OOTP Developments Forums

OOTP Developments Forums (https://forums.ootpdevelopments.com//index.php)
-   OOTP 14 - Historical Simulations (https://forums.ootpdevelopments.com//forumdisplay.php?f=3865)
-   -   Independent Minor Leagues (https://forums.ootpdevelopments.com//showthread.php?t=231074)

Scruff 04-18-2013 01:02 PM

Independent Minor Leagues
 
How do I add independent minor leagues?

What I want to do is have MLB, AAA (with 150% of MLB teams) and AA (with 300% of MLB teams), set up like a pyramid basically. Players would start out on their 'local' AA team when they come into the world, basically the one closest to where they played HS ball or were born (based on what I can find on baseball-reference.com and other online resources).

I want to start with Historical MLB in 1871 (the semi-realistic model that is native to OOTP - I still don't get why this can't be adjusted).

Really I only want the historical MLB players, I could care less about putting them on their correct teams. I don't mind filling the minors with ghost players and it won't be an issue if a few occasionally make the majors as bit players.

I see in the "Rules" area when setting up the league that I can have certain leagues feed into the majors once players pass an age requirement they are draft eligible right?

I would turn off the amateur draft and have this as the only draft.

If I set these minor leagues up as independent, they can have their own financials too, correct? So I could have the AAA leagues with say 20% of the MLB payrolls and the AA leagues with like 15% or something?

Thanks for any help. I plan on using the Spritze HS database for this. If I get really ambitious, I will also set up a college league and place players who went to college on their actual college teams, and also set up foreign leagues as those players start popping up in the database (with different 'feeder' ages).

Is this possible? I realize there's a bunch of manual work involved here if so.

Dr. P.R. Park III 04-18-2013 08:31 PM

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say it's possible, but most (if not all) of the machinery will have to be operated manually. You'll probably have to do quite a bit of DB finangling to get the players to the teams like you described, and if that's the case, Spritze is the primary and most helpful point-of-contact.

The universe sounds intriguing, but bottom line is that whenever you do that much tweaking within OOTP, the game is prone to crash (probably for a number of reasons).

khucke 04-19-2013 03:27 PM

I experimented along the same lines, Scruff. When settting financials you have to form an Association of the major league and the minor leagues. Otherwise you're unable to set seperate financial levels.

Another question is how to facilitate the advancement of players to the major league. The age limit you proposed is rather static for my taste. Historically the best minor league players were sold to a major league team, there is no way to replicate this within OOTP. I try the setting for 'Free Agency After 1 Year' for my minor leagues. Thus after one year the best players enter the free agent pool. Then major league teams should outbid minor league teams for the top players. A problematic side effect though is minor league teams giving multi-year contracts to their best players. A manual editing seems to me the only remedy to this.

I'd be very interested to hear how you plan to proceed.

Scruff 04-19-2013 04:12 PM

Interesting khucke . . . So you treat the minor leagues as major leagues, but with a lower salary structure that is manually edited at the league/team level I assume? So you don't set them as unaffiliated AAA or AA, for example, right?

That could be a decent way to go, even if it isn't what you said.

If you use the reserve clause system with no multi-year contracts that would get past the issue of minor league teams giving multi-year deals. Although think of Lefty Grove - he couldn't get out of Baltimore for 5 years in the 20s, so that's not necessarily unrealistic.

Since I'm using the Spritze HS database, what I was thinking of doing was have all 18-year olds start in AA. If I leave the age max at 0, and set that league as a feeder to AAA, all players would be eligible to be drafted into AAA at the beginning of the next season, but I'd only set it to say 5 rounds - whoever isn't drafted gets stuck in AA for another year.

Then I'd do the same thing with AAA - that would feed into ML. Same thing, 5 rounds of draft, anyone who isn't drafted does another year in AAA. So no one would be MLB eligible until they are 20 - I'm fine with that. 18-AA, 19-AAA, 20-MLB if all goes well. Obviously some will spend extra years in the minors.

So over time you would have career AA guys, career AAA guys too which will be fun. I'm very big on independent minor leagues trying to win. I would love it if there was a way to transfer money from the team drafting players to the lower level teams - a set amount for a 1st rounder, 2nd rounder, etc.

I would love to set the guys who went to college to go into a college league that feeds players into AAA. Anyone who isn't drafted for AAA becomes a AA free agent.

I think the key to getting this to work right is figuring out how many players are retiring (and/or dropping a level) and getting promoted, and having the correct number of draft rounds to replenish the leagues appropriately.

Finally, what would also be cool about this is the ability to do expansion and relegation through the minors.

When the major league expands, AAA teams are promoted - there is no expansion draft or anything. They just get increased budget, attendance, etc. AA teams are promoted to back fill AAA and then AA expands with new small market cities.

