Integrating the Segregated Era With Strat-O-Matic

My dad played some Strat-O-Matic baseball as a kid, but he never did introduce it to my brothers or me for some reason. I'd been mildly curious about Strat for awhile, but when they released a set of Negro Leagues All-Stars back in 2009, I had to check it out. I ordered the board game, the Negro leagues card set, and a set of Hall of Famers. My then three year-old son was interested in rolling the dice for me for a little while, and I enjoyed getting to put some of the Negro leagues legends into action as I learned the basic game. The game went on the shelf for awhile, with the hope that my son would get into the gameplay more when he was a little older. We pulled it down last fall, and six year-old Henry was indeed a little more into it, and can find the results of each dice roll on the cards by himself now. My interest in the game was re-piqued, and I started getting curious about learning the advanced version of the game. So I decided to draft four teams made up of Negro leaguers and pre-integration Hall of Famers to learn with. The first step was choosing the pool of players. I decided to make the "league" split evenly between Negro leaguers and Hall of Famers, so chose the top two players at each position from each set, plus some extra pitchers and bench players, and went about drafting four teams. For the draft, I ignored which set the player came from, and ended up with what four all-star teams might have looked like between roughly 1900-1946 had the insanity of segregation not existed. Here's how the four teams (which I named for their respective first picks) shaped up (click to enlarge):

Much to the chagrin of my wife, I started rolling some games ("Why would you want to play by yourself?!") to try out some of the advanced rules. But then I started getting a little too into the results and how these players were performing against each other. In the tiniest of ways, it feels like righting the wrong of separating the best players from each other during their era. Next thing I knew, I had dreams of playing a full 154 game season for each team (a total of 308 games), partly for the fun of just playing the game, and partly to come up with some oh so satisfying stats from these guys playing together. It's a great way to fill the baseball void in the off-season. I'm about a quarter of the way there, and just took a long time tabulating the stats from the season so far, and figured I might as well share them here in case anyone else finds it enjoyable. (After I explained what I was doing, even my wife allowed she could see how it might be compelling to integrate the segregated era.)

The team results aren't particularly interesting since they are arbitrary teams, but so far, it seems I picked evenly. Here are the wins and losses:

Charlestons 21-18
Gibsons 20-19
Smiths 19-20
Ruths 18-21

More fun to me are the individual leaderboards. The league has been extremely high scoring, with teams each scoring around six runs a game. The average ERA is 5.21 and average OPS is .826. Without further ado:

January Desktop

Satchel & Jackie, 1945 Kansas City Monarchs

The '69ers

The 1969 MLB expansion class of the Montreal Expos/Washington Nationals, Kansas City Royals, Seattle Pilots/Milwaukee Brewers, and San Diego Padres have wrapped up their respective 45th seasons in baseball. Only the Royals and Padres have weathered the years in the same city. The Pilots lasted all of one season in Seattle before relocating to Milwaukee, while the Expos spent 36 years in Montreal before shifting to DC for the last nine. As for all-time records, the Padres bring up the rear with a .464 winning percentage, and the other three clubs are bunched up between .478-.481:

Despite the futility of the last two decades of Royals baseball, they have always retained the best all-time record among the '69ers. The Nationals are starting to nip at their heels though.

More importantly, the Royals have also tasted by far the most playoff action and success:

WS=championships, Penn=World Series appearances, Poff=playoff appearances

So while things couldn't have been much worse in the recent past for the Royals, we are fortunate to have had the glory years of roughly '71-'89. The other three clubs have had good to great years, but nothing approaching the sustained success of those Royals teams.

When the four teams play each other, the Royals again come out in front with the best winning percentage. As the only team remaining in the American League, they don't see the other '69 babies too often anymore, but they really beat up on the Brewers when Milwaukee was still an AL town:

December Desktop

1985 World Series Win Probability Added

Dane Iorg had two plate appearances in the '85 World Series, and they were both game enders. In the second game, he pinch-hit with two outs in the ninth and the Royals trailing 1-3. Their win probability was just 5% when he strode to the plate, and 0% after he flew out to right field. His second PA was a little more eventful. As you may have heard, Don Denkinger called Jorge Orta safe at first to lead off the bottom of the ninth inning in game six with the Royals trailing 0-1. Then Denkinger failed to catch an easy foul pop-up, then Denkinger gave up a single to Steve Balboni, and then Denkinger allowed a passed ball to allow the runners to move up to second and third. The win probability now actually stood slightly in KC's favor at 54%. Denkinger gave up a single to Iorg, two runs scored, and Iorg's hit was worth a swing in win probability of 46%. You can see what a monumental moment it was by the big red spike in the graph above.

Series MVP Bret Saberhagen comes out looking great thanks to his game three and game seven starts. WPA also gives Denny Jackson plenty of credit. Jackson pitched a good game one in a losing effort, and shut down St. Louis in an overlooked but crucial game five win to keep the series alive. Onix Concepcion got exactly zero plate appearances in the series, but gets a big WPA credit for his pinch-running in that game six ninth inning. He ran for Balboni, moved to second on a bunt, to third on a passed ball, and scored on Iorg's single.

1980 World Series Win Probability Added

I don't know why I do these things, but here is a look at the game-by-game accumulation of win probability added for all the Royals to have a PA or throw a pitch in the 1980 World Serious. Willie Aikens had one of the greatest World Series performances ever seen. (Compare David Ortiz's 0.94 WPA in this year's series.) Amos Otis was fantastic for KC too, but the rest of the team either stayed right around zero or struggled. The highest WPA in the series for Philadelphia was Del Unser's 0.59, well behind Aikens and Otis. But Aikens and Otis couldn't do it alone, and Bob Boone, Mike Schmidt, Bake McBride, and Tug McGraw all joined Unser in having pretty good series for the Phillies. Dan Quisenberry appeared in all six games, and was very up and down throughout, but ended up with the second worst WPA on the team thanks to rough outings in games two and five.

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