BASEBALL
Baseball Player Editor
This is a full featured editor for ABPA Baseball players.
It allows you to change any player rating or statistic on a Windows
player disk (extension .wdd) or on a DOS data disk.
Some of the things you can do through the
Editor are:
- Change any player ratings.
- Change a player's primary position.
- Give a player a rating at a position
at which APBA did not rate him.
- Change a player's statistics to affect
the way MicroManagers use him.
- Change a player's APBA "card" numbers.
- Unjumble imported BJE card numbers
and save them that way.
- View a player's APBA "card".
- Give any player pitcher ratings.
- Attach unique pitching statistics to
any player.
What you CANNOT do through the Editor:
- Create player ratings from raw
statistics a la APBA's Baseball Wizard.
APBA's new editor within Advanced Draft will allow
you to change some of the player ratings. But it will not allow
some
of the changes I wanted to make. I wanted to make three types of
changes for players on my draft league team. I will use a
hypothetical
player to illustrate those changes. For years Lefty McGee has
received
ratings at 1B, OF and 3B. He steals bases well, and usually has
over
40 SB's a year. But this past year, Lefty only played at 1B and
OF. And he played for a manager who thinks that stealing bases is
only a last resort, so Lefty only had 15 SB's. So I wanted to:
1. Change a player's primary
position. Lefty's
primary position is 1B, but I have another good firstbaseman who only
plays
first. I use Lefty as my normal left fielder. I would like
to
see him listed with the outfielders in my lineup screen.
2. Add a position to a player's
ratings. I want to use Lefty at third base occasionally. So
I want to be able to give him a rating at third base.
3. Affect a player's usage by
MicroManagers. Many MicroManagers use actual stats rather than
APBA numbers in making their managerial decisions. I want to be
able to change Lefty's Steals and Caught Stealing stats so that it
looks like he steals three times as often as his real stats would
indicate.
This program is included in the Baseball Bundle.
Multiple Card Viewer
In the Card
Viewer for APBA
Baseballyou can view multiple "cards"
simultaneously.
It can be used, for example, to compare side by side all of the
outfielders
on a team to determine who should start. Or use it to compare all
the starters to determine your batting order. Or use it to
compare
players to determine who your next draft choice should be. This
program
works with both BB4WIN formatted data disks (.wdd directories) and with
DOS data disks.
You can view cards created by the "Import
from Bill James Encyclopedia" in APBA's Advanced
Draft or by Wizard
for Windows in either the import format
or the traditional APBA format.
This program is included in the Baseball Bundle.
Organization Editor
The Organization
Editor for APBA
Baseball for Windows allows you to
protect and unprotect organizations and set won/loss records for your
own data disks.
This program is included in the Baseball Bundle.
MicroManager Manager
The MicroManager
Manager for APBA
Baseball for Windows lets you change a
MicroManager's name and it lets you update the "comments" section of a
MicroManager. It does not modify how a given MicroManager manages. You
can also "clone" a MicroManager if you want to create MicroManagers
with specific managers' name
It can get pretty cumbersome trying to keep
dozens of managers straight. Is Billy Buntz an AIM manager? Which era
does Cap Hook work best with? And where in the world did I find Diamond
Jim O'Flaherty? Now you can note all of this in the comments section
and view it through this program.
This program is included in the Baseball Bundle.
Stadium Manager
The Stadium
ManagerforAPBA
Baseball for Windows lets you view a
complete
list of all of your stadiums. You can bring up detail about any stadium
and change the stadium name and location. You can also View stadiums
and
Print stadiums. As an additional feature the program allows to you save
"comments" about each stadium. I use the comments to note that a
particular
stadium is a black & white graphic, or that the view is from, say,
the centerfield bleachers. In addition, you can edit and/or create
Field
Effects files for your stadiums. New Field Effects files can be created
from scratch or by cloning existing files.
This program is included in the Baseball Bundle.
Disk Unscrambler
This program has only one purpose - to
unscrambleAPBA Baseball 4 Windows Data Disks created by the Bill James Encyclopedia
Import function in Advanced Draft or by Wizard for Windows.
All of the cards on a disk are unscrambled at once. The card
number
format is changed from the BJE or Wizard format to the normal APBA
format.
It can be even be used on data disks that have a combination of
BJE/Wizard formatted cards and normally formatted cards without
affecting the non-BJE cards.
This program is included in the Baseball Utilities Bundle.
Master Game Symbol
Adjuster
The Master Game
Symbol Adjuster copies Master Game Symbols
from one player to another. The most common use for this is adjusting
players created with either APBA's BB
Wizardor the Bill James Encyclopedia
Import function inAdvanced Draft. The Master
Game Symbols created by Import are based on algorithms that do not take
into
consideration a subjective evaluation of a player's abilities.
