, or should look, in Alt-1915. Since I've been thinking about it, I also figure I should write down some specifics about the Cuban and Dominican Leagues. 

There are something like 5 countries with national leagues coming into 1925: Mexico, Nicaragua, Japan, the Philippines (if only in Manila), the Netherlands. The number of MLB or minor league players in the sim from those countries is, I think, zero. When the World Cup comes around the players for those countries can be drawn from the stars of those leagues, and if I decide to do an Asian Championship, I can take the Philippine and Japanese champions to represent their countries. As far as Caribbean Series, though, certainly have Cubans in both MLB and the minors. Cuba has teams in the developmental league, and the players are mostly not Cubans, and the plans I have for an affiliated Antilles League will similarly have teams in Cuba and the DR with mostly North American rosters because that's what the minor leagues are. But I would like to give the chance for Cubans to play on Cuban teams and Dominicans to play on DR teams without divorcing those cities from the affiliated MLB system.

So, I think the way to handle it is to have winter Cuban and DR leagues, which I think would have to be run as tournaments (at least the Cuban one) so that the Cuban MLB/MiLB players could stay on whatever teams they were on and just be loaned out. I think I can do that?  So, the Cuban League would have four teams--Havana, Almendares, Santa Clara, and Cienfuegos? And the Dominican League would be the Tigres del Licey, Estrellas Orientales, Leones del Escogido, and Águilas Cibaeñas?  And so then there could be a Caribbean Series with not just the winners of the Mexican and Nicaraguan Leagues, but also the winners of these Cuban and Dominican Leagues, though it might be that I'd have to create those teams by hand for a Caribbean Series?

Some Alt-1915 Worldbuilding Thoughts

While I'd been thinking I'd start the Alt-1925 season right after that blog post, I instead decided to get a laptop repair before starting the season. So it'll probably be another week before that gets underway. That gives me a chance to write a bit about the various worldbuilding things that I've been mulling in spare moments here and there. Unless I wanted to treat this as a strictly mathematical exercise in simulation, in which specific parameter choices were going to be critical, the worldbuilding would flesh out the storytelling.

There's been a positive feedback loop for me in the game for quite some time, where making new ballparks makes me want to actually use them in-game, which then (at least sometimes) drives a need for more ballparks. And then some of the rationales for using these parks drive their own logic as far as worldbuilding. For instance, deciding to use a few ballparks for Spring Training led to also setting up the Caribbean developmental league, which in turn led to my needing a few more parks so that I could have a reasonable number of teams in it. Realizing I'd made parks for many (but not all) of the biggest North American cities and U. S. states made me want to finish the sets, which then led me to have barnstorming tours, which then led me to consider a Far Eastern barnstorming tour, which then led to needing period-appropriate parks in Japan, Manila, etc. That in turn led to setting up the non-US independent leagues, etc. 

The other worldbuilding driver, as I've mentioned in other posts, is the integrated nature of baseball. So, something had to happen to change one of the most openly racist periods in modern American history into  one that's accepting of Black ballplayers as some of the biggest (inter)national stars.  At a minimum, that seems like it would require a more complete and successful Reconstruction Era, and presumably Lincoln surviving it. The game plowed right on through the 1917 and 1918 seasons with unchanged rosters and schedules (as I expected), which means that canonically the US involvement in World War 1 was very different, if it happened at all. So, if I'm willing to accept changes to two gigantic influences on 1920s America, what else is in bounds? Is anything out of bounds?

And of course, the answer is yes--there are things I'm grounding the worldbuilding in. I only want actual historically documented baseball players to end up in MLB, though I grudgingly accept that some players who are poorly documented will be among them. This is true even though a timeline where Black Americans were uncontroversially accepted as equals in the 1920s is one where Oscar Charleston and Bullet Rogen (or Ty Cobb and Babe Ruth for that matter) might have chosen to go into business or do something other than be baseball players. I've also decided (as I'm pretty sure I wrote in some 2020-era blogpost) that technology is basically what we had in our timeline, which means no continent-spanning leagues until the 40s at the earliest, and no night games until the 30s. Some other related things I really don't care about, or am not checking in any case--schedules that have a team in Kansas City one day and Boston the next, or Mobile one day and Santo Domingo the next for that matter, aren't things I'm sweating.

I'm trying to keep team names correct for the period, save for those in Cleveland, Boston, and some minor leagues that are considered racist. I'm trying to keep period uniforms as well, again with the same caveat. I'm trying to have the right cities in the right leagues, more or less, but also not sweating that (especially since I've decided to try to have teams in all 48 states plus whichever provinces and other countries). I've also decided that I'm going to keep the cities at their historical populations, and so keep the relative sizes and rankings of cities the same. Despite all of that slack I'm giving myself, I am trying to keep the ballparks pretty close to what really were present in those cities at those times, even though there's no particular reason to be a stickler for that. In this case, I think it comes down to a combination of my wanting/needing something to work from rather than having no constraints at all, plus wanting to post things to the forum that really are historical. 

Bringing it back to the worldbuilding, all of this seems to point in some very rough, broad directions. The US is less racist, and so perhaps it's also less interventionist?  I do want baseball to still be popular in Nicaragua, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, etc., and perhaps in a universe where the US is less interventionist but baseball is still popular in all of those places, it'd also be popular in Haiti? That's definitely a retrofit from wanting a Caribbean League team in Port-au-Prince, though. But the logic seems to hold. Would the US still have the Philippines as a colony? I'm saying no, so having the Philippines as an independent republic that's close allies to the US. But what about Hawaii? Or Puerto Rico? Or other territories that were US possessions c. 1925 in OTL?  Would the Spanish-American War have happened? I suppose at the moment I'm letting some of those wave functions stay uncollapsed, but I've certainly been thinking of all of the OTL possessions (other than the Philippines) as being under US control. Maybe Puerto Rico becomes a state when Alaska and Hawaii do? Or becomes independent?  I think Canada still exists, though in some scenarios the lack of a US Civil War would remove the proximate cause of its existence (and potentially remove the example for uniting the Australian colonies later on?). However, I think the logic of a single Dominion of Canada still carries the day.

In Asia, I suppose I'm imagining China as a stable republic, with Korea and Taiwan independent of them and Japan. Hong Kong is still British, though, and I suppose I'm imagining the British Empire as more or less intact (other than Africa which I'll hit on below). I suppose I'm also imagining some of the foreign concessions in China still existing, which gives spots for teams in a Chinese baseball league. Australia and New Zealand are as OTL, with Australia providing another baseball spot.  I don't see any real changes to Latin America or the Lesser Antilles, I suppose.

