New patch - checking on 2025 draftees

[ChrisG]

So upping college draftees' current ratings seemed promising, but it looks like the AI is nowhere near aggressive enough in promoting them still, or they're still not developing.

This is draft day 2026...and of the top 25 2025 college draftees, only two are above A+. Many college draftees have actually been demoted to rookie ball (see Marek Houston for instance). This is with dev speed cranked up to 1.200.

Is anyone else seeing this? Is the AI assigning some of these guys to rookie ball etc actually inhibiting their development? I'm not sure a single 2025 college guy in this selection has had his current rating improve.

[ChrisG]

I'll add a number of top prospects are getting demoted too, sometimes two levels.
For instance, 7/18/26: Max Clark (45 OVR) is at A+ after starting the year in A, Kevin McGonigle (40 OVR) is at A.

[DetroitStyle]

I mean, only 5 college players from 2022 first round are in the majors right now. And that was 3 years ago.

I think you need to give it more than a year and also have more than one sim to compare

[johndoe8865]

Originally Posted by DetroitStyle

I mean, only 5 college players from 2022 first round are in the majors right now. And that was 3 years ago.

I think you need to give it more than a year and also have more than one sim to compare

I don't think that's the issue. The issue is, how many of the 2022 1st rd college picks are still playing are in A+ or A ball?

We've seen, especially recently - some of the top college players come to the majors in their first minor league season. Look at Chase Burns, Nick Kurtz, Jac Caglione, Rhett Lowder from last year, etc. Even Mike Leake in 2011 did it.

Now, I don't think it should be common, but it should be possible. And then top 10 college pick prospects, unless they're really struggling and need a "reset" aren't getting demoted from A+ down to A ball or even busted down to Rookie ball like we're seeing. Something about the prospect logic isn't working properly it seems.

[kidd_05_u2]

The problem is that AI fills the higher levels with old players. The AI will sign every 30-35 OVR player it finds in free agency, so from A to AAA the minors are full of players aged 25-30 who have no potential but are better than the college draftees.

[kidd_05_u2]

The developers did one of two necessary steps to fix this by raising the ratings for draftees. The second step is stopping the AI from wanting to sign every single one of the thousands of old free agents.

[Catchers Interference]

Originally Posted by kidd_05_u2

The developers did one of two necessary steps to fix this by raising the ratings for draftees. The second step is stopping the AI from wanting to sign every single one of the thousands of old free agents.

Honestly though. I usually go in and manually retire a bunch of free agents in a new save. I can't stand seeing the AI constantly sign players who haven't played pro ball in 2–3 years and clearly shouldn't still be in the free agent pool. It completely kills the immersion—especially when those washed-up guys end up getting playing time over actual prospects.

[kidd_05_u2]

Originally Posted by Catchers Interference

Honestly though. I usually go in and manually retire a bunch of free agents in a new save. I can't stand seeing the AI constantly sign players who haven't played pro ball in 2–3 years and clearly shouldn't still be in the free agent pool. It completely kills the immersion—especially when those washed-up guys end up getting playing time over actual prospects.

I do the same. I whittle down the initial FA pool from 4,000 players to about 800. The AI still goes ahead and signs any player with OVR of 30 or more.

[ChrisG]

Originally Posted by johndoe8865

I don't think that's the issue. The issue is, how many of the 2022 1st rd college picks are still playing are in A+ or A ball?

We've seen, especially recently - some of the top college players come to the majors in their first minor league season. Look at Chase Burns, Nick Kurtz, Jac Caglione, Rhett Lowder from last year, etc. Even Mike Leake in 2011 did it.

Now, I don't think it should be common, but it should be possible. And then top 10 college pick prospects, unless they're really struggling and need a "reset" aren't getting demoted from A+ down to A ball or even busted down to Rookie ball like we're seeing. Something about the prospect logic isn't working properly it seems.

This. It's not that they should all be in the majors (even 0 in the majors is a realistic outcome)...it's more the fact that many are being demoted for no apparent reason or are stuck in Low-A for no reason.

An early-round college player should never be in Rookie ball outside of some sort of injury or performance disaster.

And just with prospects in general...using the Clark and McGonigle examples... 45 OVR is basically AAA/ML ready and 40 is basically AA or AAA. No reason guys with those OVR ratings should be playing in Single-A let alone getting demoted from where they started in the save.

[Hrycaj]

Quick question. Are these issues happening with the "base minor league depth charts and pitching staff" on "Potential ratings" (Rules section)? I can see these scenarios happening if it was set to "current", if it isn't, then that doesn't sound like it is working as intended.

[Lukas Berger]

Upping dev speed is actually likely to actually hurt in a situation like this.

Doing this ups the dev speed for everyone, not just a few top prospects, and will result in more highly rated players in the higher levels of the minors and thus overall will make it harder for prospects to get promoted, not easier.

