International League/Random Debut League

[David Watts]

[David Watts]

Ryne Sandberg enters August 1987 hitting .408.

[David Watts]

What a crazy finish to the 1987 season in terms of home runs. Eddie Robinson ends up leading the league with 48 home runs. Right behind Robinson is some cat named Hobe Ferris with with 47 or 46. Doubt anyone was predicting this when the season began. Ferris actually hit 16 home runs in the month of September, taking home player of the month honors. Guessing 16 has to be close to the best ever for a month.

Mark McGwire ended up with roughly 45 bombs on the year. He struggled to the end at the plate though, finishing the season well under .200. He failed to drive in 100 runs in 87, which I'm pretty sure ends a pretty significant consecutive streak for the Big Mac. It's going to be interesting to see if the OOTP Gods send Mark to retirement or let him come back to try and chase Mel Ott for all time home run lead.

The New Orleans Baby Cakes are in the post season for the very first time. They ran away with the Southern Division, winning 100+ games on the season. Their division wasn't a pushover, as Louisville won 92 games and Arkansas 91. Louisville tied Toledo for the 1st wildcard, but Toledo won the season series 4 games to 2, so Louisville is facing off in a best a three against division rival Arkansas in the first round of the playoffs.

The Great Lakes Loons powered their way to the top of the Northern Division. The Loons had two 40+ home run guys in the aforementioned Mark McGwire and Frank Home Run Baker. Turkey Stearnes hit 30+ home runs, even after missing significant time to injury. Reggie Smith hit 30+ as well on the season.

Barry Bonds had another stellar season at the plate with roughly 36 home runs. He also stole 30+ bases on the year.

Ryne Sandberg better win league MVP honors in unanimous fashion. Dude went into the month of September hitting right around .400. His average did slip into the .380's by the end of the campaign, but he added 38 home runs to the mix and drove in well over 100 runs for the New Orleans Baby Cakes. Unbelievable season for the all star 2B.

Was heartbroken for Louisville's Andy Cooper. Cooper was having a monster season for the Redbirds, winning 22 games when disaster struck. In a blowout loss, Cooper was only able to toss 2 inning before leaving with a leg injury. The Injury ended Cooper's season. Cooper's 22 wins remained the best in the league, topping Great Lakes Loons, Tommy Bridges(21) by one. Bridges and Cooper have been lights out over the last 2 seasons.

Roberto Clemente nabbed hit number 3000 down the stretch,

Goose Gossage saved 40+ games to lead the league for the 1st time in that department. Rollie Fingers was 3rd on the leaderboard. Kenley Jansen continues to notch saves, inching his way towards career leader Mariano Rivera(380+). Personally, I don't think he will catch him.

Dazzy Vance once again took home the honor of strikeout king. Dude is just flat out dominant. The late bloomer is just about to reach 40 years old, but has shown no signs of slowing down as of yet. One can only imagine what his overall number would be if he pitched during his 20's.

Greg Maddux had a rather blah season, finishing 12-12, He's 4th on the all time win list behind Mendez, Hilton Smith and Ted Trent.

Was glad to see William Bell right the ship during the 2nd half of 1987, Bell got off to a horrible start allowing way too many runs to the tune of a 5+ era during the first half. Bell would get that ERA under 4 by the end of season, winning around 15 games by seasons end.

Going to be interesting to see if the leagues all time hits leader (4000+) returns for the 1988 season, or if he hangs up his spikes. Tris Speaker missed pretty much the entire 87 season due to injury. I have a feeling he will retire, but I'm usually wrong. If Speaker retires, the next topic of interest will be whether Nap Lajoie can catch him in the hits department . No one is catching Speaker in the WAR department. Dude has .180+ WAR over his career. Barry Bonds might have a chance, but it's way too early to speculate.

Early Wynn had a really nice season in 1987. Wynn has been in the league for at least 10 seasons now, but has pretty much served as an inning eater and nothing else. This might turn out to be OOTP doing a great job of mirroring real life if Wynn pitches well over the next several seasons.

Carl Hubbell continues his march towards the Hall of Fame. Hubbell finished 3rd on the leagues leaderboard for wins.

Not something I'm really surprised by, but once again Catfish Hunter is turning out to be just rather blah in a OOTP game. I wonder if it's even possible to create a guy like Hunter and make him a dominant pitcher in a simulation. Would love to know how he performs in other games. I imagine he's much the same in Action Pc. Maybe games like Strat or Pursue the Pennant could change Hunter's fortunes. Anyone have any success with Hunter? I never have.

