Negro League Overview - Starters

This is an ongoing multi-part series on the new ATB Negro Leaguers that will be available in our next draft.  See here for the other parts.

By my estimation 16 or so starting pitchers are good enough to receive regular playing time.  Taking a generalist view that assumes ERA is the best measure of pitcher quality, and that owners draft in the order of ERA, we can estimate where in the rotation a pitcher belongs.  For example, in a 24 team league the starting pitchers with the best 24 ERA’s would all be considered #1 starters, pitchers with the 25th-48th best ERA’s would be #2 starters, and so on.

With this approach, the Negro League player set will add eight spot starters/long relievers, four #3, 4, and 5 starters, and four #1 and 2 starters.

Spot Starters

Of the spot starters and long relievers only Satchel Paige warrants some press.  Paige’s success simply didn’t translate to ATB and while he appears to be a decent pitcher by ATB XIV standards (4.14 ERA, 1.34 WHIP) this works out to be just the 144th best in the 500-resims.  There is good news for Paige fans though.  In 1940 he only qualified as a reliever and he performed quite well thanks to a 1.14 WHIP and 3.50 ERA.

#3, #4, #5 Starters

Arthur Henderson is the best of the #3, #4, and #5 starters.  There isn’t a perfect comp, but 1905 Ed Reulbach is close enough for our purposes.

#1, #2 Starters

One of the most skilled Negro League pitchers of all time was Nip Winters.  A southpaw with a mighty fastball, Winters went 18-4 with a 2.37 ERA and 0.84 WHIP in the 1922-1923 seasons.  He recorded several other very good seasons but alcoholism and a perceived lack of trying helped shorten his career.  He retired at the age of 33 with a lifetime winning percentage of .678.

In the 500-resims Winters ranks an indisputable  although distant, 3rd behind only Pedro Martinez and Greg Maddux.  He put up a 3.08 ERA and 1.07 WHIP in 212 innings per season.

Yesterday we saw how great of a reliever Red Ryan is, and it turns out he’s a pretty good starter too.  His 1923-1924 season looks a lot like 1946 Tex Hughson.

Negro League Overview - Relievers

This is an ongoing multi-part series on the new ATB Negro Leaguers that will be available in our next draft.  See here for the other parts.

This off-season I instituted several adjustments to the ATB baseline era.  This will improve our statistical results in so much that it will feel more like a modern day baseball era, as opposed to a cross between the 1880s and 1930s as we previously simmed under.

Before moving onto the pitching results, we should spend a minute grounding ourselves as to the true differences we’ll encounter.  First and most importantly, hit rates have diminished considerably.  Pitchers in the 79-resims gave up 9.3 hits per nine innings, a historically high figure.  This has been toned down to 8.7 going forward, and consequently the league WHIP reduced from 1.42 to 1.33.

Interestingly, home runs had been a bit too scarce and they have increased from 0.7 HR per nine innings to 1.0.  Doubles have also increased, while triples decreased.  All in all, our league ERA has gone from 3.88 to 4.01.

Onto the pitchers.

Despite his 158 pound frame, Mervin Ryan featured a hard-sinking fastball and when coupled with an elusive knuckleball, the red haired right hander enjoyed a long 17 year career.  Four our purposes we have reliable statistics for “Red” for the years 1919 through 1932 and while he certainly had great years as a starter, it’s his ability as an ATB reliever I am most interested in.

In 1922-1923 Ryan tossed over 127 innings giving up just 81 hits and two walks.  He simmed extremely well, so well in fact that he sported the second best WHIP of any pitcher in the 500-resims, behind only Dennis Eckersley.

That is not to say there aren’t potential hazards.  His home run rate is nearly double nearly all the other top flight relievers and his playing time was minuscule (35 IP per season) which likely means he was used as a specialist.  Still, in over 13,000 innings he averaged a promising line: 35 IP, 25 H, 4 BB, 13 K.

