Any interest in a Contintental League save, circa 1961?
 

edit: read here to download: https://forums.ootpdevelopments.com/...7&postcount=25

I've spent the last couple of days creating a save that starts in the 1961 season as if the Continental League actually came to fruition. For those who don't know, it was the very real threat of this competing league being created that forced MLB to ultimately add 8 new teams in the 60s.

Here's the gist of the save:

* It starts at the end of the 1960 season. For verisimilitude, I ensure that the Pirates beat the Yankees in the 1960 World Series

* With the Continental League planning to start in 1961, many MLB players have refused to extend their contracts in anticipation of joining the new league. This resulted from the random generation of player contracts, I had no direct input on it. The scale of this player rebellion has in effect created the free agency system. There is no arbitration, nor an amateur draft.

* The Continental League has 8 teams: New York Mets, Houston Colt .45s, Minnesota Twins, Texas Rangers, Atlanta Crackers, Colorado Rockies, Toronto Blue Jays and Buffalo Bisons. If you choose to play one of these teams, you will be playing against 7 other AI expansion teams so your chances to establish an early dynasty are maximized!

* MLB in OOTP is set up as one subleague with three 8-team divisions (AL, NL and CL). There is no interdivisional play so they are still separate leagues. Post-season could include the 3 division champs and the top-ranked wildcard, but that can't be set until the pre-season arrives.

* All 24 MLB franchises have the following farm system: one AAA team, one AA team, and two A teams. I tried to make all of the farm teams consistent with the historical MiLB franchises, but this was not always possible. In addition, all BC/Rookie leagues are now independent and will serve as a TCR breeding ground for the lower-rated players passed over by the MLB franchises. League evolution is off in order to maintain this, so players will need to manually update the parks as needed.

* With no draft, historical players will enter the league as free agents in the year they started the minors. Roster limits are set at 25 for MLB and AAA, 30 for AA, and 35 for A teams, so each franchise can control 150 players across their 5 teams. Many MLB teams are over this limit and will shed lower-rated players as soon as you advance one day, bumping the free agent pool to about 2000 players or so. Unaffiliated players will most likely end up in the independent leagues

* Development TCR is at 200, scouting is at Very Low, talent granularity is low (1-5), potentials are turned off, while coaching and personalities are on. The purpose of this is to create maximum obfuscation of abilities and potential, players can obviously tune these to their personal tastes. Trading difficulty is set to default.

* All 24 franchises and independent teams are currently fulled staffed with coaches and whatnot.

* Veteran free agents are available a few weeks after the sim start. Star players that (randomly) declined to sign contracts in order to become free agents include: Willie Mays, Ken Boyer, Ernie Banks, Roberto Clemente and Brooks Robinson. You can't sign them all and will be competing with 23 other teams for them anyway. The TCR setting ensures that there are no guarantees of future performance, just like in the real world.

All I need left to do is to create the 24-team, 3-division schedule which should only take me an hour or so, whenver I can get to it today. Imagine a world in which the 162-game schedule never came to exist, and the Bambino is still the undisputed single-season HR champion. A zip of the save is currently 261MB, not sure how to distribute it for anyone who wants it.

To answer your first question, yes there is interest! And to answer your last, I believe that you can save this as a live start for others to use. I’ve not actually done that, so I’ll defer to others who have, or those who have successfully used a a live start generated by someone eles.

The idea is inspiring, particularly using the four teams that were created by MLB to forestall the Continental League, and the new franchises that came later. Putting the eight new teams in a single league is genius, creating immediate competition.

As you say, others can manipulate the settings. I have never understood the logic of both high TCR and low scouting accuracy. Too random for me. Great for those who love roulette (unrigged) as opposed to poker. The game is hard enough, even with accurate scouting and modest potential variability. (Of course, I admit we fans have an unfair advantage when using real historical players, because we know that young Pedro Oliva is likely to be really really good, regardless of his early ratings.)

I would encourage you to look into the live start, and, once you start play, to post results in the Historical forum. I will be eager to see how things play out. And eager to adjust some of your settings and have a go at it. i enjoy historical seasons and I enjoy expansion teams, so this is made for me LOL.

