The goal with Baseball Sim Auctions is to create a platform that will provide enthusiasts of statistical baseball simulations an avenue to create teams via auctions and drafts and then quickly simulate entire seasons to determine who created the best team – this approach differs from the long-term commitment that is typically required when you join leagues. The computer game that is used to conduct the season simulations is APBA Baseball For Windows. For an excellent history and description of the game, click HERE .

It is not my desire to create a long rules manual, but of course some guidelines are necessary.

BEFORE THE AUCTION

• Each General Manager selects a historical team – every team in MLB history going back to 1901 is available.
• The players from the historical teams are made free agents and will serve as the player pool to create new teams during the auction.
• For positional flexibility, a few additional weak hitters will be added to the auction pool from the years selected for the auction (hitters with OPS below .600).
• For innings flexibility, a few additional weak pitchers will be added to the auction from the years selected for the auction (these pitchers will typically have ERAs over 5.50).
• If the DH will be used, that fact will be communicated before the auction.
• An auction date is scheduled.

HISTORICAL TEAMS FOR THE SIM AUCTIONS

The intent of Baseball Sim Auctions is to build realistic teams and avoid creating all-star teams. The ideal scenario is to construct the equivalent number of Sim Auction teams from the same number of historical teams, but some flexibility can be introduced while still avoiding the all-star team composition. To that end, the following guidelines should be followed:

• 2 Sim Auction Teams – 2 or 3 historical teams
• 3 Sim Auction Teams – 3 or 4 historical teams
• 4 Sim Auction Teams – 4 to 5 historical teams
• 5 Sim Auction Teams – 5 to 6 historical teams
• 6 Sim Auction Teams – 6 to 8 historical teams

Generally, for every two Sim Auction teams, you can add an extra historical team. But if you want the most challenging auctions, it is better to maintain the ratio of Sim Auction teams to historical teams the same.

• If the desire is to add additional teams to the auction, the extra team should be the worst team from the same year selected for the SIM auction, again, this is to avoid building all-star teams. As an example, if the two teams selected for the Sim Auction are the 1998 Yankees & the 1998 Cardinals, and the GMs wanted to add a 3^rd team to the auction, that team should be the Florida Marlins who had a 54-108 record.
• In some years the APBA company did not include in their ratings every player that played in a given year, but typically any player who made significant contributions will be part of the APBA 25 man rosters. In the following years, the fringe players were not included, when conducting auctions with teams from these years it might be advantageous to include extra teams to increase positional flexibility and available innings/pitchers to purchase during the auction: 1901,1905,1908,1913,1916,1919,1920,1922,1924,1926,1927,1929,1930, 1932,1934,1936,1937,1938,1945,1947,1948,1950-1953,1982-1985,1987,1989-1991.

THE AUCTION

• Each General Manager starts the auction with $260 Sim dollars (a means to conduct the auction – not real money)
• Each GM must purchase 26 players
• The nomination order will be determined randomly at the start of the auction. The first GM will nominate a player and the two or more GMs will bid back and forth until all GMs stop bidding and the player is awarded to the highest bidder.
• Any bid that would not allow a GM to purchase 26 players will be invalidated, the winning bid would revert to the prior bid. Example: the GM has $10 remaining and five more players that must be purchased, the maximum he can bid for any one player at this point is $6, which would leave him with $1 to spend on the remaining four players, if the GM bids $7, the bid would be voided, and the player would be awarded to the other GM
• Before all the SIM money is depleted, you must have at least one qualified player at each defensive position (C,1B,2B, SS,3B, OF-3)
• A player must have played at least 10 games at a position for the owner to designate him at that position.
• When a hitter is purchased, the owner must declare what position he will be playing, this can change during the auction as additional purchases are made.
• Roster limits will vary depending on the number of real historical teams used for the Sim Auction – if the roster limit is more than 26 players, you cannot proceed to the Draft phase of the SIM auction until both owners have purchased 26 players. In most cases the rosters are comprised of 30 to 32 players (26 players are purchased during the auction, the remaining 4 to 6 players are acquired during a draft after the auction).