[Lukas Berger]

Now, that being said, you still shouldn't be seeing guys with those current ratings in rookie ball.

Things are much improved here in our most recent testing, as now the AI is actually generally properly assigning guys to A+ or AA out of the draft (and continuing into future years), but it does seem that there are still a few cases like the above, where things are still not working as intended.

We'll likely take another pass through this and try to eliminate these cases totally.

[Lukas Berger]

Originally Posted by kidd_05_u2

I do the same. I whittle down the initial FA pool from 4,000 players to about 800. The AI still goes ahead and signs any player with OVR of 30 or more.

I know you've mentioned this a few times, but this is really not something we've been seeing.

On the default settings, most AI teams are singing something like 10-12 milb guys in the first 3-4 months of a given sim, and there are still hundreds of guys with 30+ or 40+ ratings in the free agent pool.

It'd definitely be interesting to get a little more clarification on just how many of these signings you're actually seeing, on a team by team basis.

[kidd_05_u2]

Originally Posted by Lukas Berger

On the default settings, most AI teams are singing something like 10-12 milb guys in the first 3-4 months of a given sim, and there are still hundreds of guys with 30+ or 40+ ratings in the free agent pool.

It'd definitely be interesting to get a little more clarification on just how many of these signings you're actually seeing, on a team by team basis.

AI teams signing 10-12 MiLB guys in 3 months is a lot though! Especially when you consider that MiLB teams start old, the AI signings are all old free agents, and that there are barely any injuries in OOTP.

It may not seem like much, but the combination of those 10-12 old non-prospect signings, the lack of injuries, and the perpetuity of this AI preference for older non-prospects is enough to raise the average age in each MiLB level by nearly 2 years (compared to real MiLB ages).

If you start with a realistic FA pool (600-800 players, not the OOTP default of 4,000 that includes thousands of retired players), those 300 signings in 3-4 months still happen, and account for every single player of an OVR above 30.

Edit: the fundamental issue is that the AI values an OVR 30-35 player aged 25-30 more than it values a POT 25-30 player aged 18-24. Once you get a AAA team worth of coverage for the MLB roster, this type of valuation should not happen. In the real MiLB, decent organizational players aged 25-28 (OVR 30-35) get released by the dozens every year, in order to accommodate the 8th-20th round draft picks, aged 22-23, even if nobody thinks those draft players have much potential.

[Lukas Berger]

Originally Posted by kidd_05_u2

AI teams signing 10-12 MiLB guys in 3 months is a lot though! Especially when you consider that MiLB teams start old, the AI signings are all old free agents, and that there are barely any injuries in OOTP.

I mean, this is the same amount that real MLB teams typically sign. As we were testing last patch, I checked through the transaction logs for a lot of teams, and found that generally they were signing something like 3-4 AA or AAA guys per month. Now, they might also be releasing more guys that a typical OOTP team does, or have more injuries. So I'm not saying it's a 1-1 scenario, just that in and of itself, this does not seem to be a crazy number.

Originally Posted by kidd_05_u2

Edit: the fundamental issue is that the AI values an OVR 30-35 player aged 25-30 more than it values a POT 25-30 player aged 18-24. Once you get a AAA team worth of coverage for the MLB roster, this type of valuation should not happen. In the real MiLB, decent organizational players aged 25-28 (OVR 30-35) get released by the dozens every year, in order to accommodate the 8th-20th round draft picks, aged 22-23, even if nobody thinks those draft players have much potential.

Yeah, I do agree this has been an issue for a long time, but I also think this is significantly improved now. I really had not seen the AI signing any 30-35 overall guys over 25 in the last round of testing we did. Of course, as with all the AI roster stuff, things are pretty fragile. So it's possible things have somehow reverted a bit. We're still plugging away at making roster AI improvements, and will have another round of these next patch.

[kidd_05_u2]

Originally Posted by Lukas Berger

I mean, this is the same amount that real MLB teams typically sign. As we were testing last patch, I checked through the transaction logs for a lot of teams, and found that generally they were signing something like 3-4 AA or AAA guys per month. Now, they might also be releasing more guys that a typical OOTP team does, or have more injuries. So I'm not saying it's a 1-1 scenario, just that in and of itself, this does not seem to be a crazy number.
.

I have to push back on this. I speak with confidence because I follow the real minor leagues very closely. I'm guessing what you checked was Baseball America, which is not a good source for this particular topic.

1) Teams do not sign 3-4 Milb guys per month, not even close.
2) If you were checking Baseball America, a lot of what you see are not real signings. Players outrighted from the 40-man appear as MiLB signings for whatever reason. Players optioned also appear as signings sometimes.
3) Also, some of the "signings" are the team releasing and then re-signing the same guy, to play around the overall player limit at the minor leagues.

The MiLB signings you do see once the season starts follow one of three reasons: a) injury crisis, b) too many players traded away, c) another team released a guy the organization likes, usually a 4A guy.

