Dugout Lore — Summer Cup Preview

Manager's Guide

Play here: https://dugoutlore.com Questions or problems: support@chinmusic.ai

This guide explains how to play a Summer Cup Preview series: how to pick a team, how to set your lineup and pitching staff, when games are played, and how to read the results. You do not need to read it end to end. Sections 4 and 5 are the ones you will come back to.

Section 1: Dugout Lore

Welcome

There is a moment every baseball life remembers — walking out of the concourse into open air, the green of the grass hitting you first, then the diamond: clean lines, still dirt, a field waiting. Something in you falls in love before you can name it.

Years later you learn the rest in the dugout — the quiet talk passed down from a grandfather who saw the game a certain way, a father who corrected him gently and taught you another. How a pitcher works a hitter. Why a lineup feels right. What courage looks like with two outs and a runner on third. That is dugout lore: not a slogan, the inheritance of the game.

Franchise Apex — coming late 2026

Franchise Apex is where that feeling becomes a league.

You do not draft a fantasy club. You claim a real franchise and a real season — the 1986 Mets, the 1998 Yankees, the 2001 Mariners — and manage them as history left them. Then you take that club into a league that stretches across eras: dead ball against the live ball, integration against the long ball, the same diamond under different skies. The argument is not who had better marketing. It is who can still win when the grass is green and the season is on the line.

Clash of Titans — coming spring 2027

Clash of Titans is where that craft becomes the league.

You do not inherit a finished franchise. You draft the greatest individual seasons in baseball history — 1927 Ruth beside 1968 Gibson, a 1912 workhorse beside a modern ninth-inning knife — and you try to make them one club. Eras share a roster. Scarcity writes the rules. The best team is not always the most famous one.

Leagues can also be played with a salary cap, where every great season carries a price and you cannot simply buy the top of every list. Deciding what to give up is the whole argument.

Summer Cup Preview — you've been invited

Summer Cup Preview is an early look at the game before either of those products ships. You manage one real team from one real season in a best-of-seven series against a friend or against the computer. Every team-season from 1901 on is available.

The whole thing takes a few minutes a day. You pick a team, set your lineup and staff, and lock them in. Games are played and published at set times each day, and you read what happened. You are managing, not watching a live broadcast.

It is an early version, so a few things are unfinished and a few numbers are still being tuned. That is why you are here — if something does not look like baseball to you, we want to hear about it.

Section 2: Picking a team and starting a series

Team Strength Score

Every team-season in the game has a Team Strength Score, which answers one question: how good was this team compared to every other team-season available?

It is not an average of the roster. Two clubs can have similar stars and still land far apart, because what matters is whether those stars actually carried the season or barely played.

Teams are also sorted into Tiers 1 through 5 based on that score. When you challenge another manager, both teams have to be within 15 points of each other, so nobody accidentally brings the 1927 Yankees against a 100-loss club.

Fair warning: a few of these scores will not match your gut. The 1998 Yankees are the one people argue about most — a club you remember as unbeatable does not always sit as high as you expect. The score is built from what a season actually produced and who actually produced it. It does not account for team chemistry, a manager's touch, a great clubhouse, or a reputation earned in October. Those things were real. They are just not in this number.

Player SkillScore

Each player-season has a SkillScore: a single number for how much offense he created, or how many runs he prevented, per opportunity. 100 is roughly league average. Stars go well above it.

Think of each player-season as a card. That card holds the ratings the game uses every time he comes to the plate or takes the mound:

Hitters

• CON — contact
• POW — power
• EYE — plate discipline
• GAP — how often his contact turns into doubles and triples rather than singles or home runs
• SPD — speed
• BNT — bunting

Pitchers

• STF — stuff
• CTL — control
• CMD — command

Power is measured against a player's own league, not against history. Sixty home runs in a low-scoring league is a different accomplishment than 66 in a season where everyone was slugging, and the card reflects that. When two clubs from different eras meet, both cards are honest to their own year, and the game plays them against each other.

How different eras are balanced

We do not inflate an old team to make it look modern. Three things keep cross-era series fair:

1. Player ratings are built relative to the league that player actually played in.
2. Team Strength Score keeps challenge matchups close.
3. The simulation applies era-specific rates — strikeouts, balls in play, extra-base hits, home runs — so games still feel like the years the teams came from.

You are free to believe the 1927 Yankees beat anybody. You just should not get an easy series because the team picker ignored strength.

