Fictional League creation question

[Pdubya64]

Hey guys:
Getting ready to create my Colonial Baseball League once again. You know, 13 colonies, etc. I had them split into a North and South subleague structure in '21, with uneven # of teams.

My question has to do with how to configure the league. I made the start year in the mid-50s if memory serves, but ran into a small problem.

Once I picked a team to run and looked at the initial roster I was immediately disappointed. My choices ended up generating players no higher in overall rating than around 55. Not what I was looking for.

I can't remember how big I set the "net" to catch players, I thought it was the US and Canada, but I may have said East Coast.

I need a bit of guidance from you experienced Fictional guys to know if I am mistaken or just need to change a setting or two that will ensure a full range of players (ability rating) for the initial league draft.

I did remember to pick the largest city in each team's state to help with income, etc.
Thanks!

[joefromchicago]

Originally Posted by Pdubya64

Once I picked a team to run and looked at the initial roster I was immediately disappointed. My choices ended up generating players no higher in overall rating than around 55. Not what I was looking for.

I can't remember how big I set the "net" to catch players, I thought it was the US and Canada, but I may have said East Coast.

As long as you have a big enough pool of players, it really doesn't matter where that pool is drawn from. That's simple statistics. If you're drawing slips of paper out of a bag, you'll randomly draw roughly 10% black slips regardless of whether there are 10 black slips in a hundred or 100 black slips in a 1000.

That said, I'm not sure why you're seeing a lot of average players. Of course, you should expect the game to create average players on average, but there still should be some above-average players created. If you're drawing from the US and Canada - countries with the highest baseball-quality ratings - you should be getting a good cross-section of talent. So I'd have to know more about your setup before offering an opinion.

[ptFri217]

How many teams are you playing with? I’m assuming 13. That should be more than enough to get some variety. There is a chance with a small player pool that you just miss great (or really poor) players being generated.

That said, it doesn’t matter what the actual ratings of the players are if you have “all player ratings are displayed relative to currently selected league” and “overall ratings based on all players, not positions”. Checking these will “push” the slightly higher rated players to the 70s and 80, and the “push” the worse players down, essentially spreading out the ratings you’re being shown. This can be done even in a high school league where all players should be below a 40 compared to modern day MLB.

One last possibility is the modifiers if it’s based on some early year. Not too familiar with messing around on that, but it could be causing you some problems. Again though, the relative ratings should be seeing more of a spread I’d think.

[Pdubya64]

Ah, OK. Thanks guys. I think it might be some of the settings I chose. It does get a bit bewildering when you are not playing a lot of OOTP. Appreciate the help. I am going to wait for a few more patches to drop before I attempt a "real" campaign.