Only one other reliever appears to be good enough to earn a spot for late inning bullpen work.    Little is known about Porter Charleston (we can’t even confirm he was truly a left-hander) other than the fact he amassed about 325 innings in his career between the Negro Major and Independent leagues.  In 1931 and 1932 he was at his best, starting 14 games and allowing just 6.6 hits per nine innings.  With so few starts, Charleston is only eligible as an ATB reliever and the 500-resim AI took advantage to the tune of a 132 inning average per season.  He recorded a 3.20 ERA and 1.06 in 51,000 total innings.

All other relievers are destined for middle relief, and while useful, don’t warrant a full post.  Here are there simmed statistics.

Negro League Overview - Center Field

This is an ongoing multi-part series on the new ATB Negro Leaguers that will be available in our next draft.  See here for the other parts.

Pretend for a moment we had the ability to take the batting average of Ross Barnes and meld it together with the home run prowess of Jimmie Foxx.  We’ll take this player and sprinkle in the ability to hit doubles like Tris Speaker and take a walk like Joe Morgan.  For kicks and giggles let’s add a bit of Ty Cobb, and let this player steal 45 of 65 bases each season.

You’d be left with a slash line of .338 / .442 / .625 to go alongside 49 doubles and 39 home runs per season.  Oh, that reminds me, let’s also give this player Ex/55 defense with a Vg throwing arm and plop him down in the most demanding outfield position, Center Field.

That my fellow owners, is what you would call the new first overall draft pick.  And that is exactly what we have in 1924-1925 Oscar Charleston.

His bio at the Baseball Hall of Fame says it all:

A multi-talented star, Oscar Charleston was renowned by those who saw him play as the finest all-around player in Negro league history. A barrel-chested, left-handed hitter, the fiery Charleston hit for both average and power while revolutionizing defensive play in center field. His blazing speed, aggressiveness on the base paths and focused intensity led many to compare him to Ty Cobb. In 60 league games in 1921, he batted .434 while leading the Negro National League in doubles, triples, home runs and stolen bases.

Corner outfielder and teammate Dave Malarcher once said, “Some people asked me, 'Why are you playing so close to the right-field foul line?' What they didn't know was that Charleston covered all three fields, and my responsibility was to make sure of balls down the line and those in foul territory.”

I believe Charleston is worthy of the top draft pick.  Babe Ruth and Barry Bonds are plainly better hitters; and Ted Williams still has over 30 point lead in on base, but only at the sacrifice of 20 doubles.  Last year owners mused that perhaps Mickey Mantle was the most deserving of future #1 overall draft picks.  Charleston is better than Mantle, both with the stick and with the glove.  According to the resim data, Charleston is now the third best hitter in ATB, but with such tremendous defense he is an overall gem, and an argument can be made that Babe Ruth has been supplanted.

He wasn’t the only center fielder worthy of starting role.  Cristobal Torriente recorded an OPS of .819, Pete Hill managed .802, and Bullet Joe Rogan .794.  For their part, Torriente and Hill are almost identical, and look like either a less powerful Ty Cobb or a more powerful Tris Speaker.

Center field just got a whole lot deeper.

Negro League Overview - Right Field

This is an ongoing multi-part series on the new ATB Negro Leaguers that will be available in our next draft.  See here for the other parts

Right fielder's in All Time Baseball, and by extension the major leagues, has historically played as the weakest hitting position among the three outfield spots.  Weakest hitting in terms of OPS anyway, right fielders continue to hit home runs at the prolific rates.  The additional Negro League’s candidates played much the same way.

Heavy Johnson was exactly what his name suggested.  His 250+ pound frame allowed for great power but little agility, and while a liability in the field, Johnson slugged with the best of them.  In his rookie season Johnson won the Triple Crown, batting .406 with 20 home runs and 120 RBI.  A teammate claimed that the bulky outfielder was once sleeping on the bench when he was awoken and told to pinch-hit; he grabbed a fungo bat and hit a home run.

