Good Young Pitchers on Waivers

[Trav876]

Does anyone else run into this problem? I see it all the time while playing this game...a good young pitcher who's performing extremely well, goes on waivers. Seems like this would be pretty rare in real life, but it happens all the time in OOTP- at least with the sims I play. Unless I am somehow setting things up incorrectly.

Dehart is 25 years old, has a 1.88 ERA in 28 innings in the bigs... is a starting pitcher, also had good stats in AAA.

I have the AI Settings at- 50/25/15/5 (Ratings/Current Yr/Last Yr/2 Years)

Is the only way to solve this by making "current year stats" worth more and thus ratings less? Problem is, when I've done that, the AI doesn't value prospects very much during trading (it's way too easy to trade for top 100 guys)...yes, even with "favor prospects" only 2 ticks away from being maxed out...

It seems very tough to make the AI intelligent in this game with their transactions (particularly waivers, trades). Similarly (but a bit of a side note), I'll quite often see weird/dumb decisions made like putting poor hitters in the clean-up spot (poor ratings & statistics), when I leave it to the AI to make line ups, or with teams I'm playing against. I'll check the guys' expectations and they don't "expect" to be hitting clean-up either.

Anyone else notice these things and is there anything to be done about it?

[Trav876]

Originally Posted by Trav876

Does anyone else run into this problem? I see it all the time while playing this game...a good young pitcher who's performing extremely well, goes on waivers. Doesn't seem like you would ever see this in real life, let alone how much it seems to happen in OOTP.

Dehart is 25 years old, has a 1.88 ERA in 28 innings in the bigs... is a starting pitcher, also had good stats in AAA.

I have the AI Settings at- 50/25/15/5 (Ratings/Current Yr/Last Yr/2 Years)

Is the only way to solve this by making "current year stats" worth more? Problem is, when I've done that, the AI doesn't value prospects very much during trading (it's way too easy to trade for top 100 guys)...yes, even with "favor prospects" only 2 ticks away from being maxed out...

It seems very tough to make the AI intelligent in this game with their transactions (particularly waivers, trades). Similarly (but on a side note), I'll quite often see weird/dumb decisions made like putting poor hitters in the clean-up spot, when I leave it to the AI to make line ups (or, teams I'm playing against).

Anyone else notice this and is there anything to be done about it?

And this pitcher that I was referring to above even has 2 option years left!

[kidd_05_u2]

If the player is on waivers despite having options, it is because the team needs space in the 40-man roster.

As for Dehart, his ratings suck and he is lucky to have such a low ERA given his weak K/BB ratio. The Phillies were lucky to get some clean innings from a trash player and are now replacing him for someone who is surely better.

If you care about teams valuing performance more, I recommend you to go ahead and change the AI evaluation settings. Some people here say the AI becomes too dumb if you lower the ratings component, but in my game I'm at 35-35-20-10 and AI decisions have been good.

[MathBandit]

I'd have to have an extremely bad team to even consider putting in a waiver claim on a guy like the one in the OP.

[snepp]

Yeah, can't say I'm seeing a problem here either.

[Trav876]

Originally Posted by kidd_05_u2

As for Dehart, his ratings suck and he is lucky to have such a low ERA given his weak K/BB ratio. The Phillies were lucky to get some clean innings from a trash player and are now replacing him for someone who is surely better.

If you care about teams valuing performance more, I recommend you to go ahead and change the AI evaluation settings. Some people here say the AI becomes too dumb if you lower the ratings component, but in my game I'm at 35-35-20-10 and AI decisions have been good.

Originally Posted by MathBandit

I'd have to have an extremely bad team to even consider putting in a waiver claim on a guy like the one in the OP.

Maybe it's the historical settings that were imported (mid 90's), but his ratings are not "bad" whatsoever. In fact, it's pretty average. There are many top 100 pitcher prospects that have pretty average ratings. For example, see some of the attached (Freddy Garcia, Marcus Mays, etc.)