As far as Africa, in keeping with the spirit mentioned above I'm imagining less colonial influences and no real Scramble for Africa. So, rather than the continent split up among European colonies, I'm imagining trading posts with European sovereignty in limited areas.  Maybe something like the Antarctic Treaty, though obviously the existence of tens or hundreds of millions of human beings would make that a very limited basis of comparison. I think South Africa is going to be more or less as it was OTL, and I think having one UK-associated country (with no apartheid) would probably be a happier outcome for the indigenous population than having the Boer Republics still in place. With a more liberal/progressive Germany, which wasn't defeated in WWI, they would still presumably have trading posts in Kenya and Namibia among other areas. So I think, and admittedly this involves some working backward, Liberia would be more important here--it would have US influence, and a less-racist US would be more willing to work constructively with them. While in OTL baseball isn't a thing in Liberia, I think in TTL it would be. Or, at least, I'm deciding it is. :)

That finally brings us to Europe. I think the way to get where I want to be, again with the proviso that I may retcon all sorts of things, is to have a short war confined to Russia, Austria-Hungary, and (I guess) the Balkan countries, with an aftermath of a dissolution of the Russian and Austro-Hungarian Empires and soft landings for all the constituent countries. Maybe Germany, France, and the UK not only stay out of the war but also broker the post-war...situation. Ideally the Ottoman Empire also breaks up at this point, again with minimal European colonization, though that may be too much to reasonably expect. 

All of this only would matter at the margins in terms of random extra leagues that are running, plus things like World Cups. So, I'm going to try not to think about it any more than it's fun to think about. But I guess those nations that are playing some form of baseball worth noticing in this scenario, based on reality and how this worldbuilding is looking c. 1925 are:

Top level: USA, Cuba

Second level: Japan, Canada, Dominican Republic, Philippines?, Mexico?

Third level: Netherlands (and Netherlands Antilles), Korea, Taiwan, Nicaragua, Panama, Venezuela, UK?

Working on it: Haiti,  Colombia, Australia, China, South Africa, Ireland?, Belgium?, Finland?, other Central America, Bahamas?, West Indies?

Dabbling: Liberia, France, Peru, Brazil, Argentina, India?, Dutch East Indies? Morocco? Malaysia? French West Indies?

And so presumably the Baseball World Cup, when it happens, would have a 12-team field (the first soccer World Cup had 13) of something like: USA, Canada, Mexico, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Philippines, Netherlands, Venezuela? 

OK, this has been long, so I should just post it!

Alt-1925: Preview!

I'm just intending this to be a short post since I'm on the verge of Opening Day.  The big off-season news is that the Yankees, coming off of a 125-win regular season and easy World Series victory, worked a straight-up swap of young up-and-coming stud Goose Goslin for Babe Ruth. In-universe, there's probably some amount of dismay, but not as much as there should be. Goslin is a Hall-of-Famer, and had excellent production through to the mid/late 1930s. Babe Ruth outproduced him until 1933 and in the process had some of the most historic offensive seasons of all time. 1925 was an off year for him, which in combination with his being on the cusp of 30 years old probably made the Red Sox ready to move him. 

The algorithm picks us to have a 111-win regular season and win the pennant by 11 games over the Packers. It has the Cardinals winning 100 games and winning the NL by 12 games over Baltimore and the Giants. It predicts a .418 season for Cobb and 43 home runs for Ruth, but only 220-inning seasons for the Yankees' main pitchers. 

Even with Ruth's real-life off year in 1925, the Alt-Yankees have many of the WAR and other leaders from our universe: Heilmann, Rogan, Luque, and Winters all make the top 10 in WAR, though the game version I ended up with discounts Negro Leaguers, and Winters is actually cooling his heels in AA. Looking at the top-10 WAR for position players removes Winters and Rogan and adds the now-absent Goslin, but also adds Cobb.

So, I'm looking for a big year again and our 6th straight pennant. Hopefully we'll get back-to-back World Series championships for the first time while we're at it. Besides the Ruth pickup, we dropped Mogridge, who wasn't going to get many innings anyhow. 

OK, let's do this thing. 

A (Watsonian) New Year's Message from the Commissioner

Happy 1925!

I wanted to send this message out to all of our fans, more than 18.5 million of whom came to see a game this year, nearly two-thirds coming to an American League or National League game. We were proud to bring Organized Baseball to thirty-eight states and Washington DC, as well as three Canadian provinces. Through our developmental league, fans in Puerto Rico, Cuba, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic also were able to see high-level baseball, and though a post-season tour we were able to bring baseball to Japan, Korea, the Republics of China and the Philippines, and Taiwan. Below, I'd like to share our plans for sharing baseball with even larger audiences in coming years.

I want us to commemorate the coming sesquicentennial year in 1926 by reaching out and bringing baseball to every part of the United States.  Initial work has been done to establish several new affiliated leagues in parts of the continent that currently don't have Organized Baseball. It is my hope that in the 1926 season, every state in the Union will enjoy Organized Baseball, as well as most of the Canadian provinces, Mexico, Cuba, and Hispaniola, and as many of the American territories as possible. 

We have just finished our tenth season since the American, National, and Federal Leagues made peace and the the major leagues expanded to twenty teams. In that time, the population of the United States has increased by many millions, and the largest cities of Canada are similar in size as some of the largest ones in the USA. We're thus making plans to again add teams to the American and National Leagues, not to put an end to a baseball war but as a consequence of the benefits of baseball peace. We will be undertaking the process of identifying the right cities for expansion and preparing for four new teams to join Major League baseball in time for the 1928 season. 

Finally, we congratulate the independent baseball leagues in the Philippines and Japan on very successful seasons, and look forward to the upcoming seasons in those nations and in the leagues in the Netherlands, Nicaragua, and Mexico. In order to reinforce and encourage the international nature of baseball, we are beginning to explore a World Cup of Baseball. Because we are in the initial stages, we cannot yet say when this tournament would be held--it could be as early as the Fall of 1926, associated with the Olympic year of 1928, or in 1930. We will of course keep our fans around the world informed!

We wish a harmonious and peaceful 1925 for all, even football fans.

Yours,

-The Commissioner

Worlds Left to Conquer

 It is 22 November in alt-1924. Thanksgiving will be coming up this coming Thursday, when the first Macy's Thanksgiving Parade will be held in New York City. The players on the Barnstorming Tour will enjoy a day off, sailing from Hong Kong to Taipei. The Caribbean Developmental League will have nearly a full slate of games, though all the US-based teams will be in the USA on the holiday. 

Out of game, I've been mulling the next goals the Yankees would have, and also what goals I might have for the game. The Yankees are on top of the mountain--reigning World Series champions, winners of five straight pennants and record holders for most wins in a season as well as highest winning percentage in a season. As I've said in a few recent posts, the team seems pretty well set for the better part of the next decade. Is that challenge enough?

I think the answer is yes, actually. Even in the near-term, I think members of this Yankees team and the management would find some unfinished business.  The Yankees have never won even back-to-back World Series, let alone the three in a row that the Rustlers have done. Five pennants in a row was accomplished in real life by the Yankees of the 50s, but six in a row has never been done. 

I've also got some thoughts about setting up additional affiliated and non-affiliated leagues, which aren't in-game challenges but still things to actually do. Plus I'd like to commemorate the in-game sesquicentennial somehow, which I plan to talk about more in a later post. Plus, expansion to 12 teams per league (and two divisions per league) is coming up soon enough. It should be imminent by this time next (real) year...