Search and filters

On the team selection screen you can narrow things down:

Four ways to start a series

You always pick your own team. If you are playing another manager, he picks his. You also choose whether the series uses a designated hitter — that is your call, not forced by the league the teams came from.

Browse open challenges. A public list of series other managers have posted. Pick one, bring your own team, and you are matched.

Challenge a manager. You choose your team and send an invite link. Your opponent accepts with a team of his own within 15 points of yours. Invites expire after about 48 hours.

Post an open challenge. Same as above, except instead of sending a link you leave it on the public board for anyone in range to accept.

Play the system. You pick your team and the computer's team, and manage against the computer. Everything else works the same way.

Once a series exists, you will find it under My Series, and results arrive in your Inbox.

One honest note: the backend is still being hardened. Every so often the server drops its connection and has to be restarted. If a page stops loading or you get signed out, sign back in and open the same series from My Series. Do not start a new series to fix it — your old one is still there.

Section 3: Scouting the matchup

Who writes your series

Each series is assigned a beat writer, drawn from ten real baseball writers of the early newspaper era: Ring Lardner, Hugh Fullerton, Henry Chadwick, Grantland Rice, Charles Dryden, Sid Mercer, Damon Runyon, Sy Sanborn, Bill Phelon, and Jake Morse.

The same writer covers your scouting report, every game summary, and the series wrap — one voice for the whole series, the way a paper used to assign a club. You will see all ten before any writer repeats.

Win Probability and Average Runs

The matchup report shows your team's chance to win the series and how many runs you would expect to score per game.

Both come from a quick Monte Carlo simulation: the game plays the series up to 50 times using each club's actual runs scored and runs allowed for that season, a small adjustment for overall team quality, and home-field advantage on the 2-3-2 schedule. These are fast estimates, not full play-by-play games.

Treat them as a scouting read. The real series is decided by the actual games, with your lineup and staff decisions in them.

Team Preview

For each club you get:

• The Team Strength Score, broken into the three pieces above.
• Real season stat lines for the team's best hitters and pitchers. Players need enough playing time to qualify, so a hot 40-plate-appearance cup of coffee does not get top billing.
• A written preview from your series beat writer, using ordinary baseball statistics.

Section 4: Setting your team

When games are played

Once both managers have locked in (or you have locked in against the computer), games are simulated and published at set times each day. All times below are Eastern Time — if you are on Central, Mountain, or Pacific, adjust accordingly.

If you miss the deadline, the game is played with default cards so the series keeps moving. Your Inbox tells you when a result is ready without giving away the score.

Between publish times you can scout the next game, adjust your cards while they are still open, and give your opponent grief.

Locking in

Against another manager, both of you have to lock your lineup and staff. Until the deadline you can unlock your side and keep editing. After that, whatever was locked in is what plays. Against the computer, only you lock.

Lineup Card

Batting order

Two buttons build an order for you from your roster. You can drag or use the arrows to change anything afterward.

• Apply Standard builds a traditional order: speed at the top, contact hitters next, power in the middle, contact again at the bottom.
• Apply Sabermetric builds an on-base order: your best on-base hitter with decent speed leads off, your next-best on-base hitter bats second, your best all-around producer bats third, power follows in the middle.

Every spot in the order needs a player before you can save, and every defensive position needs to be covered by someone who actually played there. If you have two second basemen and nobody in left field, fix it before you lock — the game will not quietly cover for you.

You can set a separate batting order against left-handed and right-handed starters. Platoon splits are built into the simulation, so a batter's performance against lefties and righties genuinely differs.

You can also set a stealing tendency for each individual runner — aggressive, standard, or passive — or let him follow the team setting.

Pinch hitting

For each spot in the order, you decide whether to allow a pinch hitter and under what conditions: how late in the game (a minimum inning), and how close the score is (within a certain number of runs).

When those conditions are met, the game goes down your pinch hitter order and uses the first available bench player who can handle the position. You can keep separate pinch hitter orders against left-handed and right-handed pitchers. The game will not empty your whole bench early in a game.

Pinch hitting for your pitcher works the same way, with one addition: you also set how tired he has to be, on a green-yellow-red scale, and whether both conditions must be true or just one. A fresh starter in the third inning will not be lifted for a bat unless your settings actually call for it.

Sacrifice and squeeze

Separate from pinch hitting, you can allow a sacrifice bunt when there are runners on and fewer than two outs, with your own inning and score conditions. A successful bunt gives up an out to move the runner along; a failed one can get the lead runner thrown out. Check the squeeze box if you want the runner on third to break for home on the bunt. The batter's bunting rating affects how often it works. This setting is about bunts — sacrifice flies happen on their own.

