More OOTP fun.1959 fantasy league results - SimLeague Baseball

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Playing Out of the Park Baseball recently, which I love, I set up a league with 24 of the best teams ever from every era, from the 1894 Orioles and 1906 Cubs to the 1919 White Sox, 1941 Yankees and Red Sox, etc.

I set it up to have four divisions of six teams, each division more or less divided by era.

The four division winners were the 1894 Orioles, the 1941 Yankees, the 1986 Mets and the 1995 Braves. The Braves and Yankees won both Series 4-1 and then the Braves' pitching proved too much for even the Dimaggio Yankees as they swept the Series four straight.

Interesting. I want the run the league a few more times and see how consistently I get similar results. The Orioles just edged the 1919 White Sox.

Al Simmons of the 1929 Atheletics won the batting title with a .359 average, but Ted Williams of the 1941 Red Sox won MVp with .355 36 HR and 126 RBI.

Boog Powell of the 1969 Orioles hit 60 homers !

Sandy Koufax of the 1963 Dodgers had a 1.84 ERA to lead in that stat and Bob Gibson of the 1968 Cards won 32 games.

Kevin MItchell, not Dimaggio had the longest hitting streak at 32 games, Willie Keeler hit in 21 straight.

But Babe Ruth was injured for several months and had only 279 at bats with 18 homers, so who knows? He might have made a big difference as the '27 Yankees finished at 79-83 with only Gehrig ( .352 33 homers ) to terrorize pitchers.

Too much fun

I just re-ran the league today with a slight change in which teams I used.

The playoffs are about to start - two divisions in each league. The playoff teams:

1927 Yankees (won 100 games, lost 62, best record overall) - they just beat the 1998 Yankees by 2 games.
vs.

2001 San Francisco Giants

and

1995 Atlanta Braves (yes, them again)

vs.

1943 St. Louis Cardinals

I had the teams be adjusted as against a neutral year - normalized in WIS terms.

The Best Players (they provide a list at the end of the season):

Babe Ruth: .323 72 HR 164 RBI 1927

Barry Bonds: .335 53 HR 121 RBI 2001

Ted Williams: 332 41 126 1941

Lou Gehrig: ,322 48 124 1927

BUT then the next FOUR players on the list are all from a team you can't get on WIS:

The 1875 Boston Redstockings:

CF Jim O'Rourke hit .305 44 HR

RF Cal McVey .359 45 HR 184 RBI - maybe the best all-around player in the league

C Deacon White .294 28 HR

2B Ross Barnes .302 13 HR .436 OBP

Then came Dan Brouthers 1B of the 1886 Detroit Wolverines who hit .333 34 HR 127 RBI

and 10th (they give you a list of 50) was

Shoeless Joe Jackson of the 1919 White Sox .340 25 HR

Joe Dimaggio of the 1941 Yankees was 12th at .304 with 42 HR

George Brett of the 1980 Royals (who came in just 4 games behind the 2001 SF Giants hit .333 with 40 HRs and was 15th on this list.

among pitchers:

Sandy Koufax of the 1965 Dodgers was 15-10 with a 1.70 ERA,second lowest overall after (no.5 pitcher) Max Lanier of the 1943 Cards who went 12-6 with a 1.43 ERA.

John Smoltz did not give up a single run until his 7th start (!) and was no.2 overall as a pitcher with a record of 21-7 and an ERA of 1.88,

No. 3 was a WIS favorite: Silver King of the 1887 Browns 19-14 1.96

4. Greg Maddux 1995 Braves 20-9 2.37

5. Lanier

6. Mort Cooper 12-13 2.26 1943 Cards

7. George Pipgras 1927 Yankees 18-8 2.37

8. Nat Hudson 1887 Browns 19-18 2.19

9. Sid Fernandez 1986 Mets (came in second behind the '95 Braves) 20-9 2.52

Third in that division by the way were the 1994 Expos at 84-78. Pedro went 12-9 3.04 ERA.

and tenth was none other than:

Addie Joss 1904 Naps 18-8 1.98

These seem to me to be mostly pretty good, believable results.