AFTER THE AUCTION

One of the challenges of creating a team via an auction is the multiple elements that must be juggled simultaneously coupled with a short decision window. Among the things to be considered are the price of the player, how much money do you have remaining, how much money does your opponent have, who are the remaining players at the positions, how many hitters & at bats have you purchased, how many pitchers & innings have you purchased, etc.

Once the auction concludes, the rosters will be audited to ensure all the defensive positions are represented and each team has sufficient number of innings.

When constructing your roster, you can encounter three elements that can hinder your team’s performance – not valuing players correctly, not purchasing enough players that will deliver enough at bats, and not purchasing enough pitchers that will deliver enough innings.

• The penalty for not valuing a player correctly is self-evident, you will get a statistical output that is less than what you anticipated.
• Not purchasing enough at bats at a position will cause that player to under perform since the APBA computer simulation and the Micro Manager will be forced to overuse the player, therefore using him in a fatigued state.
• Not purchasing enough pitchers/innings will cause your pitchers to perform in a fatigued state, similar to the effect fatigue has on hitters, this penalty works well with hitters, but becomes an issue with pitchers since the APBA Micro Manager will often overuse the best fatigued pitcher in unrealistic ways (e.g. the ace pitcher being used to start two or three consecutive games) – hence, not purchasing enough innings will result in a different penalty than that inflicted by a lack of at bats.
• A typical 162 game season will generate approximately 1450 innings per team, in an ideal situation, that is the number of innings that should be purchased during the auction. Due to the ebb & flow of the auction, the number of innings that you will purchase will vary, so some latitude must be allowed. An equitable approach is to allow for a 5% variance, so a team will be allowed to purchase a minimum of 1,375 innings without penalty. If a team does not acquire the requisite number of innings – the following penalty is activated: the opponent of the team with the deficit in innings will select a pitcher or pitchers to bring their opponent’s team to or above 1375 innings. The additional pitcher/pitchers can be selected from any team from the years used in the auction (e.g. – if you had an auction involving the 1985 Mets & the 1978 Yankees, and your opponent’s auction team was deficient in innings, you could select any pitcher or pitchers from any 1985 or 1978 team to supplement your opponent’s innings, of course you are likely to select the worst possible pitchers, which would result in the desired penalty for your opponent not purchasing enough innings during the auction.
• When this pitching penalty must be invoked, the overall number of players and pitchers on the roster must remain constant, so for every pitcher added to supplement inning deficiencies, a corresponding pitcher must be dropped. The dropped pitcher will be selected based on the number of innings pitched (pitcher/pitchers with the lowest number of innings get dropped and replaced with the opponent GM’s selections)
• A maximum of 2 pitchers can be dropped to accommodate the rival GM’s substitutions.
• The minimum number of innings required in a 154 game season is 1,315.
• Trades are allowed at the conclusion of the auction, this is sometimes an option to balance rosters, but not always applicable if one owner has a surplus of what another owner needs but nothing of value to receive in return. Please note, trades occurring in auctions involving 3 or more participants must be approved by me.
• Once the rosters are validated and the number of innings augmented (if applicable) – each team submits the lineups (Left & Right) and pitching rotations.
• Each owner selects a Micro Manager to manage their team during the season simulation.

MICRO MANAGERS

A full season simulation is the Litmus Test for determining the best team, a short series will often result in a weaker team beating a stronger opponent, so 162 games is the barometer of choice in Sim Auctions. The only way to simulate an entire season expeditiously is by using Micro Managers to manage both Sim teams.

