Talent changes are terrible...

[Burgandy]

I've never seen what the big deal is with people taking potential or talent hits.

I think of a lot of them as "changes in scouts' opinions"... not necessarily the player getting worse or better. In the end, the % of players who end up panning out seems realistic to me. I ignore the messages for the most part, because I scout my organization every month and track the changes in excel. So I can always see that in general, it's a lot closer to 50/50 on increases/decreases than I would expect from the messages. Maybe they just tell you more about the decreases because those are the ones you should act on? Just a thought.

[jools]

Originally Posted by Burgandy

it's a lot closer to 50/50 on increases/decreases than I would expect from the messages.

Maybe it's just luck, but this year until Opening Day I've had 24 increases and 7 decreases.

[Burgandy]

Originally Posted by jools

Maybe it's just luck, but this year until Opening Day I've had 24 increases and 7 decreases.

That does seem a little better than I've witnessed. After a few more years of doing monthly reports, I'll post the stats I've encountered on increases/decreases and the months they have occurred in my organization. I'm guessing it will vary a lot depending on skills of coaches and scouts, the tendencies of the manager to draft players with certain ratings, and the format of the league. Or maybe it's mostly what you said.. luck.

[DrSatan]

I don't seem to be having these problems as frequently as others. The problem maybe with how some people manage their minors. Someone else posted about promoting based on ratings color (red, orange, yellow). That's pretty much what I do. I've noticed that promoting to fast is the easiest way to screw up a prospect. You also have to pay attention to stats. I"ve also noticed if you have a #1 pick caliber player and you start him out in rookie ball, then you need to keep an eye on him. If his stats are good then promote him. This will usually keep his potential from dropping off. When I promote hitters, I usually go by the contact rating. Below 40 is A, 40-49 is AA, and 50+ is AAA. I also changed the ratings change from 100 to 50. Like I said, this technique seems to be working for me, I still get the occasional bust, but it's not that rapant. I'm curious if anyone has had any luck with the opposite. I've never had a late round draft pick with like 1 or 2 star talent do any better then that. To me if blue chip prospects can bust then late round diamonds should also exist. If a player can go from 5 stars to 1, then they should be able to go from 1 to 5.

[GabeRivers]

Having increases and decreases to both current ratings and/or talent potential seems realistic to me. In real life, for example, J.J. Putz found a new pitch in his late 20's, and look at him now.

Personally, I would prefer that they were less random and somehow better tied to "occurrences" in the game. It is irksome, for example, when you have stud pitcher putting up great numbers and having a stellar season, to receive an e-mail saying he is "struggling" accompanied by a big ratings/talent hit.

I would also prefer an approach more like Gindin's in Front Office Football. He has used a graphical presentation (which I also prefer), where the red portion of the bar equates to present ratings, and the remaining green portion shows potential not yet reached. Once ratings achieve potential, there is no more green, only red, which can still fluctuate up or down over time.

The point being that once ratings have reached perceived potential, the two have merged and become one. Players might still evolve to higher ratings (a new pitch, for example), or they might devolve. They're all going to spiral down with age.

In fact, what I'd like to see would be OOTP maintaining a presentation of "peak" ratings, once they are achieved, so that we could then see the degrading of talent against the peak. In other words, we don't need to see some projection of how bad an old guy is going to get compared to his current ratings, we can all guess on that. Instead, show us what his peak ratings were so we can see how far he has already slid. We can then speculate on how fast he will fall further and gamble as we wish.

[Curtis]

Originally Posted by DrSatan

I also changed the ratings change from 100 to 50. Like I said, this technique seems to be working for me, I still get the occasional bust, but it's not that rapant. I'm curious if anyone has had any luck with the opposite. I've never had a late round draft pick with like 1 or 2 star talent do any better then that. To me if blue chip prospects can bust then late round diamonds should also exist. If a player can go from 5 stars to 1, then they should be able to go from 1 to 5.

This is a gross oversimplification, but if you cut the rate of change in half, then you cut the number of busts and the number of boomers (maybe by half, maybe to a quarter). The reverse will happen if you double the rate of change.

