Restructuring the minors

[Lucas718]

Originally Posted by Curve Ball Dave

Everything is fine until you get to High A/A then it becomes a mess.

You weren't kidding. Holy cow! I had everything mapped out pretty easily for AAA & AA. Now starting A ball and it really is a mess. I noticed the Northwest League went from a short-season A ball league to High A.

The more I dig into this the more tedious it's becoming

[Lucas718]

Originally Posted by 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

This seems worth looking into. I'm only at the start of Spring Training in the new season. Already have a backup taken, so it could be worth a try to reimport the league from 25 and run through the off-season again to see what happens. If it works, it could save many many hours of manual updates.

[thehef]

Originally Posted by Lucas718

This seems worth looking into. I'm only at the start of Spring Training in the new season. Already have a backup taken, so it could be worth a try to reimport the league from 25 and run through the off-season again to see what happens. If it works, it could save many many hours of manual updates.

It's a timing thing. OOTP updates minor league structure (reads from the milbteams.csv and milbleagues.csv files) as it transitions from the postseason to the offseason. So if you just finished up your 2020 season on Oct 15th, then when you advance the game to Oct 16th it will update your minors structure (and also any MLB changes to team names, ballparks, etc.) on that same date. It will also import all of the pro players who debuted in 2021. You may not want those in your fictional game.

So you are in the early stages of spring training. If you enable historical minors now I don't believe it will have any real effect. Not until you transition from the 2021 posteason to the 2021-22 offseason...

A couple things:

1) Here's maybe a way to deal with the importing of real players that you don't want in your game: Right before you advance to the offseason and the real players import, put ALL of your players on a Shortlist (MLB dropdown > Transactions > MLB Player List, select the checkboxes to include minor leaguers and so forth; mass select all players and then right-click over any player's name to put all players on either the Default Shortlist or a shortlist you create. Then, advance the game to the offseason, go back to that same view and setup a filter where Shortlist Is Not [Default]. That will display all of the real players who just imported to your game. Next step? Mass delete them.

2) I'm not 100% clear on this, but I *think* it will be important to make sure your Historical Team ID's and/or Historical Franchise ID's of your MLB teams match those that are in the teams.csv file for the upcoming year of when you are trying this. This *should* ensure that - with all of the milb structure changes - players don't get disassociated from their MLB organizations and dumped in the FA pool.

Theories ^^^. Test it out first

[Lucas718]

I'm having trouble finding the option to enable historical minors unless I'm just missing it. I think this could be because the league was never set up as a historical league. It just used the default template with fictional players.

My concern is if I were to find this setting and get it to run, wouldn't all of my current minor leaguers just disappear and the "new" minors be filled with real life players? (Actually, I think thehef addresses this in his last post)

[thehef]

Originally Posted by Lucas718

I'm having trouble finding the option to enable historical minors unless I'm just missing it. I think this could be because the league was never set up as a historical league. It just used the default template with fictional players.

My concern is if I were to find this setting and get it to run, wouldn't all of my current minor leaguers just disappear and the "new" minors be filled with real life players? (Actually, I think thehef addresses this in his last post)

I can't find it either. Under League Settings > Options you can Automatically Import Historical Rookies, but I don't see where you can actually convert your game from Fictional evolution to Historical evolution. But I might be missing it...

If you have to revert to one of the earlier (in this thread) suggestions and do much of the work manually, I'd recommend scaling back the scope of your changes. Get your team's milb system pretty accurate. Fool around with the top levels of your minor leagues for other teams. And leave it at that!

[Lucas718]

Originally Posted by thehef

If you have to revert to one of the earlier (in this thread) suggestions and do much of the work manually, I'd recommend scaling back the scope of your changes. Get your team's milb system pretty accurate. Fool around with the top levels of your minor leagues for other teams. And leave it at that!

That's exactly my thought process. After nearly giving up on this project, I had a bit of a revelation when I noticed in the restructured environment, every MLB team has only 1 affiliate at each level: AAA, AA, A+, A, R

I'm taking the approach now of "What is the Yankees AA affiliate?" In the old it was the Trenton Thunder. In the new, it is the Somerset Patriots. So I'm renaming the Trenton Thunder the Somerset Patriots, and figuring this out for each MLB affiliate. It could mean that I temporarily have 2 teams with the same name affiliated with different MLB teams, but it should all work out by the time I get through them all.

Doing this for each team. It will mess with each team's history, but it will assure I have the right structure with the right team names with the right players without worrying about having to change the Chattanooga Lookouts from a MIN affiliate to a CIN affiliate and then move all the players back to the MIN AA team (hope that makes sense).

I think this will get me most of the way there as I now have all the changes I need mapped out in Excel for AAA, AA, and A+ levels

At some point I'm going to have to figure out how to handle teams & leagues that no longer exist without losing the players in them, but I'll worry about that when the time comes.

[Lucas718]

One last question - Is there a way to set the league level? For instance I want to make sure the revamped Midwest, South Atlantic, and Northwest leagues are higher level A ball leagues than the California, Carolina, and Florida State leagues.

I want to make sure the game sees moving a player from the California to the Northwest as a promotion and not a demotion.

