Minors/player development struggling

[seth1710]

Sorry if this comes off as someone who just stinks at drafting and player development. But I've been playing the game every year since 2020, always going the expansion franchise route, and for the first time I'm having real problems in player development.

My drafted players, and international free agents, hardly ever pan out. My expansion franchise is in its 10th year but the farm system ranks dead last. My minor league teams have ALWAYS stunk, especially my low-A team.

Part of it may just be that my major league team has been good, even early on, so I've only had one draft pick in the lottery. But that doesn't explain the international signings also stinking it up.

Has anyone else run into this problem? Are there any AI or settings tweaks? And yes, I use the developmental lab every year.

[kq76]

This is probably the weakest part of my game so maybe I shouldn't talk, but the people who seem confident about their skill when it comes to this will point out that they spend a fair amount of time deciding exactly what level of minors their players should be at based on their stats and ratings.

Personally, I don't have much desire in doing that and I now play with only 1 level of minors, but it makes sense at least. If a player is doing well at a level, promote them to a level that is more challenging. If they're not performing well then either leave them where they are, demote them, or (especially if they're a little older) release them to give more playing time to players who may play better.

Another thing to do is to crosstrain them. Maybe they're not good enough offensively at a position like 1B, but they're plenty good offensively at 2B.

If doing all that seems like way too much then you can set the AI to control the promotions/demotions, like I do, and/or pick the top few prospects and only manage their promotions/demotions. Just make a note (shortlist?) of which ones they are so you don't have to constantly go through the process of deciding which to control.

[Daniel_09]

This version of the game drastically changed the development of the players, in my opinion quite successful and better than in other versions, but the players who are used to many previous versions realize the difference quickly, before the development of the players was somewhat linear, each year the ratings improved a little which made it easy to move up the prospects for each level each year or in a shorter period. That IRL is not the case for most players.

In this version players increase ratings in a much slower way and in a short period of time they increase almost to their maximum level, so an IAFA can spend 3 years in R 2 years in A and then in a few months he has enough ratings to be in AAA or on the MLB bench. Of course, what the game fails to do is create 16- or 17-year-old players that don't follow this pattern, meaning they can develop faster than 5 or 6 years.

Which happens IRL but it's not the majority either.

And well take into account that in my opinion in the previous versions of the game it was very easy to develop almost all the prospects in the draft and the international pool. Which was normal to have a MLB team where the average player has an overall rating of 55-60/80, which is nothing like the real world. In this version you have to take more seriously players with overall ratings of 40 or 45 out of 80 but who have individual ratings that can stand out in one area.

[md40022]

You mention that you play every game. I do the same and IMO if you play every game while micro-managing your minor leagues to the level that some other users do it just isn't practical if you plan on having a life outside of OOTP haha. At least that's my opinion.

The way I handle this is I shortlist my top prospects and I put all of my focus into that group of guys. Set their development focus and adjust it as needed. Put them at the positions and the minor league levels that I see fit, keep tabs on their production and then tweak them accordingly over the course of the season, etc. But I only do that for my short list. I let the computer handle everything else in the minors. Then at the end of a given season, I will adjust my short list accordingly. Maybe drop a guy or two off who it seems like might not be worth the time anymore and then add a new guy or two. Repeat this season after season.

That's not to say that all of those guys will magically pan out for you. Plenty will still flop, just like in real life. But at least you'll know your focus and attention is in the right place.

I used to try and micro manage the minors down to every detail, but then with also playing 162 games I'd barely by finished with 1 season when the next OOTP version was coming out and I never wanted to transfer the old safe to the new version since I always wanted to start fresh with current real life rosters...... Then I came to the realization of why focus on developing the minors if I was only playing 1 or 2 seasons lol. That's when I started to short list just my top prospects.

[jpeters1734]

I fall in the camp of total control over my minor leagues. if you allow the AI to control your minor leagues, you will miss out on a lot of gains. Even if you only control your top prospects, you're going to miss out on some hidden gems.

Something else to consider, scouting can mislead you. Your prospects may not be stalling or regressing, but their scouting reports may just be getting more accurate