This is such an important thread...I strongly recommend that anyone running a theme in which franchise lineage is relevant provide a specific link to this great work by Juice. More often than not, when I am in (or run) a franchise-based theme, someone makes a significant error based on not understanding this stuff.

Just in the past couple of days I've seen two owners make the mistake of thinking 1888 Ed Seward was part of the franchise that is currently known as the Oakland A's.

Posted by thejuice6 on 7/3/2020 3:38:00 PM (view original):
Here's the list of all the teams in the WhatIfSports Database. It doesn't always match up with Baseball-Reference.com, but it's pretty darn close. I've noted where there's a discrepency between the two.

Two side notes: (A) When you're doing research for the New York Giants and it covers the year of 1890, both the National League franchise and the Players League franchise will show up in your results. In order to differentiate between the two, you simply sort on "Players League" and search under "Teams" to show which of the Giants DO NOT belong on the National League franchise; (B) Under the Simleague Baseball Utility Player Search, the team/league/division drop-down lists the "Rochester Hop Bitters" - don't even try to find them. The Hop Bitters only existed in 1879 and 1880, therefore, before any Hop BItters players would have been listed in the database.


N.L. - National League
A.L. - American League
A.A. - American Association
F.L. - Federal League
P.L. - Players League

B-R.com - www.Baseball-Reference.com

Re: the 1890 Giants...this is ESPECIALLY tricky because the PL Giants imported many of the best players from the NL Giants. Guys like Roger Connor, Buck Ewing, Tim Keefe all played for the NL Giants before or after (or both) 1890, but in 1890 they were part of the PL Giants, who are NOT related to the modern SF franchise. Those 1890 seasons of Connor and Ewing are particularly popular in SLB. They should NOT be included in any Giants franchise theme.

List on Page 1 is updated through October 14, 2022.

I’ll add a second team if that’s allowed (cubs) this was a fun build

Here is the link to the original thread with the list of franchises:

https://www.whatifsports.com/forums/Posts.aspx?topicID=463788&threadID=10092697#l_10092697