1960 Expansion Draft

[luckymann]

Just getting ready for this in my Bucs save and wanted to see if I've got this right.

As far as I can tell, the rules IRL can't really be replicated in-game - rather than protecting players, the seven existing AL clubs made seven players on their active rosters on August 31, 1960 and eight others from their 40-man rosters available to be selected by the incoming franchises. There was also a limit of seven players able to be taken from any individual club. The IRL 1960 Expansion Draft was 31 rounds.

In the game, you cannot split it by division, so ALL clubs, NL and AL, are subject to the above rules. Moreover, you can only choose players to be protected rather than nominate those eligible for selection.

So I am thinking the following rules seem about fair:

• 40 Rounds, serpentine
• 16 protected players
• Auto-protect < 3 years
• Maximum 6 picked from any team

What are your thoughts and have any of you some experience in this specific process?

Thanks

G

[Brad K]

Since you're not playing with historical minors players are drafted prior to their first MLB season and that's when they years of experience start. So with protecting 16 plus the less than three years experience (starting from their first MLB season) the effect is basically you can keep every important player unless you're a highly veteran team.

However you have two expansion teams picking from 16 teams instead of 8 which is a bit of compensation. I think overall the expansion teams should be about as weak as real life.

Are you using minors or a reserve roster?

[luckymann]

Originally Posted by Brad K

Since you're not playing with historical minors players are drafted prior to their first MLB season and that's when they years of experience start. So with protecting 16 plus the less than three years experience (starting from their first MLB season) the effect is basically you can keep every important player unless you're a highly veteran team.

However you have two expansion teams picking from 16 teams instead of 8 which is a bit of compensation. I think overall the expansion teams should be about as weak as real life.

Are you using minors or a reserve roster?

One level of minors with a 44 roster limit, so 70 players all told for each franchise.

I just tested it on 23 and Frank Torre was the first overall pick, while we lost six fringe guys.

My main concern, well ahead of how competitive these new franchises are, is positional coverage. First pass that looks OK, the AI has done a decent job regarding organisational depth. Obviously, with only 46 players we'll need ghosts for the minors in 1961 and likely right through until this expansion spurt is done and dusted. But I think the parent clubs will be OK.

That said, if I can make it so the league stays a bit more evenly balanced than it was IRL through this period then I am also keen to do that. So I might either reduce the auto-protect to 2 years or the protection list to 14. Likely the former.

I just bought v24 so will test there before deciding.

Thanks bud.

G

[Charlie Hough]

I've based my expansion drafts on the rules from more recent real-world drafts, including 15 players on the protected list and auto-protection for players with fewer than 3 years of service time. It's still not true to the real-life rules, which are way more detailed and nuanced, but it seemed to work okay and forced a couple of difficult decisions when I was managing a team.

I wish OOTP supported the full complexity and variability of historical expansion drafts based on the actual rules at the time. If you combined the true real-life rules with historical minors, that would make expansion far more interesting and give expansion teams more of a competitive edge or make things harder for the human and AI GMs. But all of that would be difficult to implement, and it's not a huge number of OOTP users who would use expansion and the historically accurate expansion rules anyway.

[Brad K]

Competitive meaning... you want expansion teams to win more than 40 games but you still want them to finish last? LOL.

I've usually reduced the number of protected players from default but I think your idea of reducing the years protected is better.

An interesting thing about expansion is that with few existing teams you need to protect fewer players and with a lot you need to protect more. If not you end up with the Las Vegas Golden Knights.

[Charlie Hough]

Originally Posted by Brad K

Competitive meaning... you want expansion teams to win more than 40 games but you still want them to finish last?

No, I'm thinking in terms of the 1993 Florida Marlins and Colorado Rockies. Neither team finished last in its division, and the Marlins especially made some extremely smart moves through pre-draft maneuvers, the expansion draft, and subsequent trades and free agency. Both teams were able to be much more competitive right away than was possible in previous expansions, especially with free agency involved and the fact that they were able to participate in the 1992 amateur draft and stock their minor leagues.

By 1995, the Rockies were a winning team, and the Marlins won a World Series in 1997, and a lot of that had to do with the initial 1992 amateur and expansion drafts and how things played out from there.

Unfortunately, though, OOTP can't simulate how things actually played out because it doesn't have the correct rules and doesn't give expansion teams a chance to start early with an amateur draft one year before their first season in MLB. I also don't think that the OOTP AI could ever be as smart and sophisticated as Dave Dombrowski and the Marlins were in wheeling and dealing, building a scouting and minor league system, signing amateur free agents and veteran free agents, and leveraging all the tools available to them to build a winning franchise in a hurry. But it would be fantastic if it could.

