Historical Question....
 

First off, sorry if this has been posted somewhere already. I tired to do a search, but wasn't even really sure how to word the search.

I haven't done many historical leagues in my past, so they are kind of a new creature to me.

Here's what I want to do and want to see if it's possible:

I'm a tortured Pirates fan, have been since the early 80's. I want to start my league in 1980, but I want to keep the leagues static, meaning, I want to keep the rosters the same as they were IRL, no trading among teams unless it really happened, no movement of FA unless it really happened. I want to keep it like this until '93, when they actually had a good team for 3 years then they lost everything again. In '93, I'd like to be able to be able to keep the team together and allow the AI to control the other teams as it seems fit.

Is this possible? If so, how do I go about doing it?

Thanks

If you control the Pirates, then you can control the trading and FA signings of that team.

If you want all teams to stay the same and have no trades, no FA signings then you'll have to disable trading and turn off finances for the entire league. This of course would not be realistic.

The only other option is for you to control every team, which isn't what you're looking to do.

For something a lot easier to set up and a close compromise to what you're pursuing, do your initial import so all the real players come in to all their real teams.

Make sure that you have the draft set up so that historic players go directly to their real teams. Here's how you do that:

1. Go to league setup.
2. Click on the "Rules" tab.
3. Make sure that the box is clicked on that allows you to automatically import historical rookies.
4. Make sure to click on the box and DISABLE OR TURN OFF the amateur draft. This makes sure that real rookies come into the real teams and you'll have no draft.
5. Change the draft date to Nov. 1 so that it pulls the players in for the next season and not the current season.

It's up to you whether you want to leave free agency and trading on. I love to do exactly what you're doing with the Big Red Machine and see if I can return them to glory after the great 1970s -- the same period when your beloved Pirates were also so strong.

I kind of like having the chance to trade and go after free agents to see if I can really make a difference. You might want to try that alternate history just because it's easier to set up and start playing.

Thanks for the replies. Guess I'll have to try to work it as much as I can to real life happenings the first 10 years. I already started a league, but found myself getting to carried away with FA signings and trades and what not and was afraid I wouldn't be able to control the early 90's pirates the way I wanted. I want to play with the 80's players, because of the sentimental value, but I want the 90's Pirates because thats when they could have been so good.

Maybe I'll just say screw it and start with '89 or something and see how that works out.

It's amazing what you can learn just by reading through threads you didn't think mattered to you. I had no idea that if I wasn't having a draft and wanted the game to place rookies on their correct teams, I still needed to change the draft date. I don't have the game in front of me, but shouldn't 4 and 5 be switched? Doesn't the draft date go away once you disable the draft? In any event, thanks for the heads up on that.

You know what. I'm not so sure whether I'm right about #5. Even though there would be no draft, the new players are still going to be imported to their historically accurate teams with settings #1-4. But you might still need to set what date.

We know that under default draft settings historic players should come in Nov. 1 so the data is read from the correct debut year rather than the June default date.

But I'm not so sure about whether a draft date is relevant or not when you have them come directly to their historic teams without a draft. How's that for brutal honesty? I'm sure about #1-4, but in doubt about #5.

I've been playing a historical sim with the O's starting in 1983. I'm not using the draft and I didn't set a date and the rookies come in on the first day of the preseason. Hope that helps.

Yeah, I'm not sure about that either. I tried it as a test and even thogh it doesn't appear that the draft is held, the news says the draft pool is available. So at best, it confuses the game to set the date but turn off the draft, or at worst it invalidates the attempt to turn off the draft.

Using Lahman database and the default draft date, the players are pulled into the league a year early. I either skip the draft the 1st year (select the next year in the pull down) or schedule the draft after the WS. Scheduling it next year actually makes more sense.

But I think the discussion is about not having a draft. Does the draft date have any affect on when the game brings the players in, if you set a date but disable the draft?

I don't know, Ksyrup. This might be something to help all of us with by telling us what you find as you play it out.

I usually like to draft the players and not follow history so I use historical players AND the draft. In my case, it is important to change the draft date to November 1 so players come in with the real stats for that following (and correct debut) season.

You're tinkering in a different way and my guess is that disabling the draft will mean it ignores the draft date setting and brings them in at the same time. I just don't know when that is according to the game engine.

I asked this in another thread as well.

I like to have the draft as well, do we turn this option "on" right from the start, but using the November 1 setting? Also, how many rounds are we supposed to use?

Thank you!

5 rounds per league, they say. But you'd have to reduce for your historical players.

So if you have Majors, AAA, AA and A, you have 20 rounds. 20 - X = number of rounds.