The Bucs are, as most if not all of you would know, the Pittsburgh Pirates, one of the MLB foundation teams who began in the American Association in 1881 as the Pittsburgh Allegheny before joining the National League in 1887. They moved to the NL East when divisional play began in 1969, eventually ending up in their current slot in the Central Division.
The Bucs had one of the game’s first true superstars in Honus Wagner and enjoyed early success, winning the first three NL pennants after the AL had come into existence to form Major League baseball, and then the World Series in 1909. Since then, they have won just four more Championships – 1925, 1960, 1971 and 1979. They have won 9 NL Pennants all up, the last being that 1979 squad. The four-plus decades since have been fairly lean for the Buccos, with some heartbreaking losses in the NL Championship Series in the early 90s and a smattering of Wild Card appearances in the 2010s that led nowhere. The franchise is currently in pretty poor shape, with only a couple of winning seasons since their last playoff appearance in 2015.
Even though I’m actually an A’s fan, I think they deserve better.
Premise
This sim will start in 1901 and follow the historical course of MLB to the present day as far as league expansion and franchise relocations are concerned. I will be acting as the Pirates’ GM and Manager throughout.
Teams will play at their historical parks with Garlon’s quadratic factors in use, as well as some tweaking on my part to reflect L/R splits. All historical uniforms and logos will be applied.
Coaching is ON. Owner goals are OFF. Storylines are ON. Lineups TRADITIONAL.
AI evaluation settings are 32/37/21/11. 5-year recalc with double-weighted current season. Neutralized stats for ratings / peak seasons for POT / fielding and pitcher stamina based on entire career. Historical LTMs with actual BABIP as per BBRef.
Injuries are set to LOW. Suspensions NORMAL. TCR 110 for now but may get ticked up a wee bit over time.
Financials are ON and will also follow the default settings throughout.
Historical MLB Schedules used, with 3-week Spring Training. Playoffs as per history.
Trading difficulty is set two notches toward HARD with the same slider setting toward favouring prospects. I’ll get to some house trading rules and roster settings in a bit.
No historical transactions, missed seasons, or retirements are being applied.
Most other settings are as per the defaults, set to evolve automatically with the league.
This being my first full historical venture, I’m going to learn as I go along and tinker accordingly as per what I’m seeing play out.
I’m the first to admit I have a tendency toward oversharing in my saves. This one will suffer no such logorrhoea. Given it aims to cover 120+ seasons, I want to whizz through it at a brisk pace. I am no longer a young man... I’ll be doing a lot of behind the scenes work for strategy and AI settings then just fast-simming games daily. One punchy report per month throughout each season is the plan, with a quick off- / pre-season recap to set up the next one. A few updates if any major settings changes occur. I love what 3fBrown has done with his Replay League so I’m also going to provide summaries of important players – both from the Pirates and elsewhere – as they retire. I'm also in the process of adding this save to my Stats+ pages so you'll be able to follow along and immerse yourself as deeply as you want to. That’s it. Might change, but I doubt it. Let’s see how things roll.
Rosters
The Active Roster will begin at 20 and be ticked up to 25 as new players come in to allow some depth. Reserve Clause in effect as per default settings until it changes IRL.
I’ll be handling minors manually. Just going to have 3 all told: 1930 – AAA; 1950 – AA; 1970 – A. I’ll handpick appropriate MiLB franchises to best represent the historical ones without having to move them around all the time.
Max age for players on Active Roster is 45, so as to avoid the phenomenon I’ve read a lot about happening whereby players keep playing into their dotage if the “retire according to history” setting isn’t applied. Apologies to Phil Niekro and Satchel Paige.
AI trading has been set to VERY LOW. No Draft Pick trading allowed.
Legacy Players
While I want this sim to have its own life and create its own history, I also want there to be some level of verisimilitude to the past it is recreating. To achieve the balance of these two factors I wany, I’ve come up with the concept of “Legacy Players”.
As new rookies enter the league, a process will be put in place whereby a selection of these players go to the franchise with which they are most readily associated from their IRL careers.
