Sunday (31 Mar) - Last Minute Details

Sunday (31 Mar) - Last Minute Details

Another good thing about running the simulations before starting the real thing is that some mistakes can be corrected. The most significant error I found involved the Texas Rangers. I can't explain how it happened, but the Rangers ace, Matt Harrison, was left out. Not just left out of the starting rotation, he was left off the team. I found the error while doing a review of the starting rotations of each team. I also discovered that some starting pitchers were getting as many as 41 starts, when the major leagues today rarely start pitchers more than 30-33 times over the course of a season. In most cases this was the result of having only the minimum five starting pitchers. In addition to that issue, teams which had only the minimum pitching staff of ten were seeing relief pitchers going over a hundred innings, another rarity in today's baseball. I reviewed rosters and added a sixth starter where warranted and increased the pitching roster to twelve.

I didn't find any more major misses like Harrison's, but I did tweak several teams to give them more realistic numbers. The Miami Marlins were kind of a mess because their fifth and sixth starters did not have many innings pitched (IPs), so the computer manager was reluctant to start them too many times. I checked the Marlins current status and learned they had the same problem with their real rotation, and had signed on former teammate Kevin Slowey, who has not pitched in the major leagues since 2010. Well, if the Marlins can do it, so can I, and added Slowey (based on his 2010 record) to the Marlins rotation.

It's really pretty interesting to see the issues that teams face this close to the start of the season. Makes me feel like the effort I put into trying to get the simulation right was worth it.

Taking a short trip down memory lane, there was a time when I replayed each and every season. This was back in the 70s and 80s mostly. Near the start of each season, I would laboriously wade through the Sporting News. Back then the SN had a baseball only magazine, instead of mashing every sport into one rag like they do now. Do they even have a paper magazine anymore? I wouldn't know, haven't subscribed in years. But I digress. I'd go to the transactions page and adjust the rosters of every team and player affected. I'd even make changes during the season if there were trades, but I usually only did it for major roster changes - and always if it involved the Detroit Tigers. I played every simulated game manually, batter by batter, but even then I was done with my simulated season long before the real one was over.

Then I would play all kinds of simulated seasons using players from every decade. Over many years I've accumulated the SOM team rosters from every year between 1890-2012. That's 122 years of baseball to draw on, plus another set of Negro League players that took SOM literally years to assemble enough data to put a realistic roster together.

I still don't have every set. I'm missing 1876-1889. I'm sure I'll get around to buying them eventually.

By the way, by the time you read this the first game of the season will already be history. In recognition of the Houston Astros move from the National to the American League, they will play their first game at home against the Texas Rangers on 31 March.

Opening Day: Houston 8, Texas 2.
Reality League: Texas 5, Houston 1
Promise League: Texas 3, Houston 1

See, my simulated leagues are better predictors than the real thing.