For example, say you have just created the
1970 Pirates through Advanced Draft Import. Roberto Clemente is rated
as a
'2' Outfielder with an Arm of '34'. We all know he should be a '3'
Outfielder with an Arm of '39' so you will want to change this. "But
wait", you say, "how do we know that he is a '3' Outfielder?" Well, the
answer is: Because we have purchased the 1971 season disk from APBA on
which the player ratings have been adjusted subjectively and he was a
'3' on that disk.
Now if you have purchased the 1971 season
disk you may want to use it to adjust your newly created 1970 season
disk. "But wait", you say (again), "Not all of Clemente's Master Game
Symbols should be adjusted. Import correctly calculates his SAL and SSN
for 1970 so they should not be changed based on what he did in 1971.
And another player
may have experienced a major change in his abilities between 1970 and
1971
so I don't want to adjust him at all!" No problem! The Adjuster program
allows you to adjust the Symbols player by player. So if you do not
want
to adjust a particular player, just pass him by. If you only want to
adjust
a handful of players on your new disk, you can do that, too.
Just as the program lets you adjust players
on a player by player basis, it will let you adjust symbols (called
"fields" by the program) for that player on a field by field basis.
This program is included in the Baseball Utilities Bundle.
Master Game Symbol
Synchronizer
The Master Game
Symbol Synchronizer copies Master Game
Symbols from one player to another just like the Master Game Symbol
Adjuster,
but it does an entire disk at once. This can be useful when using the
newWizard for Windows program. If you use the Wizard to normalize a data
disk for different season parameters, Wizard will generate Master Game
Symbols based on algorithms that do not take into consideration a
subjective evaluation of a player's abilities. This program will copy
the original Master Game Symbols back to the normalized disk.
The program will let you designate which
Master Game Symbols (called "fields" by the program) should be copied
on a field by field basis.
This program is included in the Baseball Utilities Bundle.
Team Master Game
Symbol Adjuster
The Team Master
Game Symbol Adjuster allows the user to
adjust Master Game Symbols and Position Ratings on an APBA Baseball
Data Disk. Unlike my Master Game Symbol
Adjusterwhich works on a player at a time
or my Master Game Symbol Synchronizer
which works on an entire disk at once, this
program works on a team at a time. It is intended to be used to update
the ratings of individual players on a wizardized or home-made disk
with the ratings from an APBA card set of the same (or close) year.
(Note that if you are using a screen resolution of 640x480 the program
will load a Lite version of
itself which only allows changing the Master Game Symbols, not the
Position
Ratings.)
This program is included in the Baseball Utilities Bundle.
Master Game Symbol
and Lineup Print Utility
The Master Game
Symbol and Lineup Print Utility creates
two text files. One is a report of the Master Game Symbols for the
players
in an Organization broken out by team. This is similar to the Master
Game
Symbol foldouts that APBA produces for the Board Game cards. The second
file is a listing of the lineups for each team in the Organization. The
program will display up to nine lineups for each team in the
Organization.
The files can be viewed with any text
editor and,
if desired, can be printed from that text editor. The program allows
you
to select the Text Editor of your choice. Windows Notepad would
be
a good choice, but the files are too large for Notepad. If you use
Windows95 or Windows98 then Windows WordPad is a good choice,
as is the freeware program NotePad+. If you use Windows3.1 the
shareware program SuperPad is a good choice. Of course any Text
Editor will do. Just remember that you want to use a non-proportionally
spaced font so the columns stay lined up.
This program is included in the Baseball Utilities Bundle.
CMBA
Calculator/Converter
This program calculates CMBA pitching grades.
It can produce reports of the CMBA Grades and/or "APBA Equivalent"
Grades. It can update an APBA Baseball 4
WindowsData Disk with APBA Equivalent
Grades and, optionally, adjusted Strike Out, Control and Home Run
Allowance ratings. The reports can be
produced in conjunction with the data disk update or without the disk
update
so you can see what the grades will be before changing the disk. You
can
even select the conversion process you want to use, choosing from
either
the Classic process or the Larry "Cowboy" Williams' process, as
documented
in the APBA Journal. If you choose the Classic process you can select how
much
weight the "ERA Adjustment to Grade" is given. If you use Wizard for Windows the
program will automatically detect the xstat.dat file if it is present
and use it as the source for intentional walks. You can even set the
desired Weighted League Grade Average when converting to APBA
Equivalent Grades.
The Calculator eliminates a pitcher's own
teammates from the analysis. And the pitcher's opponents are
determined by taking into consideration the interdivision and
interleague games his played. The scheduling algorithms are
included courtesy of the SkeeterSoft Consortium. The program can also
optionally generate Strikeout and Grounded in Double Play stats if they
are missing from a season disk (many old-time seasons do not have these
stats.)