Once the MiLB season starts, it is extremely rare for a player who wasn't in an MLB organization in March to get signed (excluding the rookie leagues obviously).

If you trace back to OOTP, the other problem is that the AAA player signings nearly always come with the release of a player aged 18-24.

[Lukas Berger]

Originally Posted by kidd_05_u2

I have to push back on this. I speak with confidence because I follow the real minor leagues very closely. I'm guessing what you checked was Baseball America, which is not a good source for this particular topic.

1) Teams do not sign 3-4 Milb guys per month, not even close.
2) If you were checking Baseball America, a lot of what you see are not real signings. Players outrighted from the 40-man appear as MiLB signings for whatever reason. Players optioned also appear as signings sometimes.
3) Also, some of the "signings" are the team releasing and then re-signing the same guy, to play around the overall player limit at the minor leagues.

I crossed checked both MLB/MiLB.com and the Chadwick data we get.

I also filtered out these kinds of signings, the release and re-sign stuff.

It's probably not 3-4 players per month over the course of the year, because the signings tend to decrease as the season goes on (excepting UDFA signings for lower levels), but for the first 3+ months of the season, this is what things generally came out as.

Now, I did not check every team, so it's possible I randomly got a higher proportion of teams that signed more guys for whatever reason.

Just randomly taking the first team on the MLB.com transactions list, the Angels, and going through signings from OD on this year, you get this:

March: (these are all singings between the technical Dodgers-Padres OD and the Angels actual OD, so you can include or exclude them as you like. I'm not really sure if they should be included or not.)

Los Angeles Angels signed free agent RHP Carl Edwards Jr. to a minor league contract.
Los Angeles Angels signed free agent RHP Touki Toussaint to a minor league contract.
Los Angeles Angels signed free agent 2B Nicky Lopez. (technically an MLB deal, but he barely played in MLB)


April:
Los Angeles Angels signed free agent RHP Héctor Neris to a minor league contract.
Los Angeles Angels signed free agent RHP Jordan Holloway to a minor league contract.
Los Angeles Angels signed free agent RHP Sean Poppen to a minor league contract.

May:
Los Angeles Angels signed free agent 3B J.D. Davis to a minor league contract.
Los Angeles Angels signed free agent RHP Hunter Strickland to a minor league contract.
Los Angeles Angels signed free agent RHP Buck Farmer to a minor league contract.
Los Angeles Angels signed free agent LHP Andrew Vasquez to a minor league contract.
Los Angeles Angels signed free agent LHP Sammy Peralta to a minor league contract.
Los Angeles Angels signed free agent RF Oscar Colás to a minor league contract.

June:
Los Angeles Angels signed free agent 1B Evan Edwards to a minor league contract.
Los Angeles Angels signed free agent RHP Carson Fulmer to a minor league contract.
Los Angeles Angels signed free agent RF Ben Gamel to a minor league contract.
Los Angeles Angels signed free agent C Chad Wallach to a minor league contract.

Now, there's the question of whether you count guys like Neris and Strickland as MLB or MiLB signings as both played in MLB a fair amount.

Even not counting them and if you didn't want to count the March guys, you still get 11 guys in three months. If you count everyone, it's 16 guys in 4 months.

Most teams look pretty similar to this, though there is some variation. Obviously these guys are all sort of AAAA type guys, and not true pure MiLB players, but they are functionally acting as pure MiLB depth, as they're barely playing in MLB, if at all.

[kidd_05_u2]

I just checked the Marlins: one signing from April until the draft.

The Yankees: four signings from April until the draft.

Padres: zero signings.

Will check more later. The Angels are the worst organization in baseball after adjusting for owner money, so they could be an exception.

[Lukas Berger]

Not sure if we're counting which players are minor leaguers differently (it's pretty hard to say offhand with some guys) or just that much variation in teams, but looking further, Braves have 10, Mets have 10, Phillies have 8.

Anyway, it probably doesn't excessively matter in the end, as we're not trying to have teams sign exactly the same amount of guys as MLB teams do, I had more just checked on this to make sure we weren't crazily far off. I do agree generally we probably fall on the side of having at least a few too many signings overall still.

Matt did make some other changes here today in relation to how the AI constructs the minors rosters that look quite promising so far, and we'll keep testing and working on that and can see how those play out with the next patch.

[kidd_05_u2]

My final comment:

About 95% of those real MiLB signings are temporary, to cover for injuries or to sign decent 4A guys squeezed off other rosters (this is why most signings happen in Apr-May, and why many of these players are 4A guys who go around 3-4 teams during one season).

In OOTP, the signings are different in nature, since injuries are like 25% of real life. The real issue is what we talked about earlier, that the AI is signing too many old non-prospects to replace young marginal prospects.

Anyway, thanks to you and Matt for working so much on this. It is greatly appreciated.