Anyway, there are endless variations.

if you play OOTP, the way to do this is:

Start a "Historical League" - pick any era but know that some of the results will be skewed (normalized in WIS speak) by whatever era you choose - I set mine in 1963 so it would be less confusing to add so many teams. Play in commissioner mode - click the little box they provide as you are setting it up. Though if you forget you can do it later.

You then go to MLB League at the top of the page once the league is created Click "League Setup" and then "League Structure". I first added a division to each league. The you eliminate all the teams from the year you are starting. Then you must click on "free agents" under the MLB League menu and when you go to the list of free agents (all the players previously on the teams from the league start year) click at the bottom on "eliminate all free agents".

Now you return to "League Structure" and click "add historic team" and then click the "historic rosters"database which returns you where you were, refresh the season button and then click to get a drop-down menu of all teams from that year and pick the one you want. It sounds like more work than it is: once you have added one team it takes 10 seconds to add the others.

So you can add as many teams as you like from whatever seasons.

You can also add "historic" players from the "free agents" screen instead of whole teams.

Now on to the playoffs. But the question is: ARE the two greatest teams of all time the 1995 Braves and the 1875 Boston Redstockings?

3/25/2014 4:24 PM

italyprof

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Oh, yes, the Redstockings - they are NOT in the playoffs, mostly because um, back in 1875 apparently the teams all had just one pitcher who pitched every day (NOT a 162 game schedule).

THEIR pitcher was a guy named...Al Spalding. in real life he went 55-5 with 8 saves ! And his ERA was 1.52 , his WHIP was 1.02 for 575 IP (NOT adjusted IP/162, but real innings). Move over Mr. Joss. Why do they not call it the Al Spalding Award instead of the Cy Young?

Unfortunately, "neutralized" in OOTP terms, normalized that is, Spalding went 4-88 pitching in 162 games for my league. So they came in last. But I am not convinced by these results - in a different configuration or with a little back up to deal with modern conditions, Spalding could be very tough, or in a progressive league if WIS decides to include these stats in the database back past 1885.

Kind of cool to have Al Spalding on the mound huh? Like have the founding fathers pitching for your team (Ben Frankin had a mean screwball)...

3/25/2014 4:34 PM

italyprof

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Update: the 1995 Braves swept the 1927 Yankees in the Series. The Yankees scored 7 runs total in the 4 games. Babe Ruth hit one HR,

So having run two different simulations of great teams, covering perhaps 35 or so different teams, the 1995 Braves have won both championships, both times winning the World Series in a sweep.

But so far we have been playing under 1963 standards of scoring, hitting, etc.

Next stop: 1871...

3/25/2014 6:15 PM

redsox1966

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italyprof, how long does it take to play an entire season?

3/25/2014 7:25 PM

mensu1954

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Steven, so far I have only run career leagues with me running a franchise. Loads of fun but am very interested in running a league such as what you have listed here. Choosing the teams should be great fun! By the way, I have enjoyed reading your "reports"...keep them coming!

3/26/2014 4:40 AM

italyprof

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redsox1966, you can have a season last 6 months or run the whole thing in a couple of hours. You control the time frame, so if you want to study each box score each day, you can run it in real time. But you can have it auto-play a week, a month or the whole season. You can also, of course, play individual games and have them go in real time as you either watch or manage a team.

mensu1954, thanks, I would be interested to know which teams you pick. Let us know !

3/26/2014 9:22 AM

italyprof

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I have been trying for a few frustrating days to upload a list of all-time great players into a league starting in the 1960s, so that that period, which is itself rich in so many all-time great players (thus saving me the trouble of having to research them and include them in the list, since they are already there or will be in the next two decades or so) could have its players compete with Ruth, Cobb, W.Johnson and so on from before their time, and more recent great stars like Pedro Martinez, Greg Maddux, Barry Bonds and so on from after the end of the 1970s. So I figure on going to about 1982 or so and seeing how long I want to continue after that date.