In the 500 resims Johnson recorded the second highest OPS among right fielders, behind only Babe Ruth.  His 1922-1923 seasons resulted in a powerful line: .317 / .364 / .585, with 48 2B, 16 3B, and 31 home runs.  With a Fr/145 defensive rating, Johnson should end up as a DH; only the most daring (read: reckless) owners will allow him to play the field for any length of time.

Among the total player pool (not just right filders) Johnson is unique.  Others have greater power, still others have better on-base skills, but few combine both qualities into a single player. The great sluggers of ATB – Ruth, Bonds, Gehrig, Williams – each had on base averages 70, and sometimes over 100, points better than Johnson.  On the other hand the great bashers of the game – McGwire, Stargell, Greenberg, Foxx, etc – recorded on base averages well below Johnson’s.

He is an obvious first rounder, but as a DH and a step below the ATB elite, it will be interesting to see where owners draft him.

The only other right fielder that might be worth a starting position is Mules Suttles.  A Hall of Famer, Suttles was one of the best hitting Negro Leaguers of all time.  At his best he hit for average, power, and had the ability to draw walks.  From 1926 to 1931 he averaged an OPS over 1.000.

In the resims Suttles kept the power but little else.  He batted .254 / .301 / .480 but with a Pr/65 defensive rating he will likely end up as another DH.  He is almost identical to 1966 Dick Allen, hitting a bit more doubles while giving back a similar amount of home runs.

Negro League Overview - Left Field

This is an ongoing multi-part series on the new ATB Negro Leaguers that will be available in our next draft.  See here for the other parts.

Already one of the deepest positions in ATB, left field just got a deeper still.  Barry Bonds, Babe Ruth, and Ted Williams remain the ‘big 3’ but Turkey Stearns has emerged as a viable second tier left fielder.  Stearns was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2000 after a long career of devastating baseballs.  He led the league in home runs six times and triples four times, all while maintaining a batting average well above .300.  Former teammate, Jimmie Crutchfield, described Stearnes as "quircky-jerky sort of guy who could hit the ball a mile. Turkey had a batting stance that you'd swear couldn't let anybody hit a baseball at all. He'd stand up there looking like he was off balance. But, it was natural for him to stand that way, and you couldn't criticize him for it when he was hitting everything they threw at him."

Stearns had so many great seasons it is incredibly difficult to choose from.  Three in particular stood out and were entered into the ATB source database:

1923-1924: .357 / .393 / .653, 25 2B, 24 3B, 25 HR in 499 AB
1926-1927: .374 / .415 / .715, 50 2B, 18 3B, 38 HR in 586 AB
1929-1930: .376 / .452 / .681, 29 2B, 17 3B, 23 HR in 433 AB

The results were impressive and make him a cut above the likes of Tip O’Neill, George Hall, and Albert Belle.  My personal favorite is the last of the three listed, where the resims produced a .288 / .368 / .528 line with 60 extra base hits.  This came in a platoon situation however, and we shouldn’t expect that type of line in a full time starter role.

He was full time in the other two seasons and the results are fun to dissect.  In 1926/1927 his OBP dipped to .331 but he hit 54 doubles and 36 home runs, recording a .909 OPS.  He wasn’t as good in 1923/1924, but incredibly hit 29 doubles, 22 triples, and 27 home runs, the only player in all of the 500 resims to average more than 20 in each stat.  No matter which year is chosen, Stearns will soon be a household name in the All Time Baseball league.

Three other Negro Leaguers will also prove to be useful.  Ed Rile only played in the Negro Majors for six seasons, amassing a little over 1,200 at bats.  In 1927 he batted over .400 with a .703 slugging and this was the foundation year for his entry into ATB.  This season, coupled with a closer to average 1928 campaing, resulted in a platoon impacted  .791 OPS (.335 OBP, .457 SLG) in the 500 resims.  Rile’s closest comp in 1931 Al Simmons.