Your Alt-1924 Champions

 

In the end, the Alt-1924 Yankees could not be denied. In the 1923 World Series they came in heavily favored but also heavily injured, and while their replacements did well, the Yankees missed Santop, Collins, and Charleston more than the stats might show (or maybe I'm being Watsonian here). This time, they came in with a fully-healthy roster, and handily defeated the Cardinals 4 games to 1.  

Harry Heilmann was the MVP, hitting .455 with an OPS of 1.069 -- not as high as Goose Goslin's, but in 21 rather than 16 at-bats. Hotter still was Joe Harris, who went 12 for 21 and slashed .571/.591/.619 in a losing cause. Sam Rice also had a big series for St. Louis.  As a team, the Cardinals had almost as high a batting average as the Yankees (three fewer hits in two more at-bats, and about the same number of walks), but the Yankees hit for more power (slugging at .438 vs. .356 for the Cardinals) and were able to turn those advantages into more runs (6 vs. 3.8 per game). While it wasn't necessarily a deciding factor, the Yankees defense also held, with the team giving up zero unearned runs vs. four for St. Louis. It felt like there were a few errors in big situations for the Cardinals, too.

As noted, Harris and Rice were on fire for the Cards, but few of their teammates pitched in. Cardinals pinch-hitters were 5 for 11 with a couple of walks and a couple of RBI, and helped St. Louis win Game 2. However, Hornsby hit .235, Wright hit .250, Witt hit .222, and Meusel hit .158, so Harris and Rice's efforts were rarely rewarded.  

The Yankees' lineup, on the other hand, performed well up and down. Traynor hit .375 with a home run and a triple, Collins hit .368 out of the leadoff spot, Santop rebounded from a terrible start to go 4 for 7 with two doubles and 5 RBI in the last two games, Cobb hit .333, Terry was hitting .385 when he was sidelined with an injury in Game 4, and Pipp went 3 for 5 as his replacement.  On the pitching end, Pennock pitched brilliantly to notch two wins, Vance pitched well to grab another one, and Fitzsimmons was in the right place at the right time to grab the Game 5 win. He and Luque threw the only real clunker for New York in Game 2.  For St. Louis, Padron pitched OK but was tagged with two losses. Hoyt pitched a little bit better and got St. Louis' one win. Coveleski was a disaster in his start, and Toney was also a disaster in his start. 

Are the Alt-1924 Yankees the best team in baseball history (in this timeline)?  I think it would be hard to argue otherwise. The Spiders managed to win 7 of 18 against the Yankees, more than any other team.  The Yankees swept the season series against Newark. Winning 125 games in a 162-game regular season feels like it won't be easy to repeat, though I didn't think that beating the 1923 team's 121 wins would be doable. This team has now won five consecutive AL pennants and six out of the last seven years, and done so with a very stable lineup--Charleston, Collins, Heilmann, Pipp, Santop, Cobb, and Peckinpaugh all played in the Series-clinching games in both 1920 and 1924, and Williams, Faber, and Pennock also played in both 1920 and 1924 for the Yankees. Several other players were on the World Series roster both years but only played one of them. 

As I've mentioned in other posts, what would be particularly terrifying for the fans (and owners?) of other AL teams is that the Yankees do not seem to be nearing the end of any sort of window of contention. Collins is aging, but his real-life 1925 and 1926 were just as good as his excellent real-life 1924, though his playing time decreased. The same could be said for Cobb, though he rebounded from only playing half of 1926 to going back to full-time duty in 1927. The same can also be said for Cy Williams. Heilmann can be expected to play at a high level through 1930. Terry has yet to hit his real stride, and should be productive until 1935. Traynor should be above-average until 19 32 or so. And for those who do start to drop off due to age or injury or whatever else, there are replacements ready--Cronin should only be a few years away from being our starting shortstop, Lazzeri is sitting at AAA, as are Pepper Martin and Lefty O'Doul. It may be that an expansion draft in 1928 will take some wind out of the Yankees' sails, but it's as likely as not just going to free up some logjams and let new blood come in.

On the pitching side, the story is much the same--Pennock, Rixey, Luque, and Faber probably have a few more years of effectiveness, Vance is probably good into the early 30s if he follows his historical path, Fitzsimmons is already in the rotation and is likely to be productive into the mid 30s (if not necessarily _every_ year in that span), and the Yankees notably have Lefty Grove stashed at AAA (along with Flint Rehm, who also had a decent MLB career if not one like Grove's).

As for how Alt-1924 will end, the Barnstorming Tour will be starting soon and will be heading to East Asia, with games in Hawaii, Japan, Korea, China, and Hong Kong before finishing in the Philippines. Relevant to the worldbuilding discussion I've had elsewhere, I'm imagining the Philippines as a US ally that got their independence following the Spanish-American War (or its equivalent) rather than becoming a US colony, and I'm also imagining Korea maintaining their independence. I guess I still imagine Hong Kong as British?  Anyhow, that will play out, and the Caribbean League will have its usual season. I'll probably upgrade to the new version of OOTP after that... 

Alt-1924 World Series Preview!

 

The second half of the Alt-1924 season was a continuation of the first, and a coronation of the Yankees and Cardinals. The Yankees played at a torrid pace, winning their fifth consecutive AL pennant and shattering the single-season wins record in the process. The Cardinals cooled slightly in the second half but cruised to their own pennant, setting up the third Yankees-Cardinals championship series in the last seven seasons. 

Heilmann could not quite keep up with Cobb's 1921 record-setting pace, finishing at .419 and settling for the 4th-best single-season batting average of the 20th century and the third-most hits in a single season. I expect him to win the AL MVP award, but his performance might not have been the best in the MLB--Al Simmons in his first full season erupted for 262 hits (a record) and 433 total bases (another record) while hitting .400 on the dot. He became the first NL .400 hitter of the 20th century, with 11.6 WAR. He's a shoo-in for the NL MVP, which was cinched when Hornsby fell to an oblique strain in early August that cost him 8 weeks of time. This is the third year of the last four where Hornsby lost significant time due to injury, though he's at least back for the series.  

On the pitching side, Pennock led all qualifiers in ERA by over a half-run, though Streeter led MLB in strikeouts and wins. I suspect Pennock will win the Cy Young Award, but would not begrudge a win for Streeter. In the NL, there was no single pitcher with a dominant year--the Cardinals' success led them to clog the leaderboard for wins, but they only had one pitcher with a sub-3.00 ERA (Byron Harle at 2.99, and he got demoted to Indianapolis at the end of the season for some reason). 

This seems as good a segue into the World Series Preview as any!

Naively, it seems like it should be as simple as pointing to the 125 wins the Yankees had in the regular season vs. the 108 (still excellent!) the Cardinals had. The Yankees scored more runs than St. Louis and allowed fewer. The Yankees led the AL in both categories while the Cardinals were 3rd in runs against. However, I've consistently underestimated the Yanks' opponents in these previews and/or misestimated how things can go in a short series. So, let's go a bit deeper and see if I can do better (I usually can't).

