Thank You Contrarian23 for the great idea!
all the following was copied and pasted from contrarian's thread

Historical Replay League

I’ve always been interested in using WIS to complete a long-term historical replay. See this thread for a discussion I started over a year ago to explore the possibility.

The Cooperstown Historical Replay League is intended to fulfill that ambition. Rules will be explained in more detail in the next post, but first I want to provide some context.

WIS provides us with a database full of players going back to 1885. Every team that has appeared in the major leagues since then is here, including teams and players from three now-defunct leagues: the American Association (in the database from 1885-1891), the Player’s League (from its sole iteration in 1890), and the Federal League (from its two year stint in 1914-1915.)

So I’ve always been surprised that there aren’t more historical replay leagues. In fact, I’ve never seen one at all. I’m not talking about progressives, or twist themes, but a league where the idea is to replay each season in MLB history with the same rosters as the actual teams had that season.

The most important thing to know about this league:

There are a number of challenges with doing this, but foremost among them is probably this: every season there are a handful of teams that are doomed to be lousy and have no chance of competing. I have in mind a couple of ways of dealing with that, butthe first and most important thing to understand about this league is that some teams are not going to have any chance of winning in any given season. And you may end up with one of those teams.

Please read that previous paragraph as often as necessary, and make sure you are OK with this before signing up to join this league. This is a founding premise of this league: our primary purpose is to create an alternative historical narrative, to explore how things might have been, rather than to ensure that each owner has a decent chance to win in any given season. So we will not be giving lesser teams AAA, or twists, or free agents, or doing anything else to enhance competitive balance, and whining about this will not be tolerated at all.

Again, please fully understand this before signing up, as this fundamental principle is not subject to change. We will run the league as long as we have enough interested owners, but we will not alter this basic concept.

League Rules*

*some rules differ from the 1901 version and 1950 version.

OK, if you’ve come this far, then hopefully you’re comfortable with the premise that if you join this league there will be seasons where your team is just going to suck, and there will not be much that you can do about it. Hey, someone’s going to end up managing the 2003 Tigers.
Here’s how we we’re going to do this:

1. The league will start with the 1980 MLB season and progress forward one season at a time.
2. In season 1, once we have 26 owners, we will have a draft of the 26 MLB teams from 1980. Randomized draft order usingwww.random.org.
3. For the 1980 season, we will use the 1977-1992 Format (7/7/6/6), which entails:
   1. 162 games
   2. 26 teams divided into 2 leagues and a total of 4 divisions
   3. 4 playoff teams (the 4 division winners; there is no wildcard in this format)
   4. No interleague play
4. This is the way MLB was organized in 1980.
5. The divisions will be arranged as they were in 1980.
6. Subsequent seasons will use different formats, to reflect the way baseball changed over the years.
7. Once you have chosen your team, you will go into the draft center and enter your actual players from that season. You can use the “load historical team” feature if you want…this is often the easiest and cleanest way to build your roster, but it’s not infallible. Occasionally players are missed when you load a team that way. If you prefer to draft your players individually, keep in mind that:
   1. For players who were traded or otherwise appeared for multiple teams in a single season, you MUST use the partial-season version of that player. If the player did not get enough PA or IP with your team to warrant a partial-season version then you cannot use him.
   2. All players who played for your team in real life, and are in the WIS database, must be on your roster.
   3. Only players who played for your team in real life may be used in games. This is important, because many teams, especially from the early years, do not have 25 players in the database. In such cases, you will draft additional $200,000 players from the database (from any 1980 season on) to fill out your roster, but these players MUST:
      1. Be manually set to rest at all times
      2. Be manually removed from your player rest, defensive replacement, and PH hierarchies.
   4. In other words, these non-roster players may not be used in games, unless WIS slots them in because of some sort of emergency, and owners should take every possible step to ensure that doesn’t happen.
   5. It is quite likely that some teams will be short of PA or IP, perhaps even very short. So be it.
8. We will use “draft your own” AAA with the following parameters
   1. Each season, the theme rules will be set for a number of AAA players sufficient to allow the team with the largest real-life roster enough slots to incorporate all of their players.
   2. Teams that have more than 25 players in the WIS database will draft these additional players into AAA slots.These players MAY be used in games, and the transaction deadline will be set as late as possible to allow for roster moves throughout the season.
   3. Teams with unfilled AAA slots can either draft your own $200K players to fill the AAA slots, or just let WIS fill those slots with random AAA players, but in either case, those players MAY NOT be used in games. They should remain in AAA the entire season.
   4. Again, the purpose of AAA is to include as many real-life players as possible; no SIM-generated AAA players should ever be used in games in this league.
9. By all means, do your best to win as many games as you can with the players you have! This is important for several reasons, including…
10. …This is NOT a keeper league. Each season we will redraft from the pool of available teams. However, unlike with season 1, and unlike the 1900 and 1950 versions, these drafts will be weighted random (think NBA lottery).. Instead, owners whose teams most overachieve in the current season will receive a greater likelihood of getting the highest draft picks for the next season. “Overachievement” will be defined as “greatest relative improvement in winning percentage.” Or for those who prefer a formula: (WIS winning percentage – MLB winning percentage)/MLB winning percentage. So, if you get stuck with a terrible team in year 1, fear not. If you can win a few more games than they did in real life, you’re probably in great shape to draw a better team in season 2. If, because of owner turnover, we have new owners in the league, they will draft last in their first season (we will use random.org to generate the order for new owners if there are more than one in any given season.)
11. There will be real drafting strategy here. Do you pick the best remaining team available when it’s your turn? Or the team with the greatest possibility of improving on their real-life record?
12. Obviously we are not allowing trades or waiver wire here. We will use the DH in the AL; if you rabidly hate the DH, please don’t let that dissuade you from joining.