Best way to distribute would be via Dropbox, Google Drive, or Mega. All are free and require no intrusion on your system to speak of.

Suggest a different name for Atlanta.

I looked this up but, regardless, anyone can change it. It was the traditional name for the Atlanta AAA team for decades and is still in use. Even the Negro League team in Atlanta was called the "Black Crackers".


It wasn't really a racist slur back then.

This is why, of course. It's just way too easy to win in historical leagues with meta-knowledge if you want any semblence of historical accuracy.

The point of TCR is to create some new terrain with the players. In a world where there were suddenly 8 new teams in 1961, it's fair to say that players would have developed quite differently than they did in our world.

Fair enough. So, with that in mind, what TCR setting is necessary? Is it really 200, which, in my experience, makes everything random? My worry is that total change means the real players might as well be fictional players. Or should my focus be on the minor league players who would be most affected by TCR at max?

And with high TCR, anything wrong with accurate scouting, so at least you have reports to rely on in forming an organization? I mean, if you can't rely on the ratings as accurate, why bother trying?

It needs to be tested.

Everything that is set can be undone. Ratings were locked during the 1960 season playthrough and only unlocked when the offseason started. That's where the save is at so technically a day has not passed with the possibility of TCR effects.

However, other things need to be set by default such as scouting and coaching because turning them off makes it difficult to turn them back on. So they are left on unless the player wants to turn them off.

Same thing with the Very Low scouting accuracy. If you set it to High or 100%, there's a risk that suddenly the AI gets a good view of players if you advance a day, making setting it back to Very Low a bit problematic.

Regarding the post-season, the following may be of interest. It was an interview with Branch Rickey, president of the Continental League, published in the New York Times on Aug. 23, 1959.

I confused how the new teams will find 150 players for their organizations, with no expansion draft, no amateur draft, only free agent signings. By simple arithmetic, there will be 200 new major league roster spots (8 X 25). Suddenly there will be 600 “major league” players, where there were just 400 in 1960. Where do these 200 new major leaguers come from, exactly? Presumably they will mostly be AAA players. As the Continental League teams sign free agents, established major league teams will need to fill out rosters with these AAA players. In a perfect world, with the AAA guys spread evenly among 24 teams, that would mean 8 or 9 AAA guys per team (active roster).

I ask these questions not to criticize, but wondering aloud how this will shake out. We know that the staggered MLB expansion in 1961 and in 1962 skewed a lot of statistics. And that was only 100 new roster spots. With 200 new spots in one year, talent will be suddenly diluted to an even greater degree.

Not that this is a bad thing. At least, in your scheme, there is some possibility of talent being spread more evenly, than with an expansion draft as the main mechanism to supply players. Yours is more comparable to the Federal League in 1914-1915, and we all know how that ended. [But I am a huge FL fan, and some of those teams were legit good!].

So, if I’m the GM of the Houston Colts, I could make offers to Mays and/or Clemente and/or other MLB roster free agents, at least until my money runs out. And take a look at more fringe MLB players who are not under contract. What about AAA and AA guys who are not on the active roster of an MLB team? Are they fair game to sign with the Continental League? Is this war?

How, as an expansion GM, do I fill out my minor league system? I will need over a hundred more guys. So will the other seven expansion teams. That’s over 800 new players in one year. Without fictional players, even allowing for the guys who started IRL in 1961, how do we fill 800+ new slots? In my 1960 Season sim, with full minors, I don’t recall many minor league free agents (and obviously, these were not quality players). I guess you have reduced somewhat the number of minor league teams, and that would create a pool of unaffiliated players. And with full TCR, some of the worst guys would improve.

Your idea is an inspiration to try. I would have an accurate scouting setting. Finding a dependable head scout is hard enough, without the worry that he will be doomed to failure. But I’m persuaded that a relatively high TCR, at least 150, will effectively mitigate the advantages of hindsight. (And/or I could have a house rule, not to take advantage of then-unheralded future greats.). As with the Federal League, any player on an established MLB roster without a contract would be fair game to sign a Continental League contract. And so would any minor league player. But I wonder if the AI would react to the new reality, by locking up the best players in better deals?

