Best teams by decade, to ultimatly decide the greatest team of all time

seasideda · 10-24-2021, 01:18 PM

SUMMARY:
I started this project a few months ago and still in the beginning stages but though it would be fun to share it with the OOTP community.
My goal is to determine which team(s) were truly the greatest teams of all time by creating detailed in depth, full season leagues by decades to decide ultimately which team would have been crowned the greatest of all time.

With so many great teams to choose from, I thought the fairest way to get to the ultimate champion was not to do a quick tournament but to play full seasons and use a method that I hope would result in a the most realistic outcome using the greatest baseball simulator ever created.

Each league will consist of 18 teams from two decades each and play out an entire season (154-162 games) and

The World Series winner from each league (decade) will be placed in a separate “champions” league and play the WS winners from the other leagues. I have not decided how to play this out yet, but stay tuned.

To make things a little more interesting, I am also including four of the WORST teams from each decade in each league and will include the team with the worst record from each of my leagues in a separate playoff to determine which team was actually the worst of all time. (1951 Browns? 1962 Mets?,)

I also thought that adding a few bad teams in the league would also help equalize some of the individual stats a bit and yes the good teams can beat up the bad teams but the bad teams can also play the part of a spoiler, who knows maybe they weren’t so bad after all and can compete with some of the greatest teams?

In addition to the greatest teams, once the project is finished, I will choose and reefer to the forum for help choosing top players from each of the completed leagues, based on their ootp stats from the season to play in a “greatest players of all time” tournament.

Here is how the tournament is structured. Ill post how I set the leagues up and the teams involved in a later post.

THE METHOD AND LEAGUE SET UP:

Create various leagues by choosing the best teams from each decade (split into two decades each) so each league will consist of the greatest teams within that 20 year span. ( I choose two decades instead of one mainly to speed up the process plus there were many teams (franchises) that could have been used more than once with similar players so I wanted to spread the same franchise out a little more. There will be some franchises that will be represented more than once in the same league if necessary but will spread the years out as I see fit. For example, the 1954 Yankees and the 1961 Yankees will be in the same league from the 1950’s-1960’s)

LEAUGE SET UP BY DECADE

1. 1900-1919
2. 1930-1949
3. 1950-1969
4. 1970-1989
5. 1990-2009
6. 2010- 2021
7. 1980 Special Edition Season*
8. SEASON OF EACH DECADES OOTP WS WINNER TOURNAMENT
9. ALL STARS BY DECADE TOURNAMENT

* I choose one year (1980) as a standalone year for personal reasons which I will explain at a later time. You may also notice that I am missing the 1920’s. Well turns out I played out one season from the 1920’s and crowned the 1927 Yankees as the best team from that decade, but to be fair and more competitive, I added them to the 1930-1949 league.

LEAGUE SET UP AND PLAYOFF STRUCTURE:

Each season and league will be its own entity initially and set up as so. There will be one league with two divisions (American and National teams) Each league will have about 18 teams (9 AL and 9 NL) NL teams will play AL Teams using a balanced schedule of a series of three games. The number of games played will be determined based on the actual number played in those decades (or close to it) usually 152-162 games.

The first place team from the AL and NL will get a buy and the 2^nd and 3^rd place teams from each division will play a one game wild card game. So there will be 6 teams that make the playoffs in each league.

The winner of the WC game will play the 1^st place team in an ALCS/NLCS 7 game series and the WS will be 7 games as well. The ALL STAR game WILL determine home field. (AL or NL)

The winner of the WS will advance to the all time greatest team tournament at the end of the project once all the seasons (decades) are completed.

HOW I CHOOSE THE TEAMS.

Mainly doing a lot of research with help from Baseball Reference looking at each individual teams by season. I heavily weighted the team wins from that year and the level of competition from that leagues season. Some teams may have only won 90 games that year, but the league may have had a lot more parity.

I also heavily considered if they won the World Series or played in the WS or simply were a great team but fell short of going or winning the WS. IMO not all the greatest teams won or even went to the WS, but I do use that as more of a consideration or tie breaker. For example the 1954 Indians went to the WS but lost to the NY Giants even though they won 111 games while the ’54 Yankees finished 2^nd to the Indians, I consider them both as part of the greatest teams of the 1950’s and there may be personal and subjected methods of choosing teams like teams that played above expectations and fell short. (1967 Red Sox) or teams that finished 2^nd in their division only because the team above them had a such a great team.