The Yankees "only" won 121 games according to their Pythagorean record, but the Cardinals overachieved by 5 games, so the Yankees are still much better by that metric. New York's ERA is a full run better than the AL average, while the Cardinals are 0.2 runs better.  The Yankees scored 1.7 more runs per game than the AL average, while the Cards scored 1 run per game more than the NL average. If I did the math right (always a question) to only look at non-Yankees/Cardinals games, all those gaps get bigger by a bit, but not a lot. The Yankees actually scored more runs per game on the road than at home, and had identical stats for home/road ERA. St. Louis were league average as far as road ERA but much better at home. They also scored a bit more at home than on the road. Looking at all of this, the Yankees still look like they should be the dominant team here.  What if the NL is just a better league than the AL, so the Yankees dominated weaker competition but aren't actually better than the Cards? I'm not sure there's a way to really figure that out without interleague play. Sam Rice tore up the AL the first half of the year with the Senators, and was traded to St. Louis and did fine in the NL (but didn't tear it up). 

Moving on from there, we can look at the individuals on the teams. Heilmann had the best season by WAR (9.8), but it's hard to imagine a healthy Rogers Hornsby isn't the best player in the series. Even missing 1/3 of the season he was in 2nd place by WAR (8.5) among all the Yankees and Cardinals, and closer to 1st than to 3rd. In third by WAR is old pal Casey Stengel (7.1), with Glenn Wright about a half-win behind. After Wright is a string of Yankees, with a resurgent Peckinpaugh in 5th followed by Santop, Collins, and Cobb before reaching Sam Rice (who did most of his damage while in Washington) followed by another Yank in Pie Traynor.  

Pitching-wise, it seems like it's all Yankees. Nine pitchers for the Yankees or Cardinals had ERA+ better than 110, with three of them on the Cardinals and healthy, and five of them on the Yankees and healthy. Pennock and Mendez lead the way, with ERA+ over 200. Pennock, Fitzsimmons, and Luque top the leaderboards for Win Probability Added, though the list by pitching WAR is much more mixed. I plan to have Fitzsimmons in the pen during the World Series as the stopper/closer.

Only three players from the 1918 champions remain on the Cardinals: Hornsby, Witt, and Hoyt.  The Yankees still have 11 players from that first meeting on their roster. The 1920 Cardinals had five players in common with the 1924 version. 

OK, so. Prediction time, I guess?  I'm definitely gunshy from previous predictions, especially last year. This year's Yankees are healthy, though, and have seemed practically unstoppable. This is no pushover St. Louis team, but it's just hard for me to think that they can win it all. Yankees in 5. 

All-Star Break, Alt-1924

 

I just played out the All-Star Game, which was a fun, see-saw affair. The AL and NL traded off getting 2- and 3-run innings a few times, with the AL taking leads and the NL coming back to tie. In the end, Faber threw a clean 8th, Bob Pepper coughed up a run in the top of the 9th, and Pennock struck out the side in the bottom of the 9th (after a leadoff double) for the save. Santop was the MVP after an early home run, but it could have gone to Fournier or Rice (or Streeter, who pitched 3 good innings to start off the game for the AL).

Before getting into the main point of the post, I'll note that I've been thinking about the Newark Peppers situation that I went on about at length in the last couple of posts. I think where I'm at is that Newark c. 1925 was one of the largest cities in the USA, vibrant and growing, and affluent. Louisville was growing, sort of, but mostly by annexations. It was smaller than Newark and wasn't part of a gigantic metro area. A few decades hence the decision might be different, but I don't see a new owner, even if there were to be one, abandoning Newark for Louisville or Indianapolis. Toronto or MSP?  Maybe. But I feel like I've already talked myself out of that.

As far as the current state of affairs, the Yankees and Cardinals look like they are locks for another World Series matchup. The Yanks got off to an impossibly hot 40-10 start, and while they've cooled off very slightly they're still on a 123-win pace and have a 13-game lead over the Spiders. The Cardinals are not _quite_ that hot ("only" a 115-win pace) but have a slightly bigger lead--14 games over Philadelphia. The Yankees lead the AL in basically everything other than extra-base hits (6th), pitching strikeouts (3rd), and home runs allowed (a terrible, terrible 9th). They even lead in the defensive categories. The Cardinals aren't quite so dominant, sitting in 1st in the hitting categories but 3rd or 4th in more pitching categories than they are in 1st. Still, it's shaping up to be a battle of juggernauts. 

On an individual basis, Heilmann is gunning for Cobb's single-season batting average record. He sits at .426 right now, and is projected to fall just short of 250 hits. Heilmann is easily the AL leader in WAR. Even with Ruth's return, Heilmann might find himself winning a second straight MVP if he keeps up the pace.  Hornsby is having an even better season. While he's "only" (there's that "only" again) hitting .386, he's projected to hit 36 home runs and have jaw-dropping 13.6 WAR. That would be the single-season record if he can do it. Al Simmons is also having an amazing year for Baltimore, flirting with .400 and projected to get even more hits than Heilmann--262, which would also be an all-time record.

As for the Yankees, obviously it's hard to find any fault. Vance isn't having nearly as good a season as 1923, but it doing fine. Luque and Pennock have stepped up and Faber's been great. Charleston has mostly been struggling, but his defense keeps him playing nearly every day. Cobb and Heilmann have improved their defense to the point that I don't replace them in late innings, and they're hitting like crazy. So the third outfield spot has kind of been rotating between Charleston (mostly), Williams, and Goslin. Traynor was hurt for a while and I brought up Lazzeri, but sent him back down when Traynor came back. Toronto has a nice cushion in the IL, even though there's no standout performer in the roles that Terry, Goslin, and Arlett have filled there. The pitching has been great.  New Orleans is in 2nd place in the Southern League, and it's not crazy to think they could win the pennant. Joe Strong has been the two-way star there, with additional some strong pitching. 

So the story lines at this point for the second half look like individual milestones (Eddie Collins is only 12 hits from 3000, and whether Heilmann and Simmons (or others?) can hit .400, and whether anybody can get to 30 wins), and the Yankees and Cardinals trying to stay healthy. 

The Newark Peppers at a Crossroads, Part II

In the last post I mused about Harry Sinclair, the Newark Peppers, and the in-game choice that's looming. I thought through, and I think I established to my own satisfaction anyhow, that the most consistent headcanon has Harry Sinclair as the owner of the Alt-1924 Peppers, and that those Peppers are one of the 2-3 least successful teams in all of MLB over the past decade. Whether there's a scandal like Teapot Dome that's embroiling Sinclair in Alt-1924 is TBD, but if there were one, he'd have to sell. Whether new team owners would move the Peppers is TBD, but it doesn't seem outlandish at this point. The rest of this post will touch on where they might land, and maybe start to work on some of those TBDs.

