I am monitoring the growth of 2013 Rookie Pitchers - Any suggestions?

[Leefoo]

Up until now, I have done nothing but historical leagues (albeit with OOTP 12/13 - this is my first shot with 2014), but I have embarked on a '2013 and on' league. After some sputters (probably caused by Win 7 re-install and user stupidity...lol) and some great help from posters, I reinstalled OOTP 14 and everything is seemingly good to go.

I am testing my belief that '20/--' pitchers tend to 'die on the vine'

I had noticed this in my Historical Replays among the players I had drafted and the analyst in me wanted to confirm this, but I was too lazy. Maybe I just had a lousy development system....lol.

But, what REALLY got me going was the difference in rookie pitcher ratings in historical replays vs the current day replay. Most rookie pitchers in 1976, for example, are like Dave Rozema, who, when drafted was (I think) a 51/57 pitcher or others who have a plus 20 great on OVR/POT. Very few are like Lary Sorenson who is rated 20/71. Almost all had SOME grade on their OVR side. Some of the higher drafted pitchers were 57/76, for example.

However, in 2013, almost every pitcher is rated 20/--, even the supposed good ones who have, for example, 20/79 ratings.

So to test this theory, I loaded up the Top Pitching prospects page, made a spreadsheet from it and decided to track 37 of the top pitching prospects including the five on my Pirates (2 inherited, Cole and Taillon and 1 obtained via amateur draft and 2 international free agents that I won bids on).

So far, after one season (2013), of the 37, 5 have increased, two stayed the same and 32 have dropped, two of them to 20/20!! This is not looking good. Even one of my draftees (Mark Appel) dropped down to 20/62 from the 20/72 he was when drafted just 4 months ago! Of those five who increased, only four saw their OVR rating go up, and only one of them got out of the 20s (a whopping '32').

In my '76 league, almost every rookie pitcher that was drafted has gotten better (I have played two seasons) except for one who had a disastrous AA campaign. My 20/71 pitcher, Sorenson, to no surprise, has dropped to 20/57 after one year, despite a good "A" ball campaign. I guess I am going to have to start tracking those 1976 pitchers from hereon, too, just to make sure my suspicions are confirmed? These guys are just from my team.

The only switches that I have turned off and on, are ones that stop the game (such as I eliminated the Rule 5 draft, etc). Plus, I eliminated the DH. I wanted to have as 'out of the box' experience that I could.

I will keep you apprised of the results. However, if you have any suggestions, feel free to post them in reply. You guys have been great so far.

[El Muneco]

I admit, I'm not (yet) a big part of the community - first time poster and all that. And I've only played about 40 seasons of OOTP 14, which is not much at all, and much less than my experience with Front Office Football or Baseball Mogul, and a fraction of seasons with Championship Manager.

That said, I'm right there with your thesis that generated players with 20 overall rating are crap at worst, and more trouble than they're worth at best, regardless of their potential. I've long since started avoiding them in the draft - I'll take a 21/40 over a 20/60, for example.

I was afraid it was superstition on my part. Maybe it is - I haven't run enough seasons to show one way or the other. But I've had the same bad experiences.

[thehatfield]

Have you happened to also note the work ethic rating of the rookies in question? You can see that on their BNN Player Page in the player profile, "Personality Ratings" section. Apologies if that was already implied in your post.

[Leefoo]

Purple Cowboy...I haven't noted the work ethic....but when push comes to shove, if I have to choose between one or the other, I choose the work ethic. I'm just going by the ratings.

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El M....I have no choice but to take 20/-- pitchers, because that is all there is. I have simmed three full seasons since I wrote that post. I've come across some interesting developments, but to keep the post short, here's what has happened to my Buccos. Of the 5 highly rated 20/-- pitchers, one, a Latin signing, became a 20/20 pitcher in his first year, and has stayed that way. Gerrit Cole is now a 26/43, Taillon a 63/69, Mark Appel, 49/63 and Sixto Rodriguez, the other Latin signing, is a stud 76/80 at this writing.