[thehef]

Originally Posted by Lucas718

I'm taking the approach now of "What is the Yankees AA affiliate?" In the old it was the Trenton Thunder. In the new, it is the Somerset Patriots. So I'm renaming the Trenton Thunder the Somerset Patriots, and figuring this out for each MLB affiliate. It could mean that I temporarily have 2 teams with the same name affiliated with different MLB teams, but it should all work out by the time I get through them all.

That shouldn't be a problem if you're not advancing the game while you're making your changes. In fact, even if you were advancing your game it *might* not be a problem as long as the Historicl Minor Team ID is different for each team.

Which brings me to this...

Originally Posted by Lucas718

Doing this for each team. It will mess with each team's history, but it will assure I have the right structure with the right team names with the right players without worrying about having to change the Chattanooga Lookouts from a MIN affiliate to a CIN affiliate and then move all the players back to the MIN AA team (hope that makes sense).

Each minor league team's history remain intact as long as the Historical Minor Team ID remains the same. So if Frederick is your single-A team and you want to "move" it Pulaski, you can just change the team name, nickname, city and as long as you leave the Historical Minor Team ID as "Hagerstown4" or whatever it is your game, you'll be fine. And I should note that the value that's in this field is ONLY to connect franchise histories. The actual value means nothing otherwise (it's not displayed anywhere except on the team settings page).

For example, look at the milbteams.csv file and filter this field for "Binghamton4." You'll see that this ID has followed the team from it's origins in the NY State League when it was located in Binghamton, through it's joining the Int'l League in 1918, move to Syracuse in 1920, move to Jersey City in 1928, back to Syracuse in 1934, to Miami in '56, to San Juan & Charleston in '61, to Atlanta in '62, to Richmond in '66, and finally to Gwinnett in 2009. So if you were to run an historical OOTP game since 1901 with minors, the history for this franchise would remain intact.

(This is one subject I'm pretty familiar with, as I came up with these MILB Franchise ID's / histories for OOTP's minor league module... )

Now in your example above you can trace the Trenton & Somerset franchises by looking at this ID in the milbteams.csv file. Trenton started as Glens Falls in 1980, as an affiliate of the White Sox. By the time of your game creation it was in Trenton as an affiliate of the Yankees. It ceased being part of minor league baseball after 2019 (and became part of MLB's collegiate draft league...)... Somerset has a more complicated actual history but it's OOTP history begins with the 2021 season as a Yankees affiliate. So, yes, in your example you should have no problem "moving" the Trenton team to Somerset. Just update the name, nickname, abbrev, and ballpark. All the players will stay on the team (or move within the organization), and the history of the Trenton team will stick with Somerset.

Originally Posted by Lucas718

At some point I'm going to have to figure out how to handle teams & leagues that no longer exist without losing the players in them, but I'll worry about that when the time comes.

There may be a better way to do it, but here's how I would:

Let's say you're getting rid of a low-A league...

1. Identify the MBL teams with teams in the league to be removed.
2. Identify the teams & leagues in which other teams in those MLB organizations exist at the same level. IOW, you want to move these players to other teams within those organizations that are also in Low-A (or thereabouts) leagues.
3. Increase the roster sizes of those leagues (the ones that will receive players)
4. Bulk move players from the team (that's in the league to be removed) to the receiving team.
5. Repeat for each team in the league
6. Advance your game by one day. This should force OOTP AI GM's to redistribute players within each organization. You still might have too many players on the teams that received the players, though.
7. Reduce the player limits back to where they should be.
8. Advance your game by one day. This should further redistribute players and may result in some guys being cut. Which, in the end is to be expected to a degree if you are reducing the number of afflitiats for some (or all) teams.

Originally Posted by Lucas718

One last question - Is there a way to set the league level? For instance I want to make sure the revamped Midwest, South Atlantic, and Northwest leagues are higher level A ball leagues than the California, Carolina, and Florida State leagues.

I want to make sure the game sees moving a player from the California to the Northwest as a promotion and not a demotion.

Yes. You can do that on the Game Settings > Leauge Settings > League & Teams panel; the League Level dropdown. That should do it but you may want others - who have more experience with fictional minors - to chime in here

[Curve Ball Dave]

Originally Posted by Lucas718

You weren't kidding. Holy cow! I had everything mapped out pretty easily for AAA & AA. Now starting A ball and it really is a mess.

Yep. I wasn't kidding, was I?

[Curve Ball Dave]

Originally Posted by thehef

Yes. You can do that on the Game Settings > Leauge Settings > League & Teams panel; the League Level dropdown. That should do it but you may want others - who have more experience with fictional minors - to chime in here

The other step is to change player creation modifiers (see the Players tab). The modifiers for High A should be a little higher than those for A.

[Lucas718]

IT IS DONE!

Thanks guys for all the help and guidance. There's no way I would have figured this out on my own. I've been working my way through this all week and it is finally done.

Now back to actually playing the game.

[thehef]

Originally Posted by Lucas718

IT IS DONE!

Thanks guys for all the help and guidance. There's no way I would have figured this out on my own. I've been working my way through this all week and it is finally done.

Now back to actually playing the game.

Awesome! ... Make another backup now that you made all your changes. Just in case...