Restructuring the minors

[Lucas718]

Looking for feedback on how difficult it would be to restructure the minor leagues to match the current real life setup.

My current league is one that has been carried through several versions, starting with OOTP19 (maybe earlier). So as the Orioles, I still have teams like Frederick and Bluefield as affiliates.

How big of an undertaking would it be to restructure all the affiliates into the correct leagues/levels without causing a giant mess?

If that's too much work, how would you retire a team without losing the players? Maybe this is an easier approach.

[thehef]

This is a historical league with historic evolution? What version are you on now? What year are you on?

In real life Bluefield stopped being a Balt affiliate after 2010, and Frederick after 2019. So I'm just wondering how it is you arrived at where you are

Hopefully with some add'l info, we can find some answers for ya

[Lucas718]

Originally Posted by thehef

This is a historical league with historic evolution? What version are you on now? What year are you on?

In real life Bluefield stopped being a Balt affiliate after 2010, and Frederick after 2019. So I'm just wondering how it is you arrived at where you are

Hopefully with some add'l info, we can find some answers for ya

Purely fictional league started with MLB format in OOTP19, possibly earlier, I don't remember but it was before the MiLB revamping. Even so, I'm not sure how we ended up with Bluefield since they should have been a Blue Jays affiliate by then. Anyway, the format for this save is real teams, fake players.

The initial season was 2015 and I've just imported it into each new version of OOTP as they came out. Just finished the 2021 season in time for OOTP26 and have the league set up there now.

What started me down this path was me deciding it was time to do some house cleaning on the minor leagues, getting rid of the 1 star players who won't ever amount to anything and older guys who just aren't going to pan out. It was at that point the realization hit me... I have too many teams.

I'm too attached to my players on the Major League team to start over with a new franchise with the proper format.

[thehef]

So you basically have had a static minor league structure since your initial year, save for any changes you may have manually made?

[Lucas718]

Originally Posted by thehef

So you basically have had a static minor league structure since your initial year, save for any changes you may have manually made?

Correct. I just can't see any way to do this without spending hours and hours moving teams and players around.

[Bobfather]

The best way would be to create the teams you want. I would just pick an unaffiliated team in the correct league. Release all the current players. Then move the players you want on that team there. Plus coaches. And so on till your done. Take all the empty teams and make them unafilliated.

[thehef]

Fictional is a bit outside my area of semi-expertise. But a couple things come to mind...

1. If you were to take, for example, Bluefield and "move" it to another city by navigating to Bluefield's Home > Settings panel and changing the City/Name, Abbrev, Nickname, selecting the specific city via City Search (and probably updating the ballpark name), the players will remain on the team and the affiliation with the Orioles will still be in place. Sure, that's a fair amount of work if you have dozens or even over a hundred teams to "move" but at least you won't be also having to move any players.

2. Another approach might be to utilize the Export & Import Rosters functions (under League Settings > Functions, on the right). This might work with some plan where you a) export all the rosters (I believe you have to do this separately for each minor league), b) go into your game and make wholesale changes to the Milb structure without regard to where the players go, c) edit the export files to, for example, put all of the Bluefield players on the replacement Balt affiliate, and then d) import the rosters.

Maybe these ^^^ might give you or someone else some better ideas...

[Lucas718]

Appreciate the responses. Was just poking around in Game Settings > League Settings > Functions

There is an option called Edit League Structure. I think this might be what I'm looking for.

20+ years of playing this game and I've never noticed this option.

[thehef]

Yep. But make sure you back up before making any changes... And depending upon how you go about editing stuff, you might find players getting released & so forth... This is definitely and trial & error type of situation... thus the advice to make a backup

[Lucas718]

Great advice! Backup is definitely mandatory here because I'm still not sure I won't mess this up

[Curve Ball Dave]

Everything is fine until you get to High A/A then it becomes a mess. I've done it and my advice is to make sure you plenty of paper and a pen full of ink because you'll have to do a lot of jotting. The problem is teams changed leagues and leagues changed classifications. If the changes were just one or the other it would have made the job easier, but it's both and that's where the note taking, list making, and otherwise keeping track of everything comes in.

