Methodology

Based on the research for my book “Hardball Retrospective“, I assigned every Major League ballplayer to the first team that signed them to a professional MLB contract. Each player remains on their assigned “Original” team for the duration of their careers. For comparison purposes, I also compiled “Actual” teams using the individuals that actually played for each franchise. In both cases, I created half-decade leagues for the “Originals” and “Actuals”.

To determine the rosters for my “Actual” half-decade leagues, I utilized the following criteria:

• Half-decades were designated as 1900-1904, 1905-1909, 1910-1914, 1915-1919, etc. up to 2015-2019. For the older National League franchises, I am not including any 19th Century player-seasons.
• I take the top 40 players for each roster based on Win Shares using each player’s best season in the five-year period. For example, Mike Trout registered 42, 36, 30, 38 and 34 Win Shares from 2015 to 2019. On the Angels 2015-2019 “Actuals” roster, Mike Trout’s 2015 season will be represented.
• I manually entered the team information into Earl Weaver Baseball 1.5 for the IBM PC. I selected this version of EWB for several reasons – personal preference (I’ve a huge fan of EWB since the game was released!), challenge (I had the Amiga and Apple ][ versions back in the day, but only recently acquired the IBM PC version), aesthetics (the physics modeling, animations, sounds were all top-notch for a game produced in the late 1980’s). Another determining factor – the IBM PC edition allows the user to ‘fast-play’ a series of games without any user intervention. For example, I created the schedule and saved it to disk. Then I can reference the schedule after I launch the game using the command, “WEAVER p d %” and enter the first game number along with the number of days to play. I usually play ten days at a time then back up the EWB files. I can also increase the amount of CPU cycles in the DOSbox emulator to speed things up a bit. Here is an excellent FAQ for EWB by Demystifier which explains the various command-line parameters and other interesting information about the game.
• Earl Weaver Baseball has a roster limitation of 25 players, so each roster will consist of either 14 batters / 11 pitchers or 15 batters / 10 pitchers.
• One of the few omissions in the original Earl Weaver Baseball computer game is the inability to save lineups and designate pitching roles for a computer-managed team. The teams that are managed by “Earl” use algorithms to generate lineups before every game, substituting players as needed based on injuries and fatigue.
• Another minor flaw is the lack of “reserves” so the user is limited to a 25-man roster for each team.
• Playoffs / World Series – I will manage a series of games between the top two teams in the simulation and livestream the results to my Twitch and YouTube channels.

Angels “Actuals” – Playoffs & World Series Videos

Championship Series – 2010-2014 Angels vs. 1975-1979 Angels – view videos here!

Championship Series – 2005-2009 Angels vs. 2000-2004 Angels – view videos here!

World Series – 1975-1979 Angels @ 2000-2004 Angels – Game 1

World Series – 1975-1979 Angels @ 2000-2004 Angels – Game 2

World Series – 2000-2004 Angels @ 1975-1979 Angels – Game 3

World Series – 2000-2004 Angels @ 1975-1979 Angels – Game 4

World Series – 2000-2004 Angels @ 1975-1979 Angels – Game 5

World Series – 1975-1979 Angels @ 2000-2004 Angels – Game 6

World Series – 1975-1979 Angels @ 2000-2004 Angels – Game 7

Angels “Actuals” – Statistics, Standings & Leader Boards

Angels “Actuals” – Final Regular Season Standings

Angels “Actuals” – Team Totals

Angels “Actuals” – League Leaders – Batting

Angels “Actuals” – League Leaders – Pitching

Angels “Actuals” – Team Rosters with Individual Batting & Pitching Statistics