Rules for Legacy Player Eligibility
For a player to be classed a “Legacy”, they must fulfil the following criteria:
- Minimum career WAR of 10
- Minimum 1200 games (position players) OR 200 games (pitchers) OR more than 90% of career games played for one or more franchises
In the cases where a player is an eligible Legacy for more than one franchise, it does not come down to which club a player played more games for. If he played 1000+ games or pitched 200+ games for one club, then went to another club and played more games there then he is eligible for both and it comes down to whichever club has the higher Draft Pick that year.
This is probably the best time to explain how I’ll be doing Drafts.
I like the idea of dominant franchises and underdogs overcoming that dominance. Drafts aim for parity. I don’t want parity in this save.
And so, rather than the Draft order being based on standings from the previous season in the save, it will be based on standings from the previous season according to history.
This should provide some really interesting shifts of dynamic as teams do well or poorly in the save but did the opposite, historically-speaking.
To begin with, the Rookie Draft will be held in December each year. This will almost certainly change at some point to mid-year as is done now IRL. The number of rookies entering the league will determine the number of Rounds in the Draft each year.
In each Rookie Draft, each franchise is able to claim one Legacy, as long as they meet the criteria stipulated above. This player will be whichever has the highest career WAR total.
These players are then reserved and selected by the respective franchise with their 1st Round Pick (or their higher pick in the 1st Round if they have received compensatory supplemental picks).
Other rookies will be selected by career WAR to complete the 1st Round picks for teams without Legacy Players in that year’s Draft. After that the AI (and myself for the Bucs) will handle things as per normal.
House Trading Rules
With respect to Pittsburgh, some additional rules are to be imposed:
- No Legacy from another club can be acquired unless that player is offered in a trade instigated by their club or has become a Free Agent.
- All Pirates legacies must be retained for 10 full seasons.
- Only five instigated trades may be conducted per calendar year.
1901 Inaugural Draft
The Inaugural Draft Order was decided by the roll of 5 dice, with the Draft itself held prior to the 1901 season.
Each club was allocated their first 3 legacies. Because I wanted the league to be as competitive as possible from the off, for this season only these players were those with the highest WAR for the club in the IRL 1901 season, with at least 1 position player and 1 pitcher, all at or under their age-30 season.
These players, who were selected in the first three rounds of the Draft, are as follows:
- Baltimore Orioles: P Joe McGinnity; 1B Mike Donlin; P Harry Howell
- Boston Americans: SS Freddy Parent; 1B Buck Freeman; P Ted Lewis
- Boston Beaneaters: P Vic Willis; P Bill Dinneen; 2B Gene DeMontreville
- Brooklyn Superbas: OF Jimmy Sheckhard; P Bill Donovan; 1B Joe Kelley
- Chicago Orphans: OF Topsy Hartsel; OF Danny Green; P Rube Waddell
- Chicago White Sox: P Jimmy Callahan; P Roy Patterson; OF Fielder Jones
- Cincinnati Reds: P Noodles Hahn; OF Sam Crawford; C Heinie Peitz
- Cleveland Blues: P Earl Moore; 3B Bill Bradley; P Pete Dowling
- Detroit Tigers: P Roscoe Miller; P Joe Yeager; SS Kid Elberfeld
- Milwaukee Brewers: 1B John Anderson; P Bill Reidy; P Ned Garvin
- New York Giants: P Christy Mathewson; SS George Davis; IF Sammy Strang
- Philadelphia Athletics: 2B Nap Lajoie; P Eddie Plank; P Snake Wiltse
- Philadelphia Phillies: P Al Orth; OF Elmer Flick; P Red Donahue
- Pittsburgh Pirates: UT Honus Wagner; P Deacon Phillippe; P Jack Chesbro
- St. Louis Cardinals: SS Bobby Wallace; OF Emmet Heidrich; P Jack Powell
- Washington Senators: P Bill Carrick; 2B / OF John Farrell; P Casey Patten
From this point on, the official Legacy Player rules will be adhered to.
This exercise is dedicated to Brad K and all those other long-suffering Bucs fans out there. Hope I can do you proud!
NEXT: THE WAGNER YEARS