[Brad K]

Originally Posted by Charlie Hough

Unfortunately, though, OOTP can't simulate how things actually played out because it doesn't have the correct rules and doesn't give expansion teams a chance to start early with an amateur draft one year before their first season in MLB.

If historical rookies are enabled it gives the effect of having started before the actual expansion season.

[luckymann]

Reducing the auto-protect from 3 years to 2 gave me good results and personally means I'll have to make a few tough and quite strategic decisions - especially given the various house rules I have in place. It essentially gives the Expansion clubs the look of an early rebuild, with guys a few years off their peak. So I think I'll go with that.

I want them to lose less than 100 the first couple seasons, at or around 500 by mid-decade and competing for playoffs by 1970.

It's a fascinating time, because we've got to do it all again next year as well.

Maybe if I had my time again I would have gone with rooks going to their OG team and cut arb to 2 years and FA to 4. Oh, well, next time.

Appreciate the feedback guys.

G

[Charlie Hough]

Originally Posted by Brad K

If historical rookies are enabled it gives the effect of having started before the actual expansion season.

I play with historical minors now and stopped using imports of rookies when they made their MLB debuts. Even if I still used the old method, it would fall far short of properly simulating how expansion teams could be built up with rules based on recent real-life expansions. Without the expansion teams being able to participate in the amateur draft one year before they begin in MLB, and without them having their minor league affiliates playing one year in advance, they can't stock their minor leagues or build out their organizations the way they should with historical minors. If you're playing with rookies based on when they made their MLB debuts, it's even worse because the expansion teams may not have access to the kind of amateur free agents, draft picks and other players who never made the majors but were were pivotal to helping them make trades and build out their organizations.

[luckymann]

Originally Posted by Charlie Hough

I play with historical minors now and stopped using imports of rookies when they made their MLB debuts. Even if I still used the old method, it would fall far short of properly simulating how expansion teams could be built up with rules based on recent real-life expansions. Without the expansion teams being able to participate in the amateur draft one year before they begin in MLB, and without them having their minor league affiliates playing one year in advance, they can't stock their minor leagues or build out their organizations the way they should with historical minors. If you're playing with rookies based on when they made their MLB debuts, it's even worse because the expansion teams may not have access to the kind of amateur free agents, draft picks and other players who never made the majors but were were pivotal to helping them make trades and build out their organizations.

So how / when do you bring them into the game? Manually a couple years early or something like that? Or do they just come in via the minors? What about guys that never played in them?

[fredbeene]

Originally Posted by luckymann

Just getting ready for this in my Bucs save and wanted to see if I've got this right.

As far as I can tell, the rules IRL can't really be replicated in-game - rather than protecting players, the seven existing AL clubs made seven players on their active rosters on August 31, 1960 and eight others from their 40-man rosters available to be selected by the incoming franchises. There was also a limit of seven players able to be taken from any individual club. The IRL 1960 Expansion Draft was 31 rounds.

In the game, you cannot split it by division, so ALL clubs, NL and AL, are subject to the above rules. Moreover, you can only choose players to be protected rather than nominate those eligible for selection.

So I am thinking the following rules seem about fair:

• 40 Rounds, serpentine
• 16 protected players
• Auto-protect < 3 years
• Maximum 6 picked from any team

What are your thoughts and have any of you some experience in this specific process?

Thanks

G

We still do not have the ability to start the expansion draft with ratings of of prior season just ended. Inexplicably, the only option is to sim the prior year and then start the expansion.
No one cares though as long fonts are slightly different from the previous year

[Charlie Hough]

Originally Posted by luckymann

So how / when do you bring them into the game? Manually a couple years early or something like that? Or do they just come in via the minors? What about guys that never played in them?

First off, I highly recommend playing with historical minors. I started doing this in OOTP 23, and I've had the most fun I've ever had with the game. It adds so much depth and realism, and it's great to see so many "what if" scenarios where a player who never made the majors actually becomes a solid MLB player or finally gets a chance to shine because he's in a different organization and isn't stuck in AAA because there's an Ozzie Smith or George Brett ahead of him.

The historical minors option automatically imports players for the year when they made their professional baseball debut, as long as you're running the draft in December during the off-season before that upcoming year. Rookies will start in the minors unless their ratings are good enough for MLB, in which case they might end up being placed on an MLB roster. Players like Bob Horner are in that category. The historical minors option also maintains all the real-life affiliations and minor leagues, so most players are going to end up at the level where they started, with some slight variation depending on their current ratings, your game settings, which organization drafts them, and how the AI evaluates them.

Unfortunately, you can't run the draft in June of the year when players made their pro debuts because the game assumes that you're running it in December of the year before. So it will import players one year too early if you set the draft to happen in June. This also means that, when you run the draft in December, some players may start playing in the minors (or majors) several months too early because they'll already be drafted and will be available for rosters on opening day. But if they're assigned to low-A minor league teams, they won't end up playing until June anyway, since those leagues don't start playing until then.