I think there are basically six realistic cities for an Alt-1924 team to move to: Toronto, Montreal, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Milwaukee, Indianapolis, and Louisville. An Omaha paper musing about a third major league included Columbus and Providence as possibilities, but I don't think either one is realistic here. I plan a whole post on this from the standpoint of the upcoming expansion (which maybe will be for 1928?) so I won't go into detail here, but I'll note that the expansion looms over this choice. At the moment I'm thinking the first four cities will get the expansion teams (and given the choice, would prefer expantion teams to the Peppers), leaving Indianapolis and Louisville open. 

These two cities seem pretty closely matched. Indianapolis is a little bigger and will stay bigger over the coming decades. On the other hand, they only had major league baseball sporadically in this timeline: 1878, 1884, 1887-1889, and the 1914 FL campaign. Louisville, on the other hand, had a team in the AA that jumped to the NL and was in continuous operation 1882-1899 before getting nefariously contracted, as well as an NL team 1876-1877. So the history of major league baseball in Louisville is much deeper, if also somewhat further in the past. Louisville also has a new stadium, Parkway Field, that's ready for a major league park. Indianapolis didn't build Bush Stadium (which had various other names in the interim) until 1931. Using the same sort of logic as the last post, there's no particular reason to think that Parkway field didn't go into use in 1923 (or whatever it was), and indeed it's being used by the Alt-1924 minor league Louisville Colonels.   Nor is there any reason to think that Bush Stadium was already built, though I suppose a snap decision to build it to host a major league team in 1925 certainly could be made. The AAA ABCs are drawing better than the AAA Colonels, though that's mostly going to be a function of team quality.

In terms of whether these were "major league cities" in the 20s, Louisville had an early NFL team before that league settled down, Indianapolis did not. On the other hand, Indianapolis was almost always represented in the Negro Leagues while Louisville was much more on and off. On the other other hand, that's occurring in the future (and in Alt-1924's case, a future that's different from theirs). 

I think all in all, a move to Louisville makes more sense in-game than Indianapolis. But does it make more sense than remaining in Newark? And even if it does, would the scandal that affected Sinclair have happened?  I need to think about those some more. For now, I'm going to finish this and post. There's a mid-season update to write!

The Newark Peppers at a Crossroads

 

It's July 6th in Alt-1924. About a week ago in our timeline, Harry Sinclair was indicted for his role in the Teapot Dome scandal, which had been brewing for two years. After a long and sordid process, Sinclair served a 6-month prison sentence in 1929. He was an avid sports investor, owning horse farms and an interest in the Indianapolis Hoosiers. In 1915 he purchased the Hoosiers outright and moved them to Newark, ending that investment when the Federal League folded in 1915. 

In Alt-1924, the relocation of the Hoosiers to become the Newark Peppers is one of the main points of departure (though see below) and in the world building (such as it is) was one of the things that led the AL and NL to settle with the FL and absorb 4 teams. Sinclair, who responded to the real-life end of the Peppers by trying to buy the Cardinals, would presumably enjoy his new status as a major-league team owner and would still be owner on July 6th, Alt-1924. By all accounts he enjoyed owning the real-life Peppers even as they lost money. 

So, I think the (sort-of philosophical) questions that I'm Doylistically facing are:

1. Is there a Teapot Dome scandal in Alt-1924? Is Harry Sinclair involved? Did he just get indicted? 
2. Is Harry Sinclair even the owner of the Peppers?
3. Regardless any of that, does it matter if Sinclair did get indicted and he owns the Peppers?
4. Regardless of any of that, does it make sense that the Peppers would move, which is kind of the only consequence I should be caring about or can keep track of?

To tackle #2 first--the rationale for saying no to any/all of these is that there have clearly been a lot of really important changes to make Alt-1924 different from our 1924 in one blazingly-bright important way: Black ballplayers take the field along white teammates in American League and National League games (as well as minor league ones). So, whatever happened to enable that (and I have some vague ideas but no concrete canon), and also whatever happened to enable me to pretend WWI didn't happen (or didn't involve the USA), and to wave away the Mexican Revolution and Prohibition and make Haiti more prosperous and...  Well, with whatever happened to do those things, why would we expect Harry Sinclair to even exist let alone own the Peppers let alone be indicted in the Teapot Dome Scandal let alone think that scandal existed?

And I think the answer to that, in part, is that however my canon has been evolving based on various implications I've realized, Harry Sinclair has always been part of canon. As noted in the first sentence of the second paragraph, I considered Sinclair's move of the Hoosiers to Newark to be an important (baseball) event in this timeline. I put Sinclair Oil ads on the walls in Newark's home stadium and in other stadia through the Northeast.  If I'm going to write Harry Sinclair out of the story, there's no particular reason to have real-life players in this simulation like Ty Cobb or Oscar Charleston.

Backing up to #1, it's less clear. The Teapot Dome Scandal was presumably a confluence of a bunch of things, and while Sinclair is clearly a part of canon, Warren G. Harding and his administration needn't be. This is especially true given that at least in my unwritten headcanon Lincoln served out his full second term, the Philippines are independent, etc. So, Sinclair could still be a well-regarded businessman enjoying his middle-age years by owning a (terrible) major-league baseball team. So maybe that makes sense. I'm trying to keep in mind that I want to do what's most fun for me and I'm also hoping to make things as happy for the people in this timeline as I can. :)

For #3, does it matter?  Yeah, I think given the norms and expectations of the era, he's going to have to sell the team. 

So, with the recognition that #1 is still unsettled let's tackle #4. The Peppers and their former-Fed cohort are halfway through their tenth season in the majors. Let's see how they've done so far:

• Baltimore: 669-871 .434 total, best record 81-81, best finish 6th, 3.22 million total attendance, $1.8M total balance, 6th-best current minor league system
• Buffalo: 694-844 .451 total, best record 83-79, best finish 4th, 3.99 million total attendance, $2.8M total balance, 14th-best current minor league system
• Kansas City: 687-854 .446 total, best record 91-71, best finish 3rd, 3.77 million total attendance, $2.5M total balance, 17th-best current minor league system
• Newark: 665-873 .432 total, best record 80-82, best finish 6th, 3.69 million total attendance, $2.2M total balance, 16th-best current minor league system

By these measures Buffalo looks like the most successful of the teams, though I'd actually give it to KC for their multiple finishes above .500 and 3rd place finishes--they're dragged down by some atrocious years c. 1916-1918.  Whether Newark or Baltimore is worse isn't clear. Their overall records and best records are basically a tie, and Newark has out-drawn and out-earned Baltimore. Baltimore is in much, much better shape in terms of its minor league system and looking forward, though. Having said that, their pitching situation looks dire. Going one level (or two) deeper, Baltimore's AAA team has won a PCL pennant and finished 2nd in the PCL last year, and their AA team won last year's Southern League and AA championships, and both teams lead their leagues this year. Newark's minor league teams have never finished higher than 3rd. 

Baltimore isn't going to move. Ned Hanlon is the owner (using similar logic as Sinclair, he's in canon), he lived until 1937, he had done multiple things since 1909 to keep professional baseball in Baltimore. It's tempting to compare some of the less-successful non-FL teams in this period as well and speculate about their futures (the Browns fare worse in all of the categories above than any of the ex-FL teams), but that's another post.  This is a post about the Peppers and what they might do.

