I'd previously mentioned this in General when I was about half-way done checking into this issue, but I think Tech Support is the better place for it, so here goes...
The Game Guide says the following about player ratings at the time they're created for the draft:
Quote:
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Originally Posted by page 94
A separate, complex formula calculates the current ratings for amateurs by assessing a number of factors, including player creation modifiers, the age of the player, whether he is coming out of high school or college, and a certain "inexperience factor". Additionally, the major league equivalencies of the lowest minor league within the league system are applied to the player's ratings as well.. This complex formula helps the game decide how far along each rookie is in his development toward his potential, and it helps to ensure that most rookies are at least 2 to 5 years away from being ready for the big leagues.
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Based on that, I tried to set up a league with a single minor league that had its equivalencies set only slightly below those of the ML, hoping that players created in the draft would be much closer to being Major League-ready. (Essentially I was trying to create something like an indy league that has open tryouts, where even the better players are much closer to their potential ratings than a typical draftee.)
Unfortunately that didn't seem to work, and as I had set minor-league free agency to 3 years, even the most talented guys failed to reach the majors with their original club. (And in fact, failed to even be signed by anybody else afterwards, in some cases.) And after simulating some different scenarios, it appears that the minor league MLEs in fact aren't used for the draft at all, which is disappointing. Now, I'm wondering whether that just means the Game Guide got it wrong, or if the Guide is correct and it's not working as intended.
At any rate, see the attached spreadsheet for the results of my study. I simulated 16-team leagues with a 20-round draft (i.e. 320 players total), with four different setups:
AAA: Major League + AAA level
R: Major League + R Level
All: Major League + all five minor levels
Res: Major League only
All PCMs, MLEs and Development/Aging parameters were the defaults. I then sorted the created players by each skill, and calculated an average of each skill level for the best 10%, best 20%, best 50%, and all players. (I was sort-of expecting that having only a high-level minor league might boost the top prospects but not the scrubs, hence this approach.) This was done three times for each setup. The ratings listed in the spreadsheet are based on 1-20 rating scales.
There's definitely a lot of variation in the created draft classes even with identical league setups, but overall it appears that the draft classes were all created based on identical parameters, i.e. the Major League settings only.
I realize that I can boost the player skill progression by increasing the Development Speed settings, and that's probably what I'm going to try next, but Seviien's research (
Thread 1,
Thread 2) seems to indicate that even doing that might not result in enough of a speed-up in player development.