This program is included in the Baseball Utilities Bundle.
Export/Import Text
Files
The Text
Exporter/Importerprogram can create a text
file of an APBABaseball for Windows Season Data Disk for export to a Spreadsheet Program,
like Lotus 1-2-3 or MicroSoft Excel, or to a Word Processing program, like Word or Word Perfect. It can also
update a Season Data Disk from a text file. These Export and Import
features are designed to be used in conjunction. First create a file
for export to the Spreadsheet Program. Update any of the data elements
in the Spreadsheet. Then create a text file from the Spreadsheet
Program to import back into the Season Data Disk.
This program is available in the Baseball Utilities Bundle.
Export/Import Card
Numbers
The Card Number
Exporter/Importeris a companion to the Text Exporter/Importer.
The program can create a text file of Hitting Card Numbers from an APBA
Baseball for Windows Season Data Disk for export to a Spreadsheet Program,
like Lotus 1-2-3 or MicroSoft Excel, or to a Word Processing program, like Word or Word Perfect. It can also
update a Season Data Disk from a text file. These Export and Import
features are designed to be used in conjunction. First create a file
for export to the Spreadsheet Program. Update any of the Hitting Card
Numbers in the Spreadsheet. Then create a text file from the
Spreadsheet Program to import back into the Season Data Disk.
This program is available in the Baseball Utilities Bundle.
Export/Import
xstat.dat
The xstat.dat
Exporter/Importeris a companion to the Text Exporter/Importer.
The program can create a text file of the values in the xstat.dat file
created by Wizard for Windows for an APBA Baseball
for Windows Season Data Disk. The output
file
can be used for export to a Spreadsheet Program, like Lotus 1-2-3 or MicroSoft Excel, or to a
Word Processing program, like Word or Word Perfect. It can also update an xstat.dat file from a text
file. These Export and Import features are designed to be used in
conjunction. First create a file for export to the Spreadsheet Program.
Update any of the xstat.dat values in the Spreadsheet. Then create a
text file from the Spreadsheet Program to import back into the Season
Data Disk.
This program is included in the Baseball Utilities Bundle.
Baseball Player
Name
Adjuster
The Player Name
Adjuster removes the asterisks appended
to a player name by APBA's DOS Wizardprogram. Optionally it also changes all names to mixed
upper and lower case or forces all last names to upper case. This
program will work on both DOS season disks and BB4WIN season disks.
This program is available in the Baseball Utilities Bundle.
DOS StatMaster
Name Adjuster
In the DOS Game the StatMasterhas its own
file
of player names. This file is initially generated from the player names
on
the season disk, but if changes are then made to the season disk they
will
not be reflected in the StatMaster name file. The DOS StatMaster Name Adjuster remedies this situation. There are several options in
the program. You can remove all asterisks appended to a player name by
APBA's DOS Wizardprogram. You can change all names to mixed upper and
lower case. You can do both at once. You can edit player names
individually. You can also "synch" the StatMaster name file to the
season disk name file so the names in the StatMaster file are updated
to be the same as the names on the season disk. This program will work
only on DOS StatMaster files.
DOS Organization
Shifter
This program allows you to reorder the
organizations on a DOS Season Disk. This is normally used to move a
home made organization into the number 1 protected slot, but it will
also allow moving any org to any slot. You can even clone orgs easily.
There are three ways to move orgs: 1) Drag an org to a different slot;
2) Key the org number into a slot; or 3) use the Automatic Move feature
to move all orgs up one slot. Note that this utility only works on DOS
Season Disks.
Advanced Draft
Import
Visa
If Advanced
Draft has ever prevented you from
exporting
a player to another disk because it thought his record was a
"duplicate"
of one already on the disk, then this program is for you. Just as an
Import
Visa does in the real world, this one gives you a license to import any
player to any season disk. The program has only one purpose - to reset
the flag in each record of a season disk that tells Advanced Draft whether or
not
to consider that record when checking for duplicates. If you change the
type record indicator in a record on the destination file to 0, then Advanced Draft will not
consider
that record in it's search for duplicates. The program sets sets all
flags
to zero, that is, do not consider the record while checking for
duplicates.
The program also allows you to restore the flags after you have
finished
transferring players. If you are unsure what "FileID" and "duplicate
records"
are all about, there is a thorough explanation in the Help file.
This program is included in the Baseball Utilities Bundle.