Interested Owners:

1. dippedncrack
2. bigfatjew
3. loyalcanuck
4. rickysdad44
5. clk0619
6. mfumar
7. bublooo
8. gelfost
9. flippen
10. lenbo1212
11. joerat1
12. dlcunc31
13. zephyr1949
14. tywebb3
15. specsman
16. maxxthegreat
17. cholatse
18. schwarze
19. jfranco
20. eddiedzen
21. ff09
22. jlvjr11
23. Chisock
24. llcoach
25. sevenfifty5
26. jkorn

5/23 Roll Call or after: confirmed

dippedncrack;bigfatjew;loyalcanuck;rickysdad44;clk0619;mfumar;bublooo;gelfost;flippen;lenbo1212;joerat1;dlcunc31;zephyr1949;tywebb3;specsman;maxxthegreat;cholatse;schwarze;jfranco;eddiedzen;ff09;jlvjr11;Chisock;llcoach;sevenfifty5;jkorn

AL East Division

Tm		W	L	W-L%	GB
New York Yankees	NYY	103	59	.636	--
Baltimore Orioles	BAL	100	62	.617	3.0
Milwaukee Brewers	MIL	86	76	.531	17.0
Detroit Tigers	DET	84	78	.519	19.0
Boston Red Sox	BOS	83	77	.519	19.0
Cleveland Indians	CLE	79	81	.494	23.0
Toronto Blue Jays	TOR	67	95	.414	36.0

AL West Division

Tm		W	L	W-L%	GB
Kansas City Royals	KCR	97	65	.599	--
Oakland Athletics	OAK	83	79	.512	14.0
Minnesota Twins	MIN	77	84	.478	19.5
Texas Rangers	TEX	76	85	.472	20.5
Chicago White Sox	CHW	70	90	.438	26.0
California Angels	CAL	65	95	.406	31.0
Seattle Mariners	SEA	59	103	.364	38.0

NL East Division

Tm		W	L	W-L%	GB
Philadelphia Phillies	PHI	91	71	.562	--
Montreal Expos	MON	90	72	.556	1.0
Pittsburgh Pirates	PIT	83	79	.512	8.0
St. Louis Cardinals	STL	74	88	.457	17.0
New York Mets	NYM	67	95	.414	24.0
Chicago Cubs	CHC	64	98	.395	27.0

NL West Division

Tm		W	L	W-L%	GB
Houston Astros	HOU	93	70	.571	--
Los Angeles Dodgers	LAD	92	71	.564	1.0
Cincinnati Reds	CIN	89	73	.549	3.5
Atlanta Braves	ATL	81	80	.503	11.0
San Francisco Giants	SFG	75	86	.466	17.0
San Diego Padres	SDP	73	89	.451	19.5

res

res

In

In

Rolling...

before I came in or say I like to play how much money is it I mean is it $80 100 200 and whenyou can pick your team when its your trun and do pick just your players on the 1980 red sox or do you pick all players from 1980 I have read this may time I just trying to understand

ill join

Posted by gees51 on 4/1/2016 8:34:00 AM (view original):
before I came in or say I like to play how much money is it I mean is it $80 100 200 and whenyou can pick your team when its your trun and do pick just your players on the 1980 red sox or do you pick all players from 1980 I have read this may time I just trying to understand

As I understand it, and correct me if I'm wrong, you pick the team as it is represented in the WIS database. So when you select the 1980 Bosox, you get all of the players listed on that team. The draft isn't a player draft, it is a one pick per owner team draft. You play with that roster all season. Pretty sure there is no salary cap on this league.

Posted by bigfatjew on 4/1/2016 1:38:00 PM (view original):

Posted by gees51 on 4/1/2016 8:34:00 AM (view original):
before I came in or say I like to play how much money is it I mean is it $80 100 200 and whenyou can pick your team when its your trun and do pick just your players on the 1980 red sox or do you pick all players from 1980 I have read this may time I just trying to understand

As I understand it, and correct me if I'm wrong, you pick the team as it is represented in the WIS database. So when you select the 1980 Bosox, you get all of the players listed on that team. The draft isn't a player draft, it is a one pick per owner team draft. You play with that roster all season. Pretty sure there is no salary cap on this league.

correct

I'll give it a go.

Here's a question. I drafted the 1980 Seattle Mariners just to see what the worst team in the league would look like. The pitching was fine with 1424 innings, but there were 21 position players. What happens in a case like that? Do I just fill up my roster with the best players and forget the extras?

Edit: I just reread the part about drafting the extras in AAA slots, so never mind the question. I'm in.