Secondary Dynasty - Input requested
 

In the background I will be working on a secondary dynasty. I won't be posting daily updates or in depth details.

Basically, looking for a baseball history rewritten type of dynasty with OOTP 20.

The idea is to start with just 8 teams in 1901. Using real players from that point forwards to progress through the history of the game up until present day.

I will expand and add minor leagues as the number of players in the player pool grows, but I want to keep the top level league with a smaller number of teams than what MLB has (so the teams should be pretty stacked).

The input that I am looking for is what teams to use.

The six below are must haves and will be part of the starting 8 teams.

Philadelphia Phillies
Boston Red Sox
New York Yankees
Los Angeles Dodgers
Chicago Cubs
St. Louis Cardinals


Looking for input (votes) on the final two teams to include.

3 East Coast Clubs, 2 Clubs from the middle of the country and 1 from the West Coast. I'd say another West Coast Team (I'm partial to the Giants especially as they are the Dodgers natural rivals from their days in New York.)

The other thing I notice is you then have natural rivalries Bos-NYY, Cubs-Cardinals and if you go SF, Dodgers-Giants. The odd team out here is the Phils so I'd look at someone NL Easty. The Mets and Phils are a nice one, or you could have a Pennsylvania rivalry with the Pirates...hell the Braves (original National League franchise in Boston and my dad's favorite growing up) and Nationals-Senators also would be good (Philly-DC was on my TV just a little while ago and with Bryce in town the Nats fans were incensed.) One wild card here, Les Expos. Montreal and the Phillies were both NL East teams and it puts a team in Canada. Last one as I think about it the Reds would be a good team they were the first NL Team outside of Northeast if you go far enough back.

I guess my votes are the Giants and the Reds (or the Expos...) :)

I do not dislike this reasoning.

I'll put my votes in with thehitcat (kinda): SF and PIT, with CIN as my alternate.

Cincinnati is celebrating 150 years this year as the oldest club, IRL... so that's where my vote goes (he states without bias, LOL)…

Can't leave the Dodgers stranded out West, so I'll go with San Francisco and hmmm.. Cincy I suppose, as a bridge team between the Northeast and the Midwest teams of Chicago and St Louis.

The Athletics would be a good addition too. Since they have such a long history....also the Braves for the same reason. Long histories should be rewarded!!!

Going to expand the league by 4; 12 total teams. This way I can have two divisions of 6 teams each and it will cut down the repetitive matchups a bit.

I have taken the above suggestions into account and so far have:

East
Philadelphia Phillies
New York Yankees
Boston Red Sox
Cincinnati Reds
Atlanta Braves
Pittsburgh Pirates

West
Los Angeles Dodgers
San Francisco Giants
Oakland A's
Chicago Cubs
St. Louis Cardinals


Looking for that 6th team for the West. Maybe Detroit.

I would say Milwaukee, Minnesota, or Kansas City rather than Detroit. That way you'd have three Midwest/three California teams in the West.

Detroit to me is a border team as this league is currently constructed - could go either in West or East and thus I wouldn't make a decision on it just yet. The other three options are more clearly West.

I like the Kansas City idea here, start a KC/StL rivalry. Buuuuuut ...

The 1901 start date did cause me to go find a list of U.S. cities by population in 1900 though. Of notable baseball cities not definitely in use, Cleveland was #7, Cincy was #10, Detroit #13, Milwaukee #14, Washington #15, Minneapolis #19, Kansas City #22 ... which made me like the KC idea less than I did at first.

But I overcomplicate shit like this quite readily. New York was still twice the size of Chicago in 1900, so I'd put the Giants back in NY and move them later. And do likewise with the Braves and have them begin in Milwaukee and make a move later. And .... well, you get the idea.

In that case, I would move Milwaukee Braves West, keep the San Francisco Giants where they are, and put in the New York Mets to fill the East hole since San Francisco is #9 in population in 1900.

Actually that makes the most sense to me - keeps the 3 Cali teams and Midwest corridors, the South doesn't have an oddball team that's just stranded as per now, and you retain the distinct Northeast/Mid-Atlantic divisions in the East with a reasonable nod for Cincy as the bridge team between East and West.

Guys if you're going to move the Braves they need to go back to Boston, Milwaukee was their interim stop. :) Anyway I like the Detroit idea as the 6th team in the "West" none of the other squads listed have anything like their history. Cobb, Gehringer, Kaline, Morris, Whitaker, Trammel, Gibson and Cabrera just to throw out some names. And since Cinci and Detroit are basically as "East" as the other you could swap the Reds west if you preferred.

I was leaning towards the Tigers because of their history.

While I will be removing all history prior to 1901 and letting them create their own history they have had one of the longest histories in the the league.

Not like you'd recognize anything like my tendency to overthink shit in dynasty universes or anything :D