Minor League Hitting

[perez24]

How do you end up with decent teams at the Rookie and A levels? I know the easy answer is to pick good players, but I'm really a wit's end.

I'm playing a solo league with all of the current ML teams. During the amateur draft I'm usually in the teens to twenties in the picking order. It's not unusual to have my leading hitter batting about .230 and most of the others below .200 in my rookie and even A leagues. Further, it's quite common to have bulk of my players at those levels get rated not ready for whatever level they are at in my minor league report.

That being said, my minor leagues usually yield a couple of decent players every year and people move up.

Am I worrying unncessarily?

[Biggio509]

I believe so. In a new game I started every team below AA has been terrible but I have produced nice players for my ML team. The problem is the AI does not think the way humans do in putting together minor league teams. There still is a lot of minor league shuffles with guys getting promoted and demoted a lot. Whereas I make huge cuts every year to make room for prospects and get rid of permanent minor leaguers the game does not always do this. You find the lesser prospects often just pushed down.

I try to impose real world rules on my teams but I can't impose them on the other teams. So my low rookie teams never have anyone with more than 2 years service. My SA only has up to 2 guys with 4 or more years service. I often put top draft picks in A ball. Often this means my AZL or GCL team is a bunch of 19 yo's with 1 to 3 current CH or CON. You might find the AI playing a 30 yo with 5 CH in rookie ball.

Because I typically make trades or cuts to make room for ready prospects my AA and AAA sometimes lag behind too. So my minor league teams often do not well but my prospects are developing fine. Then again my philosophy for the minors is all about development. I will set the higher rating but fully developed guy to back up so a bigger prospect can develop and the higher rated guy is the first guy I cut to make room for a better prospect so my teams are weaker current ratings but better potential than the AI often. I just don't have 30 y/os in AA who have topped out they get cut when I find they are pretty much maxed and they will never make the majors unless I need a pulse at that position. I am not sure the AI does this.

Sometimes the AI is just weird on minor league placement I have seen guys listed with SA and AAA the same season and back to A ball the next!

Just as a note I have the 5th best minor league system during the off-season in my current game. Last all my minor league teams were under .500 and none made the playoffs. I had better minor league seasons when I was closer to the bottom of the minor system rankings.

[tejdog1]

I drafted most of these guys in the '14 draft, they ended up hitting like .210 and under. It sucks.

[udbacker58]

what are the players on other teams hitting? If all teams have the same problem, you may need to adjust your league modifiers for the rookie leagues. Also, the guys just may not be ready to play in rookie ball yet. It isn't unheard of for a guy to be that underdeveloped that he needs more than a season in rookie ball in OOTP or real life.

[perez24]

Originally Posted by udbacker58

what are the players on other teams hitting? If all teams have the same problem, you may need to adjust your league modifiers for the rookie leagues. Also, the guys just may not be ready to play in rookie ball yet. It isn't unheard of for a guy to be that underdeveloped that he needs more than a season in rookie ball in OOTP or real life.

I have two Rookie League teams, and I pretend that one is higher than the other. My rule is that you can spend 2 seasons in Rookie League but not on the same team.

I'll look at the league settings. My pitchers seem to do a lot better than the hitters so maybe other teams are having the same trouble.

Thanks to everyone for their input!!!

[Curtis]

Originally Posted by perez24

I have two Rookie League teams, and I pretend that one is higher than the other.

My experience has been that when I played the 2006 through 2008 MLB with full minors (versions 2006 through 9), the Mets had two Rookie and two A teams, and the GAME treated one as higher than the other.

For one example, a player at low A Kingsport would have the note that he was ready to be promoted. If I sent him to AA Binghamton he'd get the note that he wasn't ready for that level, but if I sent him to high A St. Lucie, no notes would come back.

Likewise, if a player at high A St. Lucie had a note that he needed to be demoted, sending him to short A Brooklyn would result in a note that he was ready to move up, but sending him to low A Kingsport would make everyone happy.

A third example would be that players on my high Rookie team would get notes saying they weren't ready to play at that level, but those at low Rookie GCL Mets never got that note, since there was nowhere lower to send them.