How will you handle the money available to the 24 teams for all these free agent contracts? Same budget for each team? Salary cap? Use the existing 1960 budget framework for the established teams? This is all fascinating stuff. I hope the game software is capable of adapting to this scenario.

This is a valid concern. Thanks for asking!

Keep in mind that this is a full-minors save. The existing 16 MLB teams had a 2950 total players in their organizations, which meant they needed to shed 550 players to trim down to the new roster sizes (most franchises had more than 4 minor-league affiliates).

With the incoming rookie class, there are now 4177 active players, of which 2054 are free agents.

24 teams can carry 150 players each = 3600 players

That leaves the remaining 577 players to fill the independent leagues (which were formally BC/Rookie leagues). And with auto-retire turned off, the number of players should grow over time. We might have to add more independent leagues over time.


No. AL and NL teams tried contractually lock up as many of their stars as possible, but there were too many holes in the dike and not enough fingers. In the face of broad player mutiny and to avoid challenges to their anti-trust exemption, the Continental League is now officially part of MLB. However, there is no expansion draft. The teams will have to find and sign their own players.

Also, the save starts with the player not employed by any team yet. So you can play the Buffalo Bisons if you'd like.

Actually, this is the style I prefer when running historical leagues with the engine. High TCR keeps me from meta-gaming, and that high TCR renders scouting pointless so I set it to 100%. However, the save will come with Scouting at Very Low in case a player wants to keep it there and lower the TCR instead.

I don't have salary cap or revenue sharing turned on, but they can be easily. The way I do "revenue sharing" in my saves is to set the ticket revenue sharing at 50%, up from the default 20%, and include season tickets in the sharing. That is really effective and encourages teams to be good enough to draw fans on the road..

Every time I've tried this house rule my save would always eventually go up in flames because 'Willie Stargell?!?" or something like that was just too irresistable.

This is awesome, thanks!

Not sure if it can be replicated in OOTP, but perhaps it serves as the basis for other ideas that are. :)


By the way, if you want another 'what if', there was this possibility published in the Nov. 29, 1952 issue of the New York Times:

Frank Shaughnessy, president of the International League, said plans were being made for two additional major leagues. The first would be from raising the Pacific Coast League to major league status. The other would be a new league created by taking the four biggest cities of the American Association and the International League. It was hoped this could be achieved within five or six years.

Yes, the Continental League being accepted by the AL and NL meant it had to respect the contracts and reservation rights of those leagues' teams. This is unlike the Federal League, which was an 'outlaw' league, and some of its clubs tried to lure AL and NL players to jump their contracts and sign with the FL (which some did).

To answer the thread title question, +1.

What I normally do for my historical saves involving Houston is to correct the name of the owner, GM and coaching staff. I realized yesterday that, if I am going to distribute this to other players who will probably want to play other teams, that I need to do the same for the other teams as well.

So that is what I am polishing up on this save before I release it into the wild.

Since league evolution needs to remain off, I will also make a "schedule" of when MLB parks need to be updated to their newer iterations.

Give me another 24-48 hours and it should be ready.

Thanks in advance for sharing it.

Hate to chime in with just a "me too", but this is a great idea and it mirrors something I was tinkering with a few years ago but never got off the ground. Looking forward to updates!

I'm very close atm. I've corrected all of the owner/gm/manager/coach names for the teams, plus the milb managers (e.g. Earl Weaver is currently a milb manager in the Baltimore system).

I've created a document detailing which parks need to be updated in which year, plus a list of the historical all-star locations for those who want to maintain that as well.

I should have the 24-team, 3-division schedule done tonight. I'm taking the 1960 AL/NL schedule and merging in the 1961 NL schedule.

At that point, I think it's ready to release!

Be careful with that. Despite both leagues playing 154 games in 1960, the NL schedule started six days earlier than the AL schedule. Here are the starting and ending dates and length of season:

1960 AL = Apr. 18 through Oct. 2 — 154 games over 168 days
1960 NL = Apr. 12 through Oct. 2 — 154 games over 174 days
1961 NL = Apr. 11 through Oct. 1 — 154 games over 174 days

Yes, I have no idea why that happened in 1960. It will all work out but one league will always start a few days after the other two. Which is fine as long as it's a different league every year. I can create 3 versions of the schedule that rotate this

I used to know, but I've forgotten it now.