Stat Leveler
Have you ever merged teams from different eras
onto one data disk and found that the players from some teams are all
Worn Out by the middle of the season because their AIM (Advanced Injury
Management) values were calculated using far more games than they
actually played? If Team A on the disk played 100 games and Team B
played 162 you can set your AIM values based on 162 games and end up
with a lot of worn out players on Team A. You can set your AIM values
on 100 games and have the regulars on Team A play far too many games.
You can manually adjust the AIM values for as many teams as necessary.
Or you can use the Stat Leveler.
The Stat
Leveler will project stats for a team over
as many games as you'd like. For example, in the example above you
could have the Stat Leveler adjust all of Team A's player stats to what
they would have been over 162 games. Then AIM will use the players on
both Team A and Team B realistically. Note that the program adjusts
players actual stats, not the AIM ratings. League Manager will use the
adjusted stats to generate the AIM rating.
You can still select any and all AIM options in League Manager and they
will work with the adjusted stats. You may even choose to recalculate
starting pitchers' fatigue ratings using DosDave's "Complete Game
Percentage" algorithm.
This program is included in the Baseball Utilities Bundle.
Stat Compare
Stat Compare
compares replay stats to actual stats. The program displays the players
on a selected team along with both their actual stats and their replay
stats. You can use it to see how well a player is performing in your
replay compared to his real life stats. The display also includes a
percentage comparison of a player's Replay Games to Actual Games,
Replay Plate Appearances to Actual Plate Appearances and, if he is a
pitcher, Replay Innings Pitched to Actual Innings Pitched and Replay
Batters Faced to Actual Batters Faced. Also, at the bottom of the
report is an Exceptions section. This section lists the names of any
players on the team who are at or above 100% in any of these
comparisons and for which of these categories the player reached that
mark.
This program is included in the Baseball Utilities Bundle.
Major League
Equivalencies
Major League Equivalencies were developed by Bill James. They convert a player's
minor league stats into their major league equivalents. Note that this
is not a projection of future performance. It is a measure of what the
player
would have done had he been in the majors instead of the minors.
The Major League Equivalency algorithms for
batters are based on Mr. James' work. Pitching Equivalency is not part
of Mr.
James' algorithms, but the algorithms included in the program will give
satisfactory results.
Why would you want to use Major League
Equivalents? Perhaps your replay is a "what if" replay and you want to
see what the result might have been had the team called up that AAA
phenom in July instead of September. Maybe the player actually had a
.143 average in 14 at bats, or hit .429 with 3 homeruns in 14 at bats.
Neither card would be suitable to use for half a season. So use a card
based on his Major League Equivalent. Or perhaps you are in a draft
league and have a shortage of firstbasemen so you would like to play
that AAA player you own who did not make it to the majors because there
was too much talent ahead of him. Use his Major League Equivalent card.
Or perhaps you are replaying a season with 31 teams and want to have
32. So have an expansion draft and fill in the players lost to
expansion with Major League Equivalent AAA players. Or convert your
favorite minor league team as a whole and play it against Major League
competition.
The program will work with AAA stats, AA
stats or a combination of the two. You can even put in the stats for
the player's actual Major League stint and have them combined with the
Major League Equivalents.
After you have generated the player's major
league equivalent stats you can use Wizard for Windows to generate a
player card based on those stats. If you convert a player who had, say,
350 at bats and you want to use him for the full season with A.I.M.,
use the MakoJo
Stat Leveler
program
to adjust his stats for the full season equivalent. Or you may specify
a
target number of At Bats for batters and a target number of innings for
Innings Pitched for pitchers right in the program. The players' stats
will
then be scaled to that target. For example if a player's total At Bats
is
400 with 8 homeruns, but your league has a rule that "equivalent"
players
may only accumulate 100 At Bats, you can set the target At Bats to 100
and
his Major League Equivalents will scaled to 100 At Bats, giving him 2
homeruns.
AIM values will then be calculated correctly based on 100 At Bats.
This program is included in the Baseball Utilities Bundle.
xstat.dat
Installer
When Advanced
Draft installs a DOS season disk into Baseball for Windows it
does not install the "extra" stats. What are the extra stats? Most
player stats are contained in files that have been part of the computer
data disk since the beginning. But some statistics, like Complete
Games, Intentional Walks, Grounded into Double Plays and Fielding Stats
by Position are not included in those files. Those stats are created,
however, by Wizard, Wizard for Windows and the
Encyclopedia Import.
Wizard stores
the stats in two files, newnstat.s99 and newpstat.s99. The others store
them in xstat.dat. If you install a DOS data disk with the extra stat
files,
however, the stats are not installed to the windows season disk. An
xstat.dat
file is created in the installation process, but it does not have any
data
in it. This program corrects that. The program also recognizes
the
file extensions of r99 and t99 for seasons disks from the 1800's and
2000's,
respectively.
