Case study · A DataCram build
Scout the sandlots. Beat the era at its own game.
Deadball Front Office drops you into 1910 as a baseball General Manager. Home runs barely exist and every run is stolen one base at a time — you don’t swing the bat, you find the men who do. DataCram designed and built the simulation, the front office, and the membership.
deadballfrontoffice.com — the general manager’s desk
No transfer market, no hindsight. Just the numbers and your nerve.
Most sports games hand you the stars. Deadball Front Office does the opposite: it’s 1910, nobody is famous yet, and your job is to see the talent before the rest of the league does. Scouting reports come back fuzzy and sharpen over time; you decide when you’ve seen enough to commit real money.
What makes it more than a spreadsheet is that time keeps moving. Seasons roll forward across decades, players age and decline, new cities join the league, and the rules and economy of the game shift underneath you. Every decision compounds — a great signing in 1910 is a legend by 1925, or a cautionary tale.
How it plays
Scout before the rest
Every scouting trip narrows the range on a prospect's true ability. Read the numbers and sign a nobody before he's a somebody.
Sign under the cap
No draft — you work the free-agent market against a salary cap and operating budget, where one smart signing can carry a club.
Seasons that age
Advance full seasons (or five games at a time on Pro). Father Time is undefeated — players fall off a cliff after 38, and you plan around it.
Answer to the owner
An owner-expectations system with real financial incentives and penalties — miss the mark and the money tightens.
Trades and a farm
Four trades a season once you're twenty games in, plus a farm system and injured list to develop talent off the active roster.
Build the franchise
Grandstand investments throw off recurring revenue, and the league itself expands across the decades — new cities, new rivals, new rules.
Under the hood
A hand-built simulation, not a template.
The whole thing runs on a classic, dependable stack — a PHP simulation engine over MySQL, with Stripe powering the Pro membership. Server-rendered for speed and search, tuned to model decades of baseball without missing a beat.
The simulation engine and the whole front-office app
Decades of clubs, players, seasons, and stats
Free vs Pro membership billing
Fast, SEO-friendly pages — no heavy client app
League expansion and era-specific rule + economy shifts
Dynamic contracts, budgets, and decline curves
Take a club to the pennant.
Claim a team and run your first season free — or tell DataCram about the game, tool, or platform you want built. This is the kind of thing we make.