However, what is really interesting is that two 20/21 players, Tyler Gaffney and Jacob Stallings, are now 61/67 and 70/80 players! Where did THAT come from? One of my middling relievers, drafted as a 20/20' is now a 50/60! I never expected that!

On the other hand, Josh E Bell, as a 64/70 OFer, was inserted into my lineup, had a fairly productive year, but in the middle of his second year, started dropping and has now been reduced to a 22/22!!! That was really mind boggling.

Overall, of these 37 pitchers, about 1/3 are being productive. The rest are currently mediocre or complete washouts after just three years! I know that there's something to be said about the 'well, this mirrors real life', but geez...

At that rate, it would take forever to rebuild. Imho, The pitchers in historical replays are more likely to fulfill their promise (but then they start out as, for example, 52/74), than these current say pitchers.

But, I have a few more seasons to sim.

[thehatfield]

Originally Posted by Leefoo

Purple Cowboy...I haven't noted the work ethic....but when push comes to shove, if I have to choose between one or the other, I choose the work ethic. I'm just going by the ratings.

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What I was wondering was if the players you're noticing that have significant drop offs also have poor or very poor work ethic?

[Leefoo]

PC...i will certainly check that out. Thanks for the suggestion.

I hope to run another season or two on Saturday.

[SirMichaelJordan]

I had a 20/20 pitcher eventually win the Cy Young Award 4x

[Lukas Berger]

Originally Posted by Leefoo

Overall, of these 37 pitchers, about 1/3 are being productive. The rest are currently mediocre or complete washouts after just three years!...
I know that there's something to be said about the 'well, this mirrors real life', but geez...

You just answered your own questions with this statement. A 33% rate of being elite players (and even someone at 49/63 like Appel is an elite player in OOTP) from a given group of prospects is actually a much higher success rate than you'd be likely to see in real life.

To illustrate, here's all the pitchers ever taken with the number one overall pick irl (guys who would be rated something like 20/70 or better at the time they were drafted in OOTP) and their career WAR's:

Stephen Strasburg (9.1)
David Price (18.6)
Luke Hochevar (2.5)
Bryan Bullington (-0.2)
Matt Anderson (-0.5)
Kris Benson (13.0)
Paul Wilson (2.2)
Brien Taylor (0.0)
Ben McDonald (20.9)
Andy Benes (31.1)
Tim Belcher (26.2)
Mike Moore (28.5)
Floyd Bannister (26.5)
David Clyde (0.7)

So you see here that we have:

Two-three guys who became stars (60/80 or better type guys) Price, Strasburg, maybe Bannister.

Five guys who were solid mid-rotation starters for a long time (30 or 40 or 50/50). Benson, McDonald, Benes, Belcher, Moore

Two guys who were mediocre to bad starters or relievers (20-25/25). Wilson and Hochevar

Four guys who were not MLB caliber pitchers (20/20). Bullington, Anderson, Taylor, Clyde

Further it's worth noting that all this is entirely customizable by changing the TCR's. Do you want every 20/80 player to eventually become a 70/80 player? Set the TCR level to 1.

Do you want complete randomness where any player can be great and any player bad? Set the TCR's to 200.

For anything in between those two extremes there's a TCR setting that'll work as well.

So learn how to use the TCR settings, and you can get any sort of result regarding talent development that your heart desires.

Also, players at the time of the draft should not be rated any higher than 20 overall as a current rating. A rating of 21 overall indicates that the player is an MLB caliber player. Players in the real life draft are almost never ready to immediately step into the majors. So they will have current ratings of 20 overall. The reason that this is different in historical drafts is that players only enter the historical draft at the time they began to play in the majors. So those guys should pretty much all be MLB ready. Guys in drafts using the MLB roster set should not be, as that much more accurately reflects rl conditions in the draft and the minor leagues.

Finally, you're paying too much attention to the overall ratings. In OOTP the overall ratings are only a very, very, very rough indicator of a players talent level. Often there will be little to no performance difference between a guy rated 30/30 and a guy rated 70/70. There's not such a drastic gap between guys 20 or 30 points apart in the overall ratings as many people seems to think there is. In fact, players rated at 20/20 can sometimes be useful players for a MLB team in OOTP if their component ratings are good enough. Those guys are absolutely not automatically worthless.

