All-Time teams

[Padres67]

Is anyone working on a all time team for each franchise?

[Homer]

yes. kinda.

[Padres67]

Can you elaborate?

[Homer]

link is in my sig. more a conglomerate of all the legends with current players, since some organizations won't have enough players to fill all the rosters. no repeated players, and guys are for the most part on the team they played most with. my main concern is getting as many legends in as possible. not so concerned with splitting hairs with little things like whether dimaggio or mantle should be the starting CF and the other in LF. the mod is still in early stages, and activity there has slowed down only because i'm in the roster making stage of it, which is slow and tedious work. feel free to poke around there and contribute if you want.

[wcrickards]

Check out a Rob Neyer book called "The Big Book of Baseball Lineups". He lists what every team's all-time lineup would be. That might help you out.

[Homer]

already done. he only lists the all time, not all time four teams.

[BigPaPa]

The rosters in theory are nearly complete, in game they are not close by any stretch. If youd like to check out the rosters in Spreadsheet form that available on the Page Homers Sig goes to just click the "Roster XLS" button.

[OTBjoel]

Hey Homer,

Do you want to work on this together? I have a concept that is basically the same thing but I went three levels deep rather than four. That fourth level is tough to find players for. If you go to my website:

http://members.aol.com/joeldeleon/otbb.html

You can read my thoughts on the idea. It's something I've been working on for twenty years and I normally update and bring it over to whatever new game it is I'm working on. The last progression was Computer Baseball -> Micro League -> Oldtime Baseball -> High Heat -> and now MVP. I've got my rosters in text format which I can zip up and send to you. There are obvious differences and many of them are just my idiosyncratic choices to balance out the league a little. Besides that, if I stick Barry Bonds on the Giants, my Dodgers have no chance in hell of beating them if they've also got Mays :-)

I'm knee deep in my sound project but I definitely want to do this as well.

[Homer]

hell yeah! i could always use more help. go register at that site and look around. you can see what we've been doing. like i said earlier, things slowed a bit there due to the 08 mod, and that we just gotta make the rosters. if you know how to make rosters in mvpedit, that's where i need help the most right now. it's a painfully slow process.

otherwise, read up on it so you can at least see the criteria we used. then download the spreadsheet to see how we've set up the rosters. the rosters are pretty much set, but they can still be tweaked. there are little things here and there that need tweaking that i'm doing as i go along. but i'll still take recommendations. the only team i'm not touching right now are the giants since i have someone working on that one.

now we battled with the whole balance issue thing for awhile too, but we decided to hell with it. basically, the guys are with the team they played most with. some are pretty stacked compared to others. but my sentiment is it's just like real life, in that you still gotta play the game. the yankees have had the best roster and highest payroll but they don't win every year. now, bonds and mays in the same lineup is scary, but believe me when i tell you the dodgers lineup isn't exactly a pushover either.

[OTBjoel]

Here is a link to an archive of my rosters:

http://www.onlinefilefolder.com/index.php?...c2532a54a85fb3d

This file is now an Excel file in the same format as your roster spreadsheet.

I have merged some of your choices with mine.

I'm really biased towards my choices so our projects may have to diverge at a certain point but we can work together until they diverge. I've looked your rosters over and they are pretty close to mine although I think I have more oldtimers. I've tried really hard to be era-balanced and have researched every book on this topic I could get my hands on. Nobody ever agrees 100% on this stuff so that's all it is. Look over my rosters and see where you think you might make adjustments and I'll do the same. By working together, maybe we can get back to the same spot and just have one project in the end. <Scratching my head> I know this will be tough for me.

[Homer]

hit the forums button and then you can register. well if you got more old timers, i'd definitely use some input. i know i have a lot of fillers. some of the guys are more favorites than legends obviously. i'm okay with it, but if there are some old timers that deserve a spot over some of my fillers, i'm all for it. just let me know. i'd suggest start one team at a time.

[BigPaPa]

For the lower level rosters alot of times we just ran out of players worth a spot and we had to make stretches by adding people who are not by any stretch "All Time Greats" but had achieved some sort of note with the team or would be remembered by fans for one thing or another. It really is tough. We have thread arguing a lot of the tough calls so if you spend some time and read through ull generally find an explanation for most of the debated decisions.

[OTBjoel]

