Diamond Mind Baseball, and a fun simulation

Today I thought I would give you an introduction to an amazing baseball computer simulation game: Diamond Mind Baseball. It is probably the most accurate simulation game out there, and you can buy leagues and teams in packages, such as season projections, past seasons, or leagues that are compilations of some of the greatest teams of all time. There are 8 discs which contain the best teams of all time, and I have all 8. You can then create leagues of any of the teams you have and simulate entire seasons in about 5 minutes. You can also play each season game by game, making every decision a manager makes in terms of lineups, pinch hitting, infield alignments, etc. So, I thought it would be fun to make a league for every decade that I have and simulate the league and playoffs to see what the best team in every decade was. I already ran this simulation for every decade last summer, but I’ll re-run it and put the results up here. I will just do one decade at a time, and I’ll put results up every so often (read: when I have nothing else to write about) along with a short summery of the season.

The first “decade” is the period of time from 1900-1919, because there weren’t enough teams to make either of those an individual decade. Here are the standings:

Division One

Team	W	L	GB
1908 Chicago (N)	95	55	-
1902 Pittsburgh	74	76	21
1912 Boston (A)	73	77	22
1917 Chicago (A)	72	78	23
1918 Boston	69	81	26
1912 New York (N)	68	82	27
1911 Philadelphia (A)	65	85	30

Division Two

Team	W	L	GB
1919 Chicago (A)	90	60	-
1909 Pittsburgh	81	69	9
1906 Chicago (N)	80	70	10
1915 Boston (A)	75	75	15
1904 New York (N)	73	77	17
1914 Philadelphia (A)	70	80	20
1919 Cincinnati	65	85	25

Teams from Chicago and Pittsburgh dominated this era. Of the 4 teams with winning records, 3 were from one of the two cities, and 4 of the 5 best records and all 4 playoff spots are occupied by Chicago or Pittsburgh teams. The 1908 Chicago Cubs were the ONLY team with a winning record in Division One, with an unthinkable 21 game lead over the second place team. This makes the playoff match-ups 1908 Chicago (N) vs. 1909 Pittsburgh and 1919 Chicago (A) vs. 1902 Pittsburgh.

Division Series
1908 Chicago (N) def. 1909 Pittsburgh, 3-0: The first game went to 15 innings and the Cubs won on an astonishing 6 errors by Pittsburgh, while committing 3 errors themselves. 1908 Chicago won game 3 4-2 in 11 innings by means of 10 innings from Ed Reulbach, giving up just 5 hits, 2 runs, 0 earned, 4 BB, and 5 K.

1919 Chicago (A) def. 1902 Pittsburgh, 3-2: A thrilling series where every game was decided by just one run. Pitching was the name of the game in this series, as a total of 25 runs were scored in the series, good for 2.5 per team per game.

1900-1919 Championship Series
1908 Chicago wins the series 4-2 on the back of a strong pitching effort, with 3 complete game wins by their starting staff, including a 124-pitch gem by Orval Overall in game 3, where he gave up just 6 hits and 5 walks in a shutout and a 139 pitch effort by Ed Reulbach in game 4, where he gave up 11 hits and 1 run in 9 innings.

Champion: 1908 Chicago Cubs

Stats of some notable players:

-Babe Ruth, 1918 Boston (A): 15 HR (led league), 68 RBI, .227/.401/.455 in 396 AB as a hitter, and 8-15, 4.96 ERA in 23 GS, with 20 CG in 207 IP. This version of Babe Ruth tends to struggle in simulations against the much better competition than he faced in real life.

-Eddie Collins, 1911 Philadelphia (A): .326 (led league)/.416 (led league)/.408

-Tris Speaker, 1912 Boston (A): 12 HR, 67 RBI, 47 SB, .314/.415/.499

-Honus Wagner, 1909 Pittsburgh: 77 R, 30 SB, .280/.389/.380. It really speaks volumes of how much pitching dominated this era when Honus Wagner hits .280.

-Orval Overall, 1908 Chicago (N): 20-4, 1.35 ERA, 1.03 WHIP, 151 K

-Mordecai Brown, 1908 Chicago (N): 21-9, 1.46 ERA, 0.85 WHIP, 30 GS, 26 CG, 8 SHO

-Eddie Cicotte, 1919 Chicago (A): 27-9, 1.54 ERA, 0.88 WHIP, 39 GS, 32 CG, 11 SHO.

-Christy Mathewson, 1904 New York (N): 15-28, 3.08 ERA, 1.22 WHIP, 45 GS, 350.1 IP

-Joe McGinnity, 1904 New York (N): 18-16, 1.92 ERA, 0.99 WHIP, 43 GS, 365.1 IP

-12 players had more than 40 SB, and Frank Chance of 1906 Chicago (N) led the league with 55, but he still got caught 22 times.

-19 starting pitchers had an ERA under 2.00, and 4 of those pitchers threw more than 300 IP.

-27 pitchers had more than 20 CG. To put this in perspective, the last time a pitcher had 20 CG was Fernando Valenzuela in 1986. There are only 25 pitchers active with more than 20 CG in their entire CAREER.

Before I end this, I also want to recognize and congratulate the Netherlands on their stunning 3-2 win in WBC action over the Dominican Republic! I wear my Ruud van Nistelrooy Netherlands national team jersey with pride today.

Interesting Baseball Fact of the Day: Christy Mathewson had the most complete games from 1900-1919, with 434 CG out of 551 GS, along with 79 SHO.