Overview of Eras

Click here to go directly to viewing and modifying era information.

Much of baseball's rich tradition is due to the unchanging nature of the game. Nevertheless, some aspects of baseball have changed dramatically over time. For example:

• Today, league batting averages are typically around .270. But over the past seventy years they have ranged from under .240 to over .300 due to changes in rules, ballparks, and equipment.

• At the turn of the 20th century, it was common for shortstops to make over 60 errors in a season. Today, few shortstops make more than 25 errors.

• Also at the turn of the 20th century, it was common for starting pitchers to complete over 80% of the games they started. Today, teams rely much more on their relief pitchers, with starting pitchers completing fewer than 10% of their starts.

• Pitchers in leagues using the designated hitter rule usually allow one more run every two games than they would in a non-DH league, because they do not face weak-hitting pitchers.

It is not possible to play realistic games among teams of different eras without adjusting for these changing playing conditions. For example, without these adjustments, a 1912 team would have almost no chance of beating a 1984 team because it would make two to three times as many errors. Are the 1984 fielders really that much better? Of course not. They just have the advantage of using modern gloves and playing on artificial turf.

Or, to use a modern example, a pitcher from a DH-league typically allows an extra run every two games compared with a pitcher who does not have to face a DH. If you want to see what would happen if this pitcher was traded to a non-DH league, or you wanted to release all of the players from both leagues and draft new rosters, you need a way to make sure the DH-league pitcher is not unfairly punished.

DMB uses eras to adjust for these factors. In DMB:

• A .280 hitter in 1968 (when the league batting average was under .250) is a better hitter than someone who hit .280 in 1930 (when the average player batted .300).

• A shortstop making 40 errors in 1912 is a better fielder than a shortstop making 30 errors in 1993.

• A starting pitcher completing 30% of his games in 1984 is more durable (relative to his peers) than someone who completed 50% of his starts in 1920.

• A DH-league pitcher with a 3.30 earned-run average is a better pitcher than someone with a 3.00 ERA in a non-DH league.

For many DMB owners, it is enough to know that you are using a game that adapts to different playing conditions. However, if you want to create or modify players, create new leagues and rosters, or play games with teams from different seasons, you need to know a little more. The remainder of this help topic describes the information contained in an era and the procedures for adding, changing and deleting eras.

The DMB historical era database

Once upon a time, anyone who wanted to create players in DMB had to start by creating the era against which those players should be evaluated. If you were creating all of the players for a single real-life season, that wasn't too bad, because you'd need only one or two eras. If you were creating a collection of all-time great players drawn from all of baseball history, you might need to create dozens of eras.

To simplify the process of creating players, DMB now includes a database with an era for every big-league season that has been completed since 1894. You can use these historical eras directly in the player creation and modification process, and you can import any of those eras into your database so you can use them in your own leagues. In short, you may no longer need to create or modify your own eras.

If, however, you are creating players for a fictional league, a foreign league, or one of the minor leagues, or if you wish to use an era based on a range of real-life seasons, you won't be able to use the eras in the historical database. You can, however, create and modify your own eras with a few simple steps.

Working with Eras

To create or modify an era, choose the View>Organizer command to open the Organizer window, then click on the Eras tab at the bottom of the window. This displays a list of the eras in your database. From here, you can click on the buttons across the top of the Organizer window to create, copy or modify an era. Each of these commands causes the following era window to display:

There are two tabs on this window:

• the General tab displays basic information about the era and the statistics that establish the level and type of offense for this era

• the Rates tab displays error rates and pitch-by-pitch rates that govern fielding performance and the batter-pitcher confrontation for games played in this era.