But I kept loading the list of players into the league as free agents, having a free agent draft after expanding the league - I am adding around 4 full teams worth of players - circa 120 in all so I needed to add teams to prevent ridiculous scenarios of Hornsby playing with Sandberg on the bench or whatever, A-Rod and Honus Wagner at SS on the same team and Mike Schmidt at 3B so no room to move A-Rod and so forth.

And every time I held a free agent draft by around round 20 the system would crash - not my computer but the OOTP program would stop and shut down. Aargh. I would each time lose most of the data and the draft etc. no matter how many times I had hit "save current game".

So I finally figured it out and got it to happen.

Okay, I got it to work. Here is how I did it:

To find players to upload, you need to get their IDs from baseball-reference - the last part of the URL is their last name abbreviated, first name abbreviated and a two-digit number,usually 01 unless there has been another player whose abbreviated name comes out the same.

You create a text file in which you cut and paste those player ids. then you can upload the whole list with one click by going into MLB League Menu and then "Free Agents" which has a button on the bottom that says "Import Historical Players".

But I needed to avoid the causes of the program crash. So here is what I did:

First, I started earlier - 1958 to reduce the variables - fewer teams, and I shut off automatic expansion of the league.

Then I expanded the league myself to 20 teams, cleared the rosters and had an inaugural draft.

I played out the 1958 season before I tried anything too complicated.

I then expanded the league again to 24 teams.

having a massive free agent draft seems to make the system unhappy, at least on my computer.

So I had the list of players - thanks again to those on the OOTP forums who explained to me in another thread how to do this - loaded en masse from a text file directly to the first-year draft pool. This is an option that is available when you click "import historical players".

I loaded around 120 players - all-time greats from before the period of the late 50s and 60s and 70s, or whose careers started at the end of or after that period.

I used the first season for each of the all-time greats I uploaded to the draft pool, so that their whole careers will occur during the 1960s and 1970s, which was both my interest - seeing how players I grew up watching did against all timers like Ruth or Pedro Martinez - he and Koufax in the same league at the same time for example...

I deleted a few important clones that were near the end of their careers - Ted Williams and Stan Musial, so I could have their entire careers instead.

So instead of a vast free agent draft, I had a new first-year player draft, incljding all the first-year players from 1959 plus the many all-time greats that I had uploaded.

I drafted for my team, the Yankees and let the auto-draft work for each round between my team's picks.

While a few teams seem a little under-powered, most have a pretty good team with a mix of 1959 and all time great players.

My team has:

Rotation:

Walter Johnson

Babe Ruth

Roger Craig

Dick Ellsworth

Bullpen: Larry Sherry, Gerry Staley and Clem Labine in middle relief, Don Cardwell in long relief, Ken Johnson just watching and Mariano Rivera as stopper and closer.

C - Yogi Berra and Jorge Posada

1B - Don Mattingly

2B - Bill Mazeroski

3B - Brooks Robinson

SS - Luis Aparicio

OF - Tony Gwynn, Kenny Lofton and Roberto Clemente, though a certain member of the starting rotation may move into RF in around 4-5 years time :D, so someone may get traded for more pitching at that point.

Felipe Alou and Ron Fairly back up OF and 1B and pinch hit, Granny Hamner, near the end of his career, Jose Pagan and Sparky Anderson in his one season (.218 in 400 plus AB) are the IF bench.

Each team has around 32-37 players on their roster, 25 on the active roster, the rest reserve. No minor leagues.

I will see how rosters look when baseball expands in 1960 and 1962 - it could be that the new players merely strengthen the bench all around the league, but if it looks like the teams are too deep with stars sitting down I may expand one more time to soak up the talent and spread it around.

