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!