[Leefoo]

lukas....Your points are well written and 'spot on'. I have been following MLB Prospects since the early 80s and am well aware of how often these top prospects fail. I just didn't know how closely OOTP adhered to real life. Especially since this was my first current day replay (as an aside, I love the names that are made up...One guy is named "Ian Spearm"...a 20/78 prospect).

I'm glad (I think) to see that they do mirror real life....As for Appel, his ERA has been over 5.00+ his first two years. I might shop him around.

Btw, I got this from Markus (assuming he doesn't mind me posting this:

"Player development in OOTP, just like in real life, is highly volatile and
full of risks. A high-potential pitcher with low current ratings has a
pretty good chance to never fully live up to his potential, it is the rule
and not the exception. The whole player development code has been improved
for over a decade now, and it is extremely realistic and produces great
long-term results. Of course, that means that some users suffer a lot
because their prospects happen to be busts.

By the way, the reason you got fully developed players in the draft for
historical leagues is that these player ratings are based on the first MLB
season the played, and some players put up good numbers there already. OOTP does not have real historical minor league stats for these players.


How many developers of games will answer you directly and be patient with you?

Overall, I guess you can say that I am now very impressed with OOTP.

[Leefoo]

SirMichael....how long should I hang onto my 20/20 pitchers?

Or, is it like winning a lotto ticket?

[Lukas Berger]

Originally Posted by Leefoo

SirMichael....how long should I hang onto my 20/20 pitchers?

Or, is it like winning a lotto ticket?

It is, pretty much. If your TCR settings are high, you might want to hang on them longer. But typically keep them until they're 25-26 if their component ratings are decent enough that they could get good with a talent bump or two.

Keep them around even longer if they perform well enough in the minors that they can provide you with some solid depth for your MiLB org or even as cover for your MLB team.

[SirMichaelJordan]

Drafting in the later rounds is pretty much a lottery ticket with a bunch of 20/20 players left. I draft for skill instead of tools in the later rounds. Meaning I may draft at guy with great fielding ratings but not much else in hopes that he will get talent bumps and will atleast be able to hit .250 at Major league level.

Depending on where you have your TCR settings at I usually keep players with with 20 potential around longer when I see that they are improving in the player development screen every year. Players with low potential ratings won't improve much if you have TCR low. (I wouldn't go below 100)



Here's the guy who went on to win 4 Cy Young's

http://www.ootpdevelopments.com/boar...ml#post3661261

One thing I notice about talent bumps is that I never seen a guy who struggled for most of his career all of a sudden became a star. TCR might be random but it seem like the bumps happens after a good season.

[JohnHoward]

I don't want to bust up the party here, but now when I am drafting I only really look at one thing for pitchers - individual pitch potential. I may also consider work ethic on borderline cases, but I find that ignoring total ratings and just looking at individual pitch potential gives me a greater chance of finding that diamond in the rough. Also, very few pitchers without a decent fastball (or sinker, if they don't have a fastball rating) are worth pursuing. However, I will take all the knuckle-ballers available.

[Leefoo]

Where do I find this elusive TCR rating? I've never heard of it.

It might be interesting to play around with it.

I spent enough time in my earlier years in APBA/Action PC draft leagues. Now, all I want to do is draft and 'play'.

I have a league"waiting" for me where I screwed up and set it to draft the teams. It might be interesting to draft using some of these things.

[megamanmatt]

AI options. Talent Change Randomness. It affects the random talent boosts and drops players get in their careers.

[Leefoo]

Originally Posted by megamanmatt

AI options. Talent Change Randomness. It affects the random talent boosts and drops players get in their careers.

I'm not seeing it....This is what I have under AI Options. In fact, I'm not sure I have ever seen it?

[SirMichaelJordan]

It's under player and picture options.

[megamanmatt]

Originally Posted by SirMichaelJordan

It's under player and picture options.

Sonofa... he's right. Sorry. That's what my memory will get you. The best part is I had the friggen game open!