The one down side of importing a list of players you want in a league into the draft pool is that like free agents, but not like free agents after a free agent draft, you have to sign them to a contract and a couple of draftees said no. But once Ruth and Big Train said yes, I breathed a sigh of relief.

Fun.

I think instead of auto-playing weeks at a time as I usually do to get to important games, I am going to play and manage every game for a while because this league is now loads of fun. Like rediscovering the original OLs for the first time here at WIS but without people who know how to take advantage of AAA and trading them with you etc. to compete against as soon as you get there.

I just played opening day, Walter Johnson - a rookie remember, in 1959, pitching against a Cleveland team with Henry Aaron, Ted Kluszewski, , Richie Ashburn and Cal Ripken Jr.

Mattingly homered in his first ever MLB at-bat, then homered again in the 6th with a man on. 3-0 for us. But Vic Power, Gene Woodling and Henry Aaron finally got to our rookie Walter Johnson in the 8th, tying it at 3 apiece. I put in Staley as Johnson tired, it went to extra innings, and I had the brilliant idea of pinch hitting Babe Ruth - tomorrow's starter - for Staley in the 10th, and he drew a walk - still no official at-bats for Mr. Ruth - but we did not score.

I couldn't tire out Ruth who has to pitch tomorrow so in came Mariano Rivera. His first ever appearance was a scoreless half-inning.

But Clemente, Mattingly and Yogi combined for three singles and we won 4-3 in 11, Rivera the winning pitcher, Mike Garcia the loser, relieving Lew Burdette, for Cleveland.

Addendum:

Game 2 of the 1959 season - We took an early 4-0 lead on homers by Yogi and Mazeroski, but after Maz's homer, Ruth, the pitcher was up next and Jerry Walker put one in his ear. The benches cleared in a brawl and Babe Ruth and Walker are now suspended three games each. Jim Kaat came on to pitch for Cleveland and shut us down the rest of the way. Don Cardwell relieved Ruth, gave up a couple of runs but held on for a 4-2. victory.

3/28/2014 9:35 PM (edited)

italyprof

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1959 - Inaugural season for OOTP baseball world of 1959 players plus 120 all-time greats from eras before 1959 and after 1980, with 24 teams overall.

Here is the wrap-up of the fantasy OOTP baseball world of 1959 I described above in its inaugural season. Most home runs ever: Ernie Banks, 1959 – 59. Most wins by a pitcher ever (rookie) Dwight Gooden, 1959 - 29. Lowest ERA ever – Gooden again 1959 – 1.99. Most stolen bases ever (rookie) Billy Hamilton 1959- 63.

Highest batting average ever: (rookie) Don Mattingly 1959 - .351.

Rookies of the year 1959 – Joe Dimaggio (Vermont Greens) and Ted Williams (NY Mets). Williams and Dimaggio’s teams met in the World Series and Dimaggio’s team won this time. Dimaggio hit .435 with 2 homers and Ted Williams hit .364 with 2 homers in the six game series won by Vermont. So both had a great Series. Though Mets’ rookie OF Barry Bonds, who hit .286 with 29 homers in the regular season did not, hitting just .222 with 1 home run.

Remember in what you read below that this was an inaugural season as the 1958 season was really just to set the league up (see my notes on the logistical hassles getting solved above), and that ALL non-1959 players – that is players from that era in real life - were in their rookie season.

1959 Baseball Season results and wrap-up

Standings:

AL East NL East

Vermont Greens 117-37 New York Mets 108-46

New York Yankees 95 -59 Philadelphia Phillies 87-67

Washington Senators 83-71 Milwaukee Braves 70-84

Baltimore Orioles 66-88 Cincinnati Redlegs 69-85

Boston Red Sox 58-96 Memphis Suns 67-87

Cleveland Indians 55-99 Pittsburgh Pirates 66-88

AL West NL West

Seattle Mariners 97-57 Portland Fishermen 91-63

Dallas Green Sox 78-76 Santa Fe Missions 87-67

Kansas City Athletics 77-77 Los Angeles Dodgers 85-69

Chicago White Sox 71-83 St. Louis Cardinals 78-76

Houston Oilmen 67-87 San Francisco Giants 65-89

Detroit Tigers 60-94 Chicago Cubs 51-103

Vermont Greens and New York Mets won the league championship series against Seattle and Portland respectively both by 4-2.

