Replay To-Do List

I recently started my prep work for my upcoming 1911 BBW replay, so let me see where I am at and what is left to be completed:

• Buy the 1911 disk and card set.
• Load the season disk into BBW, create my AL and NL organizations, and name the teams appropriately.
• Move all the players up from the farm team to the parent, just so I can see them all in one place.
• Scour the internet to see if I can find (free) PDF copies of the Spalding and/or Reach Baseball Guides for the season in question. Baseball-Reference.com (BBR) is my primary resource for data from any season, but it is always nice to be able to read the old Guides and catch a bit of the flavor of the times.
• Download the ATMgr lineup and transaction files from the ATMgr site.
• Download the 1911 batting, pitching, and fielding numbers from BBR and start my 1911 spreadsheet.
• Download the 1911 transaction, debuts, and retirements from BBR and add them to the 1911 spreadsheet.
• Add the ATMgr 1911 transactions and lineups to the 1911 spreadsheet.
• Massage the batting, pitching, and fielding numbers. Ensure the names are in the format I prefer, plus replace some raw numbers with their calculation (i.e., hits / at-bats to determine batting average).
• Massage the transaction, debut, and retirement numbers into a single tab in the spreadsheet. This means reducing each into a single common format. This format is the same as what the ATMgr transaction list uses, so then the ATMgr transaction list can then be merged into the larger transaction list as well.
• Now that all of the transaction data is in one place, go through every player and review their batting transaction log in BBR for that season. This is useful for identifying when exactly some players who, for instance, are sent down in May versus those that don’t make their season debut until September. The transaction list is updated to accurately account for the comings and goings of all these players.
• This will also point out when an otherwise full-time player suddenly misses a couple weeks of games, or, for instance, document exactly when a player who only misses twelve games all season has ten of those games appear all in one fell swoop.
• If there are large periods of time where a player doesn’t appear in a game that is not otherwise already accounted for, this absence (and return) is added to the transaction list. I try and do some research as to why a player might have unexplainably disappeared for, say, 40 games, but that information is not always available.
• This is also my first chance to see if the player names from BBW, BBR, and ATMgr all sync. For example, is the correct name to use "Joe Jackson" or "Shoeless Joe Jackson?" When in doubt, BBR is the tiebreaker.
• All of this transaction data coming in from multiple sources always results in duplicate data, but in the end, the data is culled and cleaned into my final version of the transaction list.
• Create and populate a tab in the spreadsheet that includes all of the Master Game symbols. This on ode to the old cardboard Master Game symbols list that the Game Company used to provide.
• Go through each player on the disk and massage identified data:
• Player last names were un-capitalized (except for Hall-of-Famers), and first names were changed to sync with BBR as needed
• J4/J3/J2's were all set to J1's, Q4/Q3/Q2's were all set to Q1's.
• Steal letters R/G/F/E were all changed to B, and D/C/B were all changed to A
• Stolen bases allowed and caught stealing's were added for all the catchers
• Create a Weighted Average pitching grade tab for both leagues. I don’t regrade my pitchers for revised sets (such as 1911), but it is nice to be able to compare the Weighted Average grades to the revised set grades.
• Create a week-per-season tab for every week and prepare a season snapshot table. BBR has the standings for each day of the season, so for every Sunday (my end of the week) I add the standings (wins and Losses) as well as the runs scored/runs allowed numbers so that when I am doing the replay I only have to add the replay half of the numbers. This allows me to contrast and compare where each team is performing relative to what they actually stood at the end of the same week.
• Set up the new blog for the 1911 replay.

 

That is what has been done already. What is left to do?

 

• Now that the player name's that are in sync between BBW and BBR, the ATMgr files still need to be brought in sync.
• Install the ATMgr files and finalize the season for gameplay.
• New stadium backdrops have been created, but they haven’t been tested to ensure they are ready for opening day.

There is one more step I am considering. There was a total of 4542 errors committed across both leagues (3.7 per game). In my previous replays, the same number of games, same general error number distribution, and same general fielding rating distribution, I have never gotten to 2000 total errors. For my 1901 replay all players had two error numbers and I gave a third error number to about half of the players, but even that only got me up to 2840 errors (2.6 per game), about half of the actual number of 5347 (4.8 per game).

 

It is my observation that the defensive ratings have been tamped down slightly in the 1911 set and that by itself might get me over the 2000 errors mark, but that is still way behind the actual number. On the other hand, it may be worth it just to play it as is so I can see where the number ends up when using the updated set. Regardless, I am still thinking about it. More to come.

 

In conclusion, the secret is to not try and do all of these steps in one night. Pick a task, start on it, and finish it. Some of these took two+ weeks to complete, which is fine - I am not in a race - I am just working my way through my to-do-list. I do take a night or two off occasionally, enjoy it, and don’t let myself get burned out on it.

 

I consider all of this a normal level of obsessiveness. The nut of this is that once I get all of this work done upfront when it is time to play, I can just play. BBW does all of the stat work, ATMgr loads all of my as-played lineups for each game, and I can focus on the game at hand. And when that game is over, the next one loads up automatically and I am ready to go again.

 

Actually, there is one more non-baseball task yet to complete before I start playing games - the wife and I are taking a trip in mid-March to go see the grandkids for a week. The plan is to finish up all of the prep work before leaving, read through the aforementioned Guides while I am on vacation, and then kick off the 1911 replay upon my return in late March.