So, a young starting pitcher with average ratings and excellent current stats (in AAA and MLB), with option years remaining...and they waive him?

Still seems strange. But thanks for the tip about the AI evaluation, Kidd

[kidd_05_u2]

Dehart is older and his current ratings are well worse than the potential ratings of all the players you have listed. By ratings alone, he is a AAA player at best.

The ERA looks good, but the K/9 and the K/BB don't look so good. If you look at his FIP, I bet it is significantly worse than the ERA.

So the AI GM looks at a player with AAA ratings and a performance that seems more lucky than good [we don't have nearly enough info from your screenshot though]. They yank Dehart from the 25-man before he most likely turns into a pumpkin. Your AI evaluation settings are making the AI smart that way. If you prefer AI decisions to resemble what GMs of the era were doing, go with 25/25/25/25 or something close.

[kidd_05_u2]

As for the Dehart being put on waivers instead of being optioned, yeah the AI isn't great about managing the 40-man roster.

[MathBandit]

Originally Posted by Trav876

Maybe it's the historical settings that were imported (mid 90's), but his ratings are not "bad" whatsoever. In fact, it's pretty average. There are many top 100 pitcher prospects that have pretty average ratings. For example, see some of the attached (Freddy Garcia, Marcus Mays, etc.)

So, a young starting pitcher with average ratings and excellent current stats (in AAA and MLB), with option years remaining...and they waive him?

Still seems strange. But thanks for the tip about the AI evaluation, Kidd

45 is a bad component rating for a reliever; an average MLB reliever should probably be (depends on a lot of other context but if we're breaking it down to just his ratings 'slashline') 55/55/55 or better.

So this is a relief pitcher who will give up more hits, more homers, more walks, and get less strikeouts than an average pitcher. Even if he reaches his peak (according to the scout I am paying) he will never be more than an AAAA up-and-down type arm in my system.

If I have a team that's going to lose 95 games, sure I'd probabyl claim him and hope he has an insane spike in ratings to become worthwhile. If I have a horrific pen, then sure maybe he's passable as my mop-up long reliever. But in most cases I have no use for an arm like that unless I've been heavily ravaged by injuries, and my 40-man spots are generally too valuable to waste.

[Trav876]

Originally Posted by MathBandit

45 is a bad component rating for a reliever; an average MLB reliever should probably be (depends on a lot of other context but if we're breaking it down to just his ratings 'slashline') 55/55/55 or better.

So this is a relief pitcher who will give up more hits, more homers, more walks, and get less strikeouts than an average pitcher. Even if he reaches his peak (according to the scout I am paying) he will never be more than an AAAA up-and-down type arm in my system.

If I have a team that's going to lose 95 games, sure I'd probabyl claim him and hope he has an insane spike in ratings to become worthwhile. If I have a horrific pen, then sure maybe he's passable as my mop-up long reliever. But in most cases I have no use for an arm like that unless I've been heavily ravaged by injuries, and my 40-man spots are generally too valuable to waste.

He is a starter...

That's why I thought this seems like a strange move. I see it all the time though in the game.

Originally Posted by kidd_05_u2

Dehart is older and his current ratings are well worse than the potential ratings of all the players you have listed.

He's 25...

And his ratings aren't "well worse." There are several players on there who are at or below 50's listed. He is pretty similar ratings-wise to many of them. Regardless, the ratings don't stand out as terrible. And his stats are really good. Just seems like a strange move but I see it happen a lot in this game.

[kidd_05_u2]

Originally Posted by Trav876

And his ratings aren't "well worse." There are several players on there who are at or below 50's listed. He is pretty similar ratings-wise to many of them. Regardless, the ratings don't stand out as terrible. And his stats are really good. Just seems like a strange move but I see it happen a lot in this game.

If you are really concerned, look at the transaction log for the Phillies and see who they promoted to replace Dehart. Who were the other starting pitchers? I'd bet they all had better ratings. Also, with only 28 innings pitched you can't say his stats are really good.