Hurley McNair batted .291 / .328 / .449 in about 450 at bats per season.  He should feature prominently in lineups of owners who focus on batting average and extra base hits; his closest comp is 2003 Albert Pujols.

Finally, much further down the list of usefulness is 1925-1926 Rap Dixon.  He’ll have is uses, but not as a starter.  His closest comp’s are 2008 Carlos Quentin and Lonnie Smith.

Negro League Overview - Shortstops

This is an ongoing multi-part series on the new ATB Negro Leaguers that will be available in our next draft.  See here for the other parts.

Across the other infield positions we reviewed to date, the Negro Leaguers have projected to provide only middling to weak value come draft day.  However, at shortstop and ultimately in the outfield positions, ATB will benefit from several new elite players.

Willie “El Diablo” Wells was the first true power hitting shortstop in American Baseball history.  Before Alex Rodriguez, Ernie Banks, Rico Petrocelli, and Vern Stephens, shortstops didn’t hit 35, let alone 40 home runs.

Here is a list of the most single season home runs by a shortstop:

57 – 2002, Alex Rodriguez
52 – 2001, Alex Rodriguez
47 – 1958, Ernie Banks
47 – 2003, Alex Rodriguez
45 – 1959, Ernie Banks
44 – 1955, Ernie Banks
43 – 1957, Ernie Banks (played 3B too)
42 – 1999, Alex Rodriguez
42 – 1998, Alex Rodriguez
41 – 1960, Ernie Banks
41 – 2000, Alex Rodriguez
40 – 1969, Rico Petrocelli

Obviously, Rodriguez and Banks corner the market on power hitting shortstops.  However, it is not widely known that Wells featured similar power back in the late 1920’s.  In 1927/1928 he drilled 39 home runs and then upped that to 42 a year later.  In that 1928/1929 season he also hit 41 doubles and scored 157 runs, all while performing as one of the best fielding shortstop in Negro League history.

In the 500-resims, the 1928/1929 Wells batted .258 / .328 / .515 with 37 home runs and 36 doubles.  His .843 OPS is over 30 points better than Honus Wagner.  The 1929/1930 Wells was better still, batting .277 / .351 / .490 with 31 home runs and again 36 doubles.  His OPS was two points worse this year, but the increased batting average and walk rate improved his OBP by 23 points.  Quite simply, Wells is now the best shortstop in the game, easily a first round draft pick, and perhaps an overall Top 10 selection as well.

Wells isn’t the only starting caliber shortstop either.  George Carr, reincarnated Pop Lloyd, and Dobie Moore all project to receive 500 or more at bats next season.  Carr hit 18 home runs and 32 doubles for a .724 OPS, but will be hindered by a lackluster .298 on base percentage.  “Tank” played from 1920 through 1928; his top year was 1925 when he batted .365 / .420 / .631 in 293 at bats.

Elsewhere, Pop Lloyd received a facelift.  ATB has historically used a somewhat fictional stat line for Lloyd, borrowed from another Diamond Mind Baseball league several years ago.  Now that verifiable stats for Lloyd have been compiled, I’ve made the changes and we’ll use this new data going forward.  In our last batch of resims, affectionately known as the “79 resims”, Lloyd batted .292 / .367 / .365.  In these 500 resims Lloyd took a hit, and his new baseline is .296 / .334 / .367.  This is still quite good, and I have him preliminarily ranked as the 11th best offensive shortstop.

Finally, Dobie More is now a viable position player as well.  Featuring more power than Lloyd, Dobie hit 40 doubles and 12 home runs in 1921/1922 en route to a .277 / .289 / .408 line.  I also tested his 1922/1923 season and the results were similar:  .279 / .306 / .386.

Lloyd's best comp is 1923 Joe Sewell while Dobie looks eerily similar to 1982 Robin Yount.

