Top draft picks always pitchers

[andyhdz]

For those testing are you doing a new draft for a completely new game? If you are doing it for. an existing league the draft bug that was there would have probably mixed up your blend of pitchers and batters. The patch fixed that going forward but players who got delayed in their draft status are still there.

[1991Twins]

andyhdz, My league that I tested I started as a default league with the most recent patch (21.3.45). For the test, I ran everything with default settings. Not only are pitchers 2/3 to 3/4 of the first round, in every test that I do, there are no position players from rounds 28 to the end. It has made the game unplayable for me.

[MarlinsFan2014]

Lukas, am I correct to understand that nobody will be looking into the draft issues until sometime next week? Between this issue and a thread stating that almost all of their draft picks are released, I am very concerned about progressing in a long term sim.

[andyhdz]

I just did my draft in my long term sim and before the draft pool was announced I decided to start fresh and deleted all of my draft classes so I wouldn't get any of those older players who were being held back. In my new draft pool I got a fresh class in all 4 years and the mix of batters and pitchers was about 50%. My draft looked fine and yes I did noticed that in my last round the last 15 or so picks were all pitchers but the rest of the earlier rounds were fine. I also no longer saw late round draftees demanding salary bonuses so that was fixed.

I don't know if what people are seeing is the result of the bug that saw a lot of late draftees demanding a big bonus which caused teams not to sign them and they went back into the pool diluting the mix or not. So far in this fresh draft it was fine. I do set my draft to create an extra 5 rounds of players that don't get to be drafted. So is the problem the draft pool that is available that is causing teams to draft only pitchers or batters or is it the actual draft AI? I can tell you my draft AI looks fine but I'll have to see how this new class keeps looking in the next couple of drafts as players move up and down the classes because of JUCO, going to 4 year colleges, and returning to school because they were not drafted or not signing status changes. Also as far as I can tell the problem of draftees not being in the right draft class and becoming 19 year old high schoolers or 5 year college students seems to be fixed.

[1991Twins]

I think it's awesome that andyhdz used his league to conduct a test. I was inspired by his ideas and ran another test. For this test, I used a current 2020 default rosters league on the current patch (21.3.45). I deleted the real draft class and allowed the game to provide a fresh batch of players. When generating the class, I generated a class for 5 extra rounds to not be drafted like andyhdz did.

What I found is this:

1. 9 of 29 1st round draft picks were starting pitchers.
2. Using players generated for 5 extra rounds not to be drafted, position players ran out in the 32nd round instead of the 28th round.
3. Teams still drafted a little strangely. The Padres drafted 10 catchers for some inexplicable reason. The Orioles took 14 relief pitchers (22 total pitchers), the Rockies took 13 relief pitchers (19 total pitchers), and the Marlins took 11 relief pitchers (17 total pitchers). I could see the argument that maybe these teams were very weak in pitching and were restocking their system. I am not sure though why San Diego needed to draft 10 catchers though.

I wonder if the game is generating the upper end talent in favor of mostly pitchers because in 2020 the real MLB is so dominated by offense and this is the game's way of maintaining balance. I can confirm that players are the appropriate ages and are in the right draft class. All in all, everything looks good in what was added to the new patch. I hope either Matt or Markus can look more into this to make sure that things are running smoothly and as designed. I will try to run a historic league to see if there are less pitchers.

[1991Twins]

My historical season that I tested was my 1990 quickstart. I chose this because it was before expansion and the rise of the steroid age. I figured a good contrast to what we see now. The findings of the 1990 test (using andyhyz's idea of 5 extra rounds of players that don't get to be drafted, I stayed with the standard 35 rounds of draft picks with 40 rounds of players created) were:

1. 19 of 26 1st round picks were hitters (including the top 8); I had not seen this before this test.
2. Oddities included the Detroit Tigers drafted 12 catchers, the Baltimore Orioles drafted 11 catchers, and the Royals drafted 9 catchers. The Padres drafted 16 relievers.
2. Position players ran out in round 27

Conclusions:

1. It seems talent level in current MLB dictates upper end talent in the draft (a league with elite starters will generate elite hitting prospects).
2. Teams seem to strangely fixate on certain positions.
3. The draft runs out of hitting prospects at some point no matter what.

[wodi]

I’m a little confused, are you saying that the problem is the real classes and if you generate fresh classes w/out real the pitcher issue is corrected?

How does this help for leagues which have already used the real classes?

I feel like I’m missing something.

[Hrycaj]

If I’m reading this right the issue (over draft of pitchers/running out of hitters) is prevalent with and without feeders enabled correct?

[slugga27]

Originally Posted by Hrycaj

If I’m reading this right the issue (over draft of pitchers/running out of hitters) is prevalent with and without feeders enabled correct?

Yes. This is concerning. I would be worried about the league running out of position players in 15 years. Unless someone confirms this problem corrects itself after the real draft classes are done.


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[Mat]

I have simmed through 80 years and the league did not run out of players. Most of these players will never even see A ball.