I think it makes more sense to make the same league start earlier. I'd suggest the Continental League.

Alternatively, use the 1959 AL and NL schedules for the AL and NL, and the 1960 AL schedule for the Continental League. All three will then be playing 154 games over 168 days, and the starting and finishing dates nearly identical.

ok, I've got the other schedule working and I want to make this available as soon as its zipped. But that's a good idea, I'll try to make an alternate schedule file this weekend.

ok, here is a link to the file "Continental.zip" on my Gmail drive.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LTe...ew?usp=sharing

There are 4 files in it... 2 text files, a schedule lsdl file, and a huge OOTP save folder. The whole zip is about 300Mb.

Open the READ_FIRST.txt file first for detailed information about the save.

Let me know if you have any problems! I auto-ran a copy of it to Opening Day 1961 to test the schedule file, but I haven't actually played it yet.

edit: updated with link to v2 which has some minor fixes

First things first. 7,793 files scanned, and not one item of malware! (No offense.)

Second things second. I am already impressed by the quality, and I haven't even opened it yet! I am going by the professional-looking READ_FIRST.txt file. This sort of thing always gives me a good feeling:

Third things third. Eureka! It actually loads! (;)) Thanks again for this. You are a good example of what makes this community so wonderful.

I've delivered plenty of software in my life. Old habits die hard!

edit: I hope someone can give updates on their progress in this scenario. I suspect I will do poorly compared to a lot of the experts here.

In a humorously circuitous journey, I found better Atlanta Crackers logos than the defaults which you have herein. I went to Google images and found the link to this fellow's thread in the mods forum:

https://forums.ootpdevelopments.com/...=311885&page=2

Look at this one! https://forums.ootpdevelopments.com/...d.php?t=299597

I added a bit of transparent trim to the main team logo so that it doesn't bleed over the window frame.

Before:
Attachment 957835

After:
Attachment 957837

Attachment 957838

Meh. With all due respect to EC, those items are old school now. OOTP 24 calls for more vibrant logos and those uniforms won't work in this version, I believe.

just noticed an error. The California A League needs to have its roster sizes set to 35, not 25. This may have caused a few teams to release 10 more lower-rated minor leaguers than expected. Not a real problem but I will correct the roster size when I update the zip with the new schedule.

In the "Backstory for this save," you say "Players will now gain free agency after six years of professional service and new the Continental League owners agree to drop any legal challenges. There is no arbitration for players, nor will there be an expansion draft. The new teams will have to."

Have to what? I can guess, but what did you mean to say?

"build their team and farm system through free agency"


I noticed that, too. I was getting pretty frazzled by the time I was writing that text file. I had to look up a lot of coaches!

Thanks. This save seems quite comprehensive, from a cursory scan just now. Looks to be quite an accomplishment. :thumbup1:

There's a really good book about the league, aptly named The Continental League by Russell Buhite.

If you look at any team's personnel (GM, manager, coaches) and see a face, then it's a real person and not a fictional OOTP person. It took a while, lol. Some players I wish I had never looked up! (e.g. Ted Wilks lol)

reuploaded with some minor fixes. If you've already downloaded the first version, you can make these changes manually rather than re-download again

• Change California League roster size to 35
• Use the improved Continental.lsdl schedule (attached) and update the season start day from Tuesday to Monday
• live with the minor existing uniform issues or correct them manually

For the uniform issues, I added the Atlanta Crackers uniform (linked earlier in this thread), fixed some incorrect away ballcaps, and ensured that all of the jersey fonts would properly display player names (except Yankees, that one doesn't seem to work).

Surprise! I just confirmed that the 3-team round-robin World Series as described by Branch Rickey can be done in OOTP if you are willing to use a little elbow grease.

I've attached screenshots to show how to do it:

1) Set up a round-robin for the 3 champions at 8 games each. Set number of teams to advance to 1. (image 1). This will create a schedule of 12 games that you will change.

