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 1980 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.

Owners (in draft order):

1. gelfost
2. rickysda44
3. dlcunc31
4. tywebb3
5. schwarze
6. ff09
7. eddiedzen
8. jfranco77
9. dippedncrack
10. flippen
11. jkorn
12. mfumar
13. zephyr1949
14. lenbo1212
15. sevenfifty5
16. llcoach
17. joerat1
18. bigfatjew
19. jlvjr1
20. loyalcanuck
21. Chisock
22. specsman
23. cholatse
24. flippen2
25. slainte
26. halo23

flippen, slainte and ??? will draw for the final 3 draft slot order.


New owners will draw randomly for the last 3 draft slots. The correlation between draft order and finishing order was weak for 1980 (see below). So...even for the last 3 spots, if you can improve your teams RL win pct, you can move up significantly in next season's draft.

Owner	Team	RL W	RL L	RL pct	WIS W	WIS L	WIS pct	% +/-	1980	1981
————————	——————————	———	———	————	————	————	—————	————-	Draft pick	Draft Pick
gelfost	Milwaukee Brewers	86	76	0.531	98	64	0.605	13.95	6	1
rickysdad44	Texas Rangers	76	85	0.472	87	75	0.537	13.77	10	2
dlcunc31	New York Yankees	103	59	0.636	101	61	0.623	-1.94	13	3
tywebb3	Detroit Tigers	84	78	0.519	99	63	0.611	17.86	12	4
schwarze	Pittsburgh Pirates	83	79	0.512	96	66	0.593	15.66	18	5
ff09	Montreal Expos	90	72	0.556	101	61	0.623	12.2	16	6
eddiedzen	Cleveland Indians	79	81	0.494	88	74	0.543	10.02	20	7
jfranco77	Toronto Blue Jays	67	95	0.414	73	89	0.451	8.96	25	8
dippedncrack	St. Louis Cardinals	74	88	0.457	80	82	0.494	8.11	14	9
flippen	Houston Astros	93	70	tywebb3,	97	65	0.599	4.94	1	10
jkorn	Minnesota Twins	77	84	0.478	80	82	0.494	3.25	24	11
mfumar	Philadelphia Phillies	91	71	0.562	93	69	0.574	2.20	9	12
zephyr1949	New York Mets	67	95	0.414	68	94	0.42	1.49	15	13
lenbo1212	Los Angeles Dodgers	92	71	0.564	92	70	0.568	0.62	3	14
sevenfifty5	California Angels	65	95	0.406	66	96	0.407	0.28	23	15
llcoach	Oakland Athletics	83	79	0.512	83	79	0.512	0.00	7	16
joerat1	Seattle Mariners	59	103	0.364	58	104	0.358	-1.69	26	17
bigfatjew	San Francisco Giants	75	86	0.466	74	88	0.457	-1.94	15	18
maxxthegreat	Atlanta Braves	81	80	0.503	75	87	0.463	-7.98	13	19
jlvjr11	Kansas City Royals	97	65	0.599	89	73	0.549	-8.25	8	20
loyalcanuck	San Diego Padres	73	89	0.451	66	96	0.407	-9.59	19	21
Chisock	Cincinnati Reds	89	73	0.549	78	84	0.481	-12.36	4	22
bublooo	Boston Red Sox	83	77	0.519	73	89	0.451	-13.13	11	23
specsman	Baltimore Orioles	100	62	0.617	85	77	0.525	-15.00	2	24
cholatse	Chicago Cubs	64	98	0.395	52	110	0.321	-18.75	22	25
clk0619	Chicago White Sox	70	90	0.438	54	108	0.333	-23.81	17	26

The correlation coefficient for the 1980 draft pick v. 1980 order of finish is

r = -0.0182403328480864

Posted by dippedncrack on 8/21/2016 12:03:00 PM (view original):
The correlation coefficient for the 1980 draft pick v. 1980 order of finish is

r = -0.0182403328480864

Dude, that's a lot nerdy.

Too many decimal places?

bump

Bump

Via sitemail, slainte is in; flippen is taking another team, need one more.

One more

This is a great league. The thing to remember is your primary goal is to beat your team's historical record. I picked third from last in the previous season so ended up with a bottom feeder, but I managed to eek out one more win than they did and that moved me to the middle of the draft. No matter where in the order or what team you draft you end up with you've got a shot at beating history - which is the point.

Fiiine I'll take the last spot

Posted by halo23 on 9/4/2016 6:01:00 PM (view original):
Fiiine I'll take the last spot

Thanks!

Posted by halo23 on 9/4/2016 6:01:00 PM (view original):
Fiiine I'll take the last spot

Thanks halo23. Will get the draft set up and running tomorrow night.