[actionjackson]

Originally Posted by Umeboshi

I don't think this is an issue with settings. I think there is either a bug here, or at the very least the game is creating very unrealistic results which I don’t know how to fix by using settings.

What follows is how I reproduced a situation where minor-league prospects are becoming free agents much earlier than they are supposed to in a historical game.

Create a new historical game using the wizard; all options are default except:

• Season: 1958
• Import real minor leagues: yes
• Select a team: Pittsburgh Pirates

In creating this game, I did not go into advanced mode and tweak anything before starting the game, so what I have here is just the default game settings as produced by the wizard. One thing in particular that I’d like to point out is that, in a standard game, you can set configure things like the length of service time required to reach major and minor league free agency, but those options are NOT available to change, or even view, when you start a historical game.

After creating the game, I go into “do not disturb” mode and sim forward to the day before off-season starts. At this point, everything seems normal: there are very few (often zero) free agents shown in the MLB Transactions / Free Agents tab. Each team’s Upcoming FA list includes maybe a dozen or so players whose minor league free agency eligibility is listed as“Eligible after this season” in the Contract & Status tab.

I turn off “do not disturb” mode and made sure that I haven’t delegated any roster responsibilities that might lead to any of the players in my organization getting released. Then, I sim forward to the first day of off-season. A smallish number of players show up in the Free Agents tab (3-12 or so, as I remember, depending on the simulation run).

A few weeks after the season ends (thus, late October or early November) an ‘event’ occurs where the game does some heavy processing loading and processing the player databases. After puzzling over what was happening for a bit, I realized that what the game is doing is here is adding into the game (as free agents) players who had not played in 1958. For example, Earl Wilson played in the minor leagues from 1953-1956, sat out the 1957 and 1958 seasons, and then resumed playing in 1959. Earl wasn’t available in my game when I started it, since he wasn’t on any US major or minor league roster at the start of the 1958 season, but he did resume playing in 1959. So, sure, this seems fine as well (well, I’m not sure if sitting out for those two seasons actually makes him a free agent, but that’s maybe a discussion for a different thread).


So, as a result of this ‘event,’ now I see perhaps 650 or so players in the MLB Transactions / Free Agents tab.

The problem is that this ‘event’ often results in several minor-league prospects with low professional service time being placed into the Free Agents tab as well, when they should not be:





So, on the above screenshot, I’ve highlighted the names of three prospects that should not have reached free agency, as far as I can tell: Al Jackson, Mike Cuellar, and Gary Peters. All three of these players did play in the minors during the 1958 season, they have no major-league service time, their time-as-a-professional ranges from 1 year+169 days to 2 years+169 days, and the game lists them as not eligible for minor league free agency, both before and after this event occurs.



…



So, exactly why are these prospects becoming free agents?



Is the computer AI releasing them for some reason? This can’t be it, at least in the case of Al Jackson, since he was in my organization, I had control of the roster, and I certainly did not release him. In the case of Peters and Cuellar, there was no reason for the computer GMs to release top prospects. As far as I know, the only reason the AI might do this is there was a roster limit, but I purposely did not set any roster or service time limits in this game.

Are they reaching their minor-league service time limits? Well, I don’t know for sure, since I don’t know of any way to view or set the free agency service time limits in an historical game (as opposed to a standard game, where you can). They certainly aren’t anywhere near the usual service time limit for minor league free agency, which is six years.



…



So here are a few complicating issues:

• I cannot reproduce this situation where these prospects enter free agency every time I run this game. In one simulation run, all three of these prospects entered free agency as a result of this event; in other simulation runs, none, or only one or two of these prospects entered free agency. So, whatever is happening, it seems more complicated than that the game is simply using an odd service time limit for reaching free agency.
• I also have not been able, so far, to determine exactly when the ‘event’ occurs … the most usual time seems to be about 2 weeks after the end of the season, but it’s not consistent for every simulation run.
• It’s possible that other minor league players are reaching free agency too early, not just prospects … I just haven’t looked very hard at the less-talented people to see if this is happening to them as well.

I don't know for a fact because I'm not in front of your game, but I would think this should be covered by the settings at Game Settings > League Settings > Rules > Roster Rules and by the settings at Game Settings > League Settings > Financials > Financial & Free Agency Settings. If you're in 1958 (with regards to "Financials"), you're still playing in the Reserve-Clause Era, which means no free agency. There should still be a bunch of settings in there for minimum service years though.

The other thing that could be happening is the old "AI attempting to put good prospects through waivers and losing them via the waiver wire" bug. That's never fun.

I can't be too sure though because I play random debut historicals with free agency/arbitration enabled (no Reserve Clause), and reserve rosters instead of the 40-man roster, so I never see this kind of thing. Try an advanced search on prospects, waivers or something like that and see if you can find others that have had similar problems to what you're seeing on OOTP17. I wish I could help you more with this, but that's all I can suggest for now.