Why should you care? Well, one of the stats
is Complete Games. This is used in the A.I.M. process. Not having the
complete games stat can affect what a pitcher's A.I.M. values are. It
can also affect pitchers' Q ratings (fatigue ratings). Once the
xstat.dat file is installed to your season disk you can use the Adjust
Q Ratings option in the StatLeveler program to correct starting pitchers' Q ratings.
This program will create and install an
xstat.dat file from newnstat.s99 and newpstat.s99 files.
This program is included in the Baseball Utilities Bundle.
Windows Disk to
DOS Disk Converter
The .wdd2dos Conversion Program converts
an APBA Baseball for Windows season disk (or directory) into an APBA
DOS Baseball season disk (or directory). You might want to do this if
you create
a unique BB4Win season disk and wish to distribute it. The DOS format
is usable by both the DOS Game and, through Advanced Draft, the Windows
Game.
Or you might prefer the DOS game but want to create seasons through the
BB4Win Advanced Draft Bill James/FanPark Encyclopedia import feature. Note: Before you distribute a disk, please be sure you
have the right to distribute it. Miller Associates only permits disk
distribution under limited circumstances. If you are not sure if you
can legally distribute your disk you can check with Miller Associates
at http://www.fanpark.com/ .
Players, (multiple) organizations, leagues,
team rosters and team lineups are all converted. The program recognizes
and
accommodates the limitations of a DOS disk (roster sizes, number of
teams,
etc.) You can convert into an existing .ddr directory or you can create
a new directory.
You have several options for converting
player names. You can force all player last names to be in upper case.
You can force all player last names to be in lower case. You can even
have the program leave the case of player names unchanged. You can also
have the program drop any asterisks from player last names during
conversion.
This program is shareware, not freeware.
While you may distribute the program with no changes as long as all of
the accompanying files are included, if you keep it and use it you must
register. See the Registration topic in the Help File for details about
how to register your copy of the program.
OFAS Reformatter
"Play Ball!", cries the umpire to start the
best of seven championship round between the OFAS Cardinals and the
OFAS Tigers. The Cardinals win Game 1, pounding out six doubles
and two homeruns on nine hits to the Tigers three doubles and two
triples on seven hits. The Tigers come back in Game 2 on three
homers and four doubles on ten hits. The Cardinals are held to
three doubles on four hits. In Game 3 the Tigers start strong
with a double and two homeruns in the first two innings. The
Cardinals respond with a homerun in the third, but the Ump bellows
"Time!". Calling the managers out to the plate he tells them,
"Something's wrong here!" "You guys have 34 hits between you, but
only 7 singles! Let me see those cards you're using." After
carefully inspecting the cards he says "Here's your problem. Your
pitchers' grades are so high they turn most of the singles into outs,
but don't have any effect on the extra base hits. This series is
postponed until you guys can come up with a better way of distributing
hits." And the OFAS players dejectedly return to their envelopes,
perhaps destined never to see game action again.
This could be a true story (which would be
why we're withholding the name of the Umpire, for his own
protection). All-Star card sets, such as the Original Franchise
All-Stars (OFAS) set, produce far too high a proportion of extra base
hits. Dave Morris (DosDave) came up with a solution. In the
same way that a hit result of zero means "roll again in the second
column", now any hit number from 0 to 11 means "check the hit number
against the pitcher's grade and, if it
is a hit, roll again in the second column". (7's, 8's and 9's in
the
first column now appear as 07, 08 and 09 as a reminder of this.)
The
second column is now a distribution of all of the player's hits, not
just
the extra base hits. This program, the OFAS Reformatter, will
reformat cards into this format. The input to the program is a
DOS format season disk and the output is a report of team's reformatted
cards. Optionally the changes may be saved to the disk to be used
with a card printer. The program reformats one team at a time.
1950 Card Set
Viewer
Ever wonder what the very first APBA season
card set looked like? That would be the 1950 season.
Only five sets are known to still exist. They were
single column cards. There were no player speeds, nor
pitching speeds. There were nicknames (sadly lacking in the
computer game) and home towns on the cards. This package
consists of a special version of the Baseball
Card Viewer and a
data disk compiled by DosDave. The data disk is not intended
for
replay, and the viewer will only work with this disk, but if you ever
wanted
to see just what those cards look like, then this package is for you.
2002 Season Disk
Fix for Invalid Relief Pitcher Durabilities
The valid values for Relief Pitcher
Durabilities are '1' through '3'. The 2002 Season Disk contains
'4' in that field for non-pitchers. This is okay for the BBW
programs because they ignore the field if a player is not a
pitcher. But our utilities give you access to every field on the
disk for every player and do not recognize the '4'. This program
changes the invalid 4's to valid 3's. Just copy the program 02rpqfix.exe to the
2002.wdd directory and double-click on the program name.