Note that the game didn't label the leagues as high or low; I had to figure it out for myself, and in at least one instance the game reversed what the leagues were in real life.

Note also that you can (or at least used to be able to) affect this yourself during Game Setup by giving some A or Rookie leagues modifiers that are .001 higher or lower than other leagues at the (nominally) same level.

[beorn]

Part of this is, as stated above, teams playing older non-prospects in the lower minors.

Part of it is the frequency with which you get highly skilled fielders playing 2b, ss, cf, etc.

But the real key is that almost all high school draftees enter the league with extremely low skills and then gain significantly over the next winter. This is of questionable realism, but it would work okay if rookie leagues were made up entirely of guys straight out of the draft. But instead, what happens is that second and third year players routinely beat up on first year players, even though some of those first year players will later develop into productive major leaguers.

[Biggio509]

IRL, the low rookie teams can have players up to 2 year experience and up to 3 years for advance rookie leagues. The problem in the game is you see some guys with 7 or 8 years experience with ratings that top the rookie level placement scale in rookie league. The game sometimes just holds on to guys that should have been long cut and moves them down instead of making room for prospects. Sometimes you find guys in their late 30's who are about to retire shuffled down to the low minors, despite still having big contracts.

I don't think the problem is as much 2 and 3rd year players. In many cases the AI promotes these guys if the ratings are good enough for SA or A as much as it is aging scrubs whom the AI do not cut that just forced down to SSA/rookie league or somehow stuck there after a trade.

I am looking at the Braves in my game and their rookie league has plenty of 24 to 26 olds in their APPY team. The ratings are the high end of rookie placement or borderline SSA so they are placed in the rookie league. Their GCL team is much more in line with rookie level guys yet there are few whose current ratings are at the top of rookie/bottom advanced rookie and they are 23 to 25 with little more potential, according to my scout. These are guys I would likely cut.

[tejdog1]

The hierarchy of leagues, at least according to Wiki

AAA: IL/PCL
AA: EL/SL/TXL
A+ (high A): FSL/CAL/CAR
A (mid A): SAL/MID
A- (low A, Short Season A): NYPL/NWL
R+ (advanced rookie): APP/PIO
R (rookie, complex rookie): GCL/AZL
R (Summer league teams): DSL/VSL

The game doesn't differentiate between mid and high A, nor does it differentiate between the two rookie classifications it's got.

[Curtis]

Originally Posted by tejdog1

The game doesn't differentiate between mid and high A, nor does it differentiate between the two rookie classifications it's got.

It doesn't use a different nomenclature for them, but as I described above, from at least version 2006 through version 9 the game did treat the 'high' and 'low' versions as distinct levels.

[tejdog1]

'11s the first version I've played.

[Biggio509]

Originally Posted by tejdog1

The hierarchy of leagues, at least according to Wiki

The game doesn't differentiate between mid and high A, nor does it differentiate between the two rookie classifications it's got.

It does but not in a way that is visible by labels. Markus has been firm about keeping the league labels of AAA, AA, A, SA, R. The reason is these are cosmetic. What makes a rookie league a rookie league is not the title you give it but the settings for sabremetric player creation that are found in league settings under strategy. I am not sure exactly how this relates to player creation but what it does afterward is determine which level the league is at.

So your sabre pc mods will determine the ranking of leagues. If the mods are 1 it is MLB. If it is around .9 for most modifiers it is AAA. The idea is you can do things like create an independent league that is between AA and AAA. You set the sabres below AAA but above AA.

In the game the levels are differentiated because high A has slightly higher sabre PC mods than low A same with rookie and advanced rookie clubs. The label is just there for show, although if you select say AA under the league settings tab it does automatically import AA settings. Where as the game calls all A ball clubs A the sabres actually make the California, Carolina, and Florida State Leagues high by being a little higher sabres than Midwest and the Sallie. This means more advanced players will placed there by the AI. The same works for Appy and Pioneer versus GCL and AZL. Although it is not obvious it is there. I am not sure why Markus never added the labels. I suppose he believes the work involved is not worth the purely cosmetic gain.

[tejdog1]

Ok good, lol. Thanks, Biggio. Very good to know that there is a difference in the game, and the AI knows it.