The magnitude of the effect becomes greater the farther into the draft you go. Maybe at round five you cut the rate of boomers in half, but by round ten it's down to a quarter and by round twenty it's at an eighth. The reason for this is that the later the pick the more net positive changes he's going to need to reach the majors. If changes are harder to come by, the effect becomes multiplicative. Since the number of changes doesn't remain constant throughout a player's career (declining as he ages), you'll also greatly reduce the occurance of 'late bloomers'.

Note — that's a common sense answer and may very well be overturned by someone like RonCo coming in with statistical analysis.

[jools]

Originally Posted by Burgandy

That does seem a little better than I've witnessed. After a few more years of doing monthly reports, I'll post the stats I've encountered on increases/decreases and the months they have occurred in my organization. I'm guessing it will vary a lot depending on skills of coaches and scouts, the tendencies of the manager to draft players with certain ratings, and the format of the league. Or maybe it's mostly what you said.. luck.

Well, of course I hope it's me instead of luck. I manage all Minors myself and so far I seem to get good results - better at least than when I leave it to the AI.

@Dr Satan. Please check out my previous post about Bufur Gamwich. He went up from a 20 to a 60 plus talented player. He's developing nicely now in AAA and perhaps even this season he will make his debut in the Majors. And we've had more talent increases like this in our online league (we have room for one or two GM's still - check out Solonor's SGCBL in the Online Leagues thread).

[Geebob]

Originally Posted by jools

Red = A,
Orange = AA
Yellow = AAA

So as soon as most of the ratings of an A player move out the red, I promote him to AA, and so on.

However, good stats, or overall ratings that exceed talent ratings, can also be an indication for promoting.

So a 19 year old rookie with mostly yellow and green overall ratings should play in the Majors, whereas a 25 year old with fantastic talent ratings, but mostly orange and yellow overall ratings should play AA or AAA, depending on his stats.

What are these yellow and green ratings you speak of???

[jools]

Originally Posted by Geebob

What are these yellow and green ratings you speak of???

Oops, there you have me. Apparently this has to do with the game settings.

We don't use the stars, and we use the 100 scale rating. Red is up to 20, orange 20 to 40, yellow is 40 to 60, green is 60 to 80 and blue is over 80.

Hope this helps.

[KingYankee]

Originally Posted by DrSatan

I'm curious if anyone has had any luck with the opposite. I've never had a late round draft pick with like 1 or 2 star talent do any better then that. To me if blue chip prospects can bust then late round diamonds should also exist. If a player can go from 5 stars to 1, then they should be able to go from 1 to 5.

In my historical online, 1996 season: Posada was a 1 star rating with a potential of 5 star. This guy named Mark Smith (OF), he was an unknown to me was a 1 star rating with a 1 star potential.

In the period of one sim (the same sim), Posada became a 1 star rating with a 1 star potential rating.
Mark Smith in the same sim, became a 3 star rating with 5 star potential.

Quickly researched Smith. Real life: Drafted 9th overall in 1991. Played 414 games between '94 and '03. Stats are insignificant.
No research necessary on Posada. We all know his real life credentials.

To answer the question, I've had both happen, and both at the exact same time.

[Geebob]

Originally Posted by jools

Oops, there you have me. Apparently this has to do with the game settings.

We don't use the stars, and we use the 100 scale rating. Red is up to 20, orange 20 to 40, yellow is 40 to 60, green is 60 to 80 and blue is over 80.

Hope this helps.

My misdirected attempt at being funny. My players are never good enough to have yellow or green ratings. They are all familiar shades of red and orange... including my #1 draft choice who is already fading toward obscurity.

[RonCo]

Originally Posted by Curtis

This is a gross oversimplification, but if you cut the rate of change in half, then you cut the number of busts and the number of boomers (maybe by half, maybe to a quarter). The reverse will happen if you double the rate of change.

The magnitude of the effect becomes greater the farther into the draft you go. Maybe at round five you cut the rate of boomers in half, but by round ten it's down to a quarter and by round twenty it's at an eighth. The reason for this is that the later the pick the more net positive changes he's going to need to reach the majors. If changes are harder to come by, the effect becomes multiplicative. Since the number of changes doesn't remain constant throughout a player's career (declining as he ages), you'll also greatly reduce the occurance of 'late bloomers'.

