Noob Roster Question

[Barka]

Hi guys!

UK player here, enjoy watching, can get by with limited knowledge but this game is so indepth im getting lost - any help would be appreciated.

Roster - How many players in each position should I have in my 25? Whats the ideal? 4 or 5 starting pitchers for example?

The 40 man roster - There was a weird "rule 5" draft, so i moved my guys in that to the 40 man.. Now I can't sign new players to contracts because my 40 man roster is full!! lol

The star rating - If you have a team full of 5 star guys, will you dominate? Are the star levels actually based on ability?

Is there a way I can get the AI to reshuffle my depth charts?

Thanks guys..

[Bulldawgz24]

Originally Posted by Barka

Hi guys!

UK player here, enjoy watching, can get by with limited knowledge but this game is so indepth im getting lost - any help would be appreciated.

Roster - How many players in each position should I have in my 25? Whats the ideal? 4 or 5 starting pitchers for example?

The 40 man roster - There was a weird "rule 5" draft, so i moved my guys in that to the 40 man.. Now I can't sign new players to contracts because my 40 man roster is full!! lol

The star rating - If you have a team full of 5 star guys, will you dominate? Are the star levels actually based on ability?

Is there a way I can get the AI to reshuffle my depth charts?

Thanks guys..

The norm in the Major leagues would be to have a 5-man rotation with 7 relievers for a total of 12 pitchers. This would leave 13 roster spots for batters, which would be 8-9 starting players (depending on if you have a DH or not (NL doesn't, AL does) with a 4-5 man bench.


As far as the 40-man, if you need to add a new player to the 40-man roster, you simply need to remove someone else from the 40-man first, by designating them for assignment. Doing so will put that player through waivers, which allows them to be picked up by another team. If they make it through waivers (which is a few days) without being selected by another team, you can then assign them to one of your minor league teams.


The star rating is the overall rating, but I think it can have some inaccuracy based on scouting inaccuracy I believe. I'm learning more about ratings as I go so not sure how much I trust it yet. I have learned, through reading the forums, that you should tend to trust the ratings more than reacting to stats in small sample sizes (example: if a 4star SP gets rocked after 1 start, don't overreact and send him down to the minors).


Lastly, if you go to your lineup page, in the top right of that window is a drop down. You should see an option to have AI set your lineup, which will setup your "depth chart".

[Barka]

Thanks for the info!

What is the best way to judge batters and pitchers?

Currently im looking at the past 3 seasons AVG and OBP for batters

Pitchers I look at ERA

Is that right?

[mitchkenn]

some people like WAR ... i'm old school and ERA is still a good measuring stick for me. i also look at innings pitched and (horror of horrors to the some) Win-Loss totals.

[monkeystyxx]

Originally Posted by Barka

Thanks for the info!

What is the best way to judge batters and pitchers?

Currently im looking at the past 3 seasons AVG and OBP for batters

Pitchers I look at ERA

Is that right?

For a beginner, it's a good start, yeah. You've got the right idea. OPS+ is a good one, because that compares the players OBP and SLG (ie, OPS) to the rest of the league that year, with 100 being average, over 100 being above average, below 100 being below average. That tells you not only how good the player was, but how much better/worse he was compared to the rest of the league.

For pitchers, ERA is a good starting point but the problem with it is that if you're a great pitcher in front of a terrible defence, your ERA will probably be higher than an average pitcher in front of a great defence. For more information on how good the actual pitcher is doing, you'll need to look at the stats he controls himself: HR/9, BB/9, K/9. Or look at FIP (fielding-independent pitching), which combines those for you into a format that can be read like an ERA.

For a modern MLB league, HR/9 (home runs per nine innings) should be low, for a 'good' pitcher: definitely under 1.5 and ideally under 1.
BB/9 (walks per nine innings) should be under 2.5 (around 3-4 isn't terrible if he strikes out a LOT of guys to make up for it).
K/9 (strikeouts per nine innings) will vary a lot depending on the type of pitcher. Under 6 is almost always a disaster, but some guys just aren't strikeout pitchers and so won't have huge K/9 totals, but can still be useful (these guys will have a much lower BB/9 though, as they rely on control to get through games). Over 9 K/9 is good for a guy who relies on strikeouts. Double figures is great. But plenty of excellent pitchers hover around 7 K/9 because strikeouts aren't their main goal.

But yeah, comparing FIP to ERA will generally give you a good measure of the type of team he's on. High ERA, low FIP = a good pitcher on a bad team. The scale is slightly different though. 3.0 ERA is pretty good, but 3.0 FIP is amazing. 3.anything FIP is good.