[wodi]

Originally Posted by slugga27

Yes. This is concerning. I would be worried about the league running out of position players in 15 years. Unless someone confirms this problem corrects itself after the real draft classes are done.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

My problem has been the auto classes AFTER the real classes drafting mostly pitchers

[slugga27]

Originally Posted by Mat

I have simmed through 80 years and the league did not run out of players. Most of these players will never even see A ball.

Re: the bolded portion, that seems contradictory. The league didn't run out of players, but most didn't even see A ball? Can you clarify?

[slugga27]

Originally Posted by wodi

My problem has been the auto classes AFTER the real classes drafting mostly pitchers

I've only done the 2020 Draft and 2021 Draft at this point. I don't recall anything outrageous from the 2020 draft, but the 2021 draft ran out of position players by the 32nd round.

For the classes AFTER the real classes, are you hitting a point where it runs out of position players?

[henry296]

I just looked at my draft pool and it is 60% pitchers and 40% batters for 2023. Not sure if these are real people or a mix. I've also heard that scouting discoveries are more likely to be position players which helps balance the player pool, but I can't seem to find a list of all of them. The first round was 20 pitchers and 12 batters.

Looking at the Pirates last year they took 17 pitchers and 25 position players but 4 of the last 5 were pitchers. The signed 15 pitchers and 23 position players. In my 2020 sim, they ended up with 22 position players and 14 pitchers out of 34 players. Looks like 2 two-way players. The Dodgers on the other hand had 12 position players and 24 pitchers. The Dodger have 3 rookie teams while the Pirates have 2 (+ 2 DSL), so they need more pitchers to fill them out, but all have plenty of players both pitchers and position players.

Based on that, the pool might need to be a little more balanced, but it doesn't appear to impact the rookie teams.

[ALB123]

Originally Posted by slugga27

Re: the bolded portion, that seems contradictory. The league didn't run out of players, but most didn't even see A ball? Can you clarify?

Originally Posted by slugga27

Re: the bolded portion, that seems contradictory. The league didn't run out of players, but most didn't even see A ball? Can you clarify?

Mat probably has a better answer than I do, but when I read his original post about 'most will never see A ball", it made me think, "he's probably correct!" If you have a Rookie & a Rookie Advanced league, my guess would be he's 100% correct since he didn't say "all", he said "most".

If there are 35 draft picks and you sign 30, for example, you'll probably end up cutting 10 of them at the end of their Rookie season, maybe more. So 20 of those players move on to the Rookie Advanced league. Out of those 20, how many are going to be worth promoting to Class A? Half? Heck, let's say that 12 make it onto the Class A or Short-Season Class A team. That's 12 players out of the original 30. More than half fizzled out. There are always going to be players one draft class ahead of the one we're talking about who are going to be given a second year of A ball. If your next farm club is Class AA, that is where the really good players are. So, it's not like GMs are going to flippantly send all your Class A players to Class AA to make room for every rookie player to play Single-A ball next year. To me, reaching Class A is a milestone in a player's career. It's most often make it or break it time. If you make it and move on to AA, you just may get that shot at the Majors one day. Or you might become a career AAA player. Or you might become an insurance salesman. :-)

I hope that made sense.

Has anyone looked at the draft logs of the last five or six years in real life to see what the outcomes were, Pitcher vs. Non-Pitcher?

[CField17]

The draft is totally #*&$ed in this game, I submitted my league file a week ago. Lots of complaints on the bug report forum, very disappointed this wasn't addressed in the most recent patch.

[Mat]

ALB explained it very well.

It is frustrating that no matter what I have tried, the AI will always favor batters in the draft. This leaves only pitchers selected in the last few rounds.

It is not ideal, but these pitchers selected in the last few rounds are unlikely to progress from rookie ball and if they do, it will usually be as an injury replacement. The same amount of hitters are not really required, i think, because they suffer less injuries generally.

[thklein]

Originally Posted by Mat

ALB explained it very well.

It is frustrating that no matter what I have tried, the AI will always favor batters in the draft. This leaves only pitchers selected in the last few rounds.

It is not ideal, but these pitchers selected in the last few rounds are unlikely to progress from rookie ball and if they do, it will usually be as an injury replacement. The same amount of hitters are not really required, i think, because they suffer less injuries generally.

Most people seem to be reporting the opposite problem. The AI heavily favoring pitching, at least in the first round. In my most recent draft the first ten picks were all pitchers.

[BrewCrew29]

Hate to say it, but I don't think this is a priority at all at the moment. The silence on the matter from anyone higher up surprises me. How do you invest in a long term sim with a draft that is broken?

[CField17]

Originally Posted by BrewCrew29

Hate to say it, but I don't think this is a priority at all at the moment. The silence on the matter from anyone higher up surprises me. How do you invest in a long term sim with a draft that is broken?

I can't do it...I tried for a little while, but all the low minors are totally screwed up with the draft being screwed up. The yankees GCL affiliate has over 100 players and like 80 of them are pitchers.