300 years of baseball (OOTP15)

[Young Drachma]

Sometime in 2008, I created a fast-sim solo league originally called D2D Baseball for OOTP.

Well, here we are seven years later and I'm still putzing around with it. The league as saved as a Quickstart has over 200 years of history, but I've since simmed past that and have currently logged 316 seasons of major league baseball.



My current expanse is comprised of FOUR major league associations, but the ABA is the most dominant and the league we'll focus on here. The ABA has had expansions and contractions and teams leave as the majors blew up.

But right now we're at 32 teams in four divisions across two leagues.

The idea of this dynasty is relatively simple.

- We'll do a flyby so you get a sense of what teams are here and can pick a favorite.

- I'm going to eventually settle down with one franchise. I like to usually take over a team, win a lot with them and then I get bored and do it again. It's kind of boring and I know it's not fun to read. Alternatively, I do a God mode thing where I run the whole league and control it all and that's kind of boring too because it's hard to translate ALL of that for people who are just reading and are probably engrossed in their own leagues.

Sooo..the idea here is to engross myself and hopefully to engross you.

I'm taking over the San Diego Skippers. Last year, along with the Memphis Hounds they were the two new expansion teams in the ABA. I ran the expansion draft for both, so I had a sense of both teams but actually chose to run Memphis. Memphis was on the DBacks fast track to winning - made the postseason in year one before losing out in the Division Series.

San Diego was gonna take the slow road, but turns out, they drafted well and signed a few key guys and had a winning record in Year 1 despite missing the postseason by a few games. So the team has a talent core.

But in Seattle Pilots fashion, their owner has been indicted and the team will have to be moved since they were playing in a temporary stadium and their new one isn't going to be built due to the whole owner's scheme being a Ponzi scheme of epic proportions.

So now I'm going to be the GM taking over a team that I have to grow to love when this league is full of teams that I like after years of being around here. I'm going to try to use a slightly different style than I normally do and while I want to say I'll play slower, I can't see a world where that's actually gonna happen because the only way I'll get immersed if is we play quick enough to generate a history.

I'll try to find some balance, though.

Anyway, before we dive into our new club -- wherever the hell it's gonna be -- we're gonna do a overview of all 32 clubs in the ABA so you can get acquainted. I'll compare them to real life teams so you have a sense and feel free to get interested or don't, but I'll do my best to keep it interesting.

[Young Drachma]

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| COLORADO GOLD SOX (ESTABLISHED IN 1812) |
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| DIVISION CHAMPIONSHIPS [57]: 1842, 1843, 1844, 1845, 1846, 1847, 1849, 1850, 1851, 1893, 1894, 1895, 1897, 1901, 1918, 1937, 1946, 1959, 1960, 1961, 1963, 1964, 1966, 1967, 1972, 1976, 1980, 1985, 1990, 1992, 1994, 1997, 1998, 2001, 2002, 2005, 2006, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2020, 2022, 2023, 2031, 2032, 2034, 2035, 2053, 2069, 2071, 2090, 2091, 2102, 2103, 2104
LEAGUE PENNANTS [22]: (NL) 1834, 1846, 1848, 1850, 1851, 1868, 1887, 1888, 1891 (AL) 1918 (NL) 1935, 1962, 1963, 1966, 2005, 2012, 2020, 2022, 2035, 2036, 2048, 2102
DAYLIGHT SERIES TITLES [9]: 1868, 1887, 1935, 1962, 1963, 1966, 2005, 2048, 2102 |

Known for their pitching, the Gold Sox were home to two of the greatest pitchers of all-time Rod Frazier (488 career wins) and the legendary Nelson Mares (471 wins) who the pitcher of the year award is named after. Mares spent his whole career in Colorado, Frazier only a few seasons and 150 or so years after Mares who played in the 1800s.

The franchise has made 118 postseason appearances making the postseason in over a third of their time in the bigs, only Washington (119) has made more postseason appearances in the ABA ever to date. 9 titles is tied for 7th with Eau Claire in all-time titles(behind Carolina, Washington, NY Gothams, San Francisco, Victoria & Great Plains.)

