O's Alltime Team Simulation

[LA2]

47 minutes ago, DrungoHazewood said:

Oooohh.... just reminded me of another extinct pitcher type: the Sunday starter.  This predates me, and I don't know that I can come up with an example off-hand.  But it used to be that teams would have an older starter who couldn't really handle being in the regular rotation any more.  So they'd keep him around and he'd start once a week, often on a Sunday, maybe in a doubleheader that would otherwise mess up the rotation (not that managers cared much about regular rest prior to 1960). 

Another casualty of teams actually trying to get something productive out of every roster spot, instead of keeping a pinch runner, a third catcher, a Sunday starter, Moe Berg, a defense-only first baseman... and really only regularly playing with 15 guys.

I remember this triumvirate behind the plate for the O's in 1965: Dick Brown, Johnny Orsino, and Charlie Lau.

Etchebarren came up for good the following year (after his inside-the-park homer 1-hit-in-6-ABs at the end of '65) and split the job with Vic Roznovsky, with Larry Haney as the third C, relegating Lau to pinchhitting, informal coaching, and warming up the pitchers between innings.

1965 was Brown's last season before succumbing to cancer five years later at the young age of 35. It was also Orsino's last season of regular playing time. Haney played until 1978 (age 35), but was never more than a second catcher, although a respected defensive one.

[now]

Just chiming in on the question raised about those all-time rosters: I believe the criteria was "best three seasons" with the club.

Which explains some of the head-scratchers mentioned, but not all, including the inconsistencies over franchises and eras.

Also, I can't imagine they would set it up without normalizing stats across eras.

[DrungoHazewood]

4 hours ago, now said:

Also, I can't imagine they would set it up without normalizing stats across eras.

I can.  First, it's harder just to normalize by yearly run context, you'd have to do some work before import (are they using OOTP?  It can be done, I'd guess someone already has a third-party normalized dB, but you'd have to go find it and figure out how to use it).  It's really harder and involves some guesswork to normalize for league quality.  Although I guess you could take a shortcut and just assume the league gets better by 0.5% a year.  But you'll still have discontinuities like the war and expansions.  And you might end up with Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig as the equivalent of Mark Grace and Nick Markakis.  And Cap Anson and Willie Keeler as AA players.

So my guess is they just import all the historical players as-is and throw them in a pot.  Verlander will have a 50/80 endurance, and Walter Johnson will have a 75.  And George Sisler will have a higher hit tool than Ichiro.

[now]

Drungo, maybe you're right. I haven't used OOTP in quite a while, but your take on it rings true. If so, one would think the state of the art would have advanced by now to account for those discrepancies you mention. (If not, maybe there's a job for you out there, or a next quarantine project to take on! )

[harp6]

On 4/25/2020 at 7:18 AM, DrungoHazewood said:

I can.  First, it's harder just to normalize by yearly run context, you'd have to do some work before import (are they using OOTP?  It can be done, I'd guess someone already has a third-party normalized dB, but you'd have to go find it and figure out how to use it).  It's really harder and involves some guesswork to normalize for league quality.  Although I guess you could take a shortcut and just assume the league gets better by 0.5% a year.  But you'll still have discontinuities like the war and expansions.  And you might end up with Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig as the equivalent of Mark Grace and Nick Markakis.  And Cap Anson and Willie Keeler as AA players.

So my guess is they just import all the historical players as-is and throw them in a pot.  Verlander will have a 50/80 endurance, and Walter Johnson will have a 75.  And George Sisler will have a higher hit tool than Ichiro.

Speaking of George Sisler, this was supposed to be the franchise.  Other teams have franchise players, but George Sisler is not on the Orioles roster.  He is in the top 10 all-time in most of the orioles franchise batting records.

[DrungoHazewood]

47 minutes ago, harp6 said:

Speaking of George Sisler, this was supposed to be the franchise.  Other teams have franchise players, but George Sisler is not on the Orioles roster.  He is in the top 10 all-time in most of the orioles franchise batting records.

