Do you use feeders?

[Cryomaniac]

Originally Posted by Muzamba

IMO, this is an aspect of the game that deserves immediate attention, not because it's fatally flawed, but because it could so easily be improved.

There should be 3 levels of feeders: High School, 2-Year College and 4-Year College. High School should feed 2-Year College, 4-Year College and the major league draft, while 2-Year College should feed 4-Year College and the draft, and 4-Year College should feed only the draft.

Also, team financials should be available. One should at least be able to set market size, fan interest/loyalty, cash, budget, merchandising and media contracts to help distinguish the elite programs from the less successful programs.

And even though monetary contracts shouldn't be given to players in feeder leagues, there should be a free agency system for the 2-Year College and 4-Year College levels that would allow a simulated form of "recruiting" from the High School level.

I've found that most everything else can be handled within the current setup, although I admit it would be nice if the optimal settings for each level were already set by default.

The bottom line is, the feeder system needs some minor (albeit important) adjustments, but it shouldn't require a complete overhaul. Is it something that could even be corrected in a patch?

Only Markus knows for sure.

+1 to everything in this post.

Originally Posted by Muzamba

I'm curious to see how many players 1,712 feeder teams generate, since that's the number I have in my complete college universe. (I wouldn't know because I don't have the feeder version set up yet.)

A hell of a lot I would think.

[Afino]

Each team will send 5-6 players per year to the draft pool.

1,716 * 6 = just over 10,000 players.

[gord]

Has anyone done any research on setting up a realistic number of college/JuCo/HS feeder teams? Meaning, how many college/HS players are drafted on average?

EDIT: Doing my own research from last year's MLB.com draft article: http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?...2008&fext=.jsp

That's because 485 prep players were selected out of the 1,504 names that were called. That total was also bolstered by a flurry of high school picks in the final five rounds as teams simply looked to fill up their Draft cards.

While the 485 prep players drafted represents an increase of nine over last year, it's the second-lowest total in 21 years. High school players represented 32.2 percent of the players drafted this year, the lowest since 32.8 percent of the players selected in 1987 came from the prep ranks.

[Muzamba]

Originally Posted by neojonas

Do these teams each have 25 players? If so from my formulas you'll have about 12,000 players in each draft. It'll probably range from 11,000 - 13,000 on average. That's a lot of guys!

Actually, I have 25 players only on the NCAA DI rosters. For every other team, there are only 15, which is the smallest roster size the game allows. So you can knock off a big chunk of potential draftees there. Nonetheless, it's obviously gonna result in an enormous draft pool, especially considering that doesn't even include high schoolers! That's why I wish the minimum roster size was smaller AND/OR there was a way to tell the game how many players you wanted in the pool.

[neojonas]

Originally Posted by gord

Has anyone done any research on setting up a realistic number of college/JuCo/HS feeder teams? Meaning, how many college/HS players are drafted on average?

I've been researching and testing this for about a month now with OOTPX and have learned quite a bit about feeder leagues. It is one of the great mysteries of the universe. For my setup I have a fictional league starting in 2009. It's an MLB setup with full minors, pretty much the standard MAL league. I have 30 round draft on June 1st. I generate enough players for 31 rounds. I have 134 feader teams - 84 college and 50 high school. The reason for the 84/50 split is to match the percent of high school draftees in real life and it works out so each state can have 1 high school team competing for the championship. Nice added benefit. I did 134 teams because each feeder team has 25 players + 3 hidden players (on average). So I have 134 teams x 28 players / 4 years spent on a feeder team = 938 players created for each draft pool (on average). This varies each year because the game creates an unbalanced age distribution. I actually go through my leagues and balance the ages so each age has 1/4 of the guys. The other thing to make sure is after the league is created set the created age max and min to the freshman age so all created guys are the same age.

Also something I discovered recently was an age issue. I was using the default 15-18 for HS and 18-21 for College. I also have my HS and College leagues ending just a few days before the draft. This is important because I didn't want guys to get drafted and taken off their teams while their feeder team was still playing. But you also want them to finish as close to the draft as possible so ages don't get mixed up. Anyone who is too old for a feeder team is released from the team when the feeder's offseason begins. At that point new players are created for the feeder teams. Then when the draft happens players that have since become too old for their league are also included in the draft. That's one reason I have my feeder seasons end right before the june draft so this timeframe between releasing feeder players and drafting is reduced. Now here's where one of the age issues come into play. If you have a college league with default ages 18-21 and creation age set at 18 then when the season ends it creates new players for your feeder leagues who's ages are 18 years old. By the time your season starts about 10 months from when these players were created, most of them have turned 19. That's why in your draft everyone is 19 and 22. I wanted high schoolers getting drafted at 18 and college at 21 since that's closer to real life and brings the average draftee age down closer to the 19.4 average that generated draftees are. So I've changed my ranges to 14-17 and 17-20. This makes it so college guys are created (or recruited as i say in my mind) at age 17 and play college ball usually from ages 18-21, getting drafted when they are 21.

