[Spritze]

Originally Posted by thehef

An ideal setup would be where you could play with historical transactions AND full historical minors back to at least 1901. To do this:

1. All players would import in the year they started pro ball They already do beginning in 1919.
   
2. Players who started pro ball with an MLB affiliate would import to that MLB organization They already do
   
3. Players who started pro ball with an independent or negro league team would import to that particular independent or negro team They already do
   
4. Transactions in the historical transactions file would move players, via trades, releases, and signings...
   • to and from MLB organizations
   • to and from independent and negro league teams
5. Transactions in the historical transactions file would NOT move players up and down within an MLB organization (although this could be an option). Rather, AI (or Human GM) would decide on which minor-league level/team the player belongs.
6. Exact transaction dates for most minor leaguers isn't known. However,
   • for minor leaguers who spent an entire season with an independent team (or negro team) and then moved to another indy (or negro) team the next season, precise dates are not necessary; the first of the year - which is used as a catch-all for unknown MLB transaction dates - would work just fine.
   • for minor leaguers who moved from one indy (or negro) team to another during a season, approximate dates - based upon number of games played with each team - could be used in the historical transactions file (some time ago in another thread, BigRod said that this is possible by using stints, which - apparently - are already known, to a degree).
7. An option could then be to play full historical for MLB organizations and the players associated with them, and fictional player movement for all of the independent teams and non-affiliated players. In other words, MLB organizations would use real historical txns. Independent teams, however, would not use real transactions. Rather, all non-affiliated minor-leaguers would move to and from independent minor-league teams at the whims of the AI GM, etc... Might be a cool way to play.

This would go a long way towards making historical minors pretty awesome, IMO

Some of these ideas already exist in game. A milb transaction file would be doable. ootp has a huge number of unused players, leagues and teams in its database going back to the 1880's affiliated or not. The reason for only using affiliated team/leagues had to do with financials as I disremember.