I changed my criteria over the years. I started off at first just with Hall-of-Famers, then added all the MVP's, Cy Young award winners and then every single person who got voted to or played in the all-star game. Then I started going through award winners, Gold glove, ROY, etc. Over the years, I improved my methods to rank players by Total Player Rating (Total Baseball), Runs Created (Bill James), and then Win Shares (also Bill James). I've read all the books and over the years I had just about every teamset that tried the same thing, especially APBA's excellent OFAS (Original Franchise All-Stars set). Micro League had a similar set in the late 80's and Tony LaRussa 2 had an all-time team universe (although it wasn't that well done). I always look at other peoples work so my rosters are a mix of all of the above. The debates are pretty much endless. Right now, I am using Win Shares as my deciding factor until a better statistical measure comes out, but Win Shares is pretty good. I started doing this measuring peak value back in the day but over the years, I've started to consider career value more and a sustained period of excellence with one team. I diverged at certain times from "the rules". Good example is Mike Piazza. Would you rather have him be Roy Campanella's backup or starting on the Mets? I'd rather have him start. If the Dodgers were in the American League, Piazza would be a perfect DH, but they are not. Offensively he would be a more productive hitter at first base than Hodges/Garvey but you lose a lot in defense. Also, if you take a close look at my rosters, you'll notice that I tried to have a lefty/righty batter for each position to give us platoon flexibility. So... instead of having both Gil Hodges and Steve Garvey in the majors, one of them goes to the minors and you bring up either Dolph Camilli or Jake Daubert. An argument could be made for any of those guys but point being, it's better to have one left-handed hitter and one right handed hitter than two who hit from the same side, unless there is a huge value/talent difference which there is not in the same example. Hodges or Garvey? Flip a coin. I chose Garvey because he was generally considered to be a bigger star in his era than Hodges in his. Hodges is a lot like Tony Perez and if I compare Perez to Garvey, I pick Garvey since he won an MVP, was a more regular all-star and just more highly thought of. SABRmetrics turns around and says Garvey was overrated which he might have been but that doesn't change the fact that he was generally considered one of the 2-3 best players on his team whereas Perez was more just one of the guys although a great clutch performer. I might go on with this post on the other site but I could go forever so I'll stop for now.

[Homer]

I changed my criteria over the years. I started off at first just with Hall-of-Famers, then added all the MVP's, Cy Young award winners and then every single person who got voted to or played in the all-star game. Then I started going through award winners, Gold glove, ROY, etc. Over the years, I improved my methods to rank players by Total Player Rating (Total Baseball), Runs Created (Bill James), and then Win Shares (also Bill James). I've read all the books and over the years I had just about every teamset that tried the same thing, especially APBA's excellent OFAS (Original Franchise All-Stars set). Micro League had a similar set in the late 80's and Tony LaRussa 2 had an all-time team universe (although it wasn't that well done). I always look at other peoples work so my rosters are a mix of all of the above. The debates are pretty much endless. Right now, I am using Win Shares as my deciding factor until a better statistical measure comes out, but Win Shares is pretty good. I started doing this measuring peak value back in the day but over the years, I've started to consider career value more and a sustained period of excellence with one team. I diverged at certain times from "the rules". Good example is Mike Piazza. Would you rather have him be Roy Campanella's backup or starting on the Mets? I'd rather have him start. If the Dodgers were in the American League, Piazza would be a perfect DH, but they are not. Offensively he would be a more productive hitter at first base than Hodges/Garvey but you lose a lot in defense. Also, if you take a close look at my rosters, you'll notice that I tried to have a lefty/righty batter for each position to give us platoon flexibility. So... instead of having both Gil Hodges and Steve Garvey in the majors, one of them goes to the minors and you bring up either Dolph Camilli or Jake Daubert. An argument could be made for any of those guys but point being, it's better to have one left-handed hitter and one right handed hitter than two who hit from the same side, unless there is a huge value/talent difference which there is not in the same example. Hodges or Garvey? Flip a coin. I chose Garvey because he was generally considered to be a bigger star in his era than Hodges in his. Hodges is a lot like Tony Perez and if I compare Perez to Garvey, I pick Garvey since he won an MVP, was a more regular all-star and just more highly thought of. SABRmetrics turns around and says Garvey was overrated which he might have been but that doesn't change the fact that he was generally considered one of the 2-3 best players on his team whereas Perez was more just one of the guys although a great clutch performer. I might go on with this post on the other site but I could go forever so I'll stop for now.

exactly. this is some of the more subjective reasoning we made from time to time. but for the most part, we still stuck with whoever they played most for, then went from there.

i completely agree with everything you said. star power was another subjective reasoning we used from time to time to place some guys. for instance, look at my mariners roster...there just aren't enough guys i could think of that would be mariners that i could add in to fill the entire rosters. so some were more fan favorites of mine personally than anything. like craig griffey. there's no other reason he's on there except that i wanted him to be. and then you'll see for some teams, not all the minor league teams have all 25 roster spots filled. this is because i'm limited to adding in 3250 players. and since i have such a large free agent pool, that's just how it's gotta be. i'm getting to the point now where i'm gonna have to start deleting players.

but like bigpapa said, we had tough decisions at times. some teams just flat out didn't have enough players, while some were overstocked. a lot of the overstocked teams either had guys moved to other teams that needed them more, or are just in my free agent pool. like in san diego, i needed another second baseman at the A level. i had absolutely nobody left to throw in. so i added in mark bellhorn, who only played one measely poor season with them. but i liked him personally and wanted him somewhere in the game, and it was the only place he was needed. we also filled two rosters for each expansion team with negro league players. now once this season progresses, i'm sure i'll be able to add a few players here and there, so that may change them a bit, but for the most part, we can still improve.

if you got suggestions, just let me know. but start with one team at a time so i don't get confused. i know for a fact that we could use more feedback as far as alignment of guys at the very least. let alone if we just missed any. to find the players i chose, i read through those books too. picked all the HOF'ers first. then added in my favorite players, the stars of today, and then i went through each team's history and found their franchise leaders statistically. so meaning, i probably missed a bunch of guys you have.

