20th Century Keeper League :: 1990s and beyond

See league Google doc at
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... 1367205067

I have thoroughly enjoyed the AL and NL round robin tournaments, even if my W/L records might not show a good reason for that. It's been fun to remind myself about some of the legendary stars of the game and to put them in a lineup every day. Even so, it was troubling to leave some great players sitting on the sidelines since we had no room to draft them all.

Likewise, the 2-4-6 league has been entertaining as a first look at the 6-team format -- especially since I plan to win the post-WW2 era season.      Once again, though, great players have not seen action, since there were only so many spots available.

So here's a new idea: How about a 20th century keeper league? This would be a 6-team league, playing 10 seasons, decade-by-decade:
1. 1909 and earlier
2. 1910-1919
3. 1920-1929
4. 1930-1939
5. 1940-1949
6. 1950-1959
7. 1960-1969
8. 1970-1979
9. 1980-1989
10. 1990 and later

We would use the ATG8 set (or whichever set was the current one as a new season started) and use the DH rule for the 1970s and later (when it was adopted by the AL).

There would be at least 164 hitters and 114 pitchers available in every season, so there would be plenty of players for 6 managers to draft. Likewise, there are almost 400 players who are carded in more than one decade (along with a few carded in 3 decades!), so keepers would be an important part of the league.

Managers would announce their keepers prior to the start of each annual draft and then complete their 25-player rosters during the draft. As is my custom, each season would have a $200 mil (effectively unlimited) salary cap and the drafts would start with no draft clock in the first round and a two-hour clock in every round after that.

What do you say? Want to go back to the 20th century?

1. tcochran
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What do you say? Want to go back to the 20th century?

1. tcochran
2. alk58
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What do you say? Want to go back to the 20th century?

1. tcochran
2. alk58
3. ironwill1
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1. tcochran
2. alk58
3. ironwill1
4.willmurr
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What ballparks will be available through the decades? There is only 1 from 1909 and earlier.
Negro League Players?

What ballparks will be available through the decades? There is only 1 from 1909 and earlier.
Negro League Players?

Good questions. My initial research points to a couple of possibiliities:

BALLPARKS

There are no ballparks in the set prior to 1911, as far as I can tell, so let's use the 1911 ones for both the first and the second decades.

There are a total of 12 ballparks for the 1920s and 1930s (combined), so we should probably allow all of those to be used in either of those decades.

The 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s are well represented and will each provide many ballpark options for us.

It looks like there is only 1 stadium from the 1980s, but there is a full set of them from 1978 which could be used for both the 1970s and the 1980s.

Likewise, I only saw 1 stadium from the 1990s, but there are a whole bunch from the 2000s which can be used in our final season.

(See second part of answer in next post)

NEGRO LEAGUE PLAYERS

Yes, I think it would be fun to include the Negro League players in this effort. The only challenge, though, is that most of them do not have years assigned to the cards. As Scott Simkus explained when Strat first issued the set,

What Hal Richman and I decided to do was model the STRAT-O-MATIC Negro League All-Star
set after the popular SOM Hall of Fame set from 2001, basing each player’s card off of performances
during their top 5-7 seasons, in order to capture them in their prime.

The distribution by year of the 128 NeL cards is as follows:

1920s - 11
1930s - 8
1940s - 1
Blank - 108

In order to be consistent with the MLB cards, I believe we need to assign each of the 108 unknowns to a single decade each -- i.e., just as with MLB, each card can only be used in one decade.

Luckily, the Strat-O-Matic Negro League All-Stars Guide Book contains brief bios of each player, including when they played and which were their most interesting seasons:
http://www.strat-o-matic.com/sites/defa ... League.pdf

Allen, could you prep a first draft of which seasons could be assigned to which cards?

If you'll do that, then I'll see if I can suggest the most appropriate decades for the NeL ballparks, too.

Allen, could you prep a first draft of which seasons could be assigned to which cards?

i'm on it

NEGRO LEAGUE BALLPARKS

1910s
Schorling Park

1920s
Cath. Prep Oval
HIlldale Park
Mack Park
Muehlebach Fld.
South Side Park
Stars Park
Washington Park

1930s
Greenlee Field
Martin Park
Rickwood Field
Ruppert Stadium
Yankee Stadium (NeL)

1940s
Griffith Stdm (NeL)
Penmar Park
Terrapin Park

MODIFIED DRAFT ROUTINE

BALLPARKS: There are a number of "extreme" ballparks available which could make a big difference in manager strategies -- so rather than having the ballpark draft always be in round 26, let's allow the ballpark selection to be made in ANY of the 26 rounds.

SEQUENCE: Managers who are "keeping" an Aaron or a Cobb, or a Clemens or a Mathewson, from decade to decade have a distinct advantage over those who are choosing 25 new players. How about if we say that draft sequence is determined by 2 factors:
a) Teams with fewest keepers draft first, starting with those with zero, then those with one, etc.
b) In case of ties in the number of keepers, then the most recent completed season's W/L record will be the determining factor (as usual), going from worst to best.