I don't know their justification.  Other teams clearly had predecessor franchises included.  My rule is don't do that.  When the Senators moved to Minnesota, they stopped being the same team.  The Orioles are not the St. Louis Browns.

Plus, I'd argue Eddie was a better player than Sisler.  Eddie had a longer, more valuable career.  Sisler hit .400 a few times, but what would Eddie have done in a league where the competition had almost no minorities or foreign players, and the scouting/signing/development was downright Paleolithic?

[NJOriolesFan]

I have my all-time teams for each franchise (actually still working on relievers).  My emphasis is on 4 consecutive seasons with that franchise.  I weight a few simple statistical categories which are normalized from Baseball-reference's neutral stats at the bottom of the Advanced Batting/Pitching of each player.  For Position Players I use OPS, GPA (similar to OPS but more weight to OBP and in the context of batting average spread), Runs Created per game.  From a career perspective, at bats, WAR and Win Shares are used.  So I use a career factor (Win Shares, WAR and At Bats, WS and WAR is more like JAWS (Career combined with Top 4 Consecutive years)) and the Focus Year Factor is Consecutive 4 for WAR, WS, OPS, GPA and RC/G.  I combine the Focus Years Score with Career Score all with that franchise and come up with a single score for each player.  I do the same for pitchers but the stats are WAR, WS, WHIP, ERA, IP, W-L.  I wanted to use strikeouts but found that the neutral stats did not change the strikeouts enough to make somebody like Jim Palmer with greater strikeout rates than Erik Bedard.

That said, the Neutral stats just adjust for ballpark and offensive context (Runs per game).  It did not take into account, how the game was played, etc.  But it has to be something that worked for me.  Only exceptions that I made were since AL teams were 1901-2019, I did the same cutoff for NL teams.  I also chose players for only one franchise.  I am still finalize things because I want to have things other than just numbers, break ties or close calls.  And from a game playing standpoint, the Focus stats will lean more heavily than my "Career analysis".  I will make a couple of teams of all 19th century players but not franchise teams.  I plan on using these teams for Strat-o-Matic and/or Statis-Pro Baseball and maybe one of the computer game systems.  In the day, I loved Lance Haffner games, if anybody know them.  I've found downloads for each of the Haffner games that can be run on dos-box, but I digress.

Anyhow, my Orioles team (16 batters-5 starting pitchers-working on relievers and an 11th pitcher):

C-Chris Hoiles

C-Gus Triandos

1b-George Sisler

1b-Eddie Murray

1b-Boog Powell

2b-Brian Roberts

ss-Cal Ripken

3b-Brooks Robinson

3b-Harland Clift

3b-Manny Machado

inf-Melvin Mora

of-Frank Robinson

of-Ken Williams

of-Ken Singleton

of-Brady Anderson

of-George Stone

I would have had Grich at 2nd base and probably bumped Mora but Grich went to Angels.  If Frank Robinson was on the Reds instead, I would add Paul Blair or Don Buford.  If I went to a 40 man roster (24 hitters) I would have added Matt Wieters, Del Pratt, Bobby Wallace, Vern Stephens, Don Buford, Paul Blair, Baby Doll Jacobson and Adam Jones. 

The starting pitchers were

Jim Palmer

Urban Shocker

Mike Mussina

Dave McNally

Mike Cuellar

I've done all 30 franchises to this point.  Some Hall-of-Famers did not make their teams but again I'm refining the rosters to look into some of those things.

 

 

[DrungoHazewood]

1 hour ago, NJOriolesFan said:

1b-George Sisler

3b-Harland Clift

of-Ken Williams

of-George Stone

Del Pratt, Bobby Wallace, Vern Stephens, Baby Doll Jacobson

Urban Shocker

I'm philosophically against counting Browns as Orioles, but nevertheless everyone on your list of Browns aside from Sisler has mostly been lost to history and I applaud you bringing them up.