2) When the playoffs start, go to the schedule editor and edit the schedule to have 11 playoff games per Rickey's description. It's basically 6 two-game series with the final series (hosted by the bottom seed) being just a single game. That's 11 total games. (image 2)

3) Start playing these games until one team loses 4 games and is eliminated. In this case, it was Pittsburgh (the top seed) going 0-4. When that happens, reschedule the remaining games to be just between the final two teams such that they play a best-of-7 that includes playoff games already played between them.

In this case, the Mets were up 1-0 on the Yankees when the Pirates were eliminated, so I scheduled 6 more games between them. Play out those games until one team wins the best-of-7, then remove any remaining unplayed games from the schedule. (image 3)

4) Advance to the next day and you'll get a notice that the offseason is about to start since there are no more scheduled playoff games. Start the off-season and you'll see the champion listed in the league history! (image 4)

The only downside is that OOTP doesn't write up a news recap on the World Series victory but maybe we can enlist ChatGPT for that!

A suggestion for an easier alternative would be to use a standard three-team round-robin with each team playing four or six games. The top two finishers move on to the best-of-seven World Series final.

I already started to tinker with the original save — minor stuff like making my own bookmarks — so I am going to stick with it. However, since you provided this changelist, I am able to follow along with your editing. Please continue to do so, with my thanks for the extra effort.

The next thing I changed is to create a second subleague and move the 8 continental league teams into it. This means one league has the AL and NL teams (16 teams) and the other has the 8 continental league teams.

I need to tweak the header in the schedule file slightly, but this setup will allow for All-Star Games! .... between the 16 MLB teams and the 8 Continental League teams.

Also, please note that since some of the minor leagues were restructured for this save, you will get a prompt during the pre-season for a few of them that their schedule needs to be corrected. Just select "Create Fictional Schedule" for those leagues when prompted and everything will be fine. This should only occur during the first preseason.

So here's a general question for you, if I may, and don't feel like you need to provide a tutorial in response.

How do I play this save?

For, ever since I started with OOTP, I have always played with fictional players and coaches (the vast majority of the time with actual MLB; only this year did I make some fictional teams as well) and as both GM and manager.

My gut feeling is that I need to play as GM-only because this is the first time I have ever played with real, memorable people in the game.

For example, I have interest, of course, in the New York Yankees but I see that Ralph Houk is managing the team. How could I replace The Major? My own very forgettable name instead of his, among other notables such as BC Jim Hegan, PC Johnny Sain, HC Wally Moses? Oh, the utter hubris!

But I see that you have historical transactions turned off so, on the bare chance this also means future coaching changes, I assume Houk would continue to manage the Yankees until his retirement (or I fire him, God forbid), and I will not see him move up to GM in 1964 (replacing me!) and Berra becoming the manager.

The only thing that you appear to have set in this save regarding history is the "Automatically import historical rookies" (as free agents — side question, why not have an amateur draft?). Everything else historical is turned off.

So I am thinking that if I take over the Yankees as GM, I will be in semi-fictional mode anyway and perhaps I wait until The Major does retire, allowing him to run the team until he does.

Whoa! I am throwing my stupid bookmarks out and downloading your latest save. Is it ready yet?

No. I can have it ready later today if you want. I'm trying not to overdo the releasing but I was pretty disappointed that my original structure accidentally precluded the All-Star games, so I do want to correct for that.


Baby is going to sleep, so I can work on it now.

Why didn't you originally go with subleagues ?

Mostly due to confusion on my part about how flexible the OOTP playoff settings are. I was concerned about a system where the AL/NL winner would always face the CL winner in the World Series -- which is obviously bad.

But Custom Playoffs allow you to pick which teams you want so that renders the subleague divisions moot.

ok, v3 is uploaded and overlaying the previous file, so the same download link should work.




Updated version notes:


Version History
===============
v3 -moved the 8 Continental League teams into their own subleague. This will allow All-Star games to happen.
-minor change to the Continental.lsdl file to support this restructuring
-added annual All-Star game locations to the ParkUpdates.txt file

v2 -corrected roster size for California League from 25 to 35
-updated Continental.lsdl to use a better schedule. Preferred start day is now Monday (was Tuesday)
-updated the uniforms for the Atlanta Crackers and ensured fonts were correct for others

v1 - created all of the things.