"Relocate the team" is certainly a reasonable idea for what they might do.  As for where, I think that should be a second post since I think this one has gone on plenty long by now...

Alt-1924 Season Preview

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

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

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

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

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

A Watsonian Post with Doylist Footnotes

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Your Alt-1923 World Series Champions

 

Really, I should stop making predictions because they're always wrong.  It took the full seven games, but the New York Giants emerged triumphant in what would likely be considered one of the best World Series up to this point and also one of the most shocking. The 1923 Yankees, winners of a jaw-dropping 121 games during the regular season just couldn't get it done. They dropped the first two at home, came back to win the middle three at the Polo Grounds, and then dropped the last two at home again. Three of the Yankees losses were by one run. 

The Yankees' pitching, a strength all year, let them down. Vance had two clunkers and one good game. Faber had a great Game 3 and was gutting his way through Game 6 when injury forced him out. Mogridge blew a save in Game 7 and took the loss. 

That is not to say the Giants didn't earn their win, in that OOTP way. Torriente followed up his record-breaking season by hitting 5 home runs in the World Series for another record and the World Series MVP. High Pockets Kelly had 13 hits and ended at .406. Bucky Harris had several big hits and Lewis Hampton hit a grand slam in the 1st inning of Game 7 that threatened to end things right there before the Yankees fought back. 

From a Doylist point of view, this was something of a bullshit result. From a Watsonian one it's consistent with 1906 and 1914 (to name two World Series) where heavily favored teams were beaten. And indeed, the Watsonian point of view might continue to question whether the NL is simply a better league--the Yankees didn't get here by beating up on two terrible teams but they dominated everybody. In their four consecutive World Series appearances, the Yankees are 2-2, and if you add 1918 they're 2-3. I'd think they were favored in at least four of those five. 

But that's why we play the games, I suppose. The Yankees _still_ haven't won back-to-back championships, and it'll take until the end of 1925 at the earliest for them to do so. I think this team still has a way to go in its current championship window (especially since I have a bunch of early-30s stars on the team already), but I do wonder whether there'd be a bit of a whiff of disappointment around the team. The real-life Giants won four consecutive pennants 1921-1924, but went 2-2. Were people disappointed in them?

In any case, the Alt-1923 Giants have done something no other team was able to do this year:  win a season series against the New York Yankees.

Alt-1923 World Series Preview

 

OK, I hit a lot of points in that last, long post. Let me see if I can keep this relatively concise...

On paper, the Yankees should wipe out the Giants. The Giants had a great year and won 96 games, but the Yankees played at a 99-win pace against the AL team they did worse against, and were at a 108- or 117-win pace against most teams. So, let's try to look at whether I'm overlooking anything that might indicate we're underestimating the Giants.

Team Stats Comparison:  I talked about how the Yankees and Giants fared in their own leagues, but let's go one level (or maybe two levels) deeper and try to avoid the Rustlers Effect that I fell victim to in 1921. AL teams had a road ERA of 4.53 and a road OPS of .719.  Visitors to Yankee Stadium had an ERA of 7.36 and OPS of .888.  AL road teams not facing the Yankees had an ERA of 4.23.   The Yankees had a road ERA of 3.79, nearly a half-run better. If we do this for the Giants: NL teams had a road ERA of 3.76 and a road OPS of .724. Visitors to the Polo Grounds had an ERA of 4.46 and an OPS of 0.777.  NL road teams not facing the Giants had an ERA of 3.69. The Giants themselves had a road ERA of 3.90. Maybe not demonstrably worse, but certainly not demonstrably better.

The flip side (or maybe it's the same side, actually) is runs per game by the offense. AL teams scored 4.64 runs per road game. The Yankees scored 5.68 runs per road game. Non-Yankee teams scored 4.70 runs per road game not involving the Yankees. So the Yanks scored a full run per game more. NL road teams scored 4.46 R/G, the Giants scored 4.67 R/G on the road. Non-Giants teams scored 4.49 runs per game vs. non-Giants opponents. Here the Giants are 0.2 runs per game better than average, which pales compared to the Yankees.

Individual Difference-Makers: Cristóbal Torriente turned in one of the greatest offensive seasons we've seen in this league, setting the single-season record for home runs and finishing with an OPS+ of 168 and just shy of 7 WAR. He's only 3rd in WAR among World Series participants, though--his teammate Marty McManus outpaced him based on his defense (and a good offensive year too) and Harry Heilmann led all other Yankees and Giants this year with a WAR of 7.5. 

Nevertheless, Torriente is the big name and, I think, the best player at the Series. In contrast to most of the World Series the Yankees have been in, the top players by WAR are dominated by the NL team--Heilmann is the only Yankee in the top 4, with Ken Williams following Torriente before a  string of 6 Yankees in a row round out the top 10.  Looking at OPS+ and deciding on an arbitrary 200 PA (since so many contributing Yankees were part-timers or injury replacements),  Torriente leads the group, with Heilmann and Ken Williams following, the injured Charleston and Collins following them, and then Cobb, Cy Williams, Bullet Rogan, and McManus all in a virtual tie at 120. 

Getting into the weeds a bit more, Torriente seems to have a reverse split and fare better against lefties than righties, while Ken Williams has a normal split. 

If we go to pitching, Vance is pretty clearly the best on either team, both in terms of WAR and ERA+. Flame Delhi, the Giants' ace, is closer to Vance than one might think given that he was "only" 22-11. Vance had a good FIP (again, with Delhi surprisingly close!), but it was the Yankees relief corps who led the way there, with Ruether, Mogridge, and Curry all besting Vance while pitching 30+ innings. Mogridge also had a better ERA+ and had a sneaky-good year out of the pen, including a league-leading 13 saves.

Other than Delhi, the Giants' pitchers are not quite so impressive. Sanders, Hampton, and Hall are currently listed as the starters for Games 2-4 (though that could change), and the Yankees starters (Rixey and Faber with Vance in a 3-man rotation, pending how things go) match up well or better. 

A Watsonian Word:  The city of New York would no doubt be alive with excitement, even in comparison to last season's Robins-Yankees contest. The Giants are still in a lot of ways the more prestigious, better-rooted team, and they drew nearly as many fans as the Yankees did (and brought in rather more revenue). There's more fan interest for the Giants. Can the Yankees keep it together with the injuries and perhaps less urgency than a Giants team that hasn't made the World Series since 1913 and hasn't won one since 1905?  Or will the chance to match the Rustlers' record with a third consecutive championship and the drive to finish off a dream season be more than enough to carry the talented pinstriped crew to victory?

I'll also note that two players from that 1913 Giants squad are on the team for the 1923 Series: Art Fletcher, who's been in New York the entire time, and Milt Stock, who's returned after time on other teams. 

Prediction: I tried to talk myself out of a Yankees victory being inevitable, but I can't. Things happen, the Yankees could have a few bad games at an unlucky time.  But I think by far the likeliest outcome is a Yankees win.  I'll say 5 games to be conservative, but a sweep wouldn't surprise me at all.

