League Overview - Classic Franchise League Extended

So, here's a little background on one of my many Strat-o-matic leagues: The Classic Franchise League - Extended.

It's a funky league - a weird amalgam of two previous leagues along with an 'expansion' team. From March of 2009 to May of 2011, I had played a 59-game season, with these teams:

Even THAT league was funky as I started with several others and allowed some to drop out as I lost interest and changed focus. I also had a "60s League" that ran for some time. I folded that league as my desire to add in advanced features made this basic-only set of cards less and less attractive. Still there were some great teams and interesting players:

I grabbed 4 of the top 5 in the Classic Franchise League (not the 1962 Giants for reasons i can't recall!), added in the 1962 Mets from the 60s league, and created a Hall-of-Fame team (the aforementioned expansion team) with players from the 19th-century. I modified the basic cards to include error ratings and throwing arms. I allowed all of the previous stats to roll over, including wins and losses, and figured out a way to get all 6 teams to about 150 games each. In September of 2011, I began playing and, as of June, 2015, the standings look like this:

Each team gets walloped by the HOF team but gets healthier beating up on the Mets. I don't expect any team to outpace the HOF team but I am extremely interested in the 150-game stats that will, eventually, be generated.

Some highlights:

- Frank Howard (.336), Red Schoendienst (.333), and Tommy Davis (.333) are battling for the batting title.

- Hank Aaron leads the league with 34 homers with Howard a distant second at 24.

- Maury Wills has 61 stolen bases; about 1 every 6 at bats which puts him on pace for 100 in his 150 game schedule.

- Warren Spahn is 14-7, well on his way to a 20-win season. Which, if you're familiar with Warren Spahn, should come as no surprise.

- Tim Keefe, of the 19th-century HOFers, is now 11-0.

- Ed Delahanty, also of the 19th-century team, leads the squad with 37 RBIs, 15 doubles, 5 homers, and a .346 batting average. He has yet to meet the minimum number of at bats to qualify for the batting title.

- Bob Miller (6-6) and Al Jackson (5-9) have accounted for 11 of the 1962 Mets' 14 victories. That makes the rest of the staff 3-53 . . .  gulp. 

It's been great fun: my emerging familiarity of the stars of the 1800s, witnessing, first-hand, the trials and tribulations of the 1962 Mets, being caught up in the excitement of scrubs becoming white-hot for short, exhilarating spells, and so much more. Playing a long-term project like this can feel a bit daunting but, as the season slowly builds, there's a great sense of joy and fascination. 

Musings on Mets Mismatches - 1962 Strat Style

As most of you know the 1962 New York  Mets were a bad baseball team. Very bad. They lost 120 games and lost them in spectacular fashion.

(courtesy http://2guystalkingmetsbaseball.com/)

They were the by-product of a miserly National League draft system, allowing the existing NL teams to protect virtually any player of value and guaranteeing that the expansion Mets (and their brethren the Houston Astros, then called the Colt-.45s) would be bad.

Here's Casey Stengel, Mets manager and media distraction, showing the Mets infielders (Don Zimmer, Elio Chacon, Charlie Neal, and Gil Hodges) the way to the stadium. Photo courtesy of NY Times.

These Mets are an entertaining team to play in a Strat-o-matic league. Some players have some skills but, as a rule, they are a deeply flawed group of players. Elio Chacon can draw a walk but can't actually hit and plays a miserable shortstop. Richie Ashburn is a fine outfielder and can hit .300 but is at the end of his career, needs frequent rest, and can't cover ground in the outfield like he did in his heyday. They do not have a catcher who can hit or throw. Pitchers Al Jackson and Roger Craig were serviceable starters who had worthy careers but each needs a good defense behind him to win . . .they were backed by a terrible D and lost. A lot. It's not uncommon for a pitcher to need to get 4 outs in an inning with the 1962 Mets.

They are one of six teams in a long-running league that has morphed over the years to include the 1957 Braves (Aaron, Mathews, Spahn, etc.), the 1954 Indians (Lemon, Garcia, Wynn, Doby, Rosen, etc.), the 1950 New York Yankees (Dimag, Berra, Raschi, Lopat, Reynolds, etc.), a Hall-of-Fame team featuring players of the late 19th century (Ed Delahanty, Sam Thompson, Hugh Duffy, et al) and the 1962 LA Dodgers (Koufax, Drysdale, Wills, Davis, etc.).

