Draft Class - How Stacked is too Stacked?

[pauwoo]

Curious if anyone has seen this with an imported save? I imported my long-term save a month or two after 23 came out and just noticed after playing 3-4 season out, that the first crop of players created for my feeder league (who will all be draft eligible this season) seems to be stacked. My draft pool is ~840 players deep for a 24 team league and there are 36 players showing 80 POT and another 39 showing 68 POT or above.

Did I miss an update? Is this a known issue? It seems to have only effected the first draft class that was generated in 23, all subsequent classes seem to be good to go.

And, I realize that I can't really fix it without deleting all my NCAA players and regenerating them, which I don't want to do... so I am also wondering, if you have seen something similar, what did you do about it? Painstakingly edit players in excel and re-import the class? Or - if you did see something like this in your longterm save, what would you try to do to fix it?

As it stands I have 1 1/2 rounds worth of picks with a potential rated 3 standard deviations from the mean... even for a fictional save, that's bonkers.

[dodgerblue88]

Same here, imported from 22 and seeing very stacked draft classes (bat heavy). I'm 4 seasons into my save in 23 and I've noticed it gets worse each season.

[pauwoo]

Originally Posted by dodgerblue88

Same here, imported from 22 and seeing very stacked draft classes (bat heavy). I'm 4 seasons into my save in 23 and I've noticed it gets worse each season.

I’ll need to look again, but when looking at future classes in my save it seems to normalize a bit. Curious if you’re using feeders? Also, how are you dealing with it?

[Syd Thrift]

The rule of thumb is you want to generate 3-5 players per team per minor league level, so a 24 team league with 3 levels of minors should have around 300 players in the draft pool. Yeah, 840 is waaay too many and it’s not surprising to see you have too many 80/80 guys. It’s tbh one of the major issues with feeder leagues: unless your major league is absolutely massive and deep, you just can’t have all or even a large number of actual colleges, let alone high schools.

[Rain King]

Feeder leagues should be thought of more like "All-Star Prospect Leagues" than regular college and high school leagues if you want them to be realistic from a number of players stand-point.

[pauwoo]

Originally Posted by Syd Thrift

The rule of thumb is you want to generate 3-5 players per team per minor league level, so a 24 team league with 3 levels of minors should have around 300 players in the draft pool. Yeah, 840 is waaay too many and it’s not surprising to see you have too many 80/80 guys. It’s tbh one of the major issues with feeder leagues: unless your major league is absolutely massive and deep, you just can’t have all or even a large number of actual colleges, let alone high schools.

First, that's a typo - the pool is 640.

So, I'm doing 24t ML, 4 levels of MiLB and have 90 Feeder Teams... I'm estimating ~4-5 players per feeder team entering the draft. Eligibility is set to '1 year prior to max age'. A lot of players go undrafted and either go back to school, or, if they've aged out, go play in the Bush League. I've been running it like this for a loooong time and have never had a draft class this top heavy. Last years pool had 26 players with POT of 68 or above (still too many, but nowhere near the number I had with this years pool).

That being said, I deleted all the players in my NCAA feeder, made sure I was all patched up (I am), and filled with fictional players. I now have 639 players in the draft pool with only 7 showing a POT of 68 or higher. This is much more realistic in my view - I'm guessing this issue was patched or just an anomaly in my file.

[pauwoo]

Originally Posted by Rain King

Feeder leagues should be thought of more like "All-Star Prospect Leagues" than regular college and high school leagues if you want them to be realistic from a number of players stand-point.

Not sure I follow, can you elaborate? I've been using this set-up for a while and, until recently, always found the distribution of talent acceptable.

[Syd Thrift]

Originally Posted by pauwoo

First, that's a typo - the pool is 640.