A.I.M. Editor
I wrote the Baseball
for Windows A.I.M. Editor to support some
replay projects. It can globally set
some A.I.M. variables for a selected class of players, or it can change
individual players. Note that some of the restrictions in the
game
are ignored in this Editor. For example, a starting pitcher's
Maximum
Readiness Rating can be set from 1 to 99.
Why would you want to change this stuff? Much of this can be
changed via the A.I.M. Editor in League
Manager. Some cannot.
Clicking the "Cure Itchiness"
button, for example, will remove the Itchy status from a player (just
like
Benedril!). Changing a player's "Schedule Day Last Appeared" can keep
him
from becoming Itchy again as quickly. Changing the the "Replay
Batters
Faced" or the "Replay Plate Appearances" will affect the player's RUse
factor.
Leagues may use the global change capabilities to give extra "Max BF"
to
innocuous pitchers or extra PR/SF to innocuous players.
Merlin (The
Wizard's Assistant)
- The SkeeterSoft Pitching Grade Calculator
The SkeeterSoft pitching grades were developed
by the SkeeterSoft Consortium. They are an alternative Pitching Grade
system for APBA Baseball and can be used with either the APBA Baseball
Board Game or APBA Baseball for Windows.
The SkeeterSoft grades are based on
"Opponents Batting Average", but they are tailored for specific data
disks. That is, the hitting stats of the players on the specific disk
in question are
used to generate the pitching grades. Let's say John Smith is a pitcher
on a standard APBA season disk. You use this program to generate
pitching grades for the disk. Then you move John to a disk comprised of
the league leading teams for the 1950's and use the program to generate
pitching grades for that disk. In all likelihood John will receive a
different rating on the
first disk than on the second because the hitting stats are different
on
the two disks. But John will receive the appropriate grade on each disk
so
that he will perform properly against the opposition on each disk. For
more
insight into the grading system, be sure to read Evaluating Your
SkeeterSoft
Replay in the Help file.
When calculating the pitching grade for a
pitcher, the program removes the batting stats for the batters on the
pitcher's own team so that the grade is based on the batters the
pitcher will actually face. The program also takes the structure of an
organization into consideration when generating pitching grades. You
can tell the program to weight intradivision games, interdivision games
and interleague games to determine who a given pitcher's opponents
should be for aggregating hitting statistics. The program contains
built in scheduling factors for historical seasons. It also provides
for three sets of user defined scheduling factors for draft leagues and
"what if" leagues.
Merlin can generate Control, Strikeout and
Home Run ratings for pitchers based on their opposition. You can
even
tell Merlin to take Park Effects into consideration for BB4Win
grades. Drop a pitcher into 1999 and Merlin will generate the
grade and ratings
that will reproduce his performance against the explosive offenses of
the
90's. Drop that same pitcher into 1968 and Merlin will generate the
grade
and ratings that will have the pitcher reproduce his performance in
that
pitching rich era.
There are other factors that can affect a
pitcher's performance besides the offensive stats of his opponents.
Merlin can generate player speed ratings which truly reflect the
runner's chance of scoring from any base. Have you ever noticed when
using an Encyclopedia Import that most of the starting outfielders seem
to have cannon arms and most of the bench outfielders seem to have rag
arms? Merlin can adjust this. Merlin can create Catcher's Throw
ratings. And Merlin can even generate Caught Stealing statistics for
those disks that do not have them. Merlin even knows how
to do all this differently if you are planning to use the grades and
ratings in Baseball for Windows, DOS Baseball or the Board Game.
Merlin can also adjust the stats on a
season disk
so that the ZZ and ZZZ ratings work even better and Ballpark Effects
work
as intended. It can even adjust for the triples lost by Baseball for Windows
forcing you to "stretch" some doubles into triples.
The program can produce a report of the
calculated SkeeterSoft grades and ratings. This can be used if you are
generating grades for use in the Board Game. It is also useful if you
wish to review what the grades and ratings will be before you actually
update your BB4Win Season Disk. You can produce a report only, upgrade
a season disk only, or produce the report and update the disk
simultaneously.
T3
Normalization System, or Merlin Time Travel Baseball
The
sytem is comprised of two
programs, the Normalizer and
NormCreate.
The Normalizer
program
is designed to take the statistics from a specific major league
baseball season and manipulate them so that they provide us with a
logical and consistent representation of the same statistics in the
environment of a totally different (chronologically) season. Any
player can be normalized from any year/league to any other
year/league. Normalization factors are provided for every Major
League
from 1871 through 2003.