Against this assemblage of talented teams, it's not surprising that the Mets are currently 14-68 for a .171 winning percentage. They are routinely mismatched but recently they faced perhaps the most lopsided pitching match-up I've ever seen:

Sandy Koufax vs. Jay Hook.
(11-6)                    (0-12)

That's Jay on the right. Koufax, of course, needs no introduction though one should know that his relatively modest W-L record is the result of the Dodgers having recently played 15 games against the HOF team - his record against the other teams in this league is something like 10-3.

It didn't go well.  The Dodgers jumped on Jay for 6 runs in 2+ innings, then mauled Mets relievers for 10 more runs as Koufax tossed a 3-hitter.  The final score was 16-2. The Dodgers slammed EIGHT homeruns and walked 10 times.

The next day it didn't get any better:






Don Drysdale (10-9)




vs.

Bob Moorhead (1-5)


Drysdale tossed a 5-hit shutout while the LA offense settled for single touchdown in a 7-0 win.

Up next for the Mets? Their 15-game set against the 19th-century Hall-of-Famers who currently sport a 45-15 record!  This could get ugly! Or, uglier . . .

Andy Carey's Best Week Ever!

One of the joys of Strat-o-matic baseball is that all kinds of fantastic things will happen; even to the most ordinary players. Like Andy Carey . . .

Andy Carey was a fine player - heck, he was a major leaguer which is more than 99% of us can say - but never an all-star, never a feared player. He had the good fortune of being drafted by the Yankees and playing for them in the 50s. Which meant, of course, that he was blessed - the Yankees routinely went to, and won, the World Series in the 1950s. Andy played third base on the days that Casey Stengel could remember his name. Strangely, he only played third base for Casey. I say strangely because Casey would take guys like Bobby Brown, Billy Johnson, and especially Gil McDougald and sprinkle them around the infield willy-nilly and expect them all to turn the DP. Which they did for reasons no one really knows . . .  some form of Casey magic, I suppose. Anyway, Andy played third, hit .302 one year, hit 11 triples to lead the league another, and only once compiled as many as 500 at bats. To summarize his career, I'll indulge in one advanced metric: his career OPS+, a relative measure of a player's value, was 97. An OPS+ of 100 is the average value. . .  Andy Carey was a perfectly ordinary major league baseball player.

Which is my point.


By 1962, Andy was finishing his career in LA with the Dodgers. He was 30 and hit .234 in 111 at bats. Ordinary. Those Dodgers are part of a long-running Strat league of mine and Andy has a card only because I made one for him. I wanted a larger roster than the 20 cards provided by Strat and Andy came to life along with Lee Walls, Tim Harkness, and Phil Ortega. In this league, there are daily and long-term injuries. The Dodgers were sent reeling with long-term injuries to Willie Davis and Ron Fairly and suffered several daily injuries in a 9-game set with the infamously bad 1962 Mets. Every day there were at least three regulars unavailable, forcing me to reach deep into the pile to find Andy Carey.

Andy made cameos in the first two games, pinch-hitting and making out in each game. He started the third game, went 2-3 with a homer, a walk, two runs scored, and three RBIs. Pretty good day for ol' Andy. But he was just getting started . . .

Over the course of the next six games, Andy had a career! He had the mojo workin' . . . Thirteen more hits! Seven more runs scored! Nine more RBIs! And, get this, four more homeruns, one each in the last four games of the series! (Please don't spoil it for him - or me - by pointing out that this was all accomplished while batting against one of the worst teams of all time . . .) Here's his complete line for the nine games:

15 hits in 32 at bats
9 runs scored
12 RBIs
1 double
5 HRs
3 walks

The impact of this week on his seasonal stats (the Dodgers are now 53-44) was to change his slash stats (average/on-base percentage/slugging percentage) from .188/.291/.292 to .308/.380/.577 which means, basically, that Ordinary Andy Carey became Willie Frackin' Mays for one glorious week, 53 years after he retired.

On a team with Maury Wills, Sandy Koufax, Don Drysdale, Tommy Davis, and Frank Howard, Andy Carey was THE story for a remarkable seven-game run. I like to think that Andy was paying back Casey, sitting in the 1962 Mets' dugout, for not remembering his name more frequently!