GREATEST PLAYER IN FRANCHISE HISTORY: SP Nelson Mares (1850-76) (471 career wins), Duane Covey (1953-1976) (3687 hits, 761 career HRs)

REAL LIFE TEAMS THE GOLD SOX REMIND ME OF: Chicago White Sox, New York Giants, New York Rangers.

[Young Drachma]

A misnomer since this team plays all over the Great Plains -- Omaha, North Dakota St. Louis & Kansas City got a team again (out of the ABA), there. But team offices are always based there so it doesn't matter.

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| GREAT PLAINS FLYCATCHERS (BASED IN OMAHA SINCE 2044) |
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| DIVISION CHAMPIONSHIPS: [36] 2045, 2046, 2047, 2049, 2051, 2052, 2053, 2054, 2055, 2057, 2058, 2060, 2061, 2062, 2065, 2066, 2069, 2070, 2075, 2078, 2079, 2080, 2081, 2088, 2090, 2091, 2098, 2099, 2100, 2103, 2104, 2105, 2106, 2109, 2113, 2116 (Franchise also won 4 division titles in Savannah but are not counted or recognized by this franchise)
LEAGUE PENNANTS: (17) (NL) 2047, 2051, 2052, 2053, 2054, 2055, 2056, 2066, 2075, 2089, 2091, 2099 (AL) 2104, 2106, 2107, 2109, 2116
DAYLIGHT SERIES TITLES: (10) 2053, 2054, 2055, 2056, 2066, 2075, 2089, 2091, 2109, 2116 |

Obviously the most successful expansion franchise on the planet. They were good out of the chute and I had nothing to do with it. Savannah was a really good team that never won a title but the market was too small and the team had to be relocated, but to make them the "team of the midwest" they had to be successful and so, that's what their owners set out to do with them and they did so with aplomb.

For a team that's less than 100 years old, they have a lot of retired numbers (11) already. It's a safe bet that they'll always reload. I've seen nothing like it, but the game always finds a way for them to win.

GREATEST PLAYERS IN FRANCHISE HISTORY: CL Zack Truelove (2048-2074) (1047 saves, 118 wins) C Ron Caprio (2046-67) (3753 hits)

REAL LIFE TEAMS THE FLYCATCHERS REMIND ME OF: If the Green Bay Packers, St. Louis Cardinals & Kansas City Royals had a fake baseball lovechild that no one knew who the daddy was and so they all raised it together? It'd be the Flycatchers.

Their fan base is vast, rabid and unapologetic. They talk a lot about the team like they are members of the family, everyone has a story about a time they saw a member of the Flycatchers in their hometown or how their cousin knows a guy on the team who is friends with the trainer and so he works on the arm of [insert whoever stars is on the team] and yeah....

It's hilarious and awesome.

[Young Drachma]

339th KEROUAC CUP SERIES

The Brooklyn Originals who last won a title 91 seasons ago against the Philadelphia Quakers whose last title came 100 seasons ago. FINALLY. Should be epic!

[Young Drachma]

And it's a barn burner. We're going to a decisive Game 9. The AI is terrible at managing starters, so it was going to let Philly's 4th starter throw in this game, rather than their ace on short rest. Like is there even a contest?

Rooting for Philly because they went all-in this trade deadline getting two start players in the hopes of getting over the hump, they were a wild card team that had to win a best of 3 just to get here. Then they swept the LDS and LCS beating the best team in baseball Colorado Kings and defending champs (106-56) and then a 1st place St. Louis team to get here.

But we'll see...

[Young Drachma]

The ace didn't get it done. Brooklyn takes home their 8th title in franchise history.

[Young Drachma]

So I went back to the roots of this league and standardized the ballpark. Since last season, what I do is standardized the ballpark dimensions (they all play in the same park) and randomize the park to keep it interesting. Nothing too wild, just so the stats don't go completely wacked.

I'd like to pick a "host" city for the stadium year after year now and will enlist your help. Help me pick some places for the league to play, I don't know how much the weather effects anything in-game, but it might be interesting from year to year to add a bit of variety.

Doesn't have to be a U.S. city either. Needs to be in he weather database somewhere, but...let's try it out.

2140 I'm going to use a random city generator to pick 100 cities and use a random number generator to pick which city.

[Young Drachma]

I used the city generator and used the number generator, but basically that generator picks lots of obscure cities that aren't in the weather database. So I modified my rules to make it "pick the first city on the list of 100 cities you generate that's actually in the weather database."