Well I hope this helps spark some ideas for others. These are just my observations and I'd love to hear what you all think and what you all are finding.

[goead]

So I've been trying to figure out how to get feeder leagues properly set up in my fictional league set up. I apologize ahead of time if I am hijacking this thread, but I have been going off of what can be found in the online manual about how I should go about setting this up.

If you want your parent league's first-year player draft to be fed completely by feeder leagues, you will need to do some math to determine how many feeder league teams you will need to fill out your draft class completely. So, using the default of a 5-year age range, we calculate as follows:


Feeder leagues with 5-year age ranges (18-22, for example) typically feed 6-9 players per team to the parent league each year. Smaller age-ranges result in more players entering the draft each year.


[Number of teams in your parent league] x [Number of rounds in your first-year player draft] = total # of players needed in first-year player draft
[total # of players needed for draft] / 6 (rounded up) = minimum # of feeder league teams required


For example, let's say you have a 16-team major league, and a 5-round first-year player draft. You need 16 x 5, or 80 players in your first-year player draft each year. We divide 80 by 6 and round up, getting 14. If you have 14 feeder league teams, you should get enough players from your feeder leagues to populate your first-year player draft entirely with feeder league players.


Of course, it's always better to err on the side of more teams. If you end up with more players than you need for the draft, then the undrafted players will simply enter the free agent pool.

That portion can be found in the online manual and actually I am happy that my first fictional league only has 16 total teams, so their example makes figuring this out a bit easier. My concern is, do I only need that many teams for the Majors level? Do I need to take into account any minor leagues that I might have for my majors?

For instance then I have 16 total teams, then say I go with 16 college teams for my feeder league. Now if I have a 16 team triple A set up in my league as well, do I need to make an additional 16 teams in my feeder league? I love baseball but I am not too well read on the details of stuff like this, any help would be appreciated.

[BigRed75]

I use a high school feeder system. Don't have a college one because college sports here are pretty much non-existent. Does the system generate enough players? No. But that's okay for my purposes, since in my backstory I don't want the high school league to be the sole source of talent.

I, too, enjoy looking at talented high school players and trying to draft them based on what they've done for the past four years. My last draft I had my eye on a player for about a year and a half who was not only good, but was from the high school in the town my team is based in. The team one slot before me picked him.

[professor ape]

Another question. Say that I want to create a rather extensive feeder system (both HS and college) which is going to produce more players than I need for the draft each year. Should I nudge the Player Creation Modifiers down so that I don't get too many superstars?

[ctorg]

I haven't used them, mostly for the sake of speed and file size. I generally like the game to move along pretty quickly. But I love the idea of them and I'm always considering them. I may implement them partially - that is, I may have them but also have non-feeder rookies. That seems like a good sort of compromise to me.

In my universe, rather than high school and college, I would consider them to be amateur instructional leagues, like little league.

[jtnlange]

Do you think it is better to have 1 256 team college feeder league or 8 32 team college feeder leagues?

Trevor L

[StyxNCa]

I never figured out how to set them up.

[risp2out]

I haven't used feeders much, but I have a question. When you have both high school and college feeders, do the high schoolers go exclusively to college or do some go to college and some go pro?

Related to this: does anyone know what happens in the real life ML draft when a team drafts a high school player who chooses to attend college instead? Does the ML organization retain a right of first refusal on that player for length of time or does the player reenter the later draft unobligated?

Thanks.

[endgame]

One aspect of the feeder organization that hasn't been mentioned is its effect on the existing personnel pool as the seasons progress. Honestly, I haven't looked at this, to any large extent, in X, but I watched a lot of good coaches whose contracts were not renewed in the majors find their way into management jobs at the college level; locked in sometimes for lengthy contracts. In itself, that's a good thing. But don't be surprised if you're looking for that hitting coach on your shortlist from last season, when you find he's taken a job at Birmingham U and making fair change in the process.

