[jdw]

Originally Posted by luckymann

Dear Lord, how lame this whole process has become in the past few versions of the game. Same daftness season in, season out.

And you aren't even touching on the AI GM Trading issues.

Everytime I return to OOTP, I tend to do Historical Career League runs that start in the early 1970s. The AI GM trades of Joe Morgan always are the breakers of Suspended Disbelief in running there. They happen in at least half the replays that I do, and almost always are worse than the Real Life Terrible Morgan Trade.

I thought I'd test just how bad of a deal the AI GM would make.

I'm the 1970 Red Sox. Import settings were 1+1+1 3 Year Calculations / Recalc, Real Stats, default trading / valuation settings, etc. Tried to be as vanilla as possible.

This is the degree to which the AI GM of the Astros could be fleeced:

Thursday, April 2nd , 1970

Traded 26-year old SS Rico Petrocelli, 32-year old 3B George Thomas, 22-year old LF Joe Lahoud, and 22-year old CF Billy Conigliaro to the Houston Astros, getting 26-year old 2B Joe Morgan, 28-year old RF Jimmy Wynn, 25-year old 3B Doug Rader, 27-year old RHP Mike Marshall, and 22-year old LF Cesar Geronimo in return.

I probably could have pushed harder. But I was laughing too hard when the Sox were ending up with:

1. the best player of the 1970s
2. a near-HOF CF who still had his career year to come in 1974
3. a starting 3B who would be useful through 1977 (8 years!)
4. a RP who would still be useful in 1979 (through the decade!)
5. a trade-bait/back up OF as a throw-in

For Rico having peaked the year before, and... a bunch of garbage.

As mentioned, just about every 1970-72 Joe Morgan trade the AI Astros or AI Reds make is terrible. This is just numbing on default.

Any of us who try to take this seriously and try to avoid building a 140+ win team have to set extreme rules on how we trade. Same if playing under the financials. But it's painful to feel like we need to restrict ourselves for realism, only to see the AI GMs do something stupid.

It's usually the big name trades that catch the eye, it's across the board. Pulling up another replay that I ran recently, these are AI-with-AI GM trades:

Saturday, June 13th , 1970
The New York Mets traded 22-year old SS Ted Martinez and 23-year old LHP Rich Folkers to the Pittsburgh Pirates, getting 30-year old RHP Dave Giusti in return.

Giusti's starting career is over, but he has 8 years of good RP work ahead of him from 1970-1977, with only 1976 being above league average in FIP+ right at 102. Which you could easily live with in a 5-man 1970s bullpen, relative to a lot of other teams' pens. Martinez was a garbage player, while Folkers was spotty and not as valuable as Giusti.

At the time of the trade, Giusti was 5-1 with 5 SV, a 2.55 ERA & 94 FIP+. He's 30 with 1971-77 to come.

Tuesday, July 28th , 1970
The San Francisco Giants traded 26-year old 2B Tito Fuentes and 24-year old 3B Al Gallagher to the Kansas City Royals, getting 27-year old LHP Jim Rooker in return.

Fuentes was at best a mediocre 2B, with some passable non-blackhole seasons. 1977 was good, but almost a dead cat bounce as he was toast the next year.

Gallagher was nothing.

Rooker was a under-100 FIP+ starter through 1976, 7 total years. His ERA+ are rough in 1971-72, and his innings down. But he bounced back for his career best run from 1973-76. His FIP+ fell off in 1977, but it's also one of those seasons where if you had a good defense, you could run him out in the back end of your rotation rather than a blackhole. The Pirates did, and it worked.

You're building a team, there is value in that 1970 + 1973-76, and you can use him in 1971-72 & 1977 depending what you have around him. It's a small deal, but Fuentes isn't really of value.

Friday, July 31st , 1970
The Baltimore Orioles traded 29-year old LF Curt Motton to the Houston Astros, getting 27-year old LHP Jack DiLauro and 24-year old LF Bob Watson in return.

Curt Morton is like a strange Rob Deer before Rob Deer. The import rated him at 42/81/93/100, largely driven by his inflated 1969 season. He was falling apart and unplayable by 1971. Perhaps ahead of his time where he would have been a useful RHB in a very strict platoon combo since he couldn't hit RHP if his life depended on it.

Bob Watson was quite a good hitter whose best seasons were impacted by the Astro Dome, and that he should have been a 1B/DH his whole career.

The 1970 O's? Look them up. They had Boog Powell at 1B, Frank Robinson + Paul Blair + the aforementioned Buford across the OF along with Merv Rettenmund as the roving 4th OF hitting .322/.394/.544. They don't have a spot at the moment for Watson.

OOTP does that all the time. Granted, the Astros have Mayberry coming up and OF as well. In theory someone needed to eventually move. But there are better places Watson could have gone, and for players who have actual careers.

For the AI O's, things *may* sort themselves out. They may make a trade. Buford & Rettenmund fall apart in 1972. Boog instantly falls from his 1970 MVP level downward in 1971, but 1+1+1 along with offense in general being down in 1971-72 may save him from Watson taking the job - Bogg isn't a terrible offensive player at that point.

Anyway, this is just one of those pointless AI GM trades that happens all the time where a good player is traded for garbage, and far too often ended up in a situation where someone gets blocked out of a starting job.

In turn, I can look at the Brewers OF, see a bunch of garbage, and feel bad that Watson didn't end up there where he could be a local hero for the next decade.

Anyway, it usually is the trade AI that sends me into a multiyear break from OOTP. It just a killer.