So the 2140 season will take place in Algiers, Algeria.

[Young Drachma]

We're on the 5th generation of Joe Peters, the original was the greatest player to ever play the game. Unless you're a partisan of Lars-Erik Johansen who was basically Babe Ruth and Cy Young -- combined.

[Young Drachma]

My current idea ruminating is to setup a "fanblog" style dynasty of various ABA teams. We always play in god mode, but it'd be interesting to observe the league in the way that a fan would, simming seasons quickly. Sometimes steering the ship, other times just watching what the AI does and swearing about it.

[Young Drachma]

I was searching on teams that don't have retired numbers and looking at team history to see if anyone merits the recognition that the game neglected (you know some teams are more relaxed about this than others..so making it more subjective.)

And I ran across Dwayne Wade of the Indiana Racers. I remember him for obvious reasons, he had that name -- I did not name him, he came this way -- and he was an Indianapolis native and so, I thought it was the neatest story.

But I stopped paying attention and because of how I sim, I stopped noticing and I have no idea what happened to him. He literally was out of baseball by 28 and the game retired him, not me. It's one of the strangest OOTP cases I've ever seen of a guy completely falling off the map and then being done before age 30.

I did retire his number this year because he's legitimately a Hall of Famer if his career hadn't ended so prematurely. I have noooo clue what happened. It's seriously in all of my years of OOTPing an interesting story. I thought maybe I wrote about him somewhere in this thread but nope.

[Young Drachma]

BREAKDOWN OF HALL OF FAMERS BY POSITION (As of 2141 or 341 seasons)

283 players in the Hall of Fame in 341 seasons.

C: 10
1B: 64
2B: 20
3B: 21
SS: 21
OF: 102
SP: 93
RP: NONE
CL: 8

[Young Drachma]

Carrying on, just finished 2152 and noticed there has only been ONE pitching triple crown in 352 seasons. Just one. (2126, Jeremy Angeles)

It led me to look at some other strange factoids historically or just how many occurrences of certain feats.

There have been 26 hitters who have notched hitting Triple Crowns, but mostly it's been done by the same guy multiple times. The most recent was in 2152 by Brattleboro's Mark Weston, the first in 37 seasons it'd been done. Immortal Joe Peters did it four times (2046, '49, '55, '59)

Someone has hit 50+ home runs 178 times across the history of the league.

There have been 651 no-hitters in league history. 56 of them have been perfect games. There have been 7 perfect games since the 2100 season.

The cycle has been hit for 1136 times.

There's no easy way to count rings in OOTP, but I got curious to see how many rings guys had won. You have to search manually. But looking at teams that have won titles, if there any dynasties, you can at least get a sense of guys who have won multiples across the board. This is relevant because my Brattleboro team reeled off four titles in six years and a few of their guys have gone elsewhere to win other titles, so I've got a very Boston Celtics situation with guys who have won 5 ore more rings.

So I'm going to check around the league and see historically some of the people -- it won't be exhaustive -- who have won 4 or more rings throughout history in the different eras, focusing primarily on major contributors to those teams, not just guys who might have happened to be in the right place at the right time (1 AB or something terrible) to win unless there's a good story.

[Young Drachma]

MOST RINGS

Seemed logical to start with players who had a lot of career post-season games as a baseline for figuring out who won a lot of titles. Here are the Top 20 hitters with most at-bats in the post-season and how many rings they have. (* - NOT IN THE HALL OF FAME)