Alt-1923: Season Recap!

 

It's my intention to write a World Series preview in the next day or two, but I do feel like it's worth writing something separate (if only in bullet form) for the season that just ended.  So as not to bury the lede, the Yankees had a historically good season and ran away with the AL pennant, and will be facing their former landlords, the New York Giants, in the World Series.

• The Yankees finished with a completely crazy 121-41 record, good for a .746 winning percentage. This smashes their own 115-win record from 1920 and the Cubs' 116 wins in 1906, though the latter team still holds the record for winning percentage (.763).  The Yankees had 116 wins through 154 games, but the Cubs only played 152 in 1906 for what that was worth.
• I imagine Ty Cobb getting a bunch of interviews as one of the only (or maybe the only?) still-active players to have some first-hand experience against those Cubs, albeit in the 1907 and 1908 World Series rather than 1906. 
• The Yankees did this despite some really potentially devastating injuries--they only had Oscar Charleston for 58 games in 1923, lost Ty Cobb for about a month, and lost Eddie Collins and Louis Santop for the season during the same early-September week. The roster is so deep, however, that they didn't really skip a beat in making Terry and Traynor into regulars and shifting Heilmann to the outfield (where he's a much better fielder). 
• How well did they play? They had two different months when they went 22-6 (.785), and neither was their best month--in May they went 24-4 (.857).  Their worst month was April, when they were "only" 16-11 (.592), a 96-win pace.
• They were 1st in basically every offensive category, except extra-base hits (where they were a surprising 6th of 10), strikeouts (which they kept down relative to recent years, perhaps due to Charleston's absence, and only finished 4th), and stolen bases (where they finished 2nd!). 
• Key to their success was their pitching. Dazzy Vance went 30-2, and as a team they finished 1st in ERA and Starters' ERA, WAR for pitchers, hits allowed, walks, strikeouts, and zone rating. They finished 2nd in a lot of other categories, and the only thing they didn't do super-well was suppress home runs (they were 6th). 
• At the team vs. team level, the Yankees wiped out the Red Sox (going 17-1 against them) and Peppers (16-2), but were 13-5 or 12-6 vs. most teams. The worst they did was 11-7 vs. the Packers. 
• As a result of all of this, the Yankees ended up winning the AL by 28 games over the 2nd-place Athletics, with the Packers in 3rd 30 games back. The White Sox brought up the rear, 57-105 and a jaw-dropping 64 games back. 
• As noted, the Yankees have a very deep roster and that led to a balanced lineup. There wasn't an obvious breakout, dominant season from anybody, but the team hit .322 (only 20 qualified hitters in the whole MLB did better, including 5 Yankees as you'd expect), and had a team OPS of .826, which would have placed them #29 among qualified hitters.  Absolutely bananas. 
• The Yankees had the #2, #3, and #4 hitters in batting average (Cobb, Collins, and Heilmann), though Cobb had another rotten September to give the batting crown to Shoeless Joe Jackson.  Those three also were the top 3 in AL OBP, with Collins on top. Of course, he's now out injured for the World Series.
• With Ruth hurt most of the year, the AL MVP race is open for the first time in years. 
• To the extent that there's an obvious MVP candidate on the Yankees to coalesce around, it's probably Heilmann. He's #4 in AL batting average, tops in RBI with 150 (2nd in all-time AL single season history), #2 in AL OBP, #2 in AL SLG, #1 in AL OPS, #1 in AL WAR, #1 in AL runs scored. He had 200+ hits. He even led the AL in Win Probability Added. 
• The other obvious Yankees candidate for MVP is Dazzy Vance, who had the breakout year I've been waiting for since 1916. He had 30 wins (as noted above), led the league in strikeouts, and finished 2nd in ERA just 0.1 run behind Shocker. I was sufficiently paranoid about injuries near the end that he skipped his final start, as did Luque and Faber.
• Going briefly into Watsonian mode, Dobie Moore might get my vote over Heilmann. He took over as the starting 3B and played very well there, moved over to full-time 2B when Collins went down, and was the SS when Peckinpaugh needed a rest. He ended up hitting .339 with 100+ RBI and led the league in triples. Still, he "only" had 4.5 WAR vs. Heilmann's 7.5.
• There aren't any really obvious non-Yankee candidates, either. Joe Hauser of the White Sox led the league in home runs, with Jake Fournier not too far behind, but Heilmann had the better all-around year.
• In the NL, it'll probably be Hornsby for MVP. He led the league in batting average, and was 2nd in HR and RBI. He led the NL in WAR with a completely crazy 9.5. However, Torriente had a historic season and was the first player in history to hit 50+ home runs, setting a new single-season record.
• Torriente also took the lead in career home runs, which was an interesting twist for me. Torriente has a 17-homer lead over Ruth, which might be rather hard for Ruth to make up in the short term. If this year's injuries were the Alt-1915 universe's equivalent of Ruth's 1922 absences, he still has the 1925 equivalent absences to get through. On the other hand, Ruth is one year younger than Torriente, and Ruth hit 448 home runs from 1924-1933, so I think even if he can't do more than inch up on Torriente in coming years he could blow past him if he outlasts him and plays longer...
• Before moving to the NL in a bit more detail, I'll congratulate the Toronto Maple Leafs, Sacramento Senators, Charlotte Hornets, Des Moines Demons, Dayton Ducks and Hartford Whales for winning the championships of their leagues, and in particular note Toronto, Charlotte, and Dayton for winning their level's championships.
• Toronto wasn't as dominant in the IL as the Yankees were in the AL, but they took care of business and reeled in a Mud Hens team that led much of the season. Buzz Arlett won the IL Triple Crown (and set AAA records for HR and RBI in the process, as well as for WAR), and the Leafs beat a Senators team (that ran away with the PCL) in five games. 
• Charlotte has Gehringer, Cochrane, and Dihigo, and swept Des Moines. Baltimore should be hard to beat soon, and they get another high pick in the next draft because the Orioles are still terrible at the MLB level.
• As for the Yankees' opponents in the 1923 World Series, the Giants built a big lead in the NL and basically coasted the last few months--they led Boston and St. Louis by 11.5 games at the end of July, gave back about half of that lead and sat ~5-6 games up over the latter half of August and most of September before padding it a bit at the end.
• The Giants' best month was a 17-8 July, which they followed up with a 12-17 August as their worst month.
• The Giants seem to have been good at everything, but not necessarily great at anything. They were 2nd-3rd in most major offensive categories (but 1st in OPS and wOBA), and 5th-6th in most pitching categories (but 1st in pitching WAR and strikeouts). 

I suppose I should quit here since I'm about to wander off into a World Series Preview. That'll be next!

Alt-1923: Home Stretch

 After a month or so of real-life travels and adventures, I write this on the evening of 31 August 1923, game time. Long story short, most of what I wrote in the last entry is still true and most of what I anticipated has come to pass, but I still feel compelled to capture this moment in game time.