Occasionally people talk about Williams and the fact he just missed a 40/40 season in 1922.  39 homers, 37 steals.  That was the only 35/35 season from the dawn of professional baseball until Mays did it in 1956.  Thing is Williams was about 60% park effects.  Old Sportsmans Park was a great place to hit, and Williams had about a 1.000 OPS there, compared to just over .800 on the road.  About 75% of his career homers were at home, numbers a modern Rockie would be envious of.  In '22 he hit .290 with seven homers on the road, .373 with a 1.238 at home.  bb-ref has him as nearly an 8-win player in '22 and '23 but that may overstate the case.  He was also a guy who didn't start playing ball until late, and didn't get to the majors until he was almost 30.  Would be an interesting guy to try a do-over career in OOTP or something with him debuting at 23.

Harlond Clift could be called the first modern third baseman.  Prior to the 1920s second base was more offense-focused, and third was where you put a strong defender who didn't hit much. Clift and Ken Keltner were some of the first guys we'd recognize as being out of the Brooks, Schmidt, Scott Rolen, Chipper Jones model.  Had some years in the late 30s with 20-35 homers, 100+ RBI.  But had some injuries, got traded to the Senators when Griffith Stadium was just impossible for a power hitter, and was done at 32.

George Stone is truly lost to history.  He was arguably the best player in the world in 1906, and I couldn't even pick him out of a lineup.  Led the league in average, slugging, OBP, OPS+, OPS, Total bases.  Another guy like Williams who just didn't start playing pro ball until the age a modern player would be in the majors, then bounced around the independent minors for most of his 20s.  So his MLB career was really short, and looks worse than it was because it was the depths of the deadball era.  Even his last year with a .644 OPS was better than average.  26 wins from age 28-33 is typical of a Hall of Famer, on par with Mark McGwire, Scott Rolen, Dwight Evans, Lou Bodreau, Yogi, Eddie, Molitor, others.  But that was his entire career.

Bobby Wallace is perhaps the most obscure HOFer.  Shortstop.  Played forever, from 1894-1918.  Never led the league in any offensive category but was apparently an excellent fielder.

Vern Stephens is a little famous for his time as teammates with Ted Williams, and would probably be in the Hall if not for drinking.

Urban Shocker is remembered for being on the '27 Yanks, but spent most of his career on the Browns.  It seems like a third of the league from the 1920s is in Cooperstown, but somehow they missed Shocker.

I don't really know much of anything about Baby Doll Jacobson, but he was the center fielder on the Browns during their brief period of relevance in the early 20s.

Del Pratt was the old-school kind of second baseman who could hit but probably couldn't turn the double play and would be a third baseman today.  I swear a remember an anecdote about him having a great arm, but that doesn't really make sense for a second baseman. 

[NJOriolesFan]

1 hour ago, DrungoHazewood said:

I'm philosophically against counting Browns as Orioles, but nevertheless everyone on your list of Browns aside from Sisler has mostly been lost to history and I applaud you bringing them up.

I pretty much agree with the separation of such but mostly just because I'm an Orioles fan.  There wasn't as much roster carryover from Browns to Orioles as there was from Senators to Twins.  I really would have preferred to go with separate Browns/Orioles. 

That would take out Sisler, Clift, Williams and Stone and probably put in guys like Paul Blair, Don Buford, Adam Jones and either Jim Gentile or Chris Davis.  Scott McGregor would replace Urban Shocker.

Pratt, Wallace, Stephens and Jacobson would be replaced by Gentile/Davis, Nick Markakis, Davey Johnson and Mark Belanger.

[now]

On 4/25/2020 at 4:18 AM, DrungoHazewood said:

I can.  First, it's harder just to normalize by yearly run context, you'd have to do some work before import (are they using OOTP?  It can be done, I'd guess someone already has a third-party normalized dB, but you'd have to go find it and figure out how to use it).  It's really harder and involves some guesswork to normalize for league quality.  Although I guess you could take a shortcut and just assume the league gets better by 0.5% a year.  But you'll still have discontinuities like the war and expansions.  And you might end up with Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig as the equivalent of Mark Grace and Nick Markakis.  And Cap Anson and Willie Keeler as AA players.

So my guess is they just import all the historical players as-is and throw them in a pot.  Verlander will have a 50/80 endurance, and Walter Johnson will have a 75.  And George Sisler will have a higher hit tool than Ichiro.