WHIP is also a good measure of a pitcher's ability - especially for relief pitchers, where ERA is next to useless (they pitch limited innings, of course, so one bad game where they give up a few runs will ruin their ERA for weeks). WHIP measures Walks and Hits per Inning Pitched, and thus usually a more trusted measure of how good a pitcher is than ERA. Under 1.0 is fantastic, under 1.2 is good. 1.4 is 'eh'. Anything above 1.5 and you're getting into problem territory.

Also check out BABIP. As a really, really brief and generalised rule of thumb:

If a pitcher's BABIP this year is a lot lower than it has been in previous years, he's probably getting a bit lucky and you shouldn't rely on him to continue being as good as he is (assuming, of course, he's doing well).

If a pitcher's BABIP is a lot higher than it has been in recent years, he's probably getting unlucky and you can expect him to improve (again, assuming he's doing badly).

The opposite is true for batters (higher BABIP than normal = lucky, vice versa).

BABIP measures Batting Average on Balls In Play. It tracks the outcome of any ball that's put into play (ie, a batted fair ball that isn't a home run). .300 is around average in modern MLB. Lower than that means that a higher than average percentage of batted balls in play result in outs (which is good for pitchers, bad for hitters). BABIP higher than .300 means that a lower than average percentage of batted balls in play result in outs (good for batters, bad for pitchers).

[NoOne]

AI Delegation -- either manually in Rosters and Transaction screen, the "Available Actions" will include "have AI setup complete organization" and "setup complete MiL"... take your pick.

in your manager settings and sorrounding tab-pages, you can delegate this sort of thing to your Asst GM or Manager etc.. check manual for descriptions of each, but should be self-explanatory.
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Rosters/lineups/staff:

all sorts of strategies. depends a bit on settings too... when it comes to depth, i don't typically spend alot, but you have to account for injuries... hopefully i can fill most of that with AAA prospects who won't be on the 40man unless an injury or 2 occurs... sometimes that's a stashed ~sub-average-to-average vet that's clinging to hope and willing to sign a mil contract or vet's minimum and start in AAA etc etc inevitably a mix... how much of your budget do you want to dedicate to this? one of the key questions.

on my 25-man, my bench is mostly specialized players... i'd rather they remain on bench or contribute to a platoons situations if an injury to my well-paid players occurs. these guys typically have multiple positions competently and can run above 1/2 scale at least (speed and baserunning). the guys i have in AAA are likely better hitters, but not always the case... especially if you handle your bench differently... plenty of "good" ways.

i chalk injury plagued seasons up to unavoidable catastrophes, so i don't put much money into depth-players... can't win with half your stars... suck it up, try again next year.... i do avoid fragile players, or at least will not build a team around them... maybe a key piece that could make me dominant and roll the dice for a 2 year deal type things??? i'll jump on that, but not if my team is rebuilding or in decline.

nothing is black and white... some risks can be taken with great reward and few repercussions.. just how much of 162g can those backup players partake and not make it nearly impossible to make the playoffs? just how much is 20million dollars on the bench helping win games? and, if not a playoff season, they do you no good at all.

rotation: depends on if historical, fiction or 2017 etc... but likely a 5-man rotation. based on those choices/settings when you go to the pitchign screen, whatever it defaults to likely is the rotation you need (unless you changed rotation size )

easy way to tell: pay attention to fatigue of player... if they recover to ~100% a day early, you either need to reduce overall pitcher stamina a peg, or set the rotation size for the league minus 1 from where it is. (*if they throw a ton of pitches, relative to their stamina, fatigue still in upper-80's is normal for there regular turn.. likely ~120+ or more thrown, but stamina rating has an influence. just make sure to use a pitcher who didn't throw their arm off and has decent stamina)

playoff rosters: nearly the same, but no substitution needed for fatigue... perfect world, you have 9 sure-fire starters and you jsut play the games.. maybe a platoon situation or 2. you can afford an extra position player or 2, out of 25.

you need fewer relievers and one less starter for your picthing staff... you can load up your bench, if you need to... but if a strong playoff team, that's not likely a huge need. regardless, an extra position player or 2 provides more utility than the 1-2 pitchers that will never play in the playoffs.

my whole team is predicated on winning in the playoffs... i may lose an extra game or two in the regular season, and i am okay with that... you can only do this in perpituity with a decent budget and a consistently strong team, hence the budget requirement.

so my top 4 SP are worthy of big contracts... my top 3-4 RP are worthy of paying good money to... and i will pay as many big-bopping professional hitters as i can get my gruby little hands on to fill out an offense...

