First Time I Have Ever Been Angry!!

[rhydymwyn]

Originally Posted by turdfurgeson

You could always start your lower level minors season earlier, and push back roster expansion a week or so.
Did you check out your opponent to see if they had lost players to a call up also?

Forgot to address this above... If I start my lower minors earlier, I may end up with a strange spring training shift early in the season. Better than at the end, surely, but I believe below AA they end their season earlier than 9/1 anyway. (I do not remember- I never made the playoffs there! It was an oddly easy move up the chain to AA.)

[Le Grande Orange]

Originally Posted by rhydymwyn

Adjusting the roster limit makes things less real.

Not necessarily. Roster limit rules have varied over the years.

[spark240]

Originally Posted by rhydymwyn

What kind of GM would do that?

Before your current OOTP2006 league, when you played as a major-league GM, did YOU consider the harm to your minor-league affiliates before bringing up a player?

[jarmenia]

Originally Posted by spark240

Before your current OOTP2006 league, when you played as a major-league GM, did YOU consider the harm to your minor-league affiliates before bringing up a player?

Best post in the thread.

[spark240]

...

[rhydymwyn]

Originally Posted by spark240

Before your current OOTP2006 league, when you played as a major-league GM, did YOU consider the harm to your minor-league affiliates before bringing up a player?

No, but only because I had created either leagues without affiliates or whose minor league seasons ended before my roster expanded. (By chance, not on purpose, actually.) Good point. I have considered it now, though. I doubt I will be in a position where every one of my teams is contending and I need my 15 players ASAP to make a huge difference in my chances. Plus, I am not an MLB GM. I still think a real GM would consider his minor league teams' options before swapping out half of each team's roster.

[Zitofan75]

Originally Posted by rhydymwyn

No, but only because I had created either leagues without affiliates or whose minor league seasons ended before my roster expanded. (By chance, not on purpose, actually.) Good point. I have considered it now, though. I doubt I will be in a position where every one of my teams is contending and I need my 15 players ASAP to make a huge difference in my chances. Plus, I am not an MLB GM. I still think a real GM would consider his minor league teams' options before swapping out half of each team's roster.

Why? Why do you think a real MLB GM would for one minute consider the record of the AAA or AA or A or whatever affiliate when making a roster move? Who cares? Those teams have ONE purpose in life, to feed talent to the big club so the big club wins. No one cares what the minor league club does. If you have what he needs to make the MLB club a success he takes it and runs and has no regrets. A real MLB owner doesn't give a crap about how the minor league team does. He doesn't go to his fan base and say "yeah, we didn't bring up so-and-so early enough to make a difference but he did lead our AA affiliate to victory." He never says that becuase he knows his fan base does not care. The owner doesn't care and therefore the GM certainly doesn't care.

Anyhow, you lost some key people but by your own admission you won the AA world series so all is good right? The rest is simply the hazard to take on as a minor league manager. Your best players are going to be taken from you at the whim of the major league club and you have to deal with that. It sucks but your legacy is not how many titles you rack up but how many of your players find success in the big leagues.

[rhydymwyn]

Hmm... did not expect to what seemed to be a heated response. Perhaps we have different managerial styles.

Just for kicks, I submitted a query to Steve Phillips, former GM of the Mets, who now works for ESPN Radio. I doubt he will respond, but I am interested to hear what he has to say.

[spark240]

Originally Posted by Zitofan75

Why? Why do you think a real MLB GM would for one minute consider the record of the AAA or AA or A or whatever affiliate when making a roster move? Who cares? Those teams have ONE purpose in life, to feed talent to the big club so the big club wins. No one cares what the minor league club does...

Well, the fans in the minor league town might care. Possibly even the players who had a chance to win a ring might care.

But beyond such quaint concerns, it is my belief that the *experience of winning* is as important as any other experience players can have in the minors, and that keeping a core of players as a successful team, rising together through the minors, is one of the great subtleties of organization management. It is not widely discussed, and is usually not practiced deliberately in most organizations, but when it happens (by accident or design), the players on those winning minor teams tend to become solid--often great--major league players.

