[NoOne]

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General Promotion Tips:
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Make sure you don't have multiple high-end prospects fighting each other for playing time at any particular MiL Level. This is where you may need to use a forced role on a position player.

Cull the minors of very poorly rated players before the draft and at the end of the season. This makes offering minor league contracts at the end of the season in bulk very easy with just 1 or 2 filters on the Upcoming FA screen.

Offer Minor league contracts in the offseason to the "Filler" players in your Minors. If you've done a good job culling the minors year-to-year, you will offer almost all of them another year in your system with very little effort involved. This will be the single easiest thing you can do to improve your MiL win/loss records. It takes way less time and effort than sifting through MiL FAs for vialbe filler options.

Don't move them every month! Stick to a schedule as suggested in the outline - which just says to look at them, not that you have to do anything at that time. You will learn nothing useful from 1 month of stats. For those few exceptions, it is because the player is borderline and you are actively choosing to give them a 2-month trial at that level.

2-month Trials: Focus more on their development. That should be your ONLY focus in the minors, if your goal is to maximize MLB wins. Unless stats are wicked bad or good, don't react to them. If you think the ratings are wrong, then act accordingly. If you don't see upward ticks in scouting or development reports he either is a slacker, getting unlucky, or possibly overmatched... so use the info available to make a good decision.

During the offseason things can change significantly. I am not sure if it matters in the offseason which MiL team they are on... nonetheless, I make sure to promote throughout the offseason, just in case. Since being on the Active roster means they stay in game-ready shape, i assume the roster a prospect is on should fit their ability even in the offseason.

Spring Training: I'd move any AAA player and any borderline one. If their contact suggests they can hit .240-.250, i'm okay with it. If you stuck to the suggestions above, any AA/AAA picther should be good enough for RP work. If you use a 6th SP in ST, like me, make sure they are at least a capable AAA SP. I typically stick to AAA'ers, and only use AA'ers if i don't have enough to rest my players 1/2rd-1/5th of the time, depending on position. e.g. My catcher only goes 1/2 the time in ST.

Since positions change and team need play a role, make sure they are play the position in the field that they are listed as. This is probably more important for Morale, but may affect other things too. The ai will switch RP/SP, but won't change the position of a third basemen who plays everyday as the shortstop.


General Related Tips:

Use Service time limits at the lower levels, if you want to do such things. Don't be too strict or you will create a bottle neck. I'd suggest matching # of years you allow at Rookie level to match up with # of rounds in your draft and the most rookie teams any 1 MLB team owns.

e.g. - Let's say one team has 4 rookie leages and we have a 35 round draft. If you only allow 2 years at rookie level, you will be short a large number of players. ~70 plus a few stragglers from July 2nd IAFA or scouting discoveries each year is not going to fill those 4 teams. Discoveries have a hard time making it beyond a-ball. So, you either need to allow ~3years+and extra round or 2, or you need to severely bump up #of rounds to provide ~110-120 players in 2 years of drafting.

Any type of disparity of # of Rookie teams per MLB will cause will cause some teams to inevitably have "too many" players. This is okay. Always make sure the larges system of teams has enough players, or you will have to artificially add some or use ghost players. (any real world MLB league will come with this mathematical behavior)

I'd avoid age limits at Rookie due to the wide range of ages in an amatuer draft. If you want to use age and service time limits at Short-a and beyond, make sure not to create and mathematical bottlenecks. The bulk of players will move based on these rules as opposed to freelying moving upward. Figure only ~5-10 per year, per team will need that sort of freedom. The rest should provide enough numbers to cover for injuries.

At AAA, i'd reverse my suggestion and go with just an Age limit, if any. This should not interfere with rehab assignments. When you use age limits at any level, hopefully no more than 5-10 are anywhere near maxed out at any particular time for that level. Too many would be a bad sign and a very likely bottleneck in your system of MiL service and age limit rules.

Be wary of "Forcing" a player to play a specific position. Mostly you'll only need it to force a SP/RP role, if you have a glut of OF or IF at one particular minor league level, or if you want to gain experience at a new position. Allowing the manager to move them around or you rotating them with forced positions allows for multi-positional experience before they reach the MLB.

As you Draft amatuers or sign int'l amatuer FA, before the draft completes, they will all be in your lowest MiL level. It's way easier to lock the important ones en masse before they scatter throughout your system due to AI delegation. This just saves time and less likely to lose track of them.

Draft as much talent as you can - not based on need. Trade players in positions of value that don't fit your mold. e.g. I hate huge L/R batting ratings splits. If i have a stud that can't hit lefties, or worse righties, I will jump at a chance to use them as part of a trade to a team that values that player highly. You can get a very good return on these types of players.

SP, SP, SP... If you have a steady pipeline of home-grown pitchers, you can save TONS of money!! Plus they trade well in almost any situation. sub-30 is my happy zone for SP. if i have older SP it's because they are a lifer and i enjoy running up career stats of certain deserving players, but it's better to trade them before that point. With normal accuacy, don't expect many all-star calliber SP by the ~3rd round and sometimes before round 2 begins in a weak draft year.

College kids read as you see them most of the time. 18 year-olds are more likely to develop a healthy chunk of velocity by the time they hit ~22. So, their Stuff rating potentially reads lower than it could be. high risk, high reward. If they don't increase velocity, you are stuck with a 4th/5th starter with little to no trade value, at best.

Draft batting prowess, not defense. Some exceptions for SS and C, of course, and to a lesser extent CF, too. Don't base that on their position listed in the Draft, either... base it on what their defensive abilities will likely equate to. Experience is an unseen rating. Look at MLB players with similar ability and that's what the prospects will have with "full" experience at that position.