Excellent old-timey rotation on today's Birthday Team, and I think the closer can pitch a little. A bunch of really good bats, too. If you really wanted to, you could play HoJo at short, move Minoso to third, and replace Carter Elliott (28 career at-bats) with George Thomas.

I don't want to, though. I remember what HoJo looked like at shortstop.

C: Bill Freehan
1B: Otto Velez
2B: Dick McAuliffe
3B: Howard Johnson
SS: Carter Elliott
LF: Minnie Minoso
CF: Irv Noren
RF: Mike Easler

SP: Jake Weimer
SP: Carl Weilman
SP: Long Tom Hughes
SP: Joe Price
SP: Bill Sowders
RP: Mariano Rivera

Quarterback/Minor League Infielder: Russell Wilson

If you really wanted to, you could play HoJo at short

Or McAuliffe, which would be somewhat less appalling. Looks like Joe Orengo could play second in that case, or he could play short as well.

Someone has to figure out a way to condense career and peak values into a single strat card so we can run a 365 team tournament.

Or 366. The Leap Year team has Al Rosen, Pepper Martin and Terrence Long...though only 11 men on the roster. As long as a few pitchers don't mind playing the field they'll be ok.

Someone has to figure out a way to condense career and peak values into a single strat card so we can run a 365 team tournament.

Hell yes.

Someone has to figure out a way to condense career and peak values into a single strat card so we can run a 365 team tournament.

I've thought about that. How about taking each player's median season in terms of WAR?

Average of 3 yr peak and career, with some sort of regression to replacement level for those with really short careers + adjustment to a common era?

That sounds reasonably simple (for someone other than me to do obviously).

I volunteer to collect the teams from these posts into a database. Don't tell me if this has already been done, my last baseball related project is about done and there's several months before real baseball starts again.

Looked at the four most recent teams so far...the 26th looks like the beast of the November Division so far. Brian Schneider and the back end of the rotation are the only things that could even remotely considered a weakness.

Total WAR
26th - 417
29th - 298
28th - 210
27th - 194

AFAIK, it hasn't been done, Greg.

If I can do anything, please let me know, and if you need my help putting together 25/40 man rosters, you know where to find me. Strat-O-Matic does sell (and I own) a set of rosters that include every player in baseball history, normalized to an "average" era. Sometimes it's sort of wonky - Ken Griffey Junior is inexplicably only a borderline Top 20 CF in their set - but it exists. If someone puts together the rosters, I'd be willing to build them in SOM.

One problem we'd have is that it's just normalized career averages, so a guy like Dave Winfield, a legitimately excellent player, is fringy because he hung around so long. Meanwhile, guys like George Stone and Dave Orr, who had short but brilliant careers, are fantastic because they didn't have any "decline" years factored into their cards.

Also, there's the problem of the teams who have to play a bunch of historically insignificant guys who had, say, 150 career AB but hit .350. I don't think SOM has a mechanism built in to compensate for that...as far as the game's concerned, Kevin Rhomberg is a .383 hitter and that's that.

But if someone has ideas about how to compensate for that, Strat's done much of the legwork already.

I am organizing a "Winter Meetings Simulation" for SB Nation where 30 participants will stand in as GMs and work out trades and FA negotiations. I still need about 10 more GMs. It starts Monday and runs til Friday. The time commitment is as much or as little as you want to do. Everything is done via email or at an SB Nation site. If you are at all interested, email me at sbnationbaseballsim@gmail.com and I can give you all the details. I think it would be a lot of fun for any aspiring GM.

I have the following teams available:

Baltimore
Houston
Oakland
Seattle
Texas
Arizona
Pittsburgh
San Francisco
St. Louis
Washington

No need to put November 15 in the league. With John Stephens and Randy Niemann in the starting rotation, and infield of Ryan Jackson, Jay Partridge, Pete Childs and Will Foley I'm pretty sure we're getting relegated.

For the sake of simplicity (this is a lot of players, 365 teams of 15 man rosters at the moment)...

Median season in terms of WAR might be the best way to do it (or 3rd best season by WAR). Avoid any calculations or the "Winfield-effect". I guess it would have it's own problems, helping some guys, screwing others. I guess it might present problems of how to get a hold of Howard Johnson's 1988 card, Dick McAuliffe's 1967 etc? We could cheat and have a generic "didn't have a real career" card. Treat all the sub-500 PA players as the same.

Format is a thing to consider as well. Just a huge elimination tournament (single game? best of 3?) Some kind of bye for top seeded teams. Doing anything more than 3 games series would likely need more pitchers. The current number of 6 might do for 3 games (3 starters who can pitch once per series, 3 relievers who are automatically fully rested before each game).