Yes, it can be done but prepare to budget a couple or few hours to get it right and be prepared to double and triple check your work to make sure each team has the right number of affiliates at the right levels.

[Lucas718]

Originally Posted by Curve Ball Dave

Everything is fine until you get to High A/A then it becomes a mess. I've done it and my advice is to make sure you plenty of paper and a pen full of ink because you'll have to do a lot of jotting. The problem is teams changed leagues and leagues changed classifications. If the changes were just one or the other it would have made the job easier, but it's both and that's where the note taking, list making, and otherwise keeping track of everything comes in.

Yes, it can be done but prepare to budget a couple or few hours to get it right and be prepared to double and triple check your work to make sure each team has the right number of affiliates at the right levels.

Great insight here. I wasn't really thinking much about the number of teams that switched leagues or levels. Just looking at my Orioles franchise, I'd have Aberdeen moving from the NY Penn league to the High-A South Atlantic League.

I'm really going to need to map this out. I figure the best place to start would be to list out the teams & where they are in my current save and begin noting the changes that need to be made to get them where they should be.

[Curve Ball Dave]

Originally Posted by Lucas718

Great insight here. I wasn't really thinking much about the number of teams that switched leagues or levels. Just looking at my Orioles franchise, I'd have Aberdeen moving from the NY Penn league to the High-A South Atlantic League.

That's a good for instance, right there. The Brooklyn Cyclones, off the top of my head, moved from the NY-Penn League to the Sally league. There's more.

I'm really going to need to map this out. I figure the best place to start would be to list out the teams & where they are in my current save and begin noting the changes that need to be made to get them where they should be.

I made a spreadsheet, but I also had to do a lot of hand writing with tons of check marks, cross outs, arrows, and you can guess the rest

[thehef]

Originally Posted by Lucas718

Great insight here. I wasn't really thinking much about the number of teams that switched leagues or levels. Just looking at my Orioles franchise, I'd have Aberdeen moving from the NY Penn league to the High-A South Atlantic League.

I'm really going to need to map this out. I figure the best place to start would be to list out the teams & where they are in my current save and begin noting the changes that need to be made to get them where they should be.

A good resource for this, if you didn't already know, is the milbteams.csv file that comes with OOTP and resides (typically) in your C:\.....\Out of the Park Baseball 25\data\stats folder. You can make a copy & save it as Excel and then sort & so forth... (First thing I do after saving a copy is hide columns H thru AP, as they are essentially meaningless to anything I do in this file...)

[Lucas718]

Originally Posted by thehef

A good resource for this, if you didn't already know, is the milbteams.csv file that comes with OOTP and resides (typically) in your C:\.....\Out of the Park Baseball 25\data\stats folder. You can make a copy & save it as Excel and then sort & so forth... (First thing I do after saving a copy is hide columns H thru AP, as they are essentially meaningless to anything I do in this file...)

Thanks! I had no idea those files existed

[thehef]

Originally Posted by Lucas718

Thanks! I had no idea those files existed

Yep, that file - in conjunction with the milbleagues.csv file - controls the year-to-year structure of OOTP's minor leagues when you play historical.

[Pelican]

And, if it's not apparent (I missed this), in order to preserve the new minor league teams you have created for future years, you will need to edit those csv files with the correct new information for each team. Otherwise they will revert back.

[thehef]

Originally Posted by Pelican

And, if it's not apparent (I missed this), in order to preserve the new minor league teams you have created for future years, you will need to edit those csv files with the correct new information for each team. Otherwise they will revert back.

He's playing a fictional league so his milb system won't be evolving historically. I think he just wants to update his milb structure to look a bit more like current real-life milb.

[OutS|der]

Would not turning on historical minors and ending the year trigger the MILB restructure despite the year being past that? Or does it only happen in 2020 and if past that won't trigger?
Turn off once done so the game leaves it alone for future years

[Lucas718]

Originally Posted by thehef

He's playing a fictional league so his milb system won't be evolving historically. I think he just wants to update his milb structure to look a bit more like current real-life milb.

Yep, that's the gist of it. I do also have a historical league going that I play less often, so this is still good info