League Rules

1) Choose a franchise – we will do a draft using RNG for order. Eligible franchises for the first iteration of the league are the first sixteen below (i.e., the franchises that started around the turn of the 20th century).

2) Get assigned a start decade – the initial version of this league will start with 1900-1909. We will play two Pennantchase seasons per decade (see below), so this league will hopefully last 24 seasons (1900x2 through 2010x2).

3) Choose your players and the particular season for each player that was within that decade and meet the AB/IP (150ab for hitters/85ip for starting pitchers/35ip for relievers) requirements (i.e., you can pick players from across the decade- any year a particular player qualifies is fair game). If a player played in one year for more than one franchise, you can use them as long as they hit the 150/85/35 marks in total, even if they didn’t reach the requisite minimum specifically with your team. Example: You have the Yankees and it’s the 1920s- you can start 1920 Babe Ruth, 1927 Lou Gehrig, etc. Also, note that for pitchers to be considered Starters (SP), they must have started at least 60% of the games in which they appeared.


4) In the first few seasons, there will likely not be enough relievers available for franchises- so for those first seasons, you will be able to assign SP as your relievers, but their stamina will be set to 1/3 of their stated stamina (so your relievers can’t throw 6 innings every other day).

5) Certain teams get to add 1 or 2 extra players (depending on the franchise) each decade who didn’t meet the standard AB/IP thresholds – see the team breakdown below. Owners of those franchises may add one or two players that played for the team and met the reduced AB/IP thresholds of 50AB, 50IP for Starters, and 20IP for relievers. Once these players are created, their AB/IP will be doubled (see 6) below) and will then be treated just like any other player- you can keep them for subsequent seasons, cut them, etc. – and carrying over a ‘low ab/ip’ guy into a new decade doesn’t matter- you can still create a new one (or two) in the next decade.

6) All selected players will have their stats doubled until they have 400+ at bats, 100+ innings for starters, 50+ innings for relievers. This makes the after-season progressions more uniform (and not too crazy), especially given the low AB/IP players mentioned above.

7) Set all players to U (unpredictable) progression

8) Play season

POST-SEASON

9) World Series- at the conclusion of the regular season, the top two teams in terms of W-L will face off in a seven game World Series (i.e., no playoffs- basically old-school baseball). Tieberakers for making the Series are in order 1) head-to-head record, 2) run differential, 3) runs scored.


10) Progress players 5 years – progressions through age 28 season, plateau 29-31, and regressions starting from age 32 (though note that with the U type, players can regress even when they are supposed to progress).

11) In the off-seasons before Seasons 2, 4, 6, etc. (i.e., the off-season before the 2nd of the 2 seasons for a particular decade), some time will be given post-pro/regression to move players from the majors to the minors and vice versa.

12) In the off-seasons before Seasons 3, 5, 7, etc. (i.e., the off-season before a new decade), we will choose players from the next decade, and cut players from past decade(s) who you no longer want (keeping in mind overall roster limit of 35), etc.

13) Repeat until we get through 2010-2019 decade.

If this format works well, we can do another iteration with the newer franchises (Houston, Toronto, etc.) – everyone would start with an expansion franchise and then would move to another new franchise when theirs ran out of decades (e.g., if you were the Rays, you can only use 2 decades before you’d have to move to another franchise, but for the Angels it would be 6 decades). The draft for that iteration would be another RNG draft but with multiple rounds so that everyone has roughly the same number of total decades.

Other rules:

14) Rosters are limited to 35 (25 on your majors team, 10 minor league guys). Minimum of 11 hitters, 9 pitchers on your major league roster. Ideally you should use your minors to stash younger guys in the first season of each decade, in hopes that they progress well and might be able to replace older guys you used in the first season who regressed.

15) Players will use the real-life stats for the year you choose. That includes Fire and Stamina (which of course won’t be doubled if the player has low AB/IP). Slump Buster will be turned off however.