Some teams are obvious (’27 Yankees, ’75 Reds, ’84 Tigers, ‘09 Pirates and so on)

I’m also, open to getting feedback from people who have played a lot of historical ootp, once I set up the league and choose (post) the teams please feel free to comment on a team I missed or should not have included.

The four worst teams (2 AL and 2 NL) should be easy enough to figure out mainly by the number of games lost.

HOW I WILL PLAY OUT THE SEASONS:

This is subject to change, but my plan is to choose and manage one team to play throughout the season and let the AI manage the other teams. Each typical series length is three games so I will play out at least one of the three games (about 50 or so games per year) and sim the reaming ones while managing the rosters and line ups before each game. If towards the end of the season my team is in the playoff hunt than I will play them all out to finish the season.

Once I feel my team no longer has a shot at the playoffs, Ill go to my second choice and use them. Since Im mostly a Red Sox fan, if the sox are part of the league Ill mostly use them as my main team. If neither of my choices are bidding for the playoffs, Ill choose a bad team and use that team to act as a “spoiler”

LINEUPS, ROSTERS, RL TRADES ETC.

Initial league setups take me about a week to complete. Reason being (I won’t go into detail about how I set up the leagues yet ), but from choosing the teams, to exporting the teams rosters into XL spreadsheet and using BR to cross reference rosters. I also need to import the uniforms, logos, parks, sounds etc. Researching and determining the most optimized modifiers to use, than fine tuning the rosters and lineups for each team. I have to say that for the most part I think OOTP does a decent job getting the rosters and lineups correct! But one thing I do is check BR and look at the teams RL lineups from each season, mainly as a reference knowing the AI isn’t going to match the exact lineups for any given season. Again IMO OOTP doesn’t do a bad job with the lineups and a random manager might actually set the lineups the way OOTP AI does. I’m sure some will disagree.

ROSTER VALIDATION:

Once I download the team rosters and stats from BR, I go through each OOTP team rosters and cross reference them with BR to limit any anomalies. For example a player that OOTP uses in the daily lineups that may have only had a handful of AB’s in RL. If that’s the case I will either delete the player all together or force the AI to use a player that played more regularly or delete the player and re-import him and change the min AB and min Inn as necessary. Since I don’t use minor leagues, reserves are used and I found that teams usually have enough to compensate. I have injuries set to low and Fatigue as normal, but setting depends on the Era I’m playing in at the time.
One other note on rosters, to help minimize players who stats might get padded with lower AB’s or IP, rather than using a blanket Min abs/Min IP for the entire league, I look at each teams rosters and stats and base adjust the AB’s /IP’s based on that particular teams rosters. So for example the 1993 Toronto Blue Jays may get AH

RL IN SEASON TRADES TO MATCH MY LEAGUES

Since I have trades off and actual lineups off, I force trades (or add/delete players) manually. But so I don’t drive myself crazy I only make the roster moves at the beginning of the year and at the All-star break. So if a player was traded in April or May Ill adds the player before the season start, but if a player was traded in June, July or Aug. I add him to the team at the AS break. Obviously since Im using different teams from different years if a player was traded from a team to another he gets deleted, but I also add players that were traded to the teams as well. I simply do this by importing the player from the historical data base. Again I use BR to find the trades that team made during the year. I don’t mimic RL injuries so players that get hurt is random, although injuries are very limited in this environment.

So that my universe in a nutshell. I encourage any input or suggestions from the community as well. I want this to play out as if I created a time machine and created such an environment that it plays out as true to life as, well I guess we will never really truly know with so many variables to consider but mostly just want it to be fun!

Anyway, as of this Post I have already completed two seasons and have a third in progress.

My first season was a time consuming trial and error, testing a season of sorts so I could create a template to use for the remaining seasons once I felt I had the settings to what I thought would be most realistic.

So far I have completed the 1930’s-1940’s league and am playing out the World Series from the 1900’s-1910’s league while in the beginning months of the 1950’s-1960’s League.

Im in the process of choosing the teams from the 1970’s-1980’ which so far has been the most challenging with so many great teams from that era. Especially choosing a Red Sox team (1975,1977 or 1978) Any suggestions of which teams to include are welcome.

Stay tuned.