If full 25 man rosters are feasible I guess there's no reason not to go seven games!

EDIT: Holy Moses! May 18th has Brooks Robinson, Reggie Jackson and Babe Adams as the ace. I think I can manage my fellows to the top of the spring bracket.

I think I'd just use the average of age 26 - 31 seasons (maybe 27 - 32 for pitchers). Guys like Moyer and Schilling might get screwed.

I don't really see the value of career in this type of exercise, other than to wash out one-hit wonders. You could also just pick their actual primes with a little more work, which would help with the fact that a lot of birthday guys are so fringe as to not have played in those ages. You're also going to have to come up with some sort of positional adjustment system given how many are playing out of position.

Using a standard replacement-level player for the barely-played guys is a very good idea.

I suppose it all comes down to balancing our ideal way of representing the player with the practicalities of actually playing the games.

-The "career average" cards Dan mentioned have the merit of requiring less work.
-Picking out some pre-determined representative season saves on work but still requires the tracking down of that data. I don't suppose anyone has a DMB disc of every player in every year so we can pick out individual player-seasons at will?
-Average of 26-31 years (or best 5 consecutive seasons, something like that) is probably closest to the ideal. How do we go about translating that information into something we can use for a sim?

I want to reiterate how good Monday's team was (the 26th - I see that it was just commented upon).

C: Brian Schneider ... weakest of the 9 position players listed here ... career OPS+ of 81, 3 year peak of 84, 3 yr WAR peak of 5.4, solid glove
1B: Fred Tenney ... 3 yr OPS peak of 131, but that doesn't including his batting titles, the year he led the league in runs, etc...; 3 yr WAR peak of 11.2, solid glove
2B: Harold Reynolds ... 2 time A-S, 3 time GG, 3 yr OPS+ peak of 98, also 3 yr WAR peak of 11.2, very good glove
3B: Richie Hebner ... 3 yr OPS+ peak of 136 (fueled by his one big season), also also a 3 yr WAR peak of 11.2, below average d
SS: Eddie Miller ... 7 time A-S! (I had no idea.) 3 yr OPS+ peak of 93, 3 yr peak WAR of 9.2 (both helped by the one year in his career he was a good hitter). Oddly, many of his worst seasons with the bat were during WWII. Low on-base, decent pop, great glove.
LF: Bob Johnson ... 7 time A-S, career 139 OPS+, 3 yr OPS+ peak of "only" 148, 3 yr peak WAR of 16.2. In a sort of parallel with Miller, his top finish in MVP voting (5th) was during one of his worst seasons - but during WWII. Extra credit for fame? Plus fielder, despite being error prone. Minimally, a HOVG type guy.
CF: Hugh Duffy ... HOF, helped in part by the big year you've heard about. Career 123 OPS+, 3 yr OPS+ peak of 144, 3 yr peak WAR of 13.8. Plus glove.
RF: Bob Elliott ... 6 time A-S, MVP in '47. Career 124 OPS+, 3 yr OPS+ peak of 142, 3 yr peak WAR of 17.6. [Was a 3B during peak.] Okay glove.
DH: Jorge Orta ... Career 108 OPS+, 3 yr OPS+ peak of 122, 3 yr peak WAR of 8.0. Played 2B, LF, and 3B during peak (mostly 2B ... poorly), but you could play him in an outfield corner, shift Elliott to third and Hebner to DH (if you believe in the DH, as I do) - or just let Orta be a super sub.

SP: Lefty Gomez ... HOF, 7 time A-S, twice top-5 in MVP voting, 2 ERA titles, 3 K titles, career ERA+ of 125, 3 yr ERA+ peak of 151, 3 yr WAR peak of 16.1.
SP: Chuck Finley ... 5 time A-S, career ERA+ of 118, 3 yr ERA+ peak of 134, 3 yr WAR peak of 16.0
SP: Larry Gura ... A-S, 3 time top-10 in CY voting, career ERA+ of 106, 3 yr ERA+ peak of 139 (big chunk of that was as a reliever), 3 yr WAR peak of 11.0.
SP: Matt Garza ... really consistent - ERA+ between 100 and 120 for 6 of his 7 seasons ... career ERA+ of 108, 3 yr ERA+ peak of 115, 3 yr WAR peak of 7.7.
SP: Mike Moore ... A-S, twice top-10 in CY voting, career ERA+ of 95, 3 yr ERA+ peak of 114 (one good year: 142 ERA+), 3 yr WAR peak of 11.8.
RP: Jay Howell ... 3 A-S, career ERA+ of 114, 3 yr ERA+ peak of 182 (and a 6 year peak of 171). 3 yr WAR peak of 7.3.

