White Sox 1988 - Rebuild

[npk17]

Hi everyone !
I'm french and I follow and understand baseball for a few years now, and I play ootp since the 18 version but I still lack history knowledge, so my purpose is to start playing from my birth year to today, to gradually see prospects with familiar names appear and compare the results to real life ones.

I'm planning on trying to rebuild the White Sox for this save, always had a good feeling about them for no particular reason and I like their logos.

My settings are :
- Scouting on, overall ratings 20-80 (increments of 5)
- Recalc ratings based on real life stats
- Trades : hard/neutral
- Batter aging speed .900
- Pitcher aging speed .850
- Talent change randomness 120

I'm not a good rebuilder. Every time I tried, I just failed at being brave enough to trade my best players for prospects. So this time I'm going to be more harsh, if I can.

Any advice and comment welcome !

Next post : Front office and team review, spring training and first big moves !

[Sizeman21]

I will be eager to see how you rebuild the White Sox. Good luck!

[npk17]

Ok let’s take a look at the front office and team review stuff before we get started, just to give you an overall idea of the ’88 White Sox.

My owner, Mario Banda


He seems decent, I’ve known better ones, but I’ve had worse.

His goals


Since I’ll be rebuilding, achieving .500 will be hard.
So I’ll focus on signing an extension for Fisk and finding a new 3B.
Fisk is 40 years old so it’s a bit of a gamble but it’ll provide me a Catcher for a few years.

Staff
I had no Scout and there was nobody decent available so I just appointed my assistant GM as scout, seems ok but he has « very low » accuracy on most of my guys so I just made sure to request scouting reports on everyone. Then I signed an unremarkable assistant GM.

Trades
I’ll now present you the main trades I made, mostly using « shopping around » option.
My general idea was to retain salary to get better returns and get rid of unmotivated and disruptive players. I signed a few vets that would probably help me getting close to .500.
Also, I needed salary space to extend Carlton Fisk.

- Sent 2B Mike Woodard (100% retain) to the Cubs for 3B Vance Law and SP Scott Sanderson.

- Sent disruptive CL Bobby Thigpen (100% retain) to the Twins for LF Dan Gladden (on a side note, Gladden was the only run scorer in 1991 WS game 7, bottom 10th)

- Sent RF Harold Baines + 2 insignificant minor leaguers to the Yankees for 3B Mike Pagliarulo, 1B Kevin Maas and SP Scott Kamienecki

- Sent 1B Greg Walker (90% retain) to the Blue Jays for 1B Cecil Fielder and C Pat Borders.

- Sent RF Ivan Calderon, 3.4 WAR in 1987 (100% salary retained) to the Expos for… Randy Johnson ! and 2B Jeff Huson. Biggest move.

Now that’s a lot of moves, and here’s what my roster looks like :





It looks bad at the first glance but I kinda trust that team to be decent. My main concern is pitching, couldn’t get any good guys through trades so I’ll have to focus on developing young guys + drafting ones that could be ready to join Randy Johnson in a few years.

Also, I'm glad I got rid of any noxious players to build a positive atmosphere.



Strategy
I’ll be using the moderate sabermertic approach. Overall, I’ll trust stats more than ratings, especially having a poor scout. If a 30 overall guy i shaving a decent season, I’ll let him play.
I’ll post some key player profiles later, mid-season.

MLB top prospects in 1988


I really love this new prospect pipeline feature, here’s Randy Johnson potential


Anyway that's not the most fun part but if you have any comment to make about my moves, or the overall strategy go ahead, I'm open to ideas.

Next post : OPENING DAY

[npk17]

Good batting and great pitching against the Angels for opening day at Comiskey Park.

22 year-old Melido Perez was incredible for his 4th MLB game.




Just noticed that the First-year player draft is scheduled in December, is that normal for that time?

Now I'll use 7day lineups and sim until the All-Star Break, see you then!

[npk17]

As it's a rebuild and since I don't know if someone actually reads this, I'd rather post my yearly results and the new studs I manage to sign, until things gets more interesting in a few years. Can't wait to have Randy Johnson in my rotation.

Cheers

[fuzzy_patters]

The first year draft in real life was in June, but OOTP holds it in December if it's a historical league. The reason for that is that you won't be drafting the actual draft class of 1988 but will instead be drafting from everyone who started their professional career in 1989. If it used 1988's actual draft class, that could cause problems because some player who were drafted never played professional baseball and therefore have no statistics to build ratings from.

[fergman78]

I love reading historical sims. Good Luck with this rebuild. I will be following along. All I do with this game is Historical rebuilds. I haven't posted one on here in several years. When I got OOTP 21 I started in 81 with the Cubs. Took me until 87/88 to make them a contender and finally won the WS in 91. After that, I took over Oakland and now trying to turn them into a champion.

[npk17]

Originally Posted by fergman78

I love reading historical sims. Good Luck with this rebuild. I will be following along. All I do with this game is Historical rebuilds. I haven't posted one on here in several years. When I got OOTP 21 I started in 81 with the Cubs. Took me until 87/88 to make them a contender and finally won the WS in 91. After that, I took over Oakland and now trying to turn them into a champion.

It's nice starting in the 80's, as you can get close to modern times in a few years. Who were your best players in 91 ?
Good luck with the A's !

[fergman78]

Here is my 91 Team. Canseco and Clemens were my big stars.