Team baserunning

Two team-wide settings, either of which an individual runner's setting can override:

Aggressive scores more runs and runs into more outs on the bases. Conservative is the safer approach.

Defensive replacements

You can set late-inning defensive substitutions — a better glove for a bat, from a given inning on.

Double switch

When you change pitchers in a series without a designated hitter, a double switch moves the pitcher's spot in the batting order. The incoming pitcher takes a fielder's place in the order, so you control where the pitcher's at-bat falls.

Staff Card

How pitcher fatigue works

Every outing tracks how many batters a pitcher has faced against his stamina. That produces a fatigue level, which moves through four stages: fresh, working, tired, and gassed.

As a pitcher tires, his stuff goes first, then his control, then his command. He is still the same pitcher, just less sharp the longer he stays out there. Fatigue also carries across the series: a pitcher who was gassed yesterday is not fresh today, and rest matters when deciding who is available.

Starting rotation

Set who starts which game. A few things worth knowing:

• If you want a four-man rotation, leave the fifth spot empty. The game will not invent a fifth starter.
• If a scheduled starter is not available, the game moves to the next pitcher in your rotation.
• You can set rules for when a starter comes out, combining how tired he is with the score.

Bullpen roles and when each one enters

You label your relievers, and the game works through them in order, respecting each role's usual window and the situations you allowed.

Within the same role, the game prefers the fresher arm. It will not quietly use your closer to soak up innings in a blowout.

"Enter when": ahead, tied, or behind

For each reliever you check the game situations in which you are willing to use him. It is written from your team's point of view:

• Protect — your team is ahead
• Tied — the score is tied
• Trailing — your team is behind

If a reliever is set to Protect only, he will not appear in a tie game or when you are losing. Closers are usually left on Protect, with a save window of a few runs and a limited number of outs. Setup, middle, and long relievers often cover more than one situation. Mop-up is driven mostly by blowouts and by an exhausted bullpen.

You can also restrict a non-closing reliever to left-handed or right-handed batters, which is how you use a specialist.

Series Statistics

Running batting and pitching totals for the series so far, covering every game already published. The same tables show up again in the series wrap.

Section 5: Reading a game

How each plate appearance is decided

Every batter-versus-pitcher matchup runs through our own plate appearance engine. Without giving away the recipe, here is what goes into it:

• The situation you created: who is batting, who is pitching, the ballpark and era, handedness, pitcher fatigue, the inning, the outs, the runners, and the score.
• Both players' ratings: the hitter's contact, power, discipline, and gap power against the pitcher's stuff, control, and command, adjusted for the era.
• One plate appearance produces one baseball outcome — a walk, a strikeout, a ball in play and the hit or out it becomes — and then the fielding and baserunning that follow from it.

The result is a real game: every plate appearance, every pitching change, every runner. Your lineup and staff decisions change who is in the game and when, and the engine plays those matchups out.

The tabs

Occasionally the written summary strays a little from what actually happened. The play by play is the source of truth.

Section 6: Series Wrap

When the series ends, your beat writer files a closing column: how it was won, who decided it, and what the record was.

How the Series MVP is chosen

The MVP comes from the winning team, and combines three things:

Each piece is scored against the other players on the winning team, then the three are combined. The player who comes out on top is named MVP in the wrap.

The wrap also repeats the full series batting and pitching statistics.

Known issues

• Long Ball and Post-Steroid eras: doubles and some extra-base hits come in a little low compared to the real historical stats.
• Dead Ball era: strikeouts, walks, and some hit rates run a little high for those seasons.
• Coming later: the full Franchise Apex and Clash of Titans leagues, email, text, and app notifications (for now, results arrive in your Inbox), and more defensive substitution options.

Quick checklist

• ☐Create an account at dugoutlore.com
• ☐Pick your team-season
• ☐Choose how you are playing: open challenge, invite, public post, or against the computer
• ☐Decide on the designated hitter
• ☐Set your lineup and pitching staff, including your orders against lefties and righties
• ☐Lock in before the deadline (both managers, in a head-to-head series)
• ☐Watch your Inbox for the publish times
• ☐Read the Game Summary, then check the Box Score and Play by Play
• ☐After the series ends, read the wrap and the series statistics

Telling us what's wrong

Email support@chinmusic.ai with:

• The series ID from the web address
• The game number
• One sentence on what looked wrong
• Whether the play by play agreed with the written summary

Welcome to the grass.