Also, through this system you could easily do non-expansion promotion and relegation each year. The demoted team would get a lower budget and be forced to drop a few players, who would become free agents. Or they could make trades. I'm not sure of how the AI would handle this though.

Scruff 04-19-2013 04:38 PM

Another thing to consider is getting the financials to work right . . . I assume you want the average team to turn a profit, or stuff will start breaking.

So you also need be careful to set the average ticket prices, attendance, and salaries for the lower leagues in a way that allows teams in the lower leagues to make a profit. Shouldn't be too hard, but it's something to be aware of.

I might look in my Football Manager game to get an idea of the attendance/payroll proportions between the Premier, Championship, League 1 and League 2 and try to set mine in a similar way.

mjj55409 04-20-2013 09:33 AM

Keep us updated on this. Sounds like a very interesting project.

Scruff 04-21-2013 03:48 PM

2011-12 English Payrolls based on FM2012:

Premier League (=MLB): $71.91mm average, range $192mm to $19.09mm, stdev $43.36mm, median $62.35mm

Championship League (=AAA): $14.85mm average, range $44mm to $5.72mm, stdev $8.95mm, median $12.61mm

League 1 (=AA): $3.35mm average, range from $9.93mm to $1.63mm, stdev $2.08mm, median $2.64mm

League 2 (=A): $1.84mm average, range from $2.85mm to $982k, stdev $520k, median $1.77mm

One thing to note is the overlap - the highest payrolls in the lower leagues are above the lowest payrolls in the next league up. This makes sense, and is mostly (but not entirely) a result of relegation and demotion. The 4th lowest payroll in the EPL $35.18mm, is nearly double the 4th highest payroll in the Championship $19.87 mm.

Also note the medians being much lower than the means. A few high end teams are blowing the salary structure out of proportion a bit. I'm going to institute 50% revenue sharing, so I don't think I'll see quite these extremes. The initial payrolls and league classifications will be based on 1870 city population and I'll update that each year, so cities will be brought into the correct leagues at the correct times historically.

I'm also not going to put SF and New Orleans in the leagues early, because in 1871 no one was traveling from Boston to SF. I'll set those teams up in regional leagues and split their population up so the Southern League might have 4 teams from New Orleans and one from Memphis and Mobile or something.

No team will have more than double the fan base of the lowest team in the league. The 'extra' population will be used to field lower level teams from those cities. So Manhattan might have an MLB team, two or three AAA and two or three AA teams, etc.

It takes forever to sim a season in that game, but once it's done I'll throw some attendance numbers up there. I took the payroll numbers from the beginning of the season.

Converting those to percentages, AAA payroll is 20.65% of MLB, AA is 4.65% of MLB and A is 2.56% of MLB, which is what I'll shoot for with the average payrolls when tweaking the financials.

Scruff 04-21-2013 05:35 PM

Attendance

Premier League: 34,694 (15,721-75,618), median 31,297, stdev 14,374
Championship: 18,362 (5,907-33,050), median 16,610, stdev 6,065
League 1: 7,591 (3,043-20,021), median 5,643, stdev 4,891
League 2: 4,351 (1,915-10,277), median 3,716, stdev 2,076

Championship average attendance at 53% of EPL, League 1 22%, League 2 12.5%

bwburke94 04-21-2013 06:25 PM

This is an interesting setup, I'll start one of these after the patch.

Scruff 04-22-2013 12:43 AM

Just thought of something. Will treating all of these leagues as major cause player development issues?

Lukas Berger 04-22-2013 01:03 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Scruff (Post 3488572)
Just thought of something. Will treating all of these leagues as major cause player development issues?

I don't think so. I've played with a bunch of leagues set to major in previous versions of OOTP and not noticed any issues.

thbroman 04-24-2013 10:42 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by khucke (Post 3486570)
I experimented along the same lines, Scruff. When settting financials you have to form an Association of the major league and the minor leagues. Otherwise you're unable to set seperate financial levels.

Another question is how to facilitate the advancement of players to the major league. The age limit you proposed is rather static for my taste. Historically the best minor league players were sold to a major league team, there is no way to replicate this within OOTP. I try the setting for 'Free Agency After 1 Year' for my minor leagues. Thus after one year the best players enter the free agent pool. Then major league teams should outbid minor league teams for the top players. A problematic side effect though is minor league teams giving multi-year contracts to their best players. A manual editing seems to me the only remedy to this.

I'd be very interested to hear how you plan to proceed.

I admire Scruff's dedication to making this work. But until the limitations described here by khucke are finally overcome (and some of us have been pleading for such features literally for years), we'll never be able to effectively duplicate the historical minor league universe of the early and mid-20th century.


All times are GMT -4. The time now is 02:12 AM.

Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.10
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.
Copyright © 2020 Out of the Park Developments