As some here know, I also like to play OOTP Baseball as a solitaire game at home. You can reshape the contours of historical baseball to your liking. My most recent attempt to do so follows:
So, other times I had the idea, which I posted elsewhere on this site but never got finished, of giving the expansion 1962 Mets a do-over, and to take on the challenge of whether I could turn them into a respectable team, or even a competitor, on some other basis, or schedule, than actually happened with the Miracle 1969 team (though I do still have great affection for that team, the first one I ever followed, at age 9).
But the problem with doing it as it occurred historically is, predictably, that it gets boring real quick: losing almost every game gets old fast. If you go with the expansion draft as it happened historically, you occasionally find a mediocre player or two that weren’t in the original draft, but otherwise the draft choices are nearly pre-selected – you either draft someone Houston got who is marginally better, or the people the Mets drafted.
The Mets did have a few decent seasons from players here and there, but the problem is that those players last a single year and slide back, or retire – so Richie Ashburn and Gene Woodling are great OBP men, but 1962 was the end for them. Gil Hodges hit well in a very part time role, but also ended his career right afterward, and Felix Mantilla , or Frank Thomas in 1962 again had single useful years but not even regular contributions to make. The league did not give them much to work with.
But messing with the draft parameters by allowing fewer protected players on the expansion protection lists, or by allowing auto-protect only for players with a single year of pro experience or none at all, led, when I experimented, to ridiculously rich draft pools – Bobby Richardson and Willie Stargell were suddenly available. To have that kind of expansion draft pool seemed to violate the spirit of the game here.
So, I came up with a cheat that split the difference in an acceptable way: I started the game in 1962, with the four expansion teams – Angels, Senators, Mets and Colt 45s already in existence with rosters. Then I eliminated all four, making their players into free agents. THEN I re-created all four by expanding the league (I had unclicked the option to expand the league automatically, so I could control the expansion schedule). I allowed the usual 15 players to be protected in the subsequent expansion draft, now one for four teams and not just two, but allowed auto-protect only for players with 2 years or fewer.
This move enabled me to have a draft of mediocre players with the occasional prospect, and to then have all 20 teams, including the four expansion ones, participate in a free agent draft for the players previously with the original four expansion teams I had eliminated.
In the expansion draft we got the usual people near, but fewer that were at the end of their careers, and were able to pick up Tommie Agee, Denis Menke, Cookie Rojas, Max Alvis, Jim Perry, and Sam McDowell, all of whom can play well in future seasons. The rest of the roster was retreads.
In the free agent draft that followed, Dean Chance was available when it came our turn and we drafted him, but then traded him and three other players for Jim Kaat. This gives us an eventual front three of Kaat, McDowell and Jim Perry. We obtained Roy Face in another trade to have some semblance of a bullpen, but except for long relief and spot starts from Dallas Green that is about all we got.
Our starting lineup on Opening Day, 1962, then, is:
Against LH pitchers:
Chuck Hiller 2B
Ruben Amaro SS
Vic Power 1B
Lou B. Johnson RF
Max Alvis 3B
Gino Cimoli CF
Mike Hershberger LF
Doc Edwards C
Against RH pitchers
Chuck Hiller 2B
Ruben Amaro SS
Frank Torre 1B
Charlie Maxwell RF
Max Alvis 3B
Marty Keough LF
Mike Hershberger CF
Russ Nixon C
The starting rotation is
Jim Kaat
Al Jackson
Hank Aguirre
Jim Perry
Sam McDowell
The pre-season prediction of the AI is that we will win 68 games in 1962, finishing last.
I will keep you posted about how we do.