I'll give you a real life example from the 2022 season that matches perfectly with this Dehart case:

Devin Smeltzer was 25 last season. A soft-tossing non-prospect AAA starter who got promoted to the Twins in May after a couple of injuries.
After five starts, Smeltzer had 28 innings pitched and a 1.93 ERA, almost exactly like Dehart in your save.
Was Smeltzer suddenly good or just a AAA pitcher getting lucky?
The answer was obvious at the time honestly, but the Twins had to test their luck because they didn't have enough healthy arms. Smeltzer started another seven games, put up a 6.00 ERA in those starts, and was finally sent down.

Again, there is nothing wrong with you wanting the AI to ride these players until their good luck goes away since this would be more like real teams operate, but the screenshots you put up suggest that Dehart is most certainly not a "good young pitcher put on waivers". He seems just a guy who got lucky for five starts and the AI is smart enough to know that.

[PSUColonel]

If you are using 50/25/15/5...then you still have another 5 percent you can add to ratings evaluation. 55/25/15/5

[Trav876]

Originally Posted by kidd_05_u2

If you are really concerned, look at the transaction log for the Phillies and see who they promoted to replace Dehart. Who were the other starting pitchers? I'd bet they all had better ratings. Also, with only 28 innings pitched you can't say his stats are really good.

I'll give you a real life example from the 2022 season that matches perfectly with this Dehart case:

Devin Smeltzer was 25 last season. A soft-tossing non-prospect AAA starter who got promoted to the Twins in May after a couple of injuries.
After five starts, Smeltzer had 28 innings pitched and a 1.93 ERA, almost exactly like Dehart in your save.
Was Smeltzer suddenly good or just a AAA pitcher getting lucky?
The answer was obvious at the time honestly, but the Twins had to test their luck because they didn't have enough healthy arms. Smeltzer started another seven games, put up a 6.00 ERA in those starts, and was finally sent down.

Again, there is nothing wrong with you wanting the AI to ride these players until their good luck goes away since this would be more like real teams operate, but the screenshots you put up suggest that Dehart is most certainly not a "good young pitcher put on waivers". He seems just a guy who got lucky for five starts and the AI is smart enough to know that.

They recalled a slightly better guy, ratings-wise, according to my scout (55, 45, 45).

Appreciate ya'lls thoughts on all this. Still seems weird unless a guy has terrible ratings, and there's a definite "higher rated guy" to take his place, to get rid of a young SP. Especially in this sim where SP ratings are rare to be super high. But I'm less concerned than before I suppose.

If I change AI to favor current year stats more, the problem is then trading gets all out of whack and - even though I have "value prospects" very high, the AI will still trade top 100 prospects simply because they aren't performing well yet. AI doesn't seem to make that distinction between valuing top 100 or high prospects in the organization.

[MathBandit]

Originally Posted by Trav876

He is a starter...

That's why I thought this seems like a strange move. I see it all the time though in the game.

Fair enough, I thought he was a reliever based on confusing it with the later screenshots (I think). Either way though, regardless of his current title he would not even enter into the conversation as a starter on any half-decent team, so for the purposes of a waiver claim (and 40-man spot) he's either a bad mop-up longman or a AAA starter.

[Pelican]

As for adjusting the evaluation criteria, there will be as many opinions as there are posters (or users), but I have stuck with 40/30/20/10 (except for eliminating any consideration of the artificial, truncated 2020 debacle) with good results and few anomalies, both present day and for historical seasons. YMMV.

[Trav876]

Originally Posted by MathBandit

Fair enough, I thought he was a reliever based on confusing it with the later screenshots (I think). Either way though, regardless of his current title he would not even enter into the conversation as a starter on any half-decent team, so for the purposes of a waiver claim (and 40-man spot) he's either a bad mop-up longman or a AAA starter.

The later screenshot was showing some top 100 pitching prospects and that many of them have potential ratings that aren't much different than Dehart who's a young starting pitcher, so I would think would be valuable particularly given that his stats were so solid.