3169 - Drafting AI

[Curtis]

Again, if this doesn't belong in Technical Support, feel free to shift it.

I played out the inaugural draft of a standard 2007 major league (with thirteen minor leagues — only seven minor teams for my parent club). There were 200 rounds of draft, which is about right to fill out eight teams. I did the first 75 rounds manually, getting the proportions of different positions that I was looking for. At that point no one was left in the pool who my head scout thought was any better than a 21 potential, so I told the system to autodraft to the end.

I don't believe the AI did a very good job of choosing for my teams. To fill out five teams it chose:
11 Catchers (just what I would've)
24 Starting Pitchers (only 1 less than I would've)
4 Closers (1 less)
21 Middle Relievers (far too few, and I'll have to convert 2 of them to a starter and a closer)
17 Outfielders (a lot of these guys will have to play every day), and
48 Infielders (what in the world am I going to do with 12 infielders on every team?)

I can almost understand the shortage of outfielders, since there didn't appear to be many left when I stopped manually drafting, but there were TONS of middle relievers available! And why on Earth would the AI think I needed three men to cover each infield position? Two would've been too many.

Was any of the beta team assigned to evaluating drafting AI, or were you more concerned with trades and waivers?

[Solonor]

TT#3169

And, yes, there was an entire team that studied this area. There are over 128 issues logged regarding drafting. I imagine it is one of the hardest things to do to get the AI to behave exactly right every time, especially when you throw in roster limits and taking into account age of players (not even counting league age limits), scouting ratings, etc.