[David Watts]

The New Orleans Baby Cakes make their first trip to the post season one to remember by defeating the Toledo Mud Hens 4 games to 3 for the title of league champs. Joe Torre took home MVP honors, but my nod would have went to Ernie Banks offensively and a combo of Carlos Zambrano, Carl Hubbell and Noah Syndegard on the mound.

Mentioned in earlier posts how awful Mark McGwire's 1987 season was in terms of batting average. Didn't notice till the start of the post season, that McGwire struck out and whopping total of 256 time during the season. He still managed 45 home runs, but that's an insane number of whiffs. 256 isn't the record though, as John Beckwith holds that record with an astounding 279 over the course of one season. Crazy thing is, like McGwire, Beckwith hit a ton of home runs to along with his k's.

The draft class for the upcoming season is a strong one featuring Frank Robinson, Dick Allen and Steve Carlton. Some teams are going to get real good real fast.

[David Watts]

Ugh! Sad day. Have a feeling based on my anxiousness that it is inevitable that I end up purchasing OOTP27 later today. I've never been one to ever move a league from one version to the next, so the International League may be have played the last game this morning. 1946-the start of 1988. Quite the run. Easily the longest I've ever run in a non fast sim method of play.

Mark McGwire did call it quits following the 1987 strikeout riddled campaign. He ends his career #2 on the all time home run list with 650 home runs.

Would like to thank any of you that followed along during my rambling non organized coverage of this random debut league. As you probably figured out, I usually post about the league while at work and therefore I have to rely on memory.......somthing that is not really my strong suit. When I'm at home and have access to the info, I just want to play. I admire you folks that can write such detailed reports about your leagues.

Who knows, the league will be sitting there, so there's always the chance I will decide to give transferring a league a shot. Doubt it, but it's not out of the realm of possibilities.

Now the question is, start another random league or should I go straight historical? If I do random, I will probably start in the period of 1984-1992 and go back to using a single year for the modifiers. Also will go back to using 2 subleagues. I absolutely love using 1 subleague, but it drives me nuts that the amount of stat categories that can be shown on standings page is so limited. It also sucks that one can't expand a one subleague setup into a 2 subleague setup without screwing up the league history page. Oh well, can't have everything.

[italyprof]

[Very interesting. I have to try it.

What are everyone's thoughts on getting OOTP 27? I always gave gotten the beware edition, and I like the idea of a better trade algorithm, but really, the most important thing to me was the same that David you are complimenting, the better historical options and random debut changes in 26. Maybe I am happy enough as is?


QUOTE=David Watts;5195719]I've had 26 for around a month now. So far, I'm really enjoying this version. Last years Integrated Mod was by far the best addition to the game in years. Absolutely loved it. Having the Negro League players available for my random debuts added so much enjoyment to the game. Still waiting for Josh Gibson to show up in one of my league, but I know that day is coming. I really hope the team continues to work with Garlon and Lansdowne to in an effort to ensure even more Negro League players get added.

Over the years, I think I wasted way too much time being too obsessed with the all mighty adjust/weaken settings. Way too much time. For several versions I was following the belief that lowering the defaults for both hitting and pitching was the way to go. I followed this method for all of 23 and 24. Big mistake. Then with the start of 25, the idea became, raise the adjust/weaken settings. Even bigger mistake. One method pulled all the great players down and the other in a way pumped them up way too much. Starting late in OOTP25, I began to simply use the default settings and I'm loving what I'm seeing.[/QUOTE]

[italyprof]

I have sometimes run random debut, eliminated all the players, then run a fantasy free agent draft with enough players to fill the empty rosters so that everyone enters in their rookie year. I think if you click to allow players to join the league more than once you might get back in their rookie season the ones canceled originally, but I don't remember getting that far.

Originally Posted by David Watts

I have another question for any of y'all that play random debut. Do you enjoy the fact that players that appear in the inaugural draft import with service time, or would you prefer that they come in as if baseball just started the day you created your league( or do you erase service time prior to starting your league)?

I've often wondered how things would go if I were to erase service time for all inaugural draft players? Would the year following year 6 be total bedlam? In my current save, Hank Aaron imported at or around the age of 34 as part of the inaugural draft. He 39 years old now and thanks to the pre loaded service time, he has a total of 18 years and therefore will be Hall of Fame eligible. A big part of me likes this, while another part of me questions whether it would be better to require 10 actual years played. What are your thoughts?