[neojonas]

Originally Posted by goead

For instance then I have 16 total teams, then say I go with 16 college teams for my feeder league. Now if I have a 16 team triple A set up in my league as well, do I need to make an additional 16 teams in my feeder league? I love baseball but I am not too well read on the details of stuff like this, any help would be appreciated.

First you need to figure out how many draft rounds you need. I think there's a spot in the manual to help figure this out if you haven't done so already. So the real basic formula that a lot of people use is take your # of draft rounds x # of ML teams = # of players needed for the draft. Take that number divided by the max age - min age for your feeders (usually 4 or 5 in most leagues) and that will give you the number of teams you need.

Now as I stated in my long post above there are ways to get this much more accurate, but this is the basic formula to get it close.

Originally Posted by professor ape

Another question. Say that I want to create a rather extensive feeder system (both HS and college) which is going to produce more players than I need for the draft each year. Should I nudge the Player Creation Modifiers down so that I don't get too many superstars?

The more players you create, the more talent you'll have in your draft. So if you have a 1000 player draft pool and on average 10 players are 5 star potential, then in a 10,000 player draft pool on average there will be 100 5 star potential players.

Originally Posted by jtnlange

Do you think it is better to have 1 256 team college feeder league or 8 32 team college feeder leagues?

Doesn't really matter except the larger league might have a huge playoff period depending on how your split up divisions.

Originally Posted by risp2out

I haven't used feeders much, but I have a question. When you have both high school and college feeders, do the high schoolers go exclusively to college or do some go to college and some go pro?

Unfortunately OOTP doesn't work like this. Probably the biggest gripe with feeders. All feeder players when they reach a certain age leave their league and enter the draft. They can't progress onto another feeder league.

[ctorg]

One question I have about feeder leagues that might help me keep the file size down a bit if I use them:

Can you make one where players are only in it for one year? For instance, can you set the min and max age to the same? If you do, do the players develop correctly?

Just wondering. If so, you'd only need enough feeder players to cover one year of the draft.

[gord]

I'm using feeders for the first time and have noticed something: There are players in the draft pool that, according their history, joined a HS or college team a month prior to the draft but since they're too old they are in the draft pool - This gives them zero stats. I was under the impression all created players are of the minimum age. Is this not the case?

[Afino]

Originally Posted by gord

I'm using feeders for the first time and have noticed something: There are players in the draft pool that, according their history, joined a HS or college team a month prior to the draft but since they're too old they are in the draft pool - This gives them zero stats. I was under the impression all created players are of the minimum age. Is this not the case?

You have to set it as such in the Game Setup once you start your game. There's two spots to change the ages, but you only need to change it in one spot.

Age Minimum and Age Maximum - these are the ones that control when they leave the league

CREATED Age Minimum and CREATED Age Maximum (it's on the other tab) - these control the age of the computer generated players. These are the ones that need to BOTH be changed to your desired minimum age. They default to the same numbers as the other two though, which is why you're seeing this problem.

It's important that you change these AFTER you begin your game (which you have), otherwise you'll end up with no players from your feeder for the first few years.

[Cryomaniac]

Originally Posted by risp2out

I haven't used feeders much, but I have a question. When you have both high school and college feeders, do the high schoolers go exclusively to college or do some go to college and some go pro?

Related to this: does anyone know what happens in the real life ML draft when a team drafts a high school player who chooses to attend college instead? Does the ML organization retain a right of first refusal on that player for length of time or does the player reenter the later draft unobligated?

Thanks.

High schoolerd don't automatically go to college. I think you could do it manually, it might be a hassle in large leagues though.

[gord]

Originally Posted by Afino

You have to set it as such in the Game Setup once you start your game. There's two spots to change the ages, but you only need to change it in one spot.

Age Minimum and Age Maximum - these are the ones that control when they leave the league

CREATED Age Minimum and CREATED Age Maximum (it's on the other tab) - these control the age of the computer generated players. These are the ones that need to BOTH be changed to your desired minimum age. They default to the same numbers as the other two though, which is why you're seeing this problem.

It's important that you change these AFTER you begin your game (which you have), otherwise you'll end up with no players from your feeder for the first few years.

Thanks - never noticed that before.

[jerichojews]

If you have enough players from your feeder leagues to populate the draft pool, does that mean you should instruct the Game Setup not to create any players for the amateur draft?