Quote:
Originally Posted by Syd Thrift
To ensure that youngsters keep popping in when you expand the cohort of players who are at or near 100% of their full potential either by slowing down aging or increasing development speed, the way to make that work is to lower the number of players entering your universe every year. Since the vast majority of players enter via the draft, that's the way to go.
The rule of thumb is that you want the draft to have a number of rounds / player-round equal to 3-5 times the number of minor league levels you have with a minimum "level" of 1 if you're using nothing but reserve rosters. I worded that weirdly but it *does* matter if you're using semi-independent or fully independent minor leagues. If you've got, say, 16 teams and a total of 80 minor league teams but only have 32 of them affiliated, that means you want the draft *pool* to be be between 15 and 25 rounds long and the actual draft length to be between 6 and 10 rounds.
What I'm getting to is this: if you've created longer peaks by messing with the tools, you'll want to trend close to 3 rounds per level than to 5. 5 is all right for default settings but you might find 4 rounds to be enough if your peak length is longer. I don't have a hard and fast rule on this although I guess it'd make sense that having 20% more peak = having 20% fewer players, if that helps...
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Thanks for the input on the number of draft rounds. That is something I really did not consider.
On a related note, what do you think about service time limits for minor leagers? I have gone back and forth on this issue. The reason I like service limits is that I hate seeing 28, 29, 30 year olds in A-ball or even Rookie Ball. However, running some tests, I have noticed that having service limits seems to actually cause the CPU teams to leave young players in lower minors a lot longer than they would normally. I have seen top prospects languish in the GCL and Low A for several years, even though their stats and ratings show they should have been playing at least a level or 2 higher.
Without the limits, they seem to be promoted based on ratings and stats, but then you have the 30 year olds in A-ball. With the limits in place, prospects seem to be only promoted because they have reached the service limit for their respective minor league level. I am just trying to find the right balance and am interested in hearing other players opinions on this.