ATG9 default vote - POLL PLEASE VOTE !

Their cards are based on the stats they produced in single season playing with the same rules. Sweeney’s card is based on a season with different rules.

Yes, andy, we already agreed on the community deciding although frankly that wasn't our decision.

This secondary argument is why the ERAS are not even true unto themselves and therefor separation by era is a moot point.

True, baseball across Eras is different. I’m simply talking about a very different set of rules that I feel doesn’t compare with modern baseball.
I’m not separating by era. Separating by Rules.

And yet the rules have always been changing. This is best treated as a continuous variable, not dichotomizing them as Andy arbitrarily attempts to do. Should we totally discount outlier seasons like 1894, 1930, 1968, 1999; they were played under different rules and different conditions, that yielded wildly divergent statistical performances? Don't hear that argument being made. Andy appears stuck primarily regarding the notion of underhanded vs overhand pitching. He has drawn a line in the sand circa 1883-84 for years. I am no fan of Silver King or Charlie Sweeney being included in the set, simply because I can't begin to relate to them. But they were voted in by the community and I can live with that. Other than that I have made my position crystal clear on this vote in earlier posts and will not repeat that.

Bruce, I would hope it’s not arbitrary. Here’s a list of rules changes from the 1870s-1894;

Various Rules Changes to Baseball in latter half of 19th Century:
--1867-1887 Batter could request a High or Low ball from the Pitcher (Ross Barnes, Pete Browning, Tip O'Neil, King Kelly, Dan Brouthers cards all come from this era)
--1877 The Fair-Foul hit (bunt) was outlawed. Ross Barnes batting average dropped from .429 in 1876 to .272 in 1877. To those who say he was ill in 1877, he also played full seasons in 1879 and 1881 at ages 29 and 31, batting .266 and .271, respectively.
--1880 8 balls constituted a Base on Balls, no wonder pitchers from that era had few walks
--1884 6 balls constituted a Base on Balls
--1884 The Ban on Overhand Pitching was lifted (Tommy Bond, George Bradley, Guy Hecker, Will White, Larry Corcoran, Candy Cummings, Frank Hankinson, and John F. Coleman cards in ATG all pitched underhanded) And that underhand pitching was a toss, not a fast-pitch softball windup. Until 1884, they were playing slow pitch softball...............
--1885-1893 One side of the Bat was allowed to be flat
--1887 5 balls constituted a Base on Balls
--1887 Walks were counted as HITS---11 hitters batted over .400 that year (Tip O’Neil and Pete Browning in ATG)
--1889 4 balls constituted a Base on Balls
--1893 Pitching distance increased from 50 feet to 60’6”
The game has made minor changes to the rules since then, but for the most part the rules have been fairly consistent.

I feel the same way about Ross Barnes as I do about Charlie Sweeney.

I’m perfectly fine with someone thinking differently than I do. I just think my argument is valid as well. If others don’t like it, that’s fine. Doesn’t make it not true that there was great upheaval in the rules until around 1894.

About Charlie Who...Andy explains what I had in mind...although I tend to believe, like the Druid, that it's more a continuous process rather than a dichotomous one

but I would add to Andy's arguments that the leagues around 1876-1900 looked much more like minor leagues that did not necessarily attract the best players. Post 1900 leagues and NeL were much better in having a system that detected and attracted the best players around in the country (and outside the country with regards to NeL...Martín Dihigo, José Méndez, Cristóbal Torriente, etc)

The community might well decide to produce a card for Steve Chilcott, but I definitively believe that he should set in an unleashed format, not in the regular set.

For me this is the issue:

The two different player set ATG9 and ATG9 all has DIVIDED the community.

This division didn't exist in ATG6 or ATG7 or ATG8.

It has become increasingly difficult to fill leagues as far back as 4th quarter 2019 and after the initial 72 hour love fest 2 weeks ago with ATG9 release it is even MORE difficult which seems hard to believe....but true.

Leagues are sitting for 5 to 10 days that used to fill in 48 hours....I don't want to hear that Barnstormers has created the lag. If so we would have seen to 5 to 10 days to fill in the summer months in previous years.

My hypothesis is that players are split, some want ATG9, while others want ATG9 all. It doesn't really matter which is the default, but then let's get rid of the other that is causing the division.

Let's:
a - ban all previous 1893 players...making the default 1894 to present...and get rid of ATG9 all
b - ban all previuos 1900 players....making the default 1901 to present...and get rid of ATG9 all
c - Keep all of pre-1900 players in the default set like in ATG 6, 7 and 8 and then create subsets like we did before like pre-WW2 post-WW2 and heck create another called the pure love of baseball stats post 1900 subset.

I understand Andy's others arguments....they all make a LOT of sense....but they DIVIDE the community and make leagues difficult to fill as presently constituted. I would think from a marketing sense, SOM cannot be happy that they created a brand new product in ATG9 and only one or two or on occasion three leagues are filling a day right now.

I really think having BOTH ATG9 and ATG "all" is creating a division that is making it difficult to fill leagues in either set.

I'll play with whatever set is voted on or any subset...hell I don't care. I like experimenting with limited pools and crazy team makeups anyway.

All I know is, I was a pitcher way back in the day, and if I could have stats for one season pitching underhand like Sweeney did...DAMN straight my card better be in ATG...

Tim

I'll play with whatever set is voted on or any subset...hell I don't care. I like experimenting with limited pools and crazy team makeups anyway.

All I know is, I was a pitcher way back in the day, and if I could have stats for one season pitching underhand like Sweeney did...DAMN straight my card better be in ATG...

Tim

Just for the record, the 1/2 season represented by Sweeney's card was even more incredible if you include his 27 wins in the Players League that he finished the season in. His ERA was under 2 in that league and his WHIP was about .82! Yes it took 6 pitches to walk a batter, and the pitchers box was only 50 from the plate. But... he probably threw overhand, relied on the "fadeaway pitch" (screwball), and once struck out 19 under conditions with batters calling for a high or low pitch. He definitely belongs in a conversation about great pitchers. But like Andy said, different rules. But I also agree that the set should be "all inclusive" and then sub set it out to the player group you want to play with. Era to era fantasy games are always playing apples against oranges, so the card is the card, it was still the game of baseball.

Primarily, I'm relieved to see the conversation on this page at least is intelligent.

Intriguing and valid conversations about baseball, a game we clearly all love, and all its history and tradition and nuance.

But...sorry for the but...as a few have said--this is not about the validity of cards SOM has created, or SOM players picked, or whatever. Those are great conversations...but:

This is just about keeping the paradigm of preceding ATG sets, which is the default is all players when creating or joining a league. All the other narrowing of scope is a welcome thematic component--but it is step 2, not step 1.

It is hurting league creation and that cannot be good.