NEW LEAGUE: September 1965
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On the morning of September 1, 1965, 6 teams were within 6.5 games of first place in the National League. This was the most congested any pennant race had ever been on 9/1 prior to divisional play. Here are the standings in that morning’s paper:
That seems like the perfect scenario to create some alternate realities.
We will pick up the entire NL schedule starting on September 1, 1965 (10 teams for a total of 151 games; ~30 games per team), with teams playing scheduled opponents. Games will not be required to be played in order.
PRIZES
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Winning the league is the goal. If your team finishes with the best record in the league FOR THE SEASON, not just the games we play, you will win an APBA GO gift certificate. Since all teams do not have equal odds of winning, here is the payout for a pennant for each team:
Dodgers, Giants, Reds, Braves: $10
Pirates, Phillies, Cardinals: $15
Cubs, Astros: $20 -
The league champion will then have the option to gamble their winnings (double-or-nothing) in a World Series versus the Minnesota Twins, the AL champs in 1965. Win that and your earnings will be twice the number above. Lose and you’ll get nothing and like it!
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Every team does not have the same shot at winning the league (the Mets were actually eliminated by 9/1). So in order to give all teams something else to play for, if your team wins at least 3 more games than the real-life team won in September, you will win a $5 gift certificate to APBA Go.
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The bottom 3 teams will also get a larger payout for finishing with a winning record in September. Cubs will get $10 (since they just need 5 more wins). Astros and Mets will get $20 (since they need 8 more wins) if they win more than they lose (.500 does not count). Here is the real-life record for each NL team in September 1965:
RULES (all limitation rules will be tracked in the spreadsheet to make it easier for you to monitor)
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Injured players will only miss the remainder of the game in which they are injured.
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All games will be played with No DH, Optional Pitching Rule on, and Manual Dice roll off.
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In order to force managers to deal with their team’s deficiencies, batters will be limited to the number of actual plate appearances they had in real-life September 1965. For instance, Hank Aaron had 111 plate appearances in 32 Milwaukee games that September. That’s his limit for our games.
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Of course, you need some flexibility to spread your wings as a manager. In order to enable that, you will have an additional 54 flex plate appearances for your team that you can spread across whichever players you like. This will allow you to choose different players for different situations and maybe outsmart the real-world manager.
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Similarly, pitchers will be limited to the number of batters they faced in the real-life September 1965. Your team will also have 36 flex batters faced to spread as you see fit.
EXCEPTION 1: “D” grade pitchers have no limits on them. Pitchers that are D starters but a better grade reliever (i.e. D(C*) or D(B*)) will be limited even if they are used as a starter.
EXCEPTION 2: Any pitcher with 7+ starts in September (every 5th calendar day on average) in the real world is not eligible to use any of the team’s flex batters faced. Those pitchers were already being used at their “max” level, so there’s no room to push them more. The pitchers affected by this rule are
Cubs: Larry Jackson
Reds: Sammy Ellis, Jim Maloney
Dodgers: Don Drysdale, Sandy Koufax, Claude Osteen
Braves: Tony Cloninger
Phillies: Chris Short, Ray Culp, Jim Bunning
Pirates: Tommie Sisk, Bob Veale
Giants: Juan Marichal, Ron Herbel, Bob Shaw
Cardinals: Bob Gibson
Mets and Astros have no pitchers affected by this rule. -
Players who did not play in real-life September ARE NOT ELIGIBLE for our games. If Walter Alston did not have the player on his roster that September, then neither do you.
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If a player starts a game under their limit for PA or BF, they can finish that game even if they exhaust their supply during the game. However, a player cannot start or enter a game after he has passed his limit on PA for batters or BF for pitchers (unless the team still has flex PA or flex BF). If a player goes into the negative during a game and your team still has flex PA/BF left, it will count against your flex PA/BF.
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Starting pitchers must have at least 2 games off between starts. Remember though, a starting pitcher will still be limited by his batters faced no matter how many starts he makes.
SPECIAL NOTE: The Flex PA and Flex BF are experimental and hopefully will help cover teams that have an excess number of PA per game because of unusually high scoring or extra-innings. We will be able to monitor whether or not a team is tracking close to their real-world PA per game. If the team is using more PA per G than expected, the TEAM may be granted additional Flex PA, if it makes sense. It is still up to the manager to track their PA usage. If you use all of your Flex PA on a player who only had 10 PA in the real world, you may not get much sympathy if you run out of PA too early.
Statistics will be tracked via a Google Sheet. Home teams will be expected to email box score CSVs that you can download from APBA Go after games/series are completed. We’re trying a new automated process to load the box scores, so stats should be updated within an hour of box scores being emailed (possibly faster). If you would like to view the spreadsheet with player limits listed, you can via this link: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1CMCjHvvMSRWsOG2h-oy_wSVJ-ExmF-BJbMxk0fx4e30/edit?usp=sharing
I will email weekly updates for your team to help you keep track of PA/BF limits.
I think we can play this league within 5 weeks (about 6-7 games a week per team). We will get started as soon as the league fills up.
IF YOU ARE INTERESTED, please email me (Joel) at jluckhau@gmail.com. It’s a small league that could fill up quickly, so don’t delay!
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Fascinating idea…very interesting. Would you try and use the tournament function in APBAGO to use a collection to keep stats?..i think it might be doable by “over” stating the number of times each team plays each other…( then you can pick the appropriate home team) …then the remaining un needed games can be “forfeited” and they do not effect the stats or standings…this would give some interesting stats for this project
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@backstreets Nah, we’ll just do it the old-fashioned way. I’ve got a spreadsheet that lists the schedule and teams can see exactly who they have to play. It also compiles the data just by emailing the box scores to a specific address. This allows us to track playing time limits for each team so that players don’t get used more than they’re supposed to. It’s something that anluck7 did in his 1994 replay and it worked pretty well as a way to get managers to use their entire roster.
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@dbacknate you’re certainly welcome to play if you’d like.
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@jluckhau …I know it would be a guess but do you have any idea how many weeks you expect this to take to complete?..just trying to figure out if I have the time available to participate
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Jluck…are the pirates taken yet?
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@backstreets We haven’t selected teams yet. Once we have managers lined up, we’ll randomize the order and have a team draft. That way managers who don’t see the league announcement for a couple of days have a chance to get the team they want most.
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I’ve suddenly gotten overwhelmingly busy and have had to put this league on hold temporarily. We’re still looking for 3 more managers, so if you’re interested - even if you don’t have time right at this moment - let me know.
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Did this ever get off the ground? It sounds interesting.