10-24-2021, 01:18 PM	#1
seasideda Minors (Double A) Join Date: Aug 2009 Location: new hampshire Posts: 131	Best teams by decade, to ultimatly decide the greatest team of all time SUMMARY: I started this project a few months ago and still in the beginning stages but though it would be fun to share it with the OOTP community. My goal is to determine which team(s) were truly the greatest teams of all time by creating detailed in depth, full season leagues by decades to decide ultimately which team would have been crowned the greatest of all time. With so many great teams to choose from, I thought the fairest way to get to the ultimate champion was not to do a quick tournament but to play full seasons and use a method that I hope would result in a the most realistic outcome using the greatest baseball simulator ever created. Each league will consist of 18 teams from two decades each and play out an entire season (154-162 games) and The World Series winner from each league (decade) will be placed in a separate “champions” league and play the WS winners from the other leagues. I have not decided how to play this out yet, but stay tuned. To make things a little more interesting, I am also including four of the WORST teams from each decade in each league and will include the team with the worst record from each of my leagues in a separate playoff to determine which team was actually the worst of all time. (1951 Browns? 1962 Mets?,) I also thought that adding a few bad teams in the league would also help equalize some of the individual stats a bit and yes the good teams can beat up the bad teams but the bad teams can also play the part of a spoiler, who knows maybe they weren’t so bad after all and can compete with some of the greatest teams? In addition to the greatest teams, once the project is finished, I will choose and reefer to the forum for help choosing top players from each of the completed leagues, based on their ootp stats from the season to play in a “greatest players of all time” tournament. Here is how the tournament is structured. Ill post how I set the leagues up and the teams involved in a later post. THE METHOD AND LEAGUE SET UP: Create various leagues by choosing the best teams from each decade (split into two decades each) so each league will consist of the greatest teams within that 20 year span. ( I choose two decades instead of one mainly to speed up the process plus there were many teams (franchises) that could have been used more than once with similar players so I wanted to spread the same franchise out a little more. There will be some franchises that will be represented more than once in the same league if necessary but will spread the years out as I see fit. For example, the 1954 Yankees and the 1961 Yankees will be in the same league from the 1950’s-1960’s) LEAUGE SET UP BY DECADE 1. 1900-1919 2. 1930-1949 3. 1950-1969 4. 1970-1989 5. 1990-2009 6. 2010- 2021 7. 1980 Special Edition Season* 8. SEASON OF EACH DECADES OOTP WS WINNER TOURNAMENT 9. ALL STARS BY DECADE TOURNAMENT * I choose one year (1980) as a standalone year for personal reasons which I will explain at a later time. You may also notice that I am missing the 1920’s. Well turns out I played out one season from the 1920’s and crowned the 1927 Yankees as the best team from that decade, but to be fair and more competitive, I added them to the 1930-1949 league. LEAGUE SET UP AND PLAYOFF STRUCTURE: Each season and league will be its own entity initially and set up as so. There will be one league with two divisions (American and National teams) Each league will have about 18 teams (9 AL and 9 NL) NL teams will play AL Teams using a balanced schedule of a series of three games. The number of games played will be determined based on the actual number played in those decades (or close to it) usually 152-162 games. The first place team from the AL and NL will get a buy and the 2^nd and 3^rd place teams from each division will play a one game wild card game. So there will be 6 teams that make the playoffs in each league. The winner of the WC game will play the 1^st place team in an ALCS/NLCS 7 game series and the WS will be 7 games as well. The ALL STAR game WILL determine home field. (AL or NL) The winner of the WS will advance to the all time greatest team tournament at the end of the project once all the seasons (decades) are completed. HOW I CHOOSE THE TEAMS. Mainly doing a lot of research with help from Baseball Reference looking at each individual teams by season. I heavily weighted the team wins from that year and the level of competition from that leagues season. Some teams may have only won 90 games that year, but the league may have had a lot more parity. I also heavily considered if they won the World Series or played in the WS or simply were a great team but fell short of going or winning the WS. IMO not all the greatest teams won or even went to the WS, but I do use that as more of a consideration or tie breaker. For example the 1954 Indians went to the WS but lost to the NY Giants even though they won 111 games while the ’54 Yankees finished 2^nd to the Indians, I consider them both as part of the greatest teams of the 1950’s and there may be personal and subjected methods of choosing teams like teams that