how many of each? depends on each year... depends on ages, depends on what's available over the last 3-5 years on FA, simple answer -- As much as i can afford without scr@wing myself in the future. learning curve will provide best practice as far as proportion of Offense vs Pitching and that will be relative to your league in a significant way... ie what works for me may not be the best for you... unless we have similar statistical environments. e.g. league-wide fielding pct ~.800 vs .984 may require a different weight applied to defenseive ability.
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40-man... treat spots like a commodity from now on. only protect a player if you must and you want him... trade or do something about it before that point.. never bump someone to the 25/40man during offseason unless you fully intend to play them that year. spring training is the only time you should move a mil player who is not on the 40-man to the ML-level.

may depend on settings, but a symbol will be by any name on the Rosters and transsactions main screen for any player that's eligible for rule 5 (read legend at bottom of that screen) - load up all mil or upto 9 at least. only care bout the well-rated ones, anyway, so should be at the top of each box, if sorted. Those are the only guys you need to decide to protect or not.... if they are 20/80-type players (or 1/X scale) no one is likely to select them... if you use stars, you may want to look over any 1/5, since the resolving power of that scale is too poor. point is, many players don't require a 40-man slot... save that for if they are called up for an injury replacement... dump them after season if necessary, or resign to mil contract.

leads to... first day of offseason, you go to Front office, then "upcoming free agents" tab... add a filter "league level not MLB"... either mass offer MiL contract and/or go through and handle any more important players as needed. not sure if the symbols show up in this list, but you can add a column for Pro Service Time and sort by that if worried about rule 5... refer to your league's settings in Rules or Financials relating to service time and mil free agency etc. you'll have to look to know.

i run a tidy ship. if they had value but not used on my team, they are long gone before any of this becomes a problem.. i stay between 30-35 out of 40 most years.. depending on injuries it can go higher, but most of those players will be released and re-signed to mil or just let go. wiggle room is good, but 37-38-39 is probably better for most people.
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ratings etc...

if you have ratings on, definitely the most predictive feedback in the game -- given good scouting... so don't be cheap there... pro tip unless recently amended: international scouting budget doesn't seem to affect accuracy of the fictionally created july 2nd amateurs... dump that budget to 0-1% and add those millions into the other 3... you should be able to aford some real strong scouting budgets. tailor to need... if winning 100+ games, you don't need to so much money invested for accuracy on the 25-30th pick in the draft.

stats only is defintely harder... but not necessarily more realistic... as much disdain as i have for human scouitng and their contribution to keeping the mlb in the dark ages intellectually, they offer good information in spite of that nonsense.. mutually exclusive stuff... the nonsense being based on ego and insecurity, lol. however, if you have great scouitng information, you pretty much dominate this game. maybe with the worst accuracy possible, it would force you to use both stats and ratings to get by.. no matter what, play the way that you enjoy... realism isn't always possible.

as far as dominating with all 5-star players... it definitely is correlated... however! do not pick players based on their overall rating, ever. whether 0-5 stars or 20-80 scale is used. larger scale merely provides a greater resolution... less rounding inaccuracy etc etc.

pick players because of what they can do (individual trait ratings, not an aggregate like Overall or Potanetial -- Even Contact is actually BABIP, Pow and Avoid k's calculated together -- we don't see BABIP, but since we see the other 2, you can calculate it out if you want - useful in player assessment, actually).

do some "googling" about batting orders... lots of ideas and concepts, pick one you like...any rational theory should boil down to the fact that different slots in order have different proportions of situations and opportunities over the course of 162games. that's how i choose to value different traits at different spots... and what i am willing to pay for it there.

e.g. the lead-off hitter mathematically will see the least rbi-opportunities of any spot in the batting order... may not happen every single year, but over time it is inevitable, and when you go to vegas you play the odds... simple as that...

so, just how important is it to pay a lead-off hitter who cna also hit a ton of home runs? meh... sure if you got 9 barry bond meat-head dolls playing for you team, that's awesome and you will score 1500 runs and win 150+ games

more likely you have a budget and may think more wisely and say, i'll spend 8-16mill on some monster OBP guy that can run fast as h%ll. or, maybe that 21-24y.o. AAA prospect that hasn't quite developed his power yet, but gets on base well... that's an awesome option that will likely help them blossom, too. mlb-level-development is the bee's knees, if they are at least ~average mlb-quality currently!

i'm still spending more on my lead-off guy than my 7-8-9 for sure. or at least, willing to when push comes to shove with the budget, over time. have a spent more than 16M on a leadoff hitter, yup, sure have -- likely sentimental, and a HoF-quality player for sure. nothing is black and white, just don't shoot yourself in teh foot with your budget.

if i can get my hands on quality power hitters, i go that route of course... i avoid the ~Sub-Avg Batting.Avg. guys with alot of power and 150-200k/year... i look at them like roulette wheels... i'd rather go with cheaper more well-rounded guys in the mean time until the "Cabrera's" and "Mantle's"-like, true professional hitters present themselves as time goes.