Negro League Overview - First Base

This is an ongoing multi-part series on the new ATB Negro Leaguers that will be available in our next draft.  See here for the other parts.

Four first basemen looked good enough on paper to give them a look within the 500 resims.  Clarence Smith (1922) and Willie Bobo (1924) don't appear to bring enough offense to warrant any real interest on draft day, though Bobo is at least good enough to pinch hit (.250 / .319 / .374).

That leaves two viable second tier options in Ben Taylor and Edgar Wesley.  Taylor enjoyed a long career from 1914 through 1929, bouncing around both the Negro Major and Negro Independent leagues.  He was at his best earlier in his career, and his rookie and sophomore campaigns of 1914-1915 were used for ATB purposes.  He's a speedster, averaging 44 stolen bases against just 15 caught steals during the resims.  His batting average and on base percentage is well above the league average, though not particularly stellar for a power position.  He did average 46 doubles and 11 triples a season and I roughly rank him as the 14th best first basemen.  His line: .274 / .349 / .447 with 7 home runs and a .797 OPS.  His closest comp is Bill Terry, not too shabby.

Taylor was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2006; he batted over .300 in 15 of his first 16 years in baseball.

Wesley on the other hand is more of a traditional, power hitting first basemen.  Comparatively little is known about Wesley.  After brief stints in the Independent league, Wesley moved to the Majors at 29 years of age.  His best years for ATB purposes were 1925-1926, his age 34/35 seasons in real life, where he recorded an OPS over 1.000 and hit 33 home runs in 497 at bats.  In the preceding combination seasons of 1924/1925 and 1923/1924, Wesley also recorded OPS scores between .930 and .950.

The underrated fielder (in real life anyway, for ATB he is almost perfectly average) brings more power than Taylor, but it comes at a cost of 15-20 points in on base percentage.

His final resim line: .269 / .332 / .465 with 26 home runs and 17 doubles.  He's akin to Dick Allen (1972) with a bit higher batting average.  I rate him as the 16th best first basemen in ATB.

Negro League Overview - Third Base

This is an ongoing multi-part series on the new ATB Negro Leaguers that will be available in our next draft.  See here for the other parts.

Third base has been a notoriously difficult position to find quality ATB players and the addition of the Negro Leagues has done very little to change that.  Please understand, there have been plenty of historically great major league third basemen, but hardly any translate well to Diamond Mind Baseball and ATB.  In the resims, just 5 averaged an OPS over .800, only slightly better than second basemen (4) and shortstops (2).  Conversely, 8 left fielders, 10 center fielders, 12 right fielders, and 13 first basemen recorded an OPS at least as good.

At the hot corner, Judy Johnson was the best of Negro Leaguers.  Elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1975, Johnson enjoyed a long career with a lifetime average well over .300.  He is credited with finding the great Josh Gibson and played on the famous Homestead Grays alongside Gibson, Satchel Paige, Cool Papa Bell, and Oscar Charleston.

For our purposes he rates as an excellent ranging back up infielder.  On paper Johnson showed promise, batting .362 / .399 / .541 with 41 doubles and 16 triples during the 1924-1925 seasons.  However, In over 230,000 resim at bats he hit just  .270 / .304 / .384.

Elsewhere, A.D. Creacy showed some pop, maintaining a .391 slugging in 16,000 at bats but his horrid .283 on-base percentage makes him basically unusable.  Newt Joseph also made the cut, but his .570 resim OPS precludes him from any interest on draft day.  In the table below you'll see few other options but I do wonder how the .390 OBP for Dave Malarcher will translate.

Negro League Overview - Second Basemen

This is an ongoing multi-part series on the new ATB Negro Leaguers that will be available in our next draft.  See here for the other parts.

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Within our new Negro league player set, two second basemen stand out above the rest – Walter Cannady and Newt Allen.  Neither however, will become household names in ATB as their generally lackluster stats coupled with the fact the computer AI used them in platoon situations, will make owners hesitant to spend any earlier round picks on the infielders.

