SOM Diary: the next project(s)

For this summer's vacation it was fun to play with what I had (the 1992 edition of Strat-O-Matic), and I intentionally didn't buy the 2012 set because the RedSox were just not playing well last year.

This year, they are playing great, though, and overall the AL East had an exciting year, with four teams stillin the competition for the playoffs into September. So I will obviously get the 2013 cards as soon as they are available.

The big question is what to do with them. I have toyed with three options how to do a 2013 season replay that
- has some real competition
- leads to meaningful player stats, i.e. covers at least 30-40 games per team so starters fet more than five games and offensive stats at least start to balance out
- has a manageable total number of games. For the 1992 replay I have managed to get in eight days so far, for a total of 32 games, in about three months real time (but playing a lot during my vacation and varying amounts otherwise).

So far I've come up with three ways to select some 2013 teams and get rolling.

1. Two divisions, AL and NL

This is similar to what I've tried in the 1992 replay:
Play AL and NL with one division @ 5 teams each (AL East and the division of the NL champion), teams play each division rival 7 times, one interleague rival in a 3 game series and the others twice.
Total 39 games per team (ca. 1/4 of a complete season), 195 regular games to be played.
Seven games world series between division champions.
Drawback: I'm not really excited to play a lot of NL games because a) they don't play the RedSox as often so I can't relate to their players as well and b) I find that NL games take much longer to play and are harder to interrupt due to the intricacies of switching in pinch hitters, double switches and everything else you have to consider when there is no DH. While this does mean that real life NL baseball is more interesting and, I guess, more challenging to manage, I'd rather get through three AL games than 2 NL games in a given time.

2. AL only

3 divisions with 4 teams each (dropping the worst team of each real one, e.g. the Blue Jays from the AL East although that means that I miss the chance to play the one remaining knuckleballer...), play each division rival in 3 three game series and two teams (based on 2013 real life rank - same rank from one div and 1-2/3-4 from other) from other divisions.
Total 33 games per team (ca 1/5 of a complete season), 196 regular games
Could be upped to 39/234 by doubling inter division games.
Playoffs: 5 game divisional series best 1st vs. Wildcard, 2nd vs 3rd 1st, then 7 game AlCS and a 7 game world series against the real life NL champion.
This limits the number of games (unfortunately also the games per team so statistics may be a bit off - on the other hand I highly doubt I will be able to colete these games within twelve months...) and should provide an exciting season as teams of similar strength face each other, especially in inter division games.

3. Mini full league

Two 4 team divisions per league (AL East and divisions of real life LCS contenders, each divison losing its last ranked team as in 2. above), play each division rival 3x3 times, each league rival 3x, two similar ranked (based on 2013 real life rank - same rank from one div and 1-2/3-4 from other) interleague rivals twice.
Total 43 games per team (bit more than 1/4 of complete season, 39 games w/o interleague), 344 (312) regular games
Playoffs: 5 game LCS, 7 game world series

This would also mean a lot of NL play , and the total number of games is probably way beyond what I can accomplish in a year or so.

So at the moment I'm leaning towards option 2 and focusing on the AL season. That would also make winter a nice preparation for next year- even the 1992 replay helped me bring some life to the names I read about from the time in the hardballtimes.com and other places.