16) Each franchise can only create a particular player once, with the sole exception of dual hitters/pitchers described in Rule 15 below.
Example: Say you owned the Tigers and you of course want Ty Cobb to play. You can create his 1909 season where he was 22 (so he starts playing in Seasons 1-2) but then you would miss out on his best season (probably 1911). If he progresses well, you’d get him for seasons 1 and 2, and could probably use him for season 3 (although he will have regressed a bunch after season 2).
Alternatively, you could wait and create him in 1911 when he’s 24- you don’t get him in seasons 1-2 obviously, but he starts as a much better player. You’d get him for seasons 3-4 (though he’d have a couple of regressions before season 4). Probably get a 5th season out of him as well.
So the strategy is to create each player in a season where you can maximize their value (hitting, pitching, speed, defense, positional need, etc.).


17) For players who qualify as both hitters and pitchers (the most famous example is Babe Ruth): You can create a “hitter” version and a “pitcher” version of the same player, but the hitting and pitching season must be from the same year.
Example: you own Boston and you want to create Ruth as both a pitcher and hitter- you can’t use 1916 (his best pitching year) because his hitting sucked, and you wouldn’t use 1919 (his best hitting year as a Red Sox) because his pitching was terrible. And since you can’t create both 1916 Ruth and 1919 Ruth, you could create both versions of 1918 Ruth since he is useable and good at both hitting and pitching in the same year.
Ruth and Ohtani might be the only pitchers who also played the field enough to be assigned an actual OF or 1B type position (but there could be more in the early 20th century).
For the vast majority of pitchers who could hit, they didn’t actually man a position so they will need to be set manually to DH (if you’re not a commissioner, just ask one to do this).


18) You can keep a player on your team for as many seasons as you want, regardless of whether he was still with your franchise during the decade in question. The best players who started out with great seasons might stick around for 2 or 3, or possibly even 4 seasons, but due to age/regression most won’t make it for more than a couple seasons.

19) Trades: Trades are fine – just do your best to make them fair. If the league consensus is that one owner fleeced another owner, then the commissioners reserve the right to void a trade. But that really shouldn’t happen….

Once a trade goes through, the new player on your team is just like any other- you can bench him or play him at will, he will progress/regress each offseason, etc. For ease of monitoring things, however, let’s say that the low ab/ip created players (Rule 5 above) cannot be traded.
Here's the breakdown of all 30 teams.

Team Start Combine Extra Players
NYY 1900-09 N 0
NYG/SFG 1900-09 N 1
BRO/LAD 1900-09 N 1
STL 1900-09 N 1
BOS 1900-09 N 1
CHC 1900-09 N 1
CLE 1900-09 N 1
CIN 1900-09 N 2
MIL/ATL 1900-09 N 2
DET 1900-09 N 2
CWS 1900-09 N 2
PIT 1900-09 N 2
PHA/OAK 1900-09 N 2
WAS/MIN 1900-09 N 2
SLB/BAL 1900-09 N 2
PHI 1900-09 N 2
Houston 1960-69 Y 1
Toronto 1980-89 Y 1
LAA 1960-69 Y 1
Milwaukee 1970-79 Y 1
Washington 1970-79 Y 1
NYM 1960-69 Y 1
Kansas City 1970-79 Y 1
Seattle 1980-89 Y 1
Texas 1960-69 Y 1
SDP 1970-79 Y 1
Tampa Bay 2000-09 Y 1
Arizona 2000-09 Y 1
Colorado 1990-99 Y 1
Miami 1990-99 Y



