My minor league teams are bad

[Mothy]

So, I've played numerous versions of OOTP before but for some reason with this version my minor league teams are always terrible. And not just kind of bad terrible, like unrealistically terrible.

When I start a game they are fine. But as time goes on they get worse and worse, starting with my lowest minors teams, then slowly creeping up the ranks until by 10 years into play all my minors teams from AA down are apparently putting the worst baseball product on the field the world has ever seen.

If I didn't have any decent prospects I could maybe understand, but my prospects are fine and they're still improving and reaching the majors and turning into good major leaguers. So mainly it's more just an annoyance than something affecting my game, but I wonder if anyone knows what I'm doing wrong. I feel like something must have changed from OOTP 22 and 24 (I didn't buy 23) because all the previous years I played I never had this problem.

2033 season: AA team .295 winning percentage, A+ team .212, A team .197, ACL .250, DCL .085

Anyone else experienced this?

[Swiffle]

I think the issue with this is, there aren't rules set by default for maximum time as a professional in rookie ball and A ball like there are in real life. The AI dumps a bunch of normally extraneous FAs into it's minor league teams. There were some posts on it either here or reddit, I don't quite remember what other people were doing to address this.

[kidd_05_u2]

You have to look into things to know for sure.
Perhaps you have rosters that are not well built, so your organization ends up having to play players that are tired/exhausted.
It also happens that the AI signs A LOT of old players for the minors, so while your High A may be full of 22-23 year olds, the AI will be using 25-26 year olds and kicking your team's butt.

[Curve Ball Dave]

Set roster and age limits and you'll have more competitive balance. Or course, the quality of the prospects will determine how competitive your teams are, but by in large you won't have dominant and hopelessly uncompetitive teams-especially the higher up the chain you go. I've had really bad AA teams because I had no decent prospects and the team was filled whatever warm bodies I can find. But recently my AA team has done very well because I had top prospects who should have been in AAA but were blocked by guys at that level.

[Red08]

My DSL teams are always historically bad. I have age and service time limits but always end up with like, only 10 wins a season

[HonusWagner]

Originally Posted by Curve Ball Dave

Set roster and age limits and you'll have more competitive balance. Or course, the quality of the prospects will determine how competitive your teams are, but by in large you won't have dominant and hopelessly uncompetitive teams-especially the higher up the chain you go. I've had really bad AA teams because I had no decent prospects and the team was filled whatever warm bodies I can find. But recently my AA team has done very well because I had top prospects who should have been in AAA but were blocked by guys at that level.

Though in my experience setting minor league limits tends to generate roster errors.

Traditionally my minor league teams typically are freakishly bad - .278 winning percentage bad.

[Sweed]

This seems to be a trend starting a few versions ago. In my on-going imported game I have the historical standing box on each home page and these teams seemed to have dove to the bottom and stayed there, IE most of my teams were competitive until about 6 seasons ago, I play about 2 seasons per version, so v21? maybe.

Full disclosure, I use ghost players, but that was true when my teams were putting up "normal" w/l records too.

My AAA is usually competitive as it has no ghosts and most players with skills that would allow a cup of coffee in the majors. AA and below have varying amounts of actual players, 15 or so, ie they are half ghosts. While the AI maintains pretty much full rosters.

In my current season AA got off to the worst starts I can recall, 0-29. I thought I'd try turning on the "automatically control in game engine (suggested for minors only)" option to see if that might help. Hasn't been long enough to know if it will continue to help or not, but the team since then is 7-21.

I remember Matt suggesting to someone to use the "automatically control in game engine" option for an issue they had in their minors. But I don't recall if it was due to his team's won-loss record? Might be worth a try turning it on and seeing if it helps.

[kidd_05_u2]

If the human player tries to take a realistic approach to setting up the minors, it is hard for the teams to be competitive for two main reasons:

1) The AI is constantly looking to improve its minor league roster and I believe they mostly look at current ability instead of potential. They will gobble up any free agent player aged 25-40 if they are any good, and these usually replace players aged 20-24 who are not good enough.

2) Due to the above, the AI keeps really old rosters in the minor leagues and you will often see players who are replacement level for the MLB playing as low as A-ball.

If you start a standard 2023 MLB save, there are like 100-150 players aged 25+ in free agency in March. In real life these guys retire, go to the independent leagues, or go abroad. In OOTP, 95% of them get signed to minor league contracts before the end of April and replace players who are younger but worse.

In my own save I resorted to retiring about 50% of the players that start in free agency. I still have stupid stuff like 39-year-old Alejandro de Aza and his 45OVR ratings playing at double A for the stacked Dodgers, or the Twins keeping like 9 outfielders aged over 30 in their minors.