Good fielding team, apart from the pitchers and a position player or two. Solid to good bats throughout the lineup. A little bit of speed. Good rotation and a strong closer.

The "career average" cards Dan mentioned have the merit of requiring less work.

That's a huuuuuuge merit.
Do they era adjust - or would a team with deadball pitchers and bats from the 1890s/1930s necessarily kill? Do others agree that this is something we should deal with?

The depth on that team is remarkable.

The May 18th team that has Brooks Robinson, Reggie Jackson (both better than any one player on the 26th team), and Babe Adams also has Jim Sundberg catching, Joakim Soria closing, Marcus Giles at 2B...and is still 80+ WAR behind the November 26th squad.

Important omission from the birthday team: Vincent Edward Scully

Do they era adjust - or would a team with deadball pitchers and bats from the 1890s/1930s necessarily kill? Do others agree that this is something we should deal with?

I think he said it is era normalized. Not sure if this includes accounting for dead-ball pitcher usage. I'd be happy to go with that method. It's all for fun anyway. I'd rather spend days and months pouring over a simulation that may not 100% reflect what we want, than spend hours fine-tuning a 1500 PA SS who is going to be eliminated in the first round anyway.

as far as the game's concerned, Kevin Rhomberg is a .383 hitter and that's that.

As he forever should be, that crazy bastard.

Oh, Dan did say that - oops. Yeah, I agree with you Greg.

My birthday team has two Hall of Famers and Albert Pujols, and is 176 WAR behind that November 26th team.

Blue Jays prospect/Southern Miss QB Anthony Alford was arrested for assault this morning.

I don't recall it ever being noted at the time that Freehan and McAuliffe shared a birthday. It's the sort of trivia that would certainly be noted today. I would bet that they are the best teammates to share a birthday.

Not sure if this includes accounting for dead-ball pitcher usage.

It does, sort of. Batters are credited with 32 AB per season played (whether it's an Adam Greenberg season or a Cal Ripken season), and live-ball era pitchers are generally credited with 14 IP per season as a starter and 6 IP per season as a reliever. Their method is a bit sketchier and less obvious for dead-ball era pitchers, but the end result is that the IP numbers for 19th century guys do pass the comparison smell test.

As I've envisioned the Birthday League in the past, there would be 12 "leagues" of ~30 teams each that all play a full season, then there would be some kind of playoff system.

My vague, not well thought out playoff plan would have the top 2-3 teams in each league move into a single-elimination tournament of best-of-seven series to determine a champion.

Playing entire seasons wouldn't take dramatically more time than shorter series. Strat's Quickplay feature is pretty quick. Really, the most time-consuming part would be putting together the rosters and lineups.

edit to add: The other way you could do the postseason is just to take the top two or three teams in each league and build a 24 or 36-team "Champions League", which plays a full 154-game season. I'm agnostic as to which I prefer.

Seems to me the easiest way to build the 25 man rosters would be via Google Docs. I've started such a spreadsheet, though I've only done January 1 so far. Greg (or anybody else who wants to be involved), shoot me an email via my BBTF profile page and I'll add you as collaborators.

Linky

If you really wanted to, you could play HoJo at short

Or McAuliffe, which would be somewhat less appalling. Looks like Joe Orengo could play second in that case, or he could play short as well.

There is another option, if you want to use NPB players. Use McAuliffe at short, and play Tsuyoshi Oshita at second. Oshita won Gold Gloves at second base in both Japanese leagues, and was a five-time All-Star. Not much of a hitter (.260/.310/.334), but a great fielder with excellent speed (he topped 20 SB seven times, with a high of 44) who was known as a firebrand. You could even use him at shortstop, if you wanted - he played there early in his career, and was picked to the Best Nine squad as short as a rookie; he was picked to the Best Nine at second base in 1975.

Dan I can help with the January teams, Though I think we should have each month play out a season and its champ goes to a 12 team play off. could even select all stars by the season they were born, all sorts of ways to do this, but it seems really fun.

Dan I can help with the January teams, Though I think we should have each month play out a season and its champ goes to a 12 team play off.

I like this idea as well.

I'll send you an e-mail Dan. Would it be best to jump on months for now? I can grab February. That should keep me going for a while.

Dan I can help with the January teams, Though I think we should have each month play out a season and its champ goes to a 12 team play off.

It would be fun to make this a project for all of 2013. Spend December getting the 2013 teams ready, then sim the games throughout January, while meanwhile getting February's teams together.

