Hi there and welcome to Crossing the Tracks, a simulation I am running on version 25 of the Out of the Park Baseball program that will re-imagine the history of Major League Baseball from 1901 to the present day with a number of key differentiators and divergences from the historical introduced along the way.
Foremost among these is the removal of the colour line to allow for a fully integrated version of the league from the get-go.
While (almost) all historical Negro League (NeL) players will feature in this timeline and use their raw historical statistics, 212 of the better-known from among their ranks – including some who would go on and play in the MLB after it “integrated” – will use stats derived from the Major League Equivalencies work conducted by the great Eric Chalek.
All historical major and minor league players will enter this timeline in their corresponding minor league rookie year (or major, if they skipped the minors) and retire when they did IRL, although some of the MLE-modified NeLers’ careers might differ slightly according to the years Eric has allocated them.
The other main difference in this timeline regards overall statistical output. Being a fan of neither the “Steroid” nor “Deadball” eras, I have applied a statistical dataset to the league that takes some of the “juice” from the former and redistributes it to the latter. This dataset is still based on the historical MLB league totals from season to season but it has been smoothed to heighten the lows and lower the highs.
The league will follow a unique evolution that will see some historical Negro League clubs join the fray, along with fictional franchises (and players), then ultimately replicate the modern MLB setup almost exactly.
While there will be many differences from the historical with regard to which players play at which club and when, I am heavily orchestrating it so that the better-known MLBers’ career paths follow their IRL ones as closely as possible. The program’s game engine will have some say but, wherever possible, I will be situating players where they played historically. The NeL franchises will receive an allocation of the MLE-modified NeLers; the fictional clubs some fictional players. As I said, more on this sort of stuff as it comes to pass.
I have some personal involvement in the venture, in which I assume the persona Rick Branch and act as GM and Manager of the Dodgers, who in this timeline never leave Brooklyn. I am only allowed to stock the club with historical Dodgers players and they will (for the most part, another little twist to come) be available to us only from the first year of their Dodgers IRL tenure. We are also permitted a maximum of five “ringers”, of which up to three can be NeL players and the other two players who never made it to the big historically. We are not permitted any fictional players.
Clearly, with so many points of difference from the real world this exercise can only vaguely be considered “scientific” and is meant to entertain as much as enlighten. That said, a good portion of it is rooted in statistical fact, either in its original form or a form derived therefrom. For that reason, I do believe it contains some merit on a research basis. After all, thanks to Cap Anson and his ilk, what choice are we left with to reckon how NeL players would have performed in the MLB other than to speculate in ways such as this? I make no apologies to the purists and suggest this is not the series of blog posts for you.
SPECS AND SETTINGS
This section will only interest those seeking deeper immersion in this timeline. If that’s not your bag, feel free to skip it.
For anyone unfamiliar with OOTP, the program offers the player a myriad options how to play, allowing them to “tighten” or “loosen” the screws of verisimilitude according to their desires and needs.
The two main tools it uses to do this are “recalc” – recalculation – and “LTMs” – League Total Modifiers.
It is via recalc that the game sets the statistical output of individual players. For this league, I am applying “1-year recalc”, which means that each player is re-assessed at the end of each season according to their historical statistics from the corresponding historical year. This setting provides the most realistic mirroring of the players’ IRL performances.
It is via the LTMs that the game sets the overall statistical environment for the entire league each season.
As I mentioned, I have designed my own set of LTMs for this timeline, which I manually apply just before each Opening Day.
There is another feature called “TCR” – Talent Change Randomness, which as the name implies narrows or widens the standard deviations of player performance in a random manner to replicate the vagaries of baseball in real life. This setting ranges from 1 to 200, with the higher the number representing more randomness and more variation from the baseline. For this league, I have it set at 115, so slightly above the average.
Ballpark factors do play a part, although there is much debate among the OOTP community as to their accuracy. Wherever possible, historical clubs will play in their correct parks.
Players can and do suffer injuries of varying severity. I have opted for a modern-day level of occurrence for short-term injuries and a low setting for long-term ones.
Trading is permitted, although I have it set to very low to help minimise the divergence from the historical, while full free-agency is in place from the beginning, rather than the heinous reserve-clause of those early pre-Flood and Miller years.
Finally, while I manually place the better-known rookies at their historical clubs, the rest are acquired via the annual Rookie Draft held each November (or through trading or FA signings).
WHAT’S NEXT?
I plan to provide a season by season run-through and will cover the various other points of difference as they arise. I will also include the career stats for each of the main NeL players, as well as some MLBers of note and perhaps even a few footnote players who become more prominent in this timeline than they ever did in the real one.
This being my first go-around on this site, please feel free to politely point out if I am doing anything wrong and ask any questions you want along the way, request specific player information / career stats, things of that nature.
In our real-time, I am currently playing out 1919 and will try and drip-feed the seasons I have completed so far so that the stream of posts is relatively consistent moving forward.
Thanks for following along, hope you enjoy the ride!
Postalita
NeL-obsessed member from Sydney, Australia who spends an inordinate amount of my free time running simulations of various natures on Out of the Park Baseball.
[…] For those of you embarking this trolley along the route, the premise of the exercise can be found HERE. […]
Neat project!
Thanks Joe, looking forward to how it all plays out. I’m doing a similar long-term Red Sox sim as well. Currently in ’41 and trying to mow down those Damn Yankees. Won it all in ’33 after a few early titles to break up the long historical stretch of no success but struggling to repeat the feat so far. Loads of fun trying to do so, all the same.
Hi Glenn – sounds like great project, looking forward to all the updates!
Thanks Andy, really looking forward to bringing it to you!
[…] For those of you embarking this trolley along the route, the premise of the exercise can be found HERE. […]