Running the Gauntlet

The Baltimore Elites, an all-star team of 1924-era Negro Leaguers, won 17 of their first 18 games against the four best major league teams of 1924 in the 120 League. (Then they went 12-10 the rest of the way,)

The early dominance got me to thinking: How would a lineup of the greatest players fare against a schedule of truly weak teams?

The Gauntlet is an experiment in, I guess, baseball BDSM. I expect a lot of 17-2 and 14-3 games.

The Queen City Legends

I have constructed a nine-man lineup, including DH, made up of arguably the best players in the 2000 Hall of Fame set:

C: Johnny Bench
1B: Stan Musial
2B: Joe Morgan
3B: Mike Schmidt
SS: Honus Wagner
LF: Babe Ruth
CF: Willie Mays
RF: Hank Aaron
DH: Ted Williams.

No injuries, no bench. Why would you pinch hit for any of those nine?

Some may quarrel with these specific selections, and in particular leaving Lou Gehrig off the roster. I happen to think Musial was the better player. It's not like I'm bouncing Gehrig for Highpockets Kelly.

The starting pitcher for each game will be drawn from the Hall of Fame set plus the Hall of Fame inductees from the Negro League set. Three HOF set pitchers -- Rollie Fingers, Hoyt Wilhelm, and Carl Mays -- will be assigned to the Legends bullpen. So they will have, in effect, a 13-man roster for each game, with each starter making one start over the course of the 68-game schedule. (Mays is there for emergency purposes; I will be quite happy if he never pitches.)

The Legends will be the home team for each game. They will use four Cincinnati parks, randomly assigned: Redland Field (1924), Crosley Field (1961), Riverfront Stadium (1973) and Great American Ballpark (2017).

The opposition

The Legends will face 17 teams drawn from the 1924, 1961, 1969, 1973, 2009 and 2017 sets that had regular season winning percentages under .400. In a 162-game season, that translates to 98 losses. So these are genuinely bad teams.

1924: Boston Braves, Philadelphia Phillies
1961: Philadelphia Phillies, Kansas City Athletics, Washington Senators
1969: Montreal Expos, San Diego Padres, Philadelphia Phillies, Seattle Pilots, Cleveland Indians
1973: San Diego Padres, Texas Rangers
2009: Washington Nationals, Pittsburgh Pirates, Baltimore Orioles
2017: San Francisco Giants, Detroit Tigers

Each team will play four games against the Legends, using a different starting pitcher for each game. Those starters will be the four pitchers on the roster with the most starts listed on their cards. The schedule will designate the starter -- for example, 1969 Montreal Expos (1) means the pitcher with the most starts, 1969 Montreal Expos (4) means the pitcher with the fourth-most. Ties will be broken by innings pitched.

(revised after two games) Relief pitchers for the visitors will be presumed to be fully rested. Starter-relievers will, if they had 200 innings, be allowed one relief appearance besides their start; starter-relievers, will be allowed two if they had 200 innings, one if they had less than 200 inning but more than 154/162, none if they did not qualify for the ERA title; reliever-starters, if there are any who qualify to start, will be allowed three relief outings if they had 200 innings, two if they qualified for the ERA title, one if they did not.

Pitching and schedule groups

This is a way for me to organize the HOF starters.

I have organized the pitchers into six "timeline" groups:

Negro Leaguers (11 pitchers)
19th Century (10)
Deadball (15)
Livelyball (11)
WWII/Intregration (9)
Expansion (13)

These are loosely based on the eras used in the Presidential League, with some shuffling to bring the fifth group up to nine. There is an overlapping group of 12, the pitchers not used in the Presidential League.

I have organized the schedule into nine seven-game groups and one five-game group to conclude the schedule. Nobody is in the same schedule group twice, and nobody plays the Legends with less than seven games between them.

In each seven-game group, the Legends must use at least one starter from each group. One of the seven pitchers must be from the non-Presidential League group. Obviously, there won't be a Intregration era pitcher left for the final group of five; my goal to to have a pitcher from each of the other groups in that group. (Candy Cummings of the 19th Century group will be the final pitcher, and he fits the non-Presidential League requirement.)

A guideline, not a rule: I want each of the teams to face pitchers from four different eras. Having the 1969 Padres, for example, face Jesse Haines, Burleigh Grimes, Red Ruffing and Waite Hoyt -- four righties from the Livelyball group -- feels repetitive. Perhaps having them face, say, Haines, Martin Dihigo, Fergie Jenkins and Joe McGinnity won't be.

Miscellany

None of the nine Legends regulars are rostered on the 17 opponents.  Two Hall of Fame starters are -- Rube Marquard (1924 Braves) and Robin Roberts (1961 Phillies). Neither Hall of Fame version will pitch against his own team. (Marquard does not qualify as one of Braves top four starters).

I plan to post results and stats for the Legends after each seven game group. I expect this will be a quick experiment; it's about a third of the games of the two five-team leagues I have most recently played. And since it doesn't figure to feature compelling competition, that's for the best.