The one caveat is that I'd think the playoff should be a league of some sort, because with a 12-team single-elimination tournament you're giving some first round buys that would greatly affect the potential outcomes in a crapshoot like a short series.

That's what I was thinking, Fernigal. Agree with everything you said.

Send me an email via my profile page and I'll add you to the spreadsheet.

This is rounding out to be some good fun!

I'm up to February 4th.

A question about roster construction - how important is it to have legitimate backups at every position? I'm making it a priority for every team to have two catchers, but are we ok with having 2B/3B type guys being the backup SS in a pinch? I guess for some days that's all you've got. (February is looking like a pretty dud month so far).

Gotta do the best you can with what you've got, Greg. If there aren't any legit/non-horrible backups at a position, I have no problem with a 2B/3B guy like, hypothetically, Bill Madlock serving as a backup SS.

Madlock will probably be a starter, but you know what I mean.

Since two of the four non-horrible hitters on November 15th are catchers I would be fully willing to invest in Mickey Livingston taking a comprehensive full-time course of shortstop lessons.

I'm doing March!

We should all agree to check in the dugout every day for questions and comments about the project, as it probably doesn't need a regular thread just yet and there's no need to keep the November 29th dugout on hot topics for the rest of eternity.

#1 in hits for March 1 (Paul Hines) played 3 games at catcher and at least 16 everywhere else, and #3 in hits (Farmer Vaughan) was a catcher with 250 games at first, 110 in the OF, and 13 at 3B. That would be a fun team to manage.

Mickey Livingston taking a comprehensive full-time course of shortstop lessons.

He's down with that if he can wear his shin guards in the field.

Madlock will probably be a starter, but you know what I mean.

Madlock is the second best hitter on his birthday. The best- you guessed it- another third baseman.

Well, depending on how you feel about DH's and Edgar Martinez's fielding.

Nationals trade for Denard Span.

For p Alex Meyer. High risk / reward prospect

Boy, I was expecting a much better return for Span.

Good trade for Washington, then.

My team's big power threat is John Vander Wal, and the "ace" is Noodles Hahn.
Good coaching staff, though, in Tom House & Ron Washington. That's gotta be worth something, right?

“So when I was 7 years old, I was taken to my first Cubs games, and my brother Brian said, “Wait, Billy,” and he put his hands over my eyes, and he walked me up the stairs. And then he took his hands away. [He begins to get choked up.] And there was Wrigley Field, in green. There was this beautiful grass and this beautiful ivy. I’d only seen it in black and white. It was like I was a blind man made to see. It was something.”

- Bill Murray

That whole Bill Murray speech is great.
You're young, you're an all-star athlete, now go lie down in the outfield grass and watch some fireworks. You'll be glad you did.

My team's big power threat is John Vander Wal, and the "ace" is Noodles Hahn.
Good coaching staff, though, in Tom House & Ron Washington. That's gotta be worth something, right?

Your best position player is Luis Aparicio and your second best is Rick Burleson, which sets some sort of record for redundancy. By WAR, your 8th best position player is Mickey McDermott, who spent all of two games at a position other than pitcher.

A funny Bill Murray story came up in an AV Club interview with Kelly Lynch recently:

KL: By the way, speaking of Bill Murray, every time Road House is on and he or one of his idiot brothers are watching TV—and they’re always watching TV—one of them calls my husband and says [In a reasonable approximation of Carl Spackler], “Kelly’s having sex with Patrick Swayze right now. They’re doing it. He’s throwing her against the rocks.” [Away from the receiver.] What? Oh, my God. Mitch was just walking out the door to the set, and he said that Bill once called him from Russia.

AVC: Sorry, not to dwell on this, but you said that Bill Murray “or one of his idiot brothers” will call. Which brothers are we talking about?

KL: All of them! Joel has called; Brian Doyle has called. They will all call! Any and all of them!

AVC: This was already an awesome story, but now it’s even better.

KL: I know, right? I dread it. If I know it’s coming on—and I can tell when it’s coming on, because it blows up on Twitter when it is—I’m just like, “Oh, my God…” And God help me when AMC’s doing their Road House marathon, because I know the phone is just going to keep ringing. It doesn’t matter if it’s 2 or 3 in morning. “Hi, Kelly’s having sex with Patrick Swayze right now…”

Your best position player is Luis Aparicio and your second best is Rick Burleson, which sets some sort of record for redundancy.

The May 27 birthday team would like a word with you.

I think we should have each month play out a season and its champ goes to a 12 team play off.

Then have each team play the other 11 teams 14 times for a traditional 154-game setup...