I reported this as an issue in OOTP 23 and asked for the game to provide an option so we can use historical minors, schedule the draft in June, and have players imported at that time for the current year in question. But unfortunately that hasn't made it into the game for OOTP 24.

In OOTP 23, there were also some rare instances where certain players were imported with MLB-level or AAA-level ratings based on having extremely exceptional class-A stats in their pro debut year. I reported that as well, and thankfully that seems to have been fixed.

[luckymann]

The only issue I have with HMs is how the save's file size becomes so big over a long-term save. As someone with OC tendencies but limited tech skills, I manually back up my saves every few days even though I also have a backup program for my entire HD. This just becomes too unwieldy for my liking using HMs which, along with certain problems that have persisted in this part of the game, has just scared me off them. Even with logs limited to 2 years and no WPA / highlights, my Bucs save is at over 4 Gb halfway through without HMs. FaceGen is the major issue, I think, but I just can't fathom not having player faces in the game.

I do intend to use HMs in my next long-term historical save as it only starts in the 1960s and am really looking forward to all those things you describe. I always do the Draft in December, so that issue doesn't bother me.

Appreciate the insights. Where's your file size at after how many seasons played and any tips for keeping it to a minimum?

Thanks

G

[Brad K]

Originally Posted by Charlie Hough

First off, I highly recommend playing with historical minors. I started doing this in OOTP 23, and I've had the most fun I've ever had with the game.

Is there a way to avoid having to do full hands on of minor league transactions while preventing the minor league players you want to keep from being traded?

[luckymann]

Originally Posted by Brad K

Is there a way to avoid having to do full hands on of minor league transactions while preventing the minor league players you want to keep from being traded?

I think you can set the AI to handle lineups and even call-ups and send-downs but handle all trading and transactions yourself, just like if you're using your own ahistorical MiLB setup.

[Brad K]

I don't want to do anything with the minors except keep the the players I want to keep. If I assign minor league transactions to the Asst GM can I prevent certain players from being traded? IOW, is the trade status feature available and if se to no trade and does it over ride the Asst GM?

[luckymann]

Originally Posted by Brad K

I don't want to do anything with the minors except keep the the players I want to keep. If I assign minor league transactions to the Asst GM can I prevent certain players from being traded? IOW, is the trade status feature available and if se to no trade and does it over ride the Asst GM?

Maybe in the Game Strategy section - lock to team?

Haven't got the game open but will do so tomorrow and try and be more definitive.

[Brad K]

There are possibly tools that could make it work but I was hoping someone had tried it. OOTP often does not work as would be expected based on the names of the settings and the explanations in the manual.

[luckymann]

Originally Posted by Brad K

There are possibly tools that could make it work but I was hoping someone had tried it. OOTP often does not work as would be expected based on the names of the settings and the explanations in the manual.

This should do it, along with the Lock to team option in the player strategy as long as you are happy for him / them to not be promoted.

[Charlie Hough]

Originally Posted by Brad K

I don't want to do anything with the minors except keep the the players I want to keep. If I assign minor league transactions to the Asst GM can I prevent certain players from being traded? IOW, is the trade status feature available and if se to no trade and does it over ride the Asst GM?

I've never had to worry about this, and I've never had to lock players to a team. I allow the AI to handle all the lineups and day-to-day management of the minors, including managing the injury list. But I handle all the actual transactions for my MLB team, so the AI can't trade away players in the organization, and I also handle all minor league promotions/demotions. That might sound like a lot of work, but it's actually minimal.

For the most part, you're not going to promote and demote players within your minor leagues. Players are generally going to play the entire season at one minor league level, and most of your transactions will be limited to sending players down to AAA or calling them up to MLB in case of injury or performance issues.

A few times per season, I check the minor league rosters to see how certain players are performing, but only if they are players with good potential or good ratings and whose development is particularly important to the organization's future. Otherwise, it largely runs on auto-pilot, even though I'm technically handling minor league transactions.

Sometimes I'll lock a minor league player into a position to make sure the AI uses that player in that role. Also, if a guy seems like he has ratings to be in AAA but he's hitting .180 after a couple of months, I'll send him down to AA for a number of weeks or the rest of the season, to see if he can turn things around and later perform better in AAA. Similarly, if a player is crushing it at one level and I want to move him up a level before the next season, I might promote him. I've even released a few minor leaguers when there are a lot of players at a given level and it's clear that they have no future and aren't even being used. But I only make a handful of total minor league moves each season, and I play out weeks at a time or sometimes even a couple of months without even looking at anything in the minors.