Joe Peters (2043-73), 3 RINGS (’58 BAL, ’64 NYG, ’68 CAR)
Mat Johansen (1869-92) (’77 BUF, ’82 BUF) 2 RINGS
Ron Caprio (2053-56, 2066 GPS) 5 RINGS
Bill Majano (2089, 2091 GPS) 2 RINGS
Craig Donaldson (1994-96, ’99 KC) 4 RINGS
Xavier Ellison (2059 BOS, ’68 VIR) 2 RINGS
*Kyohei Hasegawa (2074 MKE, ’77 BAL) 2 RINGS
Tommy Eissler (2053-56, ’66 GPS) 5 RINGS
Frawsen Batrawi (2049 WAS, ’53 GPS, ’67 CAR) 3 RINGS
Alejandro Salazar (2077 BAL) 1 RING
Prazeres Nerra (2076 EAU, ’82 VIR, ’92, 94 BTR) 4 RINGS (Also won a UPB ring with SLC in ’90)
J.R. Goolsby (2058 BAL) 1 RING
Dusty Veach (2071 WOR, ’82 VIR) 2 RINGS
Eddie Lory (1849, ’51, ’53, ’55, 57 PRO, ’67 WAS) 6 RINGS
*Justin Cripps (1869-71 NYG, 1872-74 LAX) 6 RINGS
*Nathan Pinches (2059 BOS)
Gerry Cashmore (2073, ’81 FLA, ’88 TAC) 3 RINGS
*Guillermo Barriento (2077 BAL)
Kip Sampson (NONE)
*Scott Blanch (’53-56 GPS) 4 RINGS

HERE ARE THE LIST OF PITCHERS WITH MOST RINGS BASED ON NUMBER OF GAMES

Zack Truelove (2053-56, ’66 GPS, ’70 TAC) 6 RINGS
Joel Say (2060, ’63 DET, ’64 NYG) 3 RINGS
*Ernest Moran (2047 MTL) 1 RING
*Garth Daly (1872-74 LAX) 3 RINGS
* Jock Peters (2075, ’89, 91 GPS, ’85 CAL) 4 RINGS
Toshiro Kichida (2043 SF, ’52 WOR, ’55-’56 GPS) 4 RINGS
J.D. Murray (2059 BOS)
Nehemiah Watson (2072 MKE, ’78-79 NYG) 3 RINGS (Sidenote: Apparently he threw 4 no-hitters including a perfect game over his career.)
*Joe Hill (1994-96, 99 KC) 4 RINGS
Erik Bulmer (2070 TAC, ’77 BAL, ’80 LAX) 3 RINGS
*Toby Swan NONE
Tony Pabon (2072 MKE)
*James Frank (1984, ’89-90 RIO, ’94-96, 99 KCY) 7 RINGS
*Robert Hobbs (1892 BOS, 1910 WAS) 2 RINGS
Cooper Riley (2041 BOS, ’55-56 GPS, ’64 NYG) 4 RINGS
*Miguel Serna (2044 JVL, ’60-61, ’63 DET, ’64 NYG) 5 RINGS
*Jack Stroud (1944 ATL, ’52 SEA) 2 RINGS
*Alex Long (1863-64, ’67) 3 RINGS
*Will Garcia (2052 WOR) 1 RING
Ron Magee (2059 BOS) 1 RING
Gaston Gray (2079 NYG, ‘100 ELP, ‘102 COL) 3 RINGS Also won two UPB titles with Dayton (’87-88) and a NABL title with Hartford (’07)

The guy who made me think of this is Jimmy Reese. He was a star on the Phoenix teams that won a title in the early 40s and then ended up in Brattleboro where he was the anchor for 4 more titles. What was unusual about him is that he was dealt when he still had life left, winning another title in West Virginia and most recently in Toronto. No telling if he'll get hired gun status to pick up another one or not, but seven is clearly the most anyone has bagged in this generation. Only player I could find who equaled that number is James Frank, a pitcher from the 80s and 90s who was on those Kansas City Blue Sox teams that won six straight AL titles and four titles in the 90s. Reese is a sure-fire hall of famer, though. Frank surely is not.

JIMMY REESE (2141 PHX, 45-47, 49 BORO, 50 WV, ’52 TOR) 7 RINGS

[Young Drachma]

Here are the teams that you could describe as "dynasties" since 1897

DYNASTIES (3 TITLES OR MORE) OVER A FIVE YEAR SPAN (SINCE 1897)

WASHINGTON MAROONS (1950, 55-56)
RIO GRANDE ROADRUNNERS (1984, 88-89)
KANSAS CITY BLUE SOX (1994-96, 99)
RIO GRANDE ROADRUNNERS (2016-18)
NEWARK WRENS (2025, 29, 31)
GREAT PLAINS FLYCATCHERS (2053-56)
DETROIT PONTIACS(2060-61, 63)
BRATTLEBORO GROCERS (2145-47, 49)

[Izulde]

The Bloods must vote for the Hall of Fame, cuz Cripps got 6 rings and ain't in.