Note — that's a common sense answer and may very well be overturned by someone like RonCo coming in with statistical analysis.

Pretty well sums it up.

[RonCo]

And, yes, there are talent/potential increases as well as talent/potential decreases. Reducing the frequency of talent changes generally reduces the likelihood of both early round busts and hidden gems in the late rounds. It's very, very hard to get a true read on the development engine by hand-picking players and asking "why him?" For me, anyway, I need to look at the changes across an entire league over a reasonable time to be able to make any definitive comments. in addition, I've learned a long time ago that it's wise to be careful about how often I pull out phrases like "that would _never_ happen in real life."

[RonCo]

And just to summarize at the top level...the following two statements are true:

1) I have mounds of data to show that v2007's development engine is the best that Markus has released.
2) I have mounds of data to show that we have many places where we could improve, especially in the cases of younger players who will often be unrealistically crushed in the process of failng.

I know that Markus's goal is to constantly improve his product from year-to-year.

[jools]

Originally Posted by Geebob

My misdirected attempt at being funny. My players are never good enough to have yellow or green ratings. They are all familiar shades of red and orange... including my #1 draft choice who is already fading toward obscurity.

Lol. Well, I'd say first you'd have to look at where your players are playing.

For instance, I have 22 year old MR who had a few talent hits which resulted in overall ratings exceeding his talent. However, this year I took him up to Spring Training and lo and behold: he had a talent boost. It's small, but it's a boost. Plus he's doing a fine job so far (I kept him the Majors bullpen). Vice versa, I had pitchers during ST whose ratings were ready for the Majors, but who didn't perfom at all. And when I demoted them back to AAA, their morale indicated they were very happy about team transactions. My theory is now that it's best to keep them there for the time being.

So you have lots of ways to live out all your theories about player development and the game provides handles for it. And it gets even better: some of your theories will work. In general that is. Managing your Minors is not a matter of driving a car. It's more like sheep herding: you hope they do what you intend and it takes patience, intuition and skill.

Perhaps the development engine can be improved on a lot of points, like Ronco says. But that doesn't mean it's total rubbish. Despite the brutal talent hits, one *can* work with it succesfully.

[darkcloud4579]

This thread was great. I missed it the first time around, but it has a ton of gems related to player development and stuff I didn't even consider that I think I'll try to implement and should make my solo experience even better. Good stuff.

[Lintyfresh]

I know this is slightly off topic, but I was wondering what you guys thought about this as a baseline for promoting/demoting talent...

For every level I try to get a guy 350-500 at bats to prove himself as ready to head to the next level.

For every starting pitcher I get them at least 150-200 innings before I move them up.

For relievers I try to get 75-100 appearances before I move them up.

Am I waiting too long to promote/demote, or are those number of opportunities accurate?

I'm pretty new to the game so I don't know if you hold a guy in a certain level too long if their potential has been wasted or what... hopefully you guys can give me some answers.

[darkcloud4579]

Before I read this thread, I guess it didn't occur to me that OOTP have evolved enough that you could destroy a guy in the minors if you don't manage him or that with effective management, you could develop a guy into something better than he'd be otherwise.

[ykr919]

I have another question, and maybe someone can explain a little more about how actual stats in OOTP 2007 correlate to ratings. I have had many players that have good stats at their level suffer talent drops/hits. A man who hits .300 and is playing at his correct level shouldn't suffer a talent drop in contact by 2-3 points in my estimation unless he suffers an injury. But it regularly happens. So I am wondering how actual stats correlate to talent ratings in the minors or do they not make any difference at all?

[Elendil]

Originally Posted by ykr919

I have another question, and maybe someone can explain a little more about how actual stats in OOTP 2007 correlate to ratings. I have had many players that have good stats at their level suffer talent drops/hits. A man who hits .300 and is playing at his correct level shouldn't suffer a talent drop in contact by 2-3 points in my estimation unless he suffers an injury. But it regularly happens. So I am wondering how actual stats correlate to talent ratings in the minors or do they not make any difference at all?

Markus has said that they do correlate, but it's not deterministic (players doing badly sometimes get boosts and players doing well sometimes take hits).