NOTE: THIS IS A VERY REVISED VERSION OF THE PREVIOUS "50 STATES AND COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD PROGRESSIVE LEAGUE PROPOSAL".
Changes: I have consolidated all the US states and territories and the countries of the world that have been the birth places of MLB players into 16 regions which are roughly equal in the numbers of available players. The league will be 16 teams, not 24 as previously planned.
The idea is to have some of the fun available in OLs of multi-era teams AND to reduce the importance (ahem, obsession) with draft position that is the one major drawback of progressive leagues, while also giving us a chance to utilize the cool info available on baseball-reference.com especially the page on players' biographical info (here: www.baseball-reference.com/bio/).
So here goes: 16 teams, 4 divisions. No DH,AAA, clones. All parks can be used but only one version of each park in the league at a time.
Below is a list of the number of players who played in MLB born in each state in the US and in foreign countries (as well as some whose birthplace is unknown who for now will not be used in our league).
I have bunched these together more or less geographically to create a round parity in the number of overall players available in each of the 16 regions.
We will randomly order each team for each round of the original founding draft AND do the same for each geographic place listed below. Teams will be ranked 1-16 each round randomly therefore and the corresponding geographical areas will likewise be ranked 1-16. The teams will be matched each round with the
region (as listed below) with the corresponding number that round.
Each round, each team may draft a player from ANY time period
from a state or country in that region.. It is possible that teams will draft from the same region more than once in a draft, . But we draft ONLY ROOKIE SEASONS. The players drafted then begin their careers in our drafted season, and continue on the rosters until traded to another team or until they retire. We will draft up to a maximum of 30 players for our rosters.
Once a player has been drafted by a team, they cannot be drafted by any other team. Once a player has retired, they are retired forever from the league and will never return.
Each seasonal draft we will again use this same random method to assign draft place in each round, and to assign regions to those teams in each round to draft players from.
At first, most players will be all-time greats - though not all since some states are not represented by any Hall of Famers for example. And some states and countries with all-time greats will not have been drafted from at all in the founding draft nor in the first few seasons.
But eventually over time there will be a gradual reduction of the quality of the players available, making draft position ever less important in the league, and knowledge of and ability to use average and bench players ever more important. Still, with 1,,000 players represented, each region should be able to supply us with good players for many seasons to come.
The draft will not be "fair" in the sense that some teams could find themselves at a disadvantage with the regions assigned them - there is a rough parity in numbers but no guarantee that each region will have the same overall depth in quality of players it offers over time. Further, placement within the draft order per se (that is the traditional first or second position etc.) will have no real meaning whatsoever. We will embrace this chaotic order and enjoy it.
IMPORTANT NOTE TO HELP YOUR RESEARCH:
The page reproduced below comes from: http://www.baseball-reference.com/bio/
That page allows you to click at the top of the chart of listing players from any one of the states or countries and order them by any stat you want - so you can find out who the best batters and pitchers are from Nebraska, Georgia, Italy, or Poland by BA, ERA, HRs etc. to ease your research. For California, which I have divided into two time-based regions, click on the California players page on "to" as in "from - to" - to order players by their last season played. Those who finished careers before 1990 are in one group and the rest in another.
About the 77 players whose birthplaces are unknown: I checked and all but 20 of these finished their careers before 1885 when our WIS database begins, and of those 20 none played in more than 8 games in their career. So we are leaving them out for simplicity sake.
KEEP IN MIND THAT ANY PLAYERS FROM A STATE OR COUNTRY WHO COMPLETED THEIR CAREER BEFORE 1885 IS NOT LISTED IN THE WIS DATABASE.. THOSE PLAYERS WILL BE ALLOWED SO LONG AS THEY PLAYED FROM 1885, WITH 1885 BEING CONSIDERED THEIR ROOKIE SEASON.
Here are the states and countries currently to be used to select players from:
1) 1. Atlantic Coast- 1,331 players
New Jersey (418) Maryland (303) Delaware (52) District of Columbia (98) Florida (460)
2) Stagecoach – 1,324 Players
3) 3. Dixie 1,358 players
Alabama (315) Virginia (277) South Carolina (174)Georgia (330)
4) 4. California Careers ended before 1990 – 1,067 Players
5) 5. California Careers ended from 1990 on – 1,017 players
6) 6. New York 1,178 players
7) 7. Pennsylvania 1,391 players
8) 8. Ohio 1,009 players
9) Down the Mississippi: 1,035
Louisiana (244) ) Missouri (594) Mississippi (197)
10) Texarkana – 1.039
Texas 858 Arkansas 151
11) Appalachia – 1.071 players
Tennessee (287) Kentucky (274)
14) New England - 1,089
15) Caribbean – 1,032
Dominican Republic (597) Puerto Rico (238) U. S. Virgin Islands (11) Cuba (182) Jamaica (4)
16) 16) The Rest of the World: 1.099 players
6/18/2014 8:42 AM (edited)