Try this exercise some time (you'll need a current Super Register and several back Almanacs): Off the top of your head, make a list of fifteen or twenty really solid, promising young major league players. Then look up the minor league teams they played on. Check the records of those teams. Sure, you may say those teams were good because they had those great players, and there is often some truth in that; I contend that there is as much causality in the other direction--that great, winning minor league teams tend to solidify both skills and character to forge solid major leaguers. (Some of these players were not considered top prospects UNTIL they cohered into winning units in small-town ballparks.)

In sum, if your big club is REALLY in a pennant race, and one or two wins could make all the difference, then sure, bring up the kids who may be just enough extra to put you over the top. But if your callups are just cups-of-coffee in an also-ran season AND they have the chance to be a part of something special in the Midwest League or the Carolina League or whatever, then let them have THAT experience, because that might just be more valuable to the big club in the long run.

Of course, in OOTP, this would all be in your head. But, you know, some people like that in a game.

[rhydymwyn]

Yeah! What he said!

[Le Grande Orange]

Originally Posted by Zitofan75

Why? Why do you think a real MLB GM would for one minute consider the record of the AAA or AA or A or whatever affiliate when making a roster move? Who cares? Those teams have ONE purpose in life, to feed talent to the big club so the big club wins.

Further proof of that can be found by examining the schedules for the minor leagues.

A number of them, most notably the Southern League and South Atlantic League, but including others such as the Eastern League, have schedules which make absolutely no sense from an equitable competition point of view. Teams playing for division titles might play twice as many games outside their division as inside it, or each team in a division will play completely different numbers of games against their divisional rivals. In short, the schedules make little or no sense in terms of competitive fairness.

The schedules are instead designed to minimize travel and/or increase numbers of contests against clubs deemed to be good box office draws.

If the playing schedule isn't about all teams having a reasonably equal shot at a division title, then it's a good bet the league is not really about crowning a champion.

[Carplos]

Without doing actual research on the issue, I would imagine it's not such a cut and dry issue. Some teams probably call up players regardless of the minor league team's post season opportunities, and others probably want their players to experience "winning" (or choking) or they may have a good relationship with a long-term farm team.

[Zitofan75]

Originally Posted by spark240

Well, the fans in the minor league town might care. Possibly even the players who had a chance to win a ring might care.

But beyond such quaint concerns, it is my belief that the *experience of winning* is as important as any other experience players can have in the minors, and that keeping a core of players as a successful team, rising together through the minors, is one of the great subtleties of organization management. It is not widely discussed, and is usually not practiced deliberately in most organizations, but when it happens (by accident or design), the players on those winning minor teams tend to become solid--often great--major league players.

Try this exercise some time (you'll need a current Super Register and several back Almanacs): Off the top of your head, make a list of fifteen or twenty really solid, promising young major league players. Then look up the minor league teams they played on. Check the records of those teams. Sure, you may say those teams were good because they had those great players, and there is often some truth in that; I contend that there is as much causality in the other direction--that great, winning minor league teams tend to solidify both skills and character to forge solid major leaguers. (Some of these players were not considered top prospects UNTIL they cohered into winning units in small-town ballparks.)

In sum, if your big club is REALLY in a pennant race, and one or two wins could make all the difference, then sure, bring up the kids who may be just enough extra to put you over the top. But if your callups are just cups-of-coffee in an also-ran season AND they have the chance to be a part of something special in the Midwest League or the Carolina League or whatever, then let them have THAT experience, because that might just be more valuable to the big club in the long run.

Of course, in OOTP, this would all be in your head. But, you know, some people like that in a game.

I'm sure the fans in the minor league town would care; I totally get that. My point is that the big league club GM isn't going to care that much about the fans in the minor league town; he will however probably care alot more about the fans in his big league city as well as the owner. Even if the big league team is in the toilet he figures the minor league star can also benefit from a month of facing big league pitching.

I'm not saying it's cool when the big league club does it but that's the way things tend to be. Again minor leagues are there to service the big league team and their rosters are at the pleasure and discretion of the big league team. I can see why the original poster would be pissed (I would too) but a little reflection on the issue suggests to me that, while crappy, this is a reasonable occurance in a baseball sim.

[Carplos]

Keep in mind that this is mostly an issue for AAA clubs. Moreso AA in recent times with the number of players directly called up from their instead of AAA, I suppose.

The only problem with the AI I can see here is that if the AAA club wasn't in the playoffs as well, there shouldn't be a reason for them to call up players from AA to take the spot of the promoted players.