Joe Schuetz’ 1948 AL replay vindicates the Indians

Joe Schuetz wrote me to pass on details on his 1948 AL replay.  He included a great analysis of the replay.

I’ve included a few tables at the bottom of this post but for those who want to really delve into Joe’s replay, you can download his replay Excel spreadsheet.

Joe S says:

1.  Replay was based on the 1948 season issued by APBA in 1980; it was a basic board game replay  (no master game symbols) – cards and dice.  My Dad lived in Cleveland in ’48, regularly attended Indian games, and told me for years how great his ’48 Indians were, so I thought I would find out myself and replay the entire AL for that year.

2.  I wanted to maintain a semblance of accuracy, so prior to beginning, did some research on the season.   After finding a season schedule and basic league stats, I set up rotations for all teams projected over 4-week increments.  I monitored pitcher’s starts and appearances, as well hitter at bats, attempting to use everyone in proportion to their season usage.  I didn’t care about pitcher’s innings, figuring that the replay would take care of that.  For the handful of uncarded players, I created cards.  For players on more than one team, I brought them in at approximately the same time they showed up during the season.  Injuries during a game took the player out of that game alone, and I otherwise ignored the injury chart.

3.  While the Indians were clearly the best team in the league (proving Dad right once again!), the basic game APBA formula for that season  was put to the test.  Runs were being scored at a far greater rate than in real life, so by the All-Star break I decided to make adjustments to the game in the hopes of making individual games a bit more playable tactically.  I upgraded 28 pitchers based, more-or-less, on a bell-curve type determination.  I also added a few x, y and z ratings, but in a rather unscientific way.  While the first half league average was 11 points higher than actual, my second half adjustments proved to be overcorrection, as league batting in the second half was 9 points lower than actual.  APBA has continued to tweak to its formula over the years, and replays based on more recent models would probably yield stats a bit closer to actual.

4.  With regard to stat-keeping, mine were fairly detailed.  While I was curious about the “realism” of the cards, I also kept major stat categories for the fun of it.  Two stats that I regrettably did not keep were sacrifices and errors.  I have wondered for years how much of an impact APBA defensive grades impact runs scored, but unfortunately can’t come up with much of a conclusion.   I am a stat dork by nature, so it was not a chore; your call as to how far into the weeds you want to go.

5.  A couple of general observations:

a.  Tens (10’s) were significant in driving up hitters averages.  Those given 10’s generally had significant increases over actual averages.  I think APBA has addressed this to some degree over the years, as I have assumed that they saw the same thing from other replayers.

b.  A lot of 14’s and no Z’s really impacted scoring.  My replay produced 640 more runs than actual, aided and abetted by 292 more hits and 254 more walks.  The teams with little or no pitching (Browns, White Sox) were cannon fodder, making games rather unenjoyable.  And while most teams scored more than in real life, the Senators pathetic hitting made their games very boring.  That, however, will always be the case with the lower-end teams in a replay, so I recommend you adopt someone on the bad teams (Luke Appling, Al Zarilla, Eddie Yost in my replay) to maintain interest when that team is being played.

I greatly enjoyed this replay, and will attempt a few more as I head into retirement.  A dead-ball replay (1901, 1908) would be easy to do, but I would want to find some sacrifice stats and bunt at the same approximate frequency.  I still lean to the old 8-team leagues for replays, just to keep the number of games to a more manageable level.

I apologize for the length of this note.  Since APBA-dom has all types of members, those more devoted to “accuracy” may find the accompanying stats interesting/useful.  I look forward to reading about other replays.  If you need anything further, please let me know.”

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I enjoy reading about replays like these. Not only does Joe compare his replay stats to the actual numbers but he tells what made it so fun (or not so fun in some cases). I enjoyed reading about the impetus (his father’s memories of the Indians’ 1948 season) for the replay too.
Nice read, Joe!