Player Development/Aging Test Leagues

[mtw]

I was going through the preseason routine for my 1924 team, which included hitting Automanage Minors for my teams and I noticed that my 5 star 2B prospect was reassigned from AA to A. Considering that I hit Automanage Minors during the season a few times during my 1st two OOTP6 seasons as well and he was left in AA, and he hadn't experienced any talent drop, I found this very disturbing. It appears that other players are "moving backward" as well (a quick survey showed at least two others). If I have more players dropping through the minor ranks than being promoted, that's a big problem.

[ortonius]

This is the precise reason that my league that I commish (and the others I'm in) "tweak" the draft pool each year. I make sure there are 5-10 almost AAA ready prospects, 20-30 AA ready prospects, and then try and round up about 75-100 guys that have high ratings in actual ability in at least ONE rating (hits/power/eye&discipline/speed&stealing for hitters and for pitchers K's/avg/control/etc). This has helped the development issue somewhat for us.

[Eugene Church]

Originally posted by ortonius
This is the precise reason that my league that I commish (and the others I'm in) "tweak" the draft pool each year. I make sure there are 5-10 almost AAA ready prospects, 20-30 AA ready prospects, and then try and round up about 75-100 guys that have high ratings in actual ability in at least ONE rating (hits/power/eye&discipline/speed&stealing for hitters and for pitchers K's/avg/control/etc). This has helped the development issue somewhat for us.

Thanks for sharing your workaround.

I have thought of editing the minor leaguers ratings, but couldn't figure out a formula that wouldn't end up with .500 hitters in Class A.

[IatricSB]

Thanks Eugene, this confirmed something I had seen with historical leagues also. If you had the occassional player that was a teenager (Ott and Foxx come to mind), their ratings hardly went up at all until they were 20 and only slowly went up from 20 to 24. Way too many of them didn't become useful until they were 26.

I hope this is an area that can be tweaked. I've always thought that a guy with a contact talent of Good or Brilliant (above 6 in v6 on a scale of 1 to 10) should probably progress proportionally faster than say an Average player. Any other ideas on how this might be implemented?

[Falcon52]

Does this depend what version patch you're using? Or what roster you're using?

The reason I ask is because in my fictional league, I only have development set to +55 for both hitters and pitchers, and basing on my team (I don't follow the other CPU controlled teams closely enough) I'd say my results are vastly different than yours.

On my current roster, I've got 2 stud hitters who both came up and played regularly as 21 year olds (both won rookie of the year with decent numbers), and have now, at age 26 become marque players. Another player came up at age 22 and has made the All-Star team the past 6 seasons, only missing out during his rookie campaign. He just completed an MVP calibre season at age 29. Two of my pitching prospects came up at age 21 and 22 respectively. Both have become premiere starters and one of them won Rookie of the Year as a 21 year old (16-11, 4.01 ERA, 200+ IP).

[Eugene Church]

Originally posted by Falcon52
Does this depend what version patch you're using? Or what roster you're using?

The reason I ask is because in my fictional league, I only have development set to +55 for both hitters and pitchers, and basing on my team (I don't follow the other CPU controlled teams closely enough) I'd say my results are vastly different than yours.

On my current roster, I've got 2 stud hitters who both came up and played regularly as 21 year olds (both won rookie of the year with decent numbers), and have now, at age 26 become marque players. Another player came up at age 22 and has made the All-Star team the past 6 seasons, only missing out during his rookie campaign. He just completed an MVP calibre season at age 29. Two of my pitching prospects came up at age 21 and 22 respectively. Both have become premiere starters and one of them won Rookie of the Year as a 21 year old (16-11, 4.01 ERA, 200+ IP).

Thanks for the reply. It's good to know that some people are getting realistic player development.

If I got players like you do, I would be very happy.

So far, I haven't been able to get young players to develop until 26 years of age. I use rosters generated by game in a fictional league and use minor leaguers developed by the AI. Even with a +200 setting it didn't do it.

[Kemp]

To the guys who tweak players prior to the draft....

Are you getting guys promoted to the majors earlier? Or are they just tearing up the minors and still getting promoted at age 25?

For a while I messed around with the development modifiers to try to get some 21 or 22 year olds up there but was never successful. If tweaking the draft class would do it, I'd consider it.

Thanks.

[Da Cubs]

Eugune,

I have been following this post with much interest. I agree, not enough young players. What I have tried and seem to get some results from is upgrading the creation modifiers 7 percent. Then setting the developement at 25 percent. I currently have 3 players on my team alone that are under 25 and performing pretty well. Don't know if this has helped with the rest of the teams. I will look and get back some info. Just thought I'd pass this on. Hope it helps.

[Da Cubs]

Ok. Did some quick checking and found a general increase of younger players. Some teams had a few and some not at all. ALso found some real studs that were 21 and 22 years old. To me this is encouraging. Just thought I'd pass this along. Will keep you posted.

[Eugene Church]

Originally posted by Da Cubs
Eugune,

I have been following this post with much interest. I agree, not enough young players. What I have tried and seem to get some results from is upgrading the creation modifiers 7 percent. Then setting the developement at 25 percent. I currently have 3 players on my team alone that are under 25 and performing pretty well. Don't know if this has helped with the rest of the teams. I will look and get back some info. Just thought I'd pass this on. Hope it helps.

I know nothing about the creation modifiers...I always used the default settings there in my test leagues...Maybe that is where we can get some 18 to 25 year olds that can hit .300 and win 10-15 games as pitchers.

I'm sick and tired of running test leagues...would like to play a game or two...but I just might play around with the creation modifiers and see what happens.

Thanks for the suggestion...please post anything you discover about this subject.

[Kemp]

Here's my issue/question with playing around with the creation modifiers.