this mostly depends on budget... how deep into your lineup and pitching staff can you retain a core of players to build around? Do you need to go another route and rely on finding a core of 0-5 year service time players (!cheap!) then add a few expensive FA and swing for fences in 2-3 year windows? that's a bare-bones budget team... a big-budget can go hog wile with some restraint and win 100+ every year without fail.... or they too can go for larger peaks and lower valleys wtih a 3-5 year windows then a valley. just might win more WS that way, actually... not sure, yet.

roster management is as much about a ~5+ year plan as this year's calendar. always try to acquire as much talent as you can every year... spend all your money when you can (excludes payroll -> long-term though there)... trade it before you lose it.. etc etc... always brew multiple options and a fall-back plan you are willing to live with.

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stats and more...

just gonna take time to read over them, look over the equations to understand what they tell you. recognize benefits and limitations of each - couting stats, relative stats, sabermetrics i don't care what they are labeled... but some are more sophisticated and more telling than others (don't get me started on OPS... stupid... stupid... stupid... ****** stupid! even so i reference it in past posts out of ease, just like E.R.A.... i don't think ERA is nearly as stupid as ops, just in case that's not clear, ERA has merit! most certainly. slugging is another bone-headed one, too, but not quite as bad as OPS. i still use it because it's visible and "good enough" to compare by the eye to BA and other basic stats)

ops+ and era+ and the like are awesome in that you immediately know if they are good, bad or ugly in that league. it keeps things relative. read up on some glossary of mlb stats, they are pretty much understood once you see the math.

however, you can't use somethign like this (ops+ / era+ like) as a rank-order scale though... a 124 is not necessarily worse than a 125... at what point does the different make it a near certainty that plyer is better? no idea... but, i guarantee that equation is not 'perfect' and the data used to give an answer is not perfect, either... multiple stat lines may add up to 125 ops+, but htey are not all the same in reality.

The more complicated teh stat, the more you should treat it like the Overall Rating... maybe great for hof stuff, maybe great for sorting/filtering, but must be used in conjunction with many other stats to be fully useful.

find an array of stats you use to verify the various ratings (should be intuitive choices) and you are good to go...

all the #'s monkeystyxx mention are all great for the mlb or whatever the context is in case there was more... but, you gotta know baseline for that stuff. no guarantee your league is ~modern mlb, even if oyu started a 2017 league in the game.

if you auto-calced the league totals modifiers, your good to go with comparing to what you basically see on TV. look at teh Estimated Slash in Stats and AI settings page of your league (assuming auto-calc) it will be near that... you can guesstimate era and such from that... at least a well-defined range over time with experience / observation.

babip for an individual - this is moreso for a pitcher with babip against, can be quite volatile year-to-year, even if the league-wide babip only deviates +/-.005-.007ish.

this is one of those stats where you can see luck, so to speak with Pitchers especially, if there is a long enough track record... i'd google for sample sizes of various mlb stats... first link should be a summary. babip takes a long while for pitchers...

i try to guesstimate how much that bloated babip would affect his whip and other #'s in a propotionate way... if it accounts for a hefty amount of the blip, i chalk it up to bad luck or bad defense if the situation dictates that as a possibility.

i probably like WHIP more than i hsould, but i also consider BABIP when looking at whip, so i hedge the drawbacks of that stat. i also look at hit and bb rates and see what exactly caused any result that concerns me. but, becasue i work top-down instead of bottom-up in what i look at first, i can miss things... i'm not being paid millions and it's a video game... everyone draws a line at a different point... but, you can get as nitty-gritty as you want with all of this.

if you udnerstand what they allmean, their volatility and such.. their proportions of occurence and what it means to scoring runs or reducing runs scored... it's easy to read... second nature stuff in a short while.

[Barka]

Thank you so much monkeysty & NoOne!

I feel like I understand it a load more now and can actually play the game it should be played.. My first season with the Athletics (love moneyball) was awful.. 61-101 lol but we've just had a 79-83 season so im on the up!

Got rid of the expensive contracts and am signing lots of cheaper high potential players and it seems to be going fairly well, here's to the playoffs next year!

[NoOne]

moneyball should scale to your budget...

e.g. NYY can apply the same concepts, but understand where they can afford to spend more even though it's not as efficient.

it's not jsut about finding the cheapest possible... well it becomes that for any small budget, but those concepts are not only for small budget teams to make use of.

simply better player evaluation. all can use that in any situation.

[Bulldawgz24]

I still can't find the autocalc function that I keep seeing in these posts.


Can anyone show me where that is? How often should I do that? ML & Minors?

[henry296]

Auto call is in league settings under stats and AI. Usually run on opening day.