“Rev” Cannady was a bit of an enigma.  A good hitter during his peak, Cannady was usually placed in the heart of a lineup and although he only played full time for 8 seasons he made the most of them, batting over .300 six times and in 1923 he batted .398 with a 1.071 OPS.  However, he was also mean and surly, and was often left alone.  He even attacked an umpire during a game, and on another occasion, upset with a call, bashed in an umpire’s car windows on the way out of the clubhouse.

In 1924 his OPS dropped to .838 and the combination of these two years is what was entered into DMB.  The .500 resims results were decent enough - .266 / .318 / .390 over the course of 35,000 at bats, just 91 per season.  In terms of OPS, Cannady ranks 12th overall in the resims.  A good comp for him is 1886 Hardy Richardson.

Behind Cannady is Newt Allen.  A famous slick fielding infielder for the Kansas City Monarchs, Allen played in 19 seasons between 1923 and 1944.  While never an elite hitter he was loved by his teammates and fans nonetheless.  In the resims he batted .257 / .306 / .346.  Couple that line with Vg/71 defense hey may get a look on draft day.  Those stats are very close to Jim Viox who was somewhat successful last season.

The last of the second basemen is Anderson Pryor.  His best stretch was 1924-1926 were he strung together OPS scores of .771, .837, and .668.  This isn't good enough for ATB and he'll end up undraftable (sub .600 OPS with Fr range).

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Negro League Overview - Catchers

I’ve completed the latest batch of resims but haven’t quite figure out the best way to incorporate them into the fold of ATB V.  There comes a point where too much information is a bad thing, and we may reached that 3 years ago.  Adding another 500 resims sounded good to the little voice in my head, but much more difficult to make use of in practice.  How do I make them readable, do I update the player cards, or analyze each teams defense so all pitchers aren’t assumed to have played in a defensive neutral environment, etc.  Before posting hard data these issues need to be worked through and then put in to practice.  It will be weeks if not more before a full run down of the 500-resims are widely available.

However, I did want to tackle our new Negro League players.  By far the biggest addition to ATB in years, hundreds of negro league players are now available to be drafted.  Months ago I gave a brief rundown, but in the next few days (weeks?) I want to provide more data about this new player set.  One reminder, the negro league set is based upon a summation of two consecutive seasons of each player.  The Negro Major and Independent Leagues, along with the Cuban Leagues, didn’t play often enough to compile more than a few hundred at bats per season.  The solution was to simply add up two consecutive seasons and use that as the real life stats for DMB purposes.

I added the most likely negro leaguers to our ATB Source Database and included them in the 500-resims.  I am sure I missed some; this isn't meant to be an exhaustive list of who to draft.

Here are the results.  I’ll post articles on each position.

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One of the best and well known Negro Leaguer's of all time was Biz Mackey.  The strong armed backstop played 19 seasons, twice batting over .400, and came within 10 points of doing it a third time. At the time he played, Mackey was regarded by some as better all around player than Josh Gibson.  If not for his Ex arm however, Mackey would likely be a backup catcher in ATB. In the resims, the 25 year old batted .287 / .318 / .359 with 22 doubles and 4 home runs.  There are no great comps from our league, but he's akin to Joe Mauer (with a bit more pop and a bit less walks).  I have Mackey preliminarily rated as the 22nd best catcher overall, but that's likely too harsh.  Someone will draft him before 20 due to his great arm.

I chose the 1923-1924 combination for Mackey (real life .369 / .393 / .388) but he was great in 24/25 and 25/26 as well.  His raw stats are more prolific in the later years - .931 OPS in 25/26 - but the league as whole hit better too.  I believe that relative to his league he was at his best in 1923-1924 but I wouldn’t argue with anyone taking a chance on an alternate season.