The Normalizer normalizes
the stats for all players on a team. The team should then be
wizardized using Wizard
for
Windows to generate the
new hitting tablets
(card numbers) and pitching grades.
Using the companion program, NormCreate,
norm factors can be generated for any league, for example, the 2003
International League. Be sure to read the Help Files before using
the
programs. Note
that you
must have Wizard for Windows to effectively use this program.
Alternate Ballpark
Field Effects File
I have always thought it odd that a Stadium's
Park Effect Factor should change from year to year even though the
Stadium configuration did not change. When the Cardinals added Mark
McGwire, who seemingly hit more homeruns than the rest of the team
combined, the Stadium did not become easier to hit home runs in for the
other players. But the yearly Park Effect values make it seem that way.
Jay Wigley has put together Park Effect Factors for every major league
ballpark from 1876 to 1993. The Park Factors are the same from year to
year, reflecting the fact that the Stadium did not change. There are
some changes, though, from when a Stadium underwent significant
reconfiguration. Most "Field Effect" Files will need only one entry.
Set the First Year and the Last Year to the same year and include an
entry for that year in the detail of the Field Effects File with the
Stadium's rating. Then no matter what year your game is played, the
Stadium will have the proper factor.
Franchise
Ballpark File
This file is an Excel spreadsheet showing, for
each major league franchise, all of the ballparks in which the team played,
and in what years. This can be a real time saver when setting up
replays.
The file is courtesy of Patrick Boyer.
Coxx Pitching Grades
for the Basic Board Game
The Coxx card pitching system was first
introduced by then-APBA Journal editor Tom Heiderscheit as a way to
adapt the 30 master game grades to the basic game. To use the
Coxx card system, simply re-roll the dice anytime a preventable single
is rolled (that is, a single which is turned into an out by some
grades), and use the grade shown on
the Coxx card instead of the original grade. Optionally you may
prefer to reroll just once per inning. Or you may prefer to
reroll for every at bat (which is great for face-to-face play!).
Just choose whichever method you prefer, without jepordizing any
statistical quality!
Note that 3 'extra' grades are incorporated
as well. Grade AA is actually grades A, B, and C combined.
Whenever this is the result, it will prevent ALL hits. On
the other
hand, Grade E
prevents no hits, and adds a single with a two-base advance on result
number
12. Grade F also adds a single to result number 12 and it adds a
single to result number 35 with a one base advance.
The use of Coxx grades may prevent a lot of
"APBA-ball" strategies. They can be used either with or without
the batter platoon system.
You can view the Coxx cards on-line and
print them right from your browser. For durability, we suggest printing
these cards out on 110 weight card stock (which is very close to APBA's
cards in thickness).
The National
Association (1871 - 1875) Season Disks
This season disk set contains season disks for
all five of the years of the National Association's existence. The
disks are in both League Manager organization backup file format and
the
traditional DOS format. The DOS format can be used to install the
seasons
into earlier versions of Baseball for Windows or can be used directly
in the DOS game. Instructions for installing it into the game are
included
in the readme file.
1869 Season Disk
1869 was the first year that a whole
team was openly professional. The Cincinnati Red Stockings went a
phenomenal 57 - 0. Scores in
games in 1869 ranged from teams scoring over 100 runs to one game of 2
to 1, generally regarded at the time as the best game ever played to
that date. There were no substituions during a game. The
twelve pro teams played not only against each other, but also against
amateur (unpaid) teams. The quality of the amateur teams ranged
from near pro level to about the level of American Legion ball.
Scheduling consisted of arranging for games against other teams, often
in a "home and home" arrangement.
This zip
file contains Baseball for Windows backup files for two season
disks. One is the pro teams only. The other is for the pro
teams plus a number of amateur teams as well. Stats for 1869 are
sketchy at best. A great deal of latitude was taken in developing
players for Baseball for Windows for these players. The amateur
teams have had a sort of "Major League Equivalency" applied. This
is probably not nearly enough of an adjustment for some teams.
Consider a AA team of our time which played most of it games against
local American Legion teams, a few other AA teams and one game against
the Cincinnati Red Stockings. The player cards generated from
their stats would be far superior to their abilities compared to the
Red Stockings, but their cards would give the Red Stockings' cards a
good game. Pro teams on the complete 1869 disk have had their
pitching grades upped by five from the pro-only disk.