The Yankees have gone 32-12 since the All-Star break, and while they hit a few rougher patches those didn't last terribly long. They're now on a 119-win pace, which would set the MLB record for wins in a season, though they're a bit behind the 1906 Cubs' record win percentage. They have kept up this blistering pace even after losing Oscar Charleston again (he's likely out for the rest of the season, though I guess a return during the World Series isn't totally impossible) and also losing Ty Cobb (a sprained ankle has led him to miss almost all of August, though his return should be imminent).  In the face of these injuries, Heilmann slid out to RF (where he's a much better defender), Terry became the everyday 1B (where he's a better defender than Heilmann), and Rogan became the everyday CF (when he's not pitching), and the Yankees didn't skip a beat.  They've "only" won 2/3 of their games since Cobb went out, but they have increased their lead over the Packers by 2.5 games since then. 

The pennant races in the other leagues are mostly decided, as well. The Giants have a reasonably comfortable 5-game lead over the Cardinals, which the algorithm thinks gives them a 90% chance for the pennant. Sacramento has clinched in the PCL, Charlotte in the Southern League, Hartford in the Eastern League. Toronto has a 4-game lead in the IL with 6 games to go, where it seems all over but the shouting. Des Moines has a 4.5-game lead in the Western League, where there's a little bit more intrigue--the Demons' magic number is 3, but if they can't reduce that to zero in their next three games they'll host Minneapolis for a season-ending series where the Millers could possibly steal the pennant from them. The American Association race seems to be where the remaining drama is--Syracuse visits Dayton for a 3-game series to end the season, with Dayton holding a 1-game lead. 

As far as individual performances, I begin by noting that Babe Ruth has missed almost all of the season with multiple injuries. He's only appeared in 20 games this season, and won't make it to 50 games. Still, because he's Babe Ruth he may very well clear 15 home runs--he already has 6 in 20 games. Nevertheless, for the first time since 1918 the AL MVP race is wide open. I can think of a few Yankees I'd vote for, but I'd probably put Heilmann or Moore as my top choice. Heilmann is on pace to finish with 7.5 WAR, second in the AL behind Johnny Mostil (who's getting a defensive bump).  Heilmann is on pace for 150+ RBI and is 2nd in OPS as well, just a hair behind Joe Hauser. Hauser may be the biggest competition to a Yankee would-be MVP, as he's outhitting Heilmann in most categories. Over in the NL, Rogers Hornsby is very likely to be MVP, on pace for a 10+ WAR season. But it's Cristobal Torriente who's going to be in the record books as he's taken advantage of Ruth's absence to seize first place in the career HR list and is threatening the single-season record as well... 

Alt-1923: All-Star Break

 

We sit at the All-Star Break, with ninety games played and seventy-two more to go. In the American League, the Yankees are playing at a 120-win pace and have a 10.5-game lead over the Kansas City Packers. Over in the NL, the Giants are playing at about a 100-win pace (just a bit worse than the Packers, actually), and have a comfortable 7-game lead over the Rustlers. While crazy things can happen, the pennant races look like they're going to be decided early, if you don't consider them already decided.

The Yankees have been excelling thus far in all aspects of the game. They are first in practically every important offensive category, as usual. They're only 7th in strikeouts, and they're all the way up in 9th in stolen bases--I decided to hand over my offensive strategy to the AI in addition to the baserunning as a way to be a bit more "realistic" or at least period realistic, but mostly as a way to try to deal with the fact that other teams could run on the Yankees pretty regularly, and I could never steal bases even with people and in situations where it should be easy.  

Anyhow, the Yankees are also benefiting from great pitching, and are first in many of those categories as well, including ERA (starters and bullpen), runs allowed, WAR, walks, and strikeouts. This has been the work of a very balanced crew, who were a very good 16-11 in April, and a bananas-good 46-10 between May and June. The team could easily be better, too, since they are 1-5 in extra innings and only 8-10 in one-run games. They're playing a couple of games above their Pythagorean record, but not a bunch. For comparison, the Giants have been better in hitting than pitching, but are pretty good in both. They're playing 6 games above their Pythag, though, and "should" be in a close race with the Rustlers and Cardinals, and even the Pirates. 

With all of this, it's hard to come with anything other than A+ all around for the Pinstripes. Oscar Charleston was hurt and out for several weeks, but the outfield logjam let us handle that without missing a beat. Biz Mackey has largely been a bust so far and went down to Toronto (where he's hitting around .225). Frank Baker's defense has deteriorated to the point that he's not getting many innings in unless it's a blowout. The pitchers don't feel dominant, and it's felt like I've had to go with a lot of quick hooks this year. But the stats don't lie, and they're clearly doing fine. Vance is having the year I was waiting for since 1915. Williams is at/near the league lead in home runs, Cobb is leading the majors in batting average, with Rogan second and Moore 5th. Collins is leading the majors in OBP, with Cobb 2nd and Heilmann and Rogan in the top 8. Heilmann leads the majors in RBI, with him, Moore and Williams 1-2-3 in the AL. Cobb leads the majors in runs scored, with Heilmann, Collins, and Williams 3-4-5 in the majors with only Hornsby breaking up the run. Heilmann, Collins, and Moore are 1-2-4 in the AL in Win Probability Added. So, it's all been pretty dominant. 

Looking at the farm teams, the Maple Leafs roared out for their first 10 games, sputtered for a while, and now find themselves in a 4-team race with Montreal, Worcester, and Toledo. Sacramento, who are Washington's AAA team, has a pretty commanding lead in the PCL. Des Moines and Minneapolis are dueling in the Western League, with other teams not too far behind, and the Pelicans are having their best-ever season and sit above .500, though aren't really threatening to take the Southern League pennant at this point.  Buzz Arlett is playing out of his mind for Toronto and is looking like he's likely to win the Triple Crown, so he'll clearly need to come up to the majors next year. Not that the Yankees have room for him. :\

As for the All-Star Game itself, it will be at Sportsman's Park in St. Louis and hosted by the Browns, who in one of the most Browns-y moments of all time are the only MLB team lacking a representative on the 28-person AL roster (counting the injured and replaced Axel Lindstrom of the Packers). Lou Gehrig, the phenom from Buffalo, led all candidates in voting. Babe Ruth has been down most of the year with a strained medial collateral ligament, and has only made 40 plate appearances, so he won't be playing. We can imagine old-timer Bobby Wallace or past All-Star (and current regular) George Sisler will throw out the first pitch, or something. Despite the Yankees' dominance in the standings, only Heilmann and Williams made the starting 9 for the AL, which is the same as the Tigers and the Senators. Looking at all the players on the active All-Star roster, though, the Yankees put in a good showing: Heilmann and Williams, plus Luque, Vance, Rixey, Santop, Moore, and Cobb. The lack of Rogan is a bit of a snub, but he's listed with pitcher as his primary position and he hasn't been good on the mound this year.

I'll be managing the AL squad since we won the pennant.  I'm 3-0 in All-Star Games, hopefully I can keep that streak going!