Does the AI REALIZE that the younger players are able to play in the majors? Or will only HUMANS call up these solid young players? I'd hate to play with the modifiers and then have only human-controlled teams with 22 year old starters. It's a waste of time and unfair to the AI teams if they're not going to take advantage of it.

So to you guys messing around with the player modifiers, is the AI calling up players younger? Does it realize it can/should?

Thanks.

[Da Cubs]

Yes. I have noticed the AI calling up younger players.

[Eugene Church]

Please note the following is not based on a scientific test...just a test league with casual unscientific analysis and observations. I have very little understanding of the way these various settings and modifiers work and interrelate. Maybe one day Markus will shed some light on this area of the game.
Just finished a 20 year test league to see if I could get more 18-24 year olds in the majors. This time I used the player creation modifiers set at these levels: (Default is set to 0%) Contact 25%..Gap 0%..Power -20%..Eye 25%..SO 0%..Stuff 10%..Control 15%..Movement 25%..Endurance 25%..Speed 0%..Stealing 0%
(I used 1950's settings for Power and just tried to get better players in the minors)
The Player evaluation AI setup was at the game default settings.
(don't use financials and don't know anything about these settings, either)

I draft 5 players each season.

Player Development Modifiers: Hitter and Pitcher development speed 200%
(to greatly speed up development and get younger players to the majors sooner)
Hitter/Pitcher Aging Speed -3%
(to slow down aging and increase retirement age)

Player Development Modifiers don't seem to have much effect (from a previous test league).

Hitter/Pitcher Aging Speed seems to work well. Previously I had used -5%
and got 44-45 year olds as maximum retirement ages...and 0% and got 40-41 year olds...this time I used -3% and got 42-43 year olds.

The Player Creation Modifiers seem to have an effect and get players to the majors quicker. In previous test leagues, very few players were under 25 and none were productive players. This time I had 30 players 18-24 years of age...9 pitchers (18 years old (1), 20 (1), 21 (1), 22 (2), and 24 (4)...only 2 of them were contributing to their teams...one 21 year old pitched in 33 games as a very solid reliever (2.35 ERA and 14 saves) and the other a starter at 22 with a 4-6 (half season in AAA and half in majors), 13-15 and 11-13 won-lost record and a 4.88 ERA in 82 starts.

21 position players: age 19 (1), 20 (1), 21 (5), 22 (3), 23 (3) and 24 (8).
Only 2, ages 20 and 23 were productive regulars (.300 hitters and over 400 at bats)...some had 200-300 at bats and hit about .250...5 total, ages 21 (1), 22 (2) and 23 (2)...and 14 just took up space on the roster...age 19 (1), 21 (4), 22 (1), 23 (1) and 24 (8).

Until Markus explains how to adjust these modifers and settings, I will just create my own rookies each year, so that I can have a realistic number of 18-24 players in my solo league. I will disable the minors.

Incidentally, the game seems to promote totally on draft position, talent and scouting reports. Rarely did I see a player promoted on stats. It seems the minors' stats are just cosmetic and pretty much meaningless. Looking at these 18-24 year olds in my test league, most of them got promoted to the majors with lousy minor league stats.

I hope this makes some sense and will benefit you.

I think it is time to play some games and enjoy the game. I'm tired of test leagues. Although I may wait for the next patch or update.

[Gunsmoke]

Interesting results there Eugene. But I have run into a interesting difference in one of my leagues compared to the others. In most of my leagues I have 5-7 draft rounds and I have similar issues to most listed here (ie. too few youngsters in the bigs).

However in one long running league I decided that the talent level of the league (particularly the pitching) was too high and I reduced the draft to 3 rounds for 5 seasons and after that period have been alternating between 3 and 4 round drafts. As a result of this I have been noticing a large increase in the amount of productive youngsters in the majors. Each draft produces one or two players that immediately wind up on the active roster and hand full of others that get time at various points in their first pro season. Now all of this is just observation and I have no stats to back up my claims off hand, but maybe if for a 3 - 4 years out of every ten a league is "starved" of talent it will open up the rosters for quicker movement of prospects.

[Eugene Church]

Thanks for the information, Gunsmoke.

Maybe the fewer the draft number, the better the quality.

That would be an interesting test league. But right now I'm burned out on test leagues.

Your response is appreciated.

[Kemp]

Ugh. I've tried a hundred different ways to try to get some younger starters in my league. I've jacked up the modifiers, I've increased development speeds, I've done combinations. All to no avail.

No matter what I've done, most of my good players debut between 24 and 26 years of age. I still haven't seen a good young starter (pitcher or position player) brought up by the computer at a young age.

I give up.

[TotalEnd98]

Nor have I. The only time I see young players in my leagues is when I bring them up. It's kind of frustrating.

[Kemp]

I gave in and did one more freaking test! This time, I made all the batting modifiers +200% and reduced the pitching modifiers to -50%.

While I've got guys hitting .470, I'm still not seeing ANY players being brought up by the computer (and starting regularly) any younger than 26.

I give up. This time, for real!

[Le Grande Orange]

The discussion over the typical ages a player can debut in the majors has been covered before in OOTP, quite extensively too as I recall. This was back when OOTP5 was still freshly released.

I remember some stats from MLB history someone had posted which showed the breakdown from 18-26 or so of the number of players who debuted at each age, and the percentage for that age of the total number of players. The percentage of players who debuted at below 24 was very small as I recall, something like 3-4%.

If you run a search on the topic and target the April to July time period from last year you should be able to find the discussions.

[Le Grande Orange]

Hmmm, not as many threads on this as I had thought. But I did find one past thread with some specifics on it with player ages in their debut years. It's worth a look at any rate.

You can find the discussion here: http://www.ootpdevelopments.com/boar...ight=debut+age