[pgd44]

I have a file that I have been working on. I have all levels full but the roster is far from perfect. I started working off of this roster by jp_hidalgo. He made a great roster, I just have been adding to it when I have had some spare time.

http://www.mvpmods.com/Downloads/details/id=2349.html

and created this for my own personal use. I will share it with you if you guys are interested.

Please remember, It is far from perfect, and I created it for myself, not for the public, so I am sure many errors will be discovered.

Let me know if I can help you guys at all. I am not sure if you need jp_hidalgo's permission or not, and I am not going to get into any arguments over who gets credit for what.

PGD44

[pgd44]

I just wanted to add. My roster has lots of errors in the cyber faces. I imported players from MVP edit using the Lahman's database, so the vast majority of the faces are not correct. My file is probably useless to you guys who create such a great legendary experience. Just wanted to offer.

PGD44

[OTBjoel]

Well,

I can't speak for Homer but I think he would agree that any help and input on a project like this is greatly appreciated. Never put down your own work. It's probably better than you think. Although we all have differing opinions sometimes, it's all for the good of the project. Feel free to share your work and of course we will do the same. Although, we have differences of opinion on the final outcome of our projects, I will work with Homer on the stuff we agree upon until our projects ultimately have to diverge.

[jp_hidalgo]

hi, I am adding some players in AAA, add me to msn jp_hidalgo(at) hotmai... and I will send you the file with additions!

[jp_hidalgo]

and by the way... we are sharing everything, everybody has my permission :)

[CircleChange11]

I have a question for you guys.

I am contemplating making an All-Time roster for MLB 2k8 (360). Do any of you have a ratings spreadsheet or a description of your process for calculating/figuring the ratings.

I am using the "162g career average season" at baseball-reference.com as a basis for the ratings (as oppossed to giving Maris -for example- a very high power rating based on one monster season).

I can access each players ratings using MVPEdit and the rosters for the all-time teams (from different sources) are often similar (although I see Reggie Sanders in place of Eric Davis as the Reds CF in the MVP AT rosters), so we'll likely be using many of the same players on the same teams.

I have also found that the pow/con rating calculator is accurate for 2k8 as it is MVP.

So, my question is if any of you have a ratings spreadsheet that you would be willing to share (given full credit of course, if I ever share the roster with others) for a guy looking to make a similar roster for a different title/game?

I purchased MVP05 (PC) recently (but it has yet to arrive, and I'm waiting for a video card to arrive as well), but I really enjoy 2k8 total contr0l pitching and swing stick, and have sliders that produce very accurate gameplay/stats, and am trying to discover the least painful method of making such a roster.

Any help is appreciated. Thanks in advance. Also thanks for all your work that you've done, and for those wonderful folks that did similar things for BBPro, Tony2, HHeat, and of course MVP.

I would also be willing to contribute time/effort to the MVP05 AT project if needed.

[kjuggs]

Can I just provide input on the Phillies All-Time Team? They're the only team in Baseball I know inside and out- been a fan for 30 years almost... I think I could provide some insight on an all-time team, as well as provide pics/stats/uni numbers/uniforms and whatever else is asked of me- I made 4 Phils-exclusive downloads for this site last week; let me know! I'm game for this project, and I could go 4 levels deep.

[kjuggs]

I went to the site- there's no Curt Schilling, who spent 9 years almost with the team and had one of the team's greatest postseasons in '93, and Chuck Klein is by far the greatest Phillies outfielder on the second team... We need a Phillies fan to do this team for it to be legit...

[OTBjoel]

Kjuggs,

Download my spreadsheet that is accessible through a link in one of my posts. My rosters have Schilling and Chuck Klein. All I can say about Homer's choices is he has more modern players whereas I think mine has more perspective to the Oldtimers. I've also been doing mine for 20 years as my rosters have evolved from Computer Baseball-Micro Leage-Earl Weaver-Tony BB-Hheat-MVP. Now we can't really say one is right and one is not. It's all a matter of taste. He has one vision for his project and I have a slightly different one for mine. For now, I would say contribute your Phillies work and we'll find a way to roll it into our projects. It seems easier to just get everybody's input and then we'll split the projects off when that time comes. That's how I feel about it anyway.

[kjuggs]

Too easy... I'd be glad to help in any way, shape, or form... thanks, Kevin

[kjuggs]

I think going back 60 years is good enough (the 1950 Whiz Kids), especially since the franchise has had only a handful of legendary players known by baseball fans prior to WWII- Chuck Klein, Ed Delahanty, Grover Cleveland Alexander. Most other HOFers played less than 2 years with the Phillies, such as Jimmy Foxx, Hack Wilson, and Nap Lajoie for 5 years, til he went across town to the A's, and hit .426 which stands as the record still. It's good to be involved though, and will contribute in whatever way possible...