1920 Card Set Review

Part of the necessary prep work required before I start a new BBW Replay is that I need to get the new replay blog set-up as well, so here goes. My previous replay blogs can be found here:

 

Roger's 1901 APBA Replay (rogers1901apbareplay.blogspot.com)

Roger's 1911 APBA Replay (rogers1911apbareplay.blogspot.com)

Roger's 1930 APBA Replay (rogers1930apbareplay.blogspot.com)

Roger's 1941 APBA Replay (rogers1941apbareplay.blogspot.com)

Roger's 1949 APBA Replay (rogers1949apbareplay.blogspot.com)

Roger's 1957 APBA Replay (rogers1957apbareplay.blogspot.com)

 

As you can probably tell my intention was to complete a BBW Replay of pre-expansion seasons that were (more-or-less) ten years apart. This may not have been my original intent, but I adjusted along the way, and I am happy with how this has worked out. This has allowed me to see various Hall-of-Famers at different points in their careers and it has provided me with a view of the ever-evolving game of baseball throughout the early century. My upcoming 1920 replay will nicely fill in the missing hole in this sequence and will be an exciting replay to complete as well.

 

The 1920 APBA Card set is not a Revised set. There are 25 player cards per team (the same goes for the BBW disk as well). There are no new Revised algorithms incorporated in this set, although the cards themselves now include their stats as well as Master Game symbols. Example: 

400 carded players meant there were 95 players that were not carded. The uncarded players, as a group, well, it is pretty obvious why they didn’t need to be officially carded. The 95 players have a total of 541 plate appearances, ~5.7 plate appearances per player. The 51 uncarded pitchers average ~7 innings pitched per appearance. After going through and adding these players to the players' disk most of these players are "one and done" types that had their cup of coffee and would never appear again. Having gone through this several times now this group was especially bleak. However, out of this group came such players as Homer Summa, Marty McManus, Zack Taylor, Johnnie Heving, and Jughandle Johnnie Morrison, and included swansongs from long-time veterans Jack Coombs and Nig Clarke.

 

The stats database on the BBW disk is missing Complete Games for pitchers and is missing the season's age for all players. Those have been added, as have stolen base/caught stealing numbers for pitchers and catchers. As I was going through each of the players, I found a few other numbers that didn’t match what was in Baseball-Reference.com (BBR), mostly Hit-by-Pitch numbers for batters and the number of Games Started for pitchers. Baseball research has marched on over the decades since this disk was originally released and while it doesn't specifically impact gameplay, it is nice to have the updated numbers included.

 

Stolen bases and sacrifices continue to be a much-used offensive strategy, although the oncoming use of the homerun is just beginning to usurp this. There may be another reason though. For the past twenty seasons, the stolen base has been a key component of offensive strategy. Therefore, it would seem likely that a key component of defensive strategy would be to neutralize the stolen base as a threat. Pitchers would likely become better at holding runners on, and catchers would also have been improving their own footwork and throwing ability as well. What we see in 1920 is that the AL has a stolen base success rate of only 52% and in the NL it is only 53%.

 

That's a pretty poor percentage. Even in the non-analytic days of 1920 managers had to realize that stolen bases were becoming more of a crapshoot than an effective strategy. Obviously, the game was changing regardless, it's just that there were multiple reasons for it to do so. There are plenty of players who have a less than 50% chance of a successful steal, so this may become a challenge.

 

Note: BBR does not have caught stealing numbers for individual batters, but it does have them as a defensive stat for pitchers and catchers and has totals for teams.

 

As this is not a Revised set the older pitching grade formulas are still in place, which means that players that come short on appearances were often downgraded. I used the Weighted Average pitching formulas to regrade all pitchers and the BBW disk has been updated accordingly. I have used Weighted Average before with no issues and frankly, it comes out pretty similar to pitchers grades you would find in a Revised set.

 

The 1919 World Series was marred by severe accusations of gamblers influencing the outcome of the series, and indeed eight players of the White Sox were banned from baseball for life on September 28, 1920. This has several potential replay implications with regard to the World Series:

 

1. On 09/27/1920, the soon-to-be-banned players played, and Chicago (95-56) ended the day in second place, one-half game behind Cleveland (94-54).
2. Chicago did not play on 09/28/1920. Cleveland (95-54) won their game to expand their lead to 1.0 games.
3. Chicago did not play on 09/29/1920. Cleveland (96-54) won their game to expand their lead to 1.5 games.
4. There were no games on 09/30/1920
5. Chicago (95-57) resumed play on 10/01/1920 with a makeshift lineup and lost, while Cleveland (97-55) split a doubleheader, ending the day with a 2.0 game lead, both teams with two games left to play.
6. Chicago (96-57) won on 10/02/1920, but Cleveland (98-55) also won and clinched the AL pennant with one game remaining for both teams.

In replays, the team that actually won doesn’t always win. What do I do if Chicago, still a very good team, were to find itself in a position where they still ended up winning the AL pennant for me in 1920, even without their key players? Would the White Sox and their makeshift lineup still be allowed to play in the World Series, or would baseball step in and arbitrarily declare them out? Would Charles Comiskey voluntarily declare them out? Would there even be a World Series at all in 1920 if this were to occur?

 

Ultimately, it's my replay and therefore I get the final word on this, so if the White Sox should reach the World Series they will play and use their makeshift lineup. That may not give them much hope I suppose, but that is why you play the games.

 

Summary

 

The 1920 season is a season of baseball in transition. The pitching dominated game of the first two decades of the 20th century that required slap hitting and speed on the bases was giving way to the coming offensive explosion symbolized by the arrival of sluggers like Babe Ruth, Rogers Hornsby, George Sisler, and others yet to come. Stars such as Ty Cobb, Joe Jackson, and Tris Speaker were still stars, but aging stars by this time, and even they were forced to adapt to some degree as well.

 

The spitball and its variations were outlawed before the 1920 season started, with exceptions granted for a set of pitchers who were grandfathered in and allowed to keep using their bread-and-butter pitch. This not only gave the batter some advantage but put pitchers at a further disadvantage by removing a weapon from their arsenal. Some pitchers were able to adapt, some were not, and the game moved on.

 

The other thing to remember is that World War One ended in 1919. During the war, seasons had been shortened, players had been drafted, and the overall impact on the country, in general, meant that now since the war was over and the boys were coming home, society as a whole had changed. A similar thing happened with regard to World War Two - the boys coming home from the war found the country a different place than when they left.

 

Throw in the Black Sox scandal, and all this means that baseball was moving away from its old way of doing business and was moving ahead with the times, just as they have continued to do so to this day. I have a few more set-up tasks to complete but am looking forward to the beginning of gameplay in this replay, so stay tuned.