Vermont won the World Series, defeating the Mets 4 games to 2, with Kid Nichols outpitching Cy Young 3-0 in game 6.

Analysis:

AL East:

There was no stopping Vermont this inaugural year. AL Rookie of the year CF Joe Dimaggio (.332 29 HR) and other newcomers like Tris Speaker, Wade Boggs, catcher Mike Piazza (.320 17 HR), SS Nomar Garciaparra (.297 26 HR), led the attack. But it was Vermont’s pitching, with its rotation of rookies Dwight Gooden (who set a league record with 29 wins), Carl Hubbel and Mordecai Brown that was the core of their success this year.

The Yankees put up a good fight, with a 95-59 record but were never close to the Vermont juggernaut. Yankees rookie 1B Don Mattingly won the batting title with a .351 average and 20 homers, but except for catcher Yogi Berra’s 14 home runs the rest of the team lacked punch. Pitcher Babe Ruth, who surprisingly hit 2 home runs in his first season might make a fine everyday player someday. But for now, his 21-11 record and 2.44 ERA made him a fine rotation partner for rookie Walter Johnson who posted a 26-9 record and a 2.56 ERA.

The NL champion Mets boasted rookie starter Cy Young (who won the award for best pitcher in the league, heretofore to be called “The Cy Young Award”), who combined with the best overall rotation in baseball of rookies Roger Clemens (17-9), Old Hoss Radbourn (19-11), Andy Pettitte (16-7) and Don Newcombe (15-8).

Chicago White Sox veteran OF Vada Pinson won the NL batting title with a .350 and his 33 homers helped him win the MVP award, which the Mets’ Ted Williams, already rookie of the year for the NL also won – an amazing accomplishment in a freshmen season. Williams hit .340 with 38 home runs.

Ernie Banks, shortstop for the Los Angeles Dodgers set a record with 59 home runs in 1959, and that will be a tough record to beat ! The Phillies Bill Skowron hit 46 to take second place. Portland rookie Eddie Matthews hit 44 and we have not seen the last of him !

The Mets’ Rogers Hornsby, their rookie 2B (combined with Ted Wililams making for quite an offense) and Kansas City’s Tito Francona each hit .350 to come a point short of Mattingly of the Yankees for the MLB batting title, but Hornsby was consoled by a pennant and the NL batting crown.

Billy Hamilton of Portland stole a record 63 bases in his rookie year, and the Yankees’ Kenny Lofton, also a rookie, stole 43, followed by the Mets’ Tim Raines at 36.

Grover Cleveland Alexander of the Dodgers and Seattle’s Ed Walsh each won 22 to finish behind Gooden’s record year, the Yankees’ Walter Johnson and the Mets’ Cy Young who posted 25 wins.

Tim Lincecum of Seattle struck out an astounding record 326 batters in his rookie season, followed by Gooden, Bob Feller a Seattle team-mate of Lincecum’s with 253, Fernando Valenzuela the Cards’ rookie with 231, one more than Walter Johnson of New York.

Also worth mentioning was Portland rookie pitcher Addie Joss who went 20-7 with a 2.87 ERA and a 1.15 WHIP, though he joined the club of those, including Al Spalding of the Phillies and Don Drysdale of the Braves at 1.07 WHP and Larry Jackson of Santa Fe at 1.03 who could only dream of Dwight Gooden’s magnificent 0.97 WHIP on the year.

So 1959 is in the books. The Yankees hope to find a way to catch up with Vermont, but the Greens and Mets look to be dominant for a while to come.

3/29/2014 12:18 PM

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