I have new respect for your skepticism about older-era players after watching the 1960 WS game 7. Even Roberto Clemente looked like he was "stepping into the bucket" on his swings. Power hitters were trying to bunt with one strike in random situations. Bobby Shantz was 5'-6", looked like a Little Leaguer. SS Groat muffed a run-scoring grounder thru the middle that was easy pickings for any modern shortstop. Scrub relievers (Jim Coates) were pitching in critical situations. Etc. etc. (Not to mention the lackluster play-by-play announcers, adding nothing to the box score in real time!).

Oh and about those franchises, the writeup on the recent elimination round refered to the Orioles franchise going back to 1901. But, no John McGraw with his 171 OPS+?

[now]

On 4/28/2020 at 6:59 AM, NJOriolesFan said:

I have my all-time teams for each franchise (actually still working on relievers).  My emphasis is on 4 consecutive seasons with that franchise.  I weight a few simple statistical categories which are normalized from Baseball-reference's neutral stats at the bottom of the Advanced Batting/Pitching of each player.  For Position Players I use OPS, GPA (similar to OPS but more weight to OBP and in the context of batting average spread), Runs Created per game.  From a career perspective, at bats, WAR and Win Shares are used.  So I use a career factor (Win Shares, WAR and At Bats, WS and WAR is more like JAWS (Career combined with Top 4 Consecutive years)) and the Focus Year Factor is Consecutive 4 for WAR, WS, OPS, GPA and RC/G.  I combine the Focus Years Score with Career Score all with that franchise and come up with a single score for each player.  I do the same for pitchers but the stats are WAR, WS, WHIP, ERA, IP, W-L.  I wanted to use strikeouts but found that the neutral stats did not change the strikeouts enough to make somebody like Jim Palmer with greater strikeout rates than Erik Bedard.

Impressive number-crunching!

[now]

On 4/28/2020 at 9:16 AM, DrungoHazewood said:

Del Pratt was the old-school kind of second baseman who could hit but probably couldn't turn the double play and would be a third baseman today.  I swear a remember an anecdote about him having a great arm, but that doesn't really make sense for a second baseman. 

Jonathan Schoop says hi.
But seriously, that did seem one of the most valuable tools in his skill set.

[DrungoHazewood]

1 hour ago, now said:

I have new respect for your skepticism about older-era players after watching the 1960 WS game 7. Even Roberto Clemente looked like he was "stepping into the bucket" on his swings. Power hitters were trying to bunt with one strike in random situations. Bobby Shantz was 5'-6", looked like a Little Leaguer. SS Groat muffed a run-scoring grounder thru the middle that was easy pickings for any modern shortstop. Scrub relievers (Jim Coates) were pitching in critical situations. Etc. etc. (Not to mention the lackluster play-by-play announcers, adding nothing to the box score in real time!).

Oh and about those franchises, the writeup on the recent elimination round refered to the Orioles franchise going back to 1901. But, no John McGraw with his 171 OPS+?

That was in 73 games.  In '02 he only played 20 more before deserting the team and going to NY.  McGraw had typhoid or malaria in the mid-90s and I think mostly because of the effects from that his playing career was over by 30.

The '01-02 Orioles are kind of an orphan now.  bb-ref says they aren't really part of the Yanks, since there was almost no carry over between teams.  So their entire history is just those two years, half of one was with a severely crippled team after McGraw's antics.  And the current Orioles derive from the Browns and the even more obscure '01 Milwaukee Brewers. 

This is just an excuse to tell stories, but the '01 Brewers had Ned Garvin.  Garvin went 58-97 in his career, one of the 20 worst winning percentages for anyone with 125 decisions.  But he had a 124 ERA+, which is way better than McGregor, Flanagan, Cuellar, McNally.  It's almost as good as Jim Palmer.  Garvin was apparently a disagreeable guy, always getting into fights and disputes with teammates. Got traded annually. The suspicion was that his teammates hated him so much they'd throw games just to spite him.  But he got his in the end.  Died of the consumption at 34.