The only other catcher selected was Pythias Russ and I suspect this will be the one and only mention on this blog.  The 23-year old looked decent on paper but his stats hardly translated.  He batted .268 / .289 / .338 in a platoon no less.  Similar to Mackey, he had better raw stats as a 24 year old and I wouldn't hold it against an owner to try out his .351 / .383 / .486 season.

Not Even the 100 Resims Tell the Whole Story

The 100 and 79 Resims changed drafting strategies forever.  This is nothing new, we learned this the hard way during our draft last spring.  A common complaint among owners, including myself, is that we often fell into what I called the "79 Resim Trap".  Those resims made many players looked better (or worse) than reality.

Perhaps the best example was Larry Doby.  Averaging 539 plate appearances across the 79 resims, Doby was the 6th best center fielder after scoring a .423 on base percentage and .799 OPS.  During the season he was a ruin, batting .258 with a .325 on base.  The after season 20 re-sim results where much the same:  .247 / .325 / .345.

Of course there are numerous plausible explanations for the difference.  Park factors for both Doby's home team and the league, general differences in quality of play in the 79 resims vs last season (due to 56 teams in the resims and 24 in ATB XIV), etc.  Each of these contribute to the difference in results of every player in the game.

However, part of my thinking always worried about the utter consistency in the 79 resim process.  With injuries turned off and the same schedule used repeatedly over and over, there are bound to be small but measurable differences in the results.  Pitchers especially, due to the fact they took the mound every 5 days against the same team, each season for 79 seasons.  Many pitchers wouldn't get to face all teams in the league with a schedule such as this.

Earlier this week, I mentioned my goal of conducting another batch of resims.  We have many new negro league players, a host of database corrections, and new ATB era to deal with (the era may end up changing things quite a bit).

For this new round of resims I decided to run at least 3 batches of 100 resims.  The difference in each batch is the team schedule, for which I'll shuffle so that they differ between each.  Random injuries will also be turned on so the rotations and lineups are not 100% predictable from one day to the next; over the course of 300 seasons the random variation from missing half of a season with a broken leg would be minimized.

Some early results are in and they are surprising.

• Andrew Bailey tossed over 5000 innings in each batch (A and B, I haven't run C) and compiled a 2.87 ERA/1.21 WHIP the first time, and a 2.50 ERA/1.14 WHIP the second.

• Noodles Hahn pitched in over 15,000 innings in each batch, and his stats went from 3.60/1.20 to 3.83/1.27

• Walker Cooper saw his OPS drop from .700 to .664 over teh course 15,000 at bats in each batch

• With at least 17,000 at bats in each batch, Gavy Cravath hit a respectable .261 / .313 / .444 in one batch, and an almost undraftable .250 / .303 / .420 in another

The schedule won't account for all of the variation.  100 seasons is a heck of a lot of data but I expect random variance would account for 1-2% difference, but I am confident that our previous resim iterations didn't give a clear view of each player and in fact, may had led some of us astray.

ATB Era Change

I've decided to tinker with the 'era' we use to simulate games in ATB.  Normally when we speak of era's, we mean the year in which the original batter or pitcher played.  For our purposes today, the era refers to the  ATB league itself.  I have the ability to adjust this era to make it play like the dead ball era, the homer happy late 1990's, or anything in between.

In the 79 resims batters collectively hit

9.39 hits per game
1.12 doubles
0.22 triples
0.75 home
3.32 walks

To put this in comparison, the 2012 AL hit:

8.72 hits per game
1.68 doubles
0.16 triples
1.11 home runs
3.02 walks

Those end up being striking differences.  The 79-resim batting average was over .270 while the AL hit just .256 last year.  Similarly, the AL on-base percentage was .320, but the 79-resim average was .335.  Home runs were (thankfully) suppressed, and the 79 resim slugging was .381 versus an AL average of .412.

I'll be making changes to the ATB era to bring them more in line with current 2012 statistics.  I'll likely do a batch of published resims as well.