Quote:
Originally Posted by Syd Thrift
I just pull up the transactions on a given day and more or less try to approximate them for each team. Like, if I have a transaction like this:
The Cubs traded Ted Abernathy to the Cardinals for Phil Gagliano.
I start with... "the Cubs trade a good if aging reliever to the Cardinals for a middle-aged 4th outfielder/pinch hitter" and then I go from there. Rarely if ever, of course, are there exact matches because that's not how fictional leagues work; however, what I do is I try to take the general talent level from both sides, fit strengths and weaknesses (and also, if applicable, chemistry issues or the fact that I'll try and move a disgruntled player more easily than a... gruntled one). Sometimes TBH the value of the trades varies quite a bit from real life, like a minor deal winds up being a kind of big one, or for a counter example the equivalent of the Curt Flood/Dick Allen/Tim McCarver trade wound up being a little "meh" in my league.
It's more of an "art" (I don't want to call it an art, haha) than an exact science and the main impetus is to keep transactions flowing through the league at about the same rate as they happened in real life when I'm acting as the GM of all teams. It also forces individual ballclubs to often try and make do with what they've got in their minor league system rather than patch up every hole they have with a trade, which I'd probably do for some teams if I didn't impose this upon myself.
Just as an aside, I looked it up and in retrospect I sort of messed up that "Ted Abernathy" move, heh. Not sure how I managed to mess that up... but I moved Chad Nies, the Cubs' stopper, a 1969 All-Star, and, unlike the real-life Abernathy, a 26 year old, to the Giants, not the Cardinals, for a starting pitcher named Jason Sanders. I always trade between the right teams unless I made a mistake, so clearly I did. Talent-wise, Sanders is *miles* better than Gagliano but the Cubs don't really have any holes in their lineup (in fact, at the time their 4th outfielder was a former All-Star himself) that the Giants had any ability to fill and Nies is, in truth, really, really good (13-7 last year, led the NL in saves and games in relief, 2.53 ERA). I still probably gave up too much for him but... these are the thought processes I have when I make these kinds of deals.
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This is the sort of thing that it would never have even occurred to me to do, and I love it that you do this.
Granted, I have my own unusual approaches to immersion for my fictional league, including the identification of players (including their primary entry position and player type- slugger, utilityman, defensive whiz, speedster, etc, as an example of just a few position player types) who will later enter the baseball universe who are related to someone already in that universe (brothers, cousins, sons, sons-in-law, grandsons) as well as identifying the date and cause of death of former big league players and big league managers in my fictional baseball universe. (This second process happens on January 1st of the W.P. Kinsella League calendar, and that is where I am right now, so it is big day as after I make my morning coffee I will be finding out which former players and/or mangers we will be losing during 1986.)
Point being, I love not only how customizable OOTP is, but also how creatively this community interacts with the game. What you have described above is one of the more interesting approaches I have read about here in some time.