[snepp]

A combination of roster limits, age limits, and service limits works pretty well for keeping the AI from having too many old guys in the lower minors. Enabling ghost players can help with the occasional AI roster oops, but with enough replacement talent coming from draft/iafa I rarely see it getting used.

[kidd_05_u2]

Originally Posted by snepp

A combination of roster limits, age limits, and service limits works pretty well for keeping the AI from having too many old guys in the lower minors.

I'm not seeing this. Service limits only screw up things for the international and HS guys that come in very young. Age limits, if I set it at 25 for A-ball because you often see relievers of that age, then teams will start filling up their rosters with players aged 25 who are coming down from the AA and AAA teams, pushed down by older free agent signings.

Snepp, do you play modern MLB? What limits are you using?

[snepp]

Here's what I'm currently using. I've tweaked it a couple times, it's not perfect but I'm generally happy with how it's been working.

AAA - 28 players - no age limit, no service limit

AA - 28 players - 28 years old, no service limit

A - 30 players - 26 years old, 6 years service

SA - 35 players - 25 years old, 5 years service

R - 50 players - 24 years old, 3 years service

[Daniel_09]

Originally Posted by Mothy

So, I've played numerous versions of OOTP before but for some reason with this version my minor league teams are always terrible. And not just kind of bad terrible, like unrealistically terrible.

When I start a game they are fine. But as time goes on they get worse and worse, starting with my lowest minors teams, then slowly creeping up the ranks until by 10 years into play all my minors teams from AA down are apparently putting the worst baseball product on the field the world has ever seen.

If I didn't have any decent prospects I could maybe understand, but my prospects are fine and they're still improving and reaching the majors and turning into good major leaguers. So mainly it's more just an annoyance than something affecting my game, but I wonder if anyone knows what I'm doing wrong. I feel like something must have changed from OOTP 22 and 24 (I didn't buy 23) because all the previous years I played I never had this problem.

2033 season: AA team .295 winning percentage, A+ team .212, A team .197, ACL .250, DCL .085

Anyone else experienced this?

It could be several factors that are doing that, personally all my minor league teams play close to 500.

The first thing would be to check the AI evaluation, if the stats part is higher than the ratings it is likely that the AI is sitting prospects with below average performances (stats) for players with better stats performance but less potential. Another thing that is impossible to restrict is that the AI will always try to sign the best players possible, therefore they almost always have 27 and 28 year old players playing in the lower part of the minor leagues.

While your franchise is likely to have many players in the minors on teams that do not match their talent, in my case I only promote players when their ratings (including overall rating) are higher than 50 or 55 of the next level (relative ratings). I always made the mistake of promoting players when their overall rating was close to 45 and 50 and I would get AA and AAA full of 19 and 20 year old players which were not at the level to compete with the AI teams, now I promote my players much slower.

The last thing is to make sure that by default the starting lineups and depth charts of the AI minor teams are set to be chosen by their potential in the game settings.

[Daniel_09]

Originally Posted by Daniel_09

It could be several factors that are doing that, personally all my minor league teams play close to 500.

The first thing would be to check the AI evaluation, if the stats part is higher than the ratings it is likely that the AI is sitting prospects with below average performances (stats) for players with better stats performance but less potential. Another thing that is impossible to restrict is that the AI will always try to sign the best players possible, therefore they almost always have 27 and 28 year old players playing in the lower part of the minor leagues.

While your franchise is likely to have many players in the minors on teams that do not match their talent, in my case I only promote players when their ratings (including overall rating) are higher than 50 or 55 of the next level (relative ratings). I always made the mistake of promoting players when their overall rating was close to 45 and 50 and I would get AA and AAA full of 19 and 20 year old players which were not at the level to compete with the AI teams, now I promote my players much slower.

The last thing is to make sure that by default the starting lineups and depth charts of the AI minor teams are set to be chosen by their potential in the game settings.

One last detail, I stopped using limits and restrictions in the minor leagues because the AI ​​makes some inconsistent moves.

[Daniel_09]

In minor league teams use managers who have preference for rookies over veterans, this is something that can also affect.

[HonusWagner]

Originally Posted by Sweed

Full disclosure, I use ghost players, but that was true when my teams were putting up "normal" w/l records too.

I remember Matt suggesting to someone to use the "automatically control in game engine" option for an issue they had in their minors. But I don't recall if it was due to his team's won-loss record? Might be worth a try turning it on and seeing if it helps.

Am going to try that.

Ghost players also allow fictional players to intermingle with historical rosters, which I prefer to at least have control over if not prevent outright.

[Mud Hen]

Originally Posted by Curve Ball Dave

Set roster and age limits and you'll have more competitive balance. Or course, the quality of the prospects will determine how competitive your teams are, but by in large you won't have dominant and hopelessly uncompetitive teams-especially the higher up the chain you go. I've had really bad AA teams because I had no decent prospects and the team was filled whatever warm bodies I can find. But recently my AA team has done very well because I had top prospects who should have been in AAA but were blocked by guys at that level.

