The Incomplete Replay
Was this 1905 replay really complete?
The Incomplete Replay
Most replayers use the as played schedule, not the as scheduled one.
To be frank, it doesn’t make any sense to me.
I mean, I understand that you want the season to be as realistic as possible. I know that you want to prevent yourself from overusing certain players, and that part of the appeal in the replay world comes from playing under the constraints that the team faced in real life.
But it can lead to some bizarre outcomes, as we’re about to see.
Ball Park Baseball
I won’t go into too much detail about Ball Park Baseball. Though the website advertising the game still exists, the company itself appears to have shuttered its doors several years ago.
The game itself is significant in terms of baseball sim history. It was created in 1957 by a Kansas University professor named Charles Sidman. Among other things, it apparently had a strong influence on Bill James.
However, despite being around for decades, Ball Park Baseball never really developed a following like APBA, Strat-O-Matic, and some of the other bigger games have developed. This might be due to the complexity of the game, though its fans assure me that a single game can be played in a half hour or so. It might be due to the simplistic nature of the individual player cards, though, honestly, they’re not that different from what most other games offer.
There is still a Delphi message board devoted to the game, though it has been mostly empty over the past few years. It’s also not easy to find full Ball Park seasons. The game only rarely shows up on eBay, and the secondary market on the forum is a bit less than robust.
However, there are some interesting replays on the forums. And that’s what we care the most about, after all.
The 1905 Replay
Here’s the problem:
Do the math.
The Chicago White Sox played 158 games in this replay, not 154. They finished 4 1/2 games behind the Philadelphia Athletics, who played only 152 games.
How did this happen? It happened because the replayer simply played every game as listed, without worrying about tie ballgames.
The White Sox did play 158 games in 1905, going 92-60-6 in the process. In fact, one of those tie games probably did have an impact on their fortunes. Chicago tied the second game of a doubleheader at St. Louis on October 7th — a game that, if they had won, would have kept them in contention.
In fact, when you look at the official 1905 American League standings, you’ll see that there was a similar problem in real life:
Chicago wound up with 152 games that counted in the standings. Philadelphia only had 148. In other words, the White Sox had played 4 games more than the Athletics, and yet somehow they lost the pennant despite being behind by only 2 games in the standings.
I’m not certain that I understand how this worked. The Chicago newspapers don’t seem to take much note of the discrepancy. The Chicago Tribune basically called the race when the Browns beat the White Sox on October 6:
I suppose this made sense in 1905, but it certainly doesn’t make much sense today. It seems that the Athletics won the pennant by the virtue of having played fewer games than the White Sox.
Now, that’s fine for the baseball historians, and for geeky people like me who want to point out obvious flaws. What baffles me, though, is how these kinds of mistakes can be made in full season replays. Wouldn’t you want to make sure that the teams play an even number of games before starting the project?
Stats
Anyway, here’s the story of the replay:
The New York Giants swept the World Series, winning 4 straight. Mathewson and McGinnity were overwhelming, just as they were in real life.
The team statistics are pretty interesting. Here’s what hitting was like in the American League, with real life statistics in bold:
The averages were just about perfect, though the American League saw 200 more runs than it saw in real life.
Here’s the National:
This is where the averages are a bit off. The composite batting average was about 10 points high. The National League as a whole also saw almost 400 extra runs, which is enough to be concerned, in my opinoin.
As a result, the pitching statistics were a bit off:
The American League’s 2.74 ERA was much higher than it should have been — and the National League was way off, with a 3.20 ERA compared to 2.99. In other words, there’s a problem here with runs.
It is interesting to note that the replayer got the complete games in both leagues almost exactly right.
Interestingly enough, the fielding percentages were actually a bit low:
That’s kind of surprising when you consider that ERAs were higher than in real life. You’d think that the slightly worse fielding would result in a higher percentage of runs that were unearned.
It’s an interesting replay to review. You can find the original replay in this thread. The World Series recaps are broken up into game 1, game 2, game 3, and game 4 threads.
Still — I can’t help but wonder if the White Sox would have won if they didn’t have all those extra games.