Favor Vets or Rookies in trading?

[ClassicMLB]

Wanted to see what kind of experience people have had with setting the AI Trade Preference Setting. I am currently using Neutral but what does everyone think about the other settings of Favor Veterns or Favor Rookies, etc?? My concern with changing the settings is that I don't want EVERY team trying to rebuild all the time if I say favor Vets and I don't want EVERY team full of aging stars with no rookies. I guess having a Trade Preference for each team would be much better.

[gordyhulten]

I use Hard, Favor Prospects and it seems to work out well in my solo league. I can't trade all my upcoming free agents for five-star prospects anymore.

That said, with the trading system, YMMV.

[joncarlos]

I've got it set to hard, favor prospects as well. I think that's the most common setting. Very hard/heavily favor prospects is a little too insane for my tastes.

[dougaiton]

I'm a hard/favour prospectsman as well...it removes the only real problem that I found with the all trade AI where a team would ship a 26 year old guy with good ratings for a 5-star prospect with the same ratings and two other guiys for good measure.

I also set 'trading'' to LOW. I think that better mirrors the number of ML transactions (sure, teams make a whole pile of trades a year, but most are minor leaguers for other minor leaguers). Lets you get more used to the teams too.

[sixfour210]

I would think it to be more realistic to set it to favor heavily for veterans. This way, you CAN trade away upcoming veteran free agents for prospects like they do in MLB.

[ClassicMLB]

Originally posted by sixfour210
I would think it to be more realistic to set it to favor heavily for veterans. This way, you CAN trade away upcoming veteran free agents for prospects like they do in MLB.

Well the problem with favor heavily for veterns would allow you to deal a 37 yr old who is good now but will be finished in a season or less for a 5 star stud. And even if you just don't do that, the computer still will and you will see very bad trades.

I have experimented some and found that favor heavily for either vets or rookies is too extreme and results in foolish trades. I am leaning toward Favor Rookies because that seems to produce nice results. I also like the trade setting freq to LOW. Perhaps in OOTP6 there will be a way to set trade preferences for each team because that would improve things greatly.

[sixfour210]

Originally posted by ClassicMLB
Well the problem with favor heavily for veterns would allow you to deal a 37 yr old who is good now but will be finished in a season or less for a 5 star stud. And even if you just don't do that, the computer still will and you will see very bad trades.

I have experimented some and found that favor heavily for either vets or rookies is too extreme and results in foolish trades. I am leaning toward Favor Rookies because that seems to produce nice results. I also like the trade setting freq to LOW. Perhaps in OOTP6 there will be a way to set trade preferences for each team because that would improve things greatly.

Trades like this happen often in MLB. The Dodgers pulled of a couple like this in Robin Ventura and Jeromy Burnitz. Larry Walker was also brought up in trade talks. Oh yeah and one bonehead move by the Braves: they traded Matt Belisle for Kent Mercker. There's the kicker.

I get great results with the favor veterans or favor veterans heavily. Look down the list of the trades that happened this past July. You'll find that most of them happened with teams giving away good prospect talent for some good veterans.

Favoring veterans heavily makes it so the team is less likely to just give away the veterans while they would give up on the up and coming talent. This reflects what happens in the MLB. Brandon Phillips, Jack Cust, Adrian Gonzalez and the list goes on. These were all high prospects traded in deadline deals.

Favoring prospects will limit deals like this because teams will not let the young talent go.

[Skipaway]

Originally posted by sixfour210
Trades like this happen often in MLB. The Dodgers pulled of a couple like this in Robin Ventura and Jeromy Burnitz. Larry Walker was also brought up in trade talks. Oh yeah and one bonehead move by the Braves: they traded Matt Belisle for Kent Mercker. There's the kicker.

I get great results with the favor veterans or favor veterans heavily. Look down the list of the trades that happened this past July. You'll find that most of them happened with teams giving away good prospect talent for some good veterans.

Favoring veterans heavily makes it so the team is less likely to just give away the veterans while they would give up on the up and coming talent. This reflects what happens in the MLB. Brandon Phillips, Jack Cust, Adrian Gonzalez and the list goes on. These were all high prospects traded in deadline deals.

Favoring prospects will limit deals like this because teams will not let the young talent go.

Your interpretation of real life trades is not really true.

First of all, in real life veterans with ending contracts will bring you draft picks if they leave to sign with other teams. That draft pick is in a sense prospects.

Also, in real life, teams trade veterans AND CASH for prospects. In these days, teams will only take veterans when the salary is basically covered by the former team.

Both of these are not presented in OOTP. And without those two features, teams trading prospects for veterans are robbed.

And the prospect pool in OOTP is virtually smaller than in real life. It is easier for a OOTP prospect to make it to the major leagues, and therefore their values are higher in OOTP than in real life.

All those factors combined, it makes more sense to favor prospects than veterans.

[crackpott]

also, prospects in OOTP reach their projected ability at a MUCH more stable level then in real life, thus when trading for a stud prospect in real life... you still may end up with nothing all that great. In OOTP, you pretty much know in a few years he'll be tearing it up, or at worst be a very solid contributor.

[ClassicMLB]

Yes the key to the Trade Settings is to make OOTP play the best it can. Just because favoring Vets might be what happens in real MLB, it does not work as well in OOTP. Favoring Vets does seem to be the best way.

Thanks to everyone for the input.