I just purchased OOTP 24 recently and will be starting my second season.

Will setting roster and age limits once a save is in progress create problems? I'm considering reducing the ACL and FCL roster limits to 50.

[Curve Ball Dave]

Originally Posted by Mud Hen

Will setting roster and age limits once a save is in progress create problems? I'm considering reducing the ACL and FCL roster limits to 50.

Not sure what you mean by "once a save is in progress". You can set the limits at any time. It will force the AI to rearrange their minor leagues so everyone is on a team for which their eligible, and if there are more players than spots the AI will release them.

[Mud Hen]

Poor wording on my part. I didn’t want to start my save over from the beginning.

You confirmed what I assumed would happen.

Thank you for the response, I appreciate it!

[Curve Ball Dave]

Originally Posted by Mud Hen

Poor wording on my part. I didn’t want to start my save over from the beginning.

You confirmed what I assumed would happen.

Thank you for the response, I appreciate it!

[NoOne]

when i see this occuring, it's because theres a bunch of older and over-developed players in the leauge -- more often in lower levels and more extreme in those lower levels.

roster rules can help, or they can easily make it even worse, lol.

changing these settings midstream is generally okay, but the decisions made due to previous changes midstream can cause additional issues... say some rules cause most teams to release or cut a bunch of players, but then a rule change after that would have needed those players at different levels and forced there due to the rules (never expect the AI to act as you want, total crapshoot in that regard, lol.)

So, it's complicated.

understanding how many new players enter your league per year and their general age distribution is very important to consider when making rules.

if oyu add 35 players per year (iafa, discoveries, draft - but not so much the new players that can be older, like independent or established foreign FA), and you make rule where players only get 1-2 years in the rookie league, but have 2-3 rookei leaguges, it will never fill up.

40% is hs-age by default? so a good chunk of new players may be rated well enough to play in higher levels than rookie. not all 60% but a chunk of them, nonetheless.

after rookie/short-a this becomes less of an issue to consider.

i'd suggest svc time limits at lower levels, becuase they deviate so much with recently drafted players, but even college players from lower in draft are rated for rookie-level and not so much A-ball.

By A ball and AA i use age rules. it is generous so as not to cause really bad AI decisions.

AAA i may set a roster limit to avoid 50-60 players, but i try not to use too many rules. this is a lot of MLB depth that only plays when injuries occur. As in real life, AA is where the real talent is often waiting. AAA has the minor league lifers/MLB-inury-depth and a few good prospects.

you can dink arond with this and use a restored backup to zoom out 10 years at a time and re-assess your rules. look at player distribution across league. find min and max values... is either a problem? if so, adjust. e.g. you might see A ball with 60 players pooling and maintaining those levels over time, but if you sort by age in the rosters screen, you may find there are 10-12 27 year olds on every team -- this would be an excellent situation to adjust Age max of that level.

age and svc time rules for minor leagues are complicated and often make a mess messier if you don't put some good forethought into it.

early on, really pay attention to number of players you need and guesstimate how many 18-19 vs 21-23 year olds are coming out of your draft. add in discoveries per team (Tend to be young) and avg iafa signings. then multiply by how many years of svc time you allow at any level...

e.g. if you produce 30/year younger players (17-20) and have 3 rookie leagues, you need to allow at least 3 years svc time or it will never fillup. even that may cut it close. (and a lot more than 30 rounds in draft to do it, most likely)

over time you can see a resulting equilibrium (number of players per level) that result from rules or just default AI behaviour. watch for any large pooling at any level. look at how/why it's happening (ages? ratings? both? existing rule?) to help make a educated adjustment to your rules. consider where those players will go after any adjusted rules are enforced.. may just push the pooling up or down a level and that doesn't accomplish anything.

you can use "ask ai to set up minor league" to see what happens after a change, but doing it multiple times over and over can have negative effects like i described above.. anytime it resutls in releasing players, probably want to hold off and sime a bit...

the AI will re-adjust to new rules as things come up during season. e.g. if a player is too old after a change, you eithe rhave to force ai to set up minor league or the player has to get injured or similar before that check is made again. this happens at beginnig of each season too (ai across the leauge 'sets up their mil' automatically on this date unless you have control over it for your team). so adjusting rules in offseason will take effect when it matters.

one tidbit -- new leagues are filled with seed players. distribution of age and talent may be quite a bit different with players created for a draft. it'll take about 10 years before that reality is 100% realized. you may need different rules than what works in year 1 of a new league. or year 5 for that matter...

MLB is full of seed players too, but will take 30 years to fully recycle league to draft-created players. this is why i pre-date every league i make 30 years. zoom ahead 30 years, delete history, purge database and make it look like a new leauge at that point and start playing.