• You can choose from a collection of 88 Micro Managers.
• The Micro Managers have different tendencies (i.e. closer selection process, how quickly they pull the SP, steal strategy, hit & run strategy, wait for the big inning or play small ball, etc.)
• Most Micro Managers are programmed with attributes that are applicable to specific eras, but some can be used over multiple eras.
• It is advantageous to align your Micro Manager with the roster you have created (i.e., you would not want a dead ball era manager for your 1990 era Sim team)

THE SEASON SIMULATIONS

• A World Series is played to determine the best team – each “game” of the series is represented by the simulation of an entire season, the team that wins 4 out of 7 seasons, wins the World Series!
• The goal of Sim Auctions is to clearly identify the BEST team, so if after 4 World Series victories, the winning team has a negative run differential, the series will continue until the winning team has a positive run differential, or is overtaken in wins and run differential by another team (NOTE: this happens infrequently)
• Click HERE for an interesting article on the effects of random variation on player and team performance, and hence, the need for multiple simulations to determine the best team.
• The APBA computer program (aka – BBW) is used to conduct the season simulations (scheduled and conducted via ZOOM) – games are simulated in small batches, the goal being to keep the process to approximately 1 hour.
• Box scores are reviewed periodically during the simulations.
• Standings are reviewed periodically during the simulations.
• The statistics for the hitters and pitchers are saved after every season simulation.
• To keep the simulations moving swiftly, statistics are only reviewed for the deciding season of the simulation.
• After the simulations are complete, I send the participants a file containing the final combined statistics for all the simulations.

SIM AUCTION POWER RATING

Sim Auction General Managers will receive a Power Rating based on their cumulative performance – the rating is based on the following criteria:

• Wins
• Run Differential
• Bonus points for winning 100 or more games in a season
• Bonus points for sweeping a World Series
• Bonus points for Run Differential above the historical average of World Series Teams and teams that won 100 or more games in a season
• Bonus points for defeating opponents with a higher Power Rating
• Point loss for losing to opponents with a lower Power Rating
• Point loss for losing 100 or more games in a season
• The Power Rating will be calibrated periodically to ensure the lowest ratings are near zero – typically the lowest Power Ratings will hover close to zero and the highest ratings will be 700 to 800.

A.I.M – Advanced Injury Management

A.I.M. is a feature of the APBA computer baseball game that provides for increased realism in the conduct of a series of games over the course of a season schedule.  A.I.M. is designed to recreate the actual level of involvement of players in the historic season being emulated by simulating fatigue.

The purpose of A.I.M. is to encourage realistic usage of pitchers and players, in the sense that pitchers do become fatigued as a result of performing their role in a game, and players who played less than a full season should not be allowed to increase their playing time without an equivalent decrease in their performance.

There are four levels of A.I.M. interaction:

Fatigue only: A.I.M. will report the current status of a player, and will modify the player’s abilities based upon his usage under fatigued status conditions.  However, no injuries that occur in games or that might result from over-use in A.I.M. terms will be enforced upon a player for subsequent games.

Game injuries enabled: In addition to maintaining fatigue status effects, injuries that occur due to rare plays during the course of a game will be enforced on players for the length of time in days that injury is scheduled to run.

All injuries enabled: In addition to the above, A.I.M. will often assess injuries against players who participate in a game while fatigued.  That is, players who are Tired, Bushed, or Worn out may become injured after a game if they appear in an active role in that game.

Reduced Injuries and Fatigue – this option is identical to the above option except that the duration of AIM injuries has been somewhat reduced.

In the Sim Auctions we will only use two A.I.M options:

“Fatigue Only” will be used as the A.I.M setting when using equivalent number of historical teams and Sim teams – example, if the teams being disbanded are the 1974 Dodgers, 1973 A’s and 1970 Orioles, and from those players 3 new teams are created via a Sim Auction, then the A.I.M setting will be “Fatigue Only”.

“All Injuries Enabled” will generally be used if the number of historical teams surpasses the number of Sim teams – in the example above, if we added a fourth historical team, say the 1976 Reds, but kept the Sim teams at three, then the simulation would be run using “All Injuries Enabled”. The A.I.M setting can be adjusted to “Fatigue Only” if the historical seasons used for the Sim Auction did not have every player graded by APBA, or if the General Managers unanimously agree to use “Fatigue Only”.

BALLPARKS

Ballpark factors will not be used in Sim Auctions, the player performance will only be influenced by the player’s historical stats and the batter/pitcher interactions.

RECOMMENDED LINKS:

Baseball Analytics

Double Take APBA Podcast

This Week In APBA Podcast

APBA Games

APBA Store

APBA GO