So, I'm doing 24t ML, 4 levels of MiLB and have 90 Feeder Teams... I'm estimating ~4-5 players per feeder team entering the draft. Eligibility is set to '1 year prior to max age'. A lot of players go undrafted and either go back to school, or, if they've aged out, go play in the Bush League. I've been running it like this for a loooong time and have never had a draft class this top heavy. Last years pool had 26 players with POT of 68 or above (still too many, but nowhere near the number I had with this years pool).

That being said, I deleted all the players in my NCAA feeder, made sure I was all patched up (I am), and filled with fictional players. I now have 639 players in the draft pool with only 7 showing a POT of 68 or higher. This is much more realistic in my view - I'm guessing this issue was patched or just an anomaly in my file.

IME 640 players is still around 50% too many for a 4 level, 24 major league environment. I try to stick at 4, which would put the ideal number just southeast of 400. You do this for years on end and it’ll dilute the talent of your league. If you go with fictional players, that also means that a 4 level minor league system should have a draft around 16 to 20 rounds in length (I try to do, say, 16 or so with a draft pool that could fill out 18 or 19 so that at the end of the draft teams still have players to choose from).

Another issue, depending on how long you’ve run your league in 23, is that when things first came out college players were developing too quickly while they were still in school. That was occurring behind the scenes in non feeder leagues but I’m sure development was ramped up compared to now for players who were actually interacting directly with the game/development engine. My guess is that these players might have had their “growth spurts” before the patch came in to fix that issue.

[Rain King]

Originally Posted by pauwoo

Not sure I follow, can you elaborate? I've been using this set-up for a while and, until recently, always found the distribution of talent acceptable.

You mentioned "NCAA". When I have seen people try to add an entire NCAA setup that is going to be way too many players for OOTP. So, to help understand the "level" of player that the Feeder Leagues are actually representing an "All-Star Prospect" league is a better representation. For example, the Cape Cod league.


FWIW, I do believe that OOTP 23 had some overpowered draft class issues when it was released that got fixed along the way. So, you may be experiencing that depending on when your draft classes were generated. I don't have a lot of details on that as I haven't used Feeder Leagues in this version of the game but it has been mentioned in various threads and in the patch fix lists.

[pauwoo]

Originally Posted by Rain King

You mentioned "NCAA". When I have seen people try to add an entire NCAA setup that is going to be way too many players for OOTP. So, to help understand the "level" of player that the Feeder Leagues are actually representing an "All-Star Prospect" league is a better representation. For example, the Cape Cod league.


FWIW, I do believe that OOTP 23 had some overpowered draft class issues when it was released that got fixed along the way. So, you may be experiencing that depending on when your draft classes were generated. I don't have a lot of details on that as I haven't used Feeder Leagues in this version of the game but it has been mentioned in various threads and in the patch fix lists.

Ahh, got it. Thanks, Rain King!

[pauwoo]

Originally Posted by Syd Thrift

IME 640 players is still around 50% too many for a 4 level, 24 major league environment. I try to stick at 4, which would put the ideal number just southeast of 400. You do this for years on end and it’ll dilute the talent of your league. If you go with fictional players, that also means that a 4 level minor league system should have a draft around 16 to 20 rounds in length (I try to do, say, 16 or so with a draft pool that could fill out 18 or 19 so that at the end of the draft teams still have players to choose from).

Another issue, depending on how long you’ve run your league in 23, is that when things first came out college players were developing too quickly while they were still in school. That was occurring behind the scenes in non feeder leagues but I’m sure development was ramped up compared to now for players who were actually interacting directly with the game/development engine. My guess is that these players might have had their “growth spurts” before the patch came in to fix that issue.

Appreciate the input.

I also have a 12t Bush League that left over players end up in... but, your point stands. I also saw some of that quick development, one of my clubs' rivals, the Austin Grackles, managed to get a world-class, 75% developed CFer 2 drafts (or so) ago who finished 3rd in MVP voting last season. There are other examples of course but this is the most glaring as he led his team to a division title, effectively ending our stranglehold on the division.

I think I started this file in 19 (or 18), so it may be time to put it away and create something new...