The
schedules included in the organization backups contain the games played
by the teams in the org against each other. Most of them played
many additional games against other teams which are not represented on
the disk. The Divisions in the complete 1869 Org are completely
arbitrary. No such divisions existed in real life. The two
organizations are intended to give a flavor of the era. Serious
replays are probably beyond the capability of the disks, but I hope you
have fun playing with the disks
Great Teams of the
19th Century Season Disk
This season disk contains some of the great
teams of the 19th century. There are representatives here from the
National League, the National Association, the American Association,
the Union Association and the Players League. There are two bonus teams
included as well. One is a team comprised of all those on Major League
Baseball's Permanently
Ineligible list. The other is the 1899 Cleveland Spiders, perhaps the
worst
major league team ever. They won only twenty games in 1899. In
comparison,
the hapless New York Mets of 1962 won forty. The season disk is in
BB4Win
format. Instructions for installing it into the game are included in
the
readme file.
Extra Players for
APBA's Negro Leagues Greatest Teams Data Disk
The Negro League XB disk was created to add a
little more flexibility to the rosters of the teams on APBA "Negro
Leagues Great Teams" disk. I wanted the availability of an extra pinch
hitter, spot starter or outfielder with whom to make a double switch.
All of the players on this disk are real players who are listed are
their respective teams' rosters in "The Negro Leagues Book", an
excellent SABR publication edited by Dick Clark and Larry Lester.
The stats for these players were, for the
most part, not available to me. I created the stats with one
constraint.
The additional players should add to the team's depth, not it's
strength.
If all the shortstops on a team hit less than .220 and I added another
shortstop, then he will not have an average higher than that. In a
similar vein if the APBA set has five outfielders on a team, the games
played by one of my additional outfielders should not exceed the games
played by the fifth outfielder. Several
teams have additional players with a fair number of games played. This
occurs
when the player-games on a team on the APBA disk seem insufficient to
field
a team for the full season.
Pilot Field
Pilot Field in
Buffalo, NY is the home of the AAA Buffalo Bisons. Opened in 1988 in
downtown Buffalo, it has been called by one major sports publication
the "jewel in the crown of Minor League Baseball". It was built to look
like an old-time ballpark and provides that old "take me out to the
ballgame feel" for the fan. It is a very comfortable park in which to
watch a game and has excellent site lines from all seats. The food
court is extensive with a broad range of excellent cuisines. The
stadium holds 20,000, with an expansion capability of having a second
deck added which would seat another 20,000. The stadium was renamed
"NorthAmericare Park" for the 1997 season and again to "Dunn Tire Park"
for the 1999 season. Contains high resolution graphic (256 colors)
only. Pilot Field 1 is a view of the stadium from high above center
field. Pilot Field 2 is a traditional view from behind home plate.
Doubleday Field
in
Cooperstown, NY
Doubleday Field in
Cooperstown, NY is an adjunct of the Baseball Hall of
Fame. It is a cozy, old time field with seating that puts the fan close
to the action. The view in the stadium file is from behind home plate
under the roof over the grandstand. Contains high resolution graphic
(256 colors) only.
Reading Municipal
Stadium in Reading, PA
Reading Municipal Stadium is the home of the AA Reading Phillies, an affiliate
of the Philadelphia Phillies. It seats approximately 8,000 and is a
very
fan friendly ballpark. The view in the stadium file is from behind home
plate, perhaps just a bit too close to the field (but the seats were
great
for watching the game, an exciting contest won by the Phillies on a
homerun
in the bottom of the tenth). Contains high resolution graphic (256
colors)
only.
Roberto Clemente
Stadium
Roberto Clemente Stadium is an artist's rendition of a proposed new stadium in
Pittsburgh from a couple of years ago. The stadium is a bit reminiscent
of APBA's
Forbes Field, with a Pirate fan prominent in the foreground. Contains
high
resolution graphic (256 colors) only.
Harper College 1890
Harper College 1890
is a drawing of gay 90's field, complete with crowd in period
dress. The graphic is gray scale.
The Park
The Park is a
typical cow pasture that kids might play on. It looks very
similar to the
park at which I played when I was a child. When we told our
parents
we were going to "the park", they all knew we meant the field at
the
end of Weinmann's Blvd. that was our ball park. The graphic is
that
of a field with bases and foul poles stuck in the ground. The
fence
in the foreground is similar to the one at our real park, except that
the
real fence was chainlink, not wood.
War Memorial Stadium
War Memorial Stadium, affectionately known as "The Rock Pile", was a
football stadium used by Buffalo, NY pro football teams in the AAFC,
the AFL and the NFL. It was used as a baseball stadium by the
Buffalo Bisons from 1960, when Offerman Stadium was closed, until 1972,
and then again from 1979 to 1988, when Pilot Field opened. It was
also used as the Knight's Stadium in the filming of "The Natural", with
Robert Redford. It has since been torn down.
Citizen's Bank Ball
Park
Citizen's Bank Ball Park is an artist's rendition of the new ball park planned
for Philadelphia.