played above expectations and fell short. (1967 Red Sox) or teams that finished 2^nd in their division only because the team above them had a such a great team. Some teams are obvious (’27 Yankees, ’75 Reds, ’84 Tigers, ‘09 Pirates and so on) I’m also, open to getting feedback from people who have played a lot of historical ootp, once I set up the league and choose (post) the teams please feel free to comment on a team I missed or should not have included. The four worst teams (2 AL and 2 NL) should be easy enough to figure out mainly by the number of games lost. HOW I WILL PLAY OUT THE SEASONS: This is subject to change, but my plan is to choose and manage one team to play throughout the season and let the AI manage the other teams. Each typical series length is three games so I will play out at least one of the three games (about 50 or so games per year) and sim the reaming ones while managing the rosters and line ups before each game. If towards the end of the season my team is in the playoff hunt than I will play them all out to finish the season. Once I feel my team no longer has a shot at the playoffs, Ill go to my second choice and use them. Since Im mostly a Red Sox fan, if the sox are part of the league Ill mostly use them as my main team. If neither of my choices are bidding for the playoffs, Ill choose a bad team and use that team to act as a “spoiler” LINEUPS, ROSTERS, RL TRADES ETC. Initial league setups take me about a week to complete. Reason being (I won’t go into detail about how I set up the leagues yet ), but from choosing the teams, to exporting the teams rosters into XL spreadsheet and using BR to cross reference rosters. I also need to import the uniforms, logos, parks, sounds etc. Researching and determining the most optimized modifiers to use, than fine tuning the rosters and lineups for each team. I have to say that for the most part I think OOTP does a decent job getting the rosters and lineups correct! But one thing I do is check BR and look at the teams RL lineups from each season, mainly as a reference knowing the AI isn’t going to match the exact lineups for any given season. Again IMO OOTP doesn’t do a bad job with the lineups and a random manager might actually set the lineups the way OOTP AI does. I’m sure some will disagree. ROSTER VALIDATION: Once I download the team rosters and stats from BR, I go through each OOTP team rosters and cross reference them with BR to limit any anomalies. For example a player that OOTP uses in the daily lineups that may have only had a handful of AB’s in RL. If that’s the case I will either delete the player all together or force the AI to use a player that played more regularly or delete the player and re-import him and change the min AB and min Inn as necessary. Since I don’t use minor leagues, reserves are used and I found that teams usually have enough to compensate. I have injuries set to low and Fatigue as normal, but setting depends on the Era I’m playing in at the time. One other note on rosters, to help minimize players who stats might get padded with lower AB’s or IP, rather than using a blanket Min abs/Min IP for the entire league, I look at each teams rosters and stats and base adjust the AB’s /IP’s based on that particular teams rosters. So for example the 1993 Toronto Blue Jays may get AH RL IN SEASON TRADES TO MATCH MY LEAGUES Since I have trades off and actual lineups off, I force trades (or add/delete players) manually. But so I don’t drive myself crazy I only make the roster moves at the beginning of the year and at the All-star break. So if a player was traded in April or May Ill adds the player before the season start, but if a player was traded in June, July or Aug. I add him to the team at the AS break. Obviously since Im using different teams from different years if a player was traded from a team to another he gets deleted, but I also add players that were traded to the teams as well. I simply do this by importing the player from the historical data base. Again I use BR to find the trades that team made during the year. I don’t mimic RL injuries so players that get hurt is random, although injuries are very limited in this environment. So that my universe in a nutshell. I encourage any input or suggestions from the community as well. I want this to play out as if I created a time machine and created such an environment that it plays out as true to life as, well I guess we will never really truly know with so many variables to consider but mostly just want it to be fun! Anyway, as of this Post I have already completed two seasons and have a third in progress. My first season was a time consuming trial and error, testing a season of sorts so I could create a template to use for the remaining seasons once I felt I had the settings to what I thought would be most realistic. So far I have completed the 1930’s-1940’s league and am playing out the World Series from the 1900’s-1910’s league while in the beginning months of the 1950’s-1960’s League. Im in the process of choosing the teams from the 1970’s-1980’ which so far has been the most challenging with so many great teams from that era. Especially choosing a Red Sox team (1975,1977 or 1978) Any suggestions of which teams to include are welcome. Stay tuned.