[FuzzyRussianHat]

Greetings and welcome to a new OOTP project that I will be writing about in the coming weeks entitled “The Level Playing Field.” It is going to be a historical simulation with real-life players in their proper timeframes, but a very different fictionalized and normalized version of MLB.

One of the main goals of this alternative history is to create a consistent play style and world throughout all of baseball history. I tried a similar project on OOTP 22 (that I didn’t ever write-up) with some success, but there were limits on achieving the type of parity I was looking for. After getting OOTP 26 recently because of the sale, it looks like this version is far better suited to my idea. OOTP 26 also seems to give the Negro League greats far more heft than 22, which I think came out before those stats were officially declared Major League caliber (those players unfortunately ended up rated and treated largely like career minor leaguers in my original efforts). So after playing around with some tests with different settings, I believe I have everything set up right to achieve this unique experiment.

I’ll go more specific details on settings and the like in future posts, but the basic principles are below.

-The game begins in 1884 with plans of running up to and possibly beyond the present day. 1884 was chosen as one of the earliest years in the game where enough players exist in the universe to be able to field teams in the style I’m looking at. For anyone who has looked at how I’ve recently written the Baseball: The World’s Game universe, I’ll likely keep similar narrative structures for going year-by-year.

-MLB will be a much larger league from the beginning and will end up larger than the modern world, although the team names and looks will be a blend of modern and historical. At the start, the National League and American League will each have 12 teams split into two divisions. There will be later expansions that take place earlier than real life did, but also keeping in mind historical populations and trends. The plan is to eventually grow to 20 teams per league and maybe more. There aren’t minor leagues at the very start because there aren’t enough players in the world initially, but I’ll quickly add levels as soon as they’re able to be supported.

-There will not be any relocations of any franchises. For example, the Giants begin in New York and will stay in New York for their entire life. San Francisco will enter as a later expansion (the Seals, based on the historic PCL squad). I will also keep each franchise’s logo and look the same for all of history based mostly on personal preferences. Like even though the Athletics will stay in Philadelphia and they never wore the green/gold there, I’m giving them that look because I think it is sharp (and there’s already too many blue/red teams).

-The league will be fully integrated and the reserve clause will not be used. Free agency will exist from the beginning. I’ve got a customized player salary structure scaled for the initial year with inflation built in to increase to more modern values as the sim goes on. I will also adjust the attendance baselines as time progresses to partially mirror real life attendance trends and growth. I may adjust some figures at different points if things get out of whack, but I think I figured a good balance out. I set initial market sizes and gave the bigger cities a bit more starting cash (and will do the same for expansion teams), but won’t touch specific teams after that. Any growth or contraction will happen naturally and I won’t adjust owners either.

-The base league totals used for statistics are 1983; which I settled on as a good balance between not being too high/low scoring that combines some modern/classic elements. There are a few other tweaks to get to a play style that I just generally find aesthetically pleasing. The lock league total stats and auto-calc will be used, but I will also adjust some modifiers manually to achieve the consistency I’m looking for (mainly involving stolen bases and pitcher stamina, but also fielding success since it makes 19th Century guys have a crazy amount of errors if you don’t adjust it).

-I will adjust franchises to move to real life stadiums as time moves on using the game’s auto-calculation for park factors. Once a team is in a stadium, I’ll pick one set of historic dimensions I like and keep it throughout (not adjusting the fences every single time they moved in real life slightly just for brevity’s sake). I’ll also use real life capacity generally, but will boost up in the cases of cities using smaller minor league parks in their earlier years. For the starting teams, since some didn’t exist in 1884 or had brief stints in places, I chose one applicable 19th Century park to start (even if in some cases that facility might not have been built until the 1890s). My props to the folks on the OOTP board for having dimensions available for so many classic parks, I was able to find usable ones for all but one franchise.

-I will also make it a point to keep track and turn players who had real life prominent managing careers into coaches in the game once they retire. I’ll also probably juice the ratings up a bit on HOF-level managers so that they are more likely to be notable coaches in the sim as well, as opposed to the seeming randomness the game uses to decide who becomes a coach and their ratings post-retirement. I’ll also generally make players who had HOF or Hall of Very Good careers in the sim into coaches once they retire to continue their stories.

I appreciate those who read on and hope you enjoy this alternate history of professional baseball. I am grateful of course to the folks behind OOTP and all of the various mods that make the game even better. These fictional worlds provide a much needed escape from the absolute tire fire that is the real world these days.