A few notes for new owners:
- Ignore all subjective or team-based stats. For hitters, RBI and Runs really don’t affect much. For pitchers, you can completely disregard Wins/Losses and ERA.
HITTERS:
- Power (especially HR power) tends to translate to offensive success more than average.
- Righties tend to struggle more (as the simulation favors the pitcher in righty/righty or lefty/lefty matchups, and there are far more right-handed pitchers)
- Speed is nice but anything below an 8 speed isn’t that notable, and there seems to be a pretty dramatic difference between 9 and 10 speed.
DEFENSE:
- Higher fielding percentage is always good, but the sim tends to give lower % guys (like the early 20th century guys) the benefit of the doubt. So a guy with a real-life .890% would likely have compiled percentage in the .930 range (give or take).
- Defensive WAR (dW) is basically a numerical representation of how many hits a defender saves, or how many outs a defender fails to get. I think of it a lot like range- are you really a great fielder if you have a .998 fielding percentage but no range, so you can only catch what is hit directly at your glove? DW is FAR more important in terms of defensive quality than fielding percentage, and it especially matters for SS, 2B, and CF. In general, it’s almost always better to have a guy with a low fielding % but a high dW over a guy with a high fielding % but a low dW.
- Some catchers have plus arms (the “A” column). In general, if your catcher has a plus arm, he’ll be better at throwing out baserunners. That said, the speed rating of the runner matters, there is variability in the sim, etc. But still a very nice thing to have.

PITCHING:
- The key stats for pitchers are WHIP (walks and hits per innings pitched), hits per 9 (h/9) and strikeouts per 9 (so/9). WHIP and h/9 overlap, but since a hit can be a single, double, triple, or homer, a hit is inherently worth more than a walk – so I’d value a slightly higher WHIP with a lower h/9 a bit more than a slightly lower WHIP with a higher h/9.
- The sim seems to really like strikeouts, especially for relievers. So the higher the so rate, the better.
STAMINA/ENERGY:
- Stamina is also somewhat important – starters with lower staminas will struggle to make it deep in games, which in turns means you have to burn more relievers. (Stamina for starters is roughly 65-140, or 65 pitches to 140 pitches before the player starts to get tired)
- Many modern relievers have Staminas of around 20 so they can’t go more than an inning or two without tiring. Some of the earlier relievers might have staminas in the 30s, 40s, or even 50s, which mean they make great long relievers.
- For hitters, the stat is Energy (EN) and it covers how often your guy needs a rest. Some guys have an EN of 200 which means, barring injury, they will play every single game of the season. The lowest EN rating is 5, which means every 5 days the player will need to sit out-
POSITIONS:
- Every hitter has a primary and a secondary position. This means that a 1B/OF player is primary at first base but can also play outfield. Note that putting players at their secondary position will mean a slight debuff to their fielding, which is typically a bigger deal at primary defensive spots (SS, 2B, CF).
- It is VITAL that you have backups on your team that can cover every position (putting a 1B in at shortstop,for example, is a DISASTER, and putting any non-catcher in at catcher means baserunners will steal at will).
- Some players will have an “IF” secondary, which means they can play at ANY infield position other than C (albeit with a slight debuff).
- A very small number of players may even have a “UTIL” secondary which means they can play any position on the field other than C, again with the slight hit to fielding.
FIRE:
- For any player (hitter or pitcher), Fire represents the chance that player will ‘catch fire’ in a particular game – which basically means they get boosts to their stats for that game.
- Only one hitter and one pitcher per team can be On Fire in each game.
- For hitters, the sim basically checks for someone being On Fire in order based on the batting order- so you want to put your best guys fairly early in your batting order so that they have a better chance of catching fire – even if your #9 hitter has a better Fire rating than the guys before him, he may rarely catch fire because 8 other guys get checked first.
- For pitchers, it first checks your Starter, and then each reliever is checked if the previous pitcher didn’t catch fire.

RESOURCES:
- The league’s website is:
www.pennantchase.com
It’s free to sign up.
- To research teams and players, the best place to go is:
www.baseball-reference.com
it’s free to use (they have a paid tool that’s really handy but not necessary)

League Settings

Year Range of Stats	1900 - 2025
Roster Size (Majors)	25
Roster Size (Minors)	10
Keepers	(40 keepers)
Change Stats Allowed
Free Agency	(waivers)
Drops
No-Drop List
Player Fatigue
Batter Injuries	(40 games max)
Pitcher Injuries	(40 games max)
Use Pitcher's HR Allowed Stats
Allows Max Surprise Bunts
Min Batters Pitcher Must Face	3
Slump Buster
On Fire	Uses WAR
User Sims	(every 2 hours)