A Developer's Guide to the New Development Features

[Will Beh]

Originally Posted by ptautscher

I have noticed that sometimes when a player has a successful lab session (?) their stats don't always seem to flag up on scouting as increased. Im convinced they are increasing it just doesn't say in scouting. I think it's typically for stealing related developments. Has this been seen before. Pictures for ref


https://imgur.com/a/1rzoWaV

Yeah the issue here is that the scouting system only tracks the main ratings. For things like base stealing, it won't be visible in the scouting report unfortunately

[OzzieFan]

Originally Posted by Will Beh

Can click the + button or drag and drop them to the left of the screen

Thanks. I will check this when I get back home.

[ptautscher]

Originally Posted by Will Beh

Yeah the issue here is that the scouting system only tracks the main ratings. For things like base stealing, it won't be visible in the scouting report unfortunately

Thought so, is this something that would or could come into the game? Just makes it more complete.

[FantasyDrafter]

Originally Posted by Will Beh

Yeah the issue here is that the scouting system only tracks the main ratings. For things like base stealing, it won't be visible in the scouting report unfortunately

I just finished the offseason. 5 programs completed on 2/14/2025. One outstanding, 2 successful, 1 no improvement, 1 poor. All of these I would assume should be visible in the scouting report.

OUTSTANDING in pitch movement. Player was already maxed out. 2/14 scouting report is identical to the previous 4 reports - no change in any categories. Oh, and I had his movement focus bar maxed out as well.

SUCCESSFUL control session. Player was not maxed out (35/55). No increases noted on the scouting report, but his stamina dropped from 65 to 60, his movement dropped from 50 to 45 and his potential CONTROL dropped by 5 (55 to 50). His overall potential went DOWN from 3.5 to 2.5 stars (Previous report was 11/4/2024). Not ideal! I only had points in his stuff bars.

SUCCESSFUL plate discipline program. This one worked. Player was not maxed out. There was an increase of 5 in Power, 10 in eye, 5 in eye potential. Overall and Potential rating went up by .5 stars each. His power and eye bars are maxed out.

NO IMPROVEMENT control program. Player was not maxed in control (40/45). According to the scouting report I would say it was a very successful off season program. Stuff actual and potential both up 5 and CONTROL up 5. Plus increase in velocity one tick up to 97-99, which is nice! Plus .5 star current. I only have points in his stuff bars.

POOR add velocity program. This one absolutely tracks - he lost 5 in movement and 10 in control, as described in the email. Totally backfired. I only have points in his stuff bars.

[Will Beh]

Originally Posted by ptautscher

Thought so, is this something that would or could come into the game? Just makes it more complete.

It's something we wanted to add but didn't have time unfortunately this year

[Will Beh]

Originally Posted by FantasyDrafter

I just finished the offseason. 5 programs completed on 2/14/2025. One outstanding, 2 successful, 1 no improvement, 1 poor. All of these I would assume should be visible in the scouting report.

OUTSTANDING in pitch movement. Player was already maxed out. 2/14 scouting report is identical to the previous 4 reports - no change in any categories. Oh, and I had his movement focus bar maxed out as well.

SUCCESSFUL control session. Player was not maxed out (35/55). No increases noted on the scouting report, but his stamina dropped from 65 to 60, his movement dropped from 50 to 45 and his potential CONTROL dropped by 5 (55 to 50). His overall potential went DOWN from 3.5 to 2.5 stars (Previous report was 11/4/2024). Not ideal! I only had points in his stuff bars.

SUCCESSFUL plate discipline program. This one worked. Player was not maxed out. There was an increase of 5 in Power, 10 in eye, 5 in eye potential. Overall and Potential rating went up by .5 stars each. His power and eye bars are maxed out.

NO IMPROVEMENT control program. Player was not maxed in control (40/45). According to the scouting report I would say it was a very successful off season program. Stuff actual and potential both up 5 and CONTROL up 5. Plus increase in velocity one tick up to 97-99, which is nice! Plus .5 star current. I only have points in his stuff bars.

POOR add velocity program. This one absolutely tracks - he lost 5 in movement and 10 in control, as described in the email. Totally backfired. I only have points in his stuff bars.

A couple things to keep in mind;
The sliders are not related to the development lab as mentioned in the OP.
Without 100% scouting accuracy you might not see exactly the changes that were made.
Even if you have 100% accuracy, on a 20 to 80 scale it's possible you won't see an increase because the resolution is to coarse.
As mentioned in the OP and in the emails you get from the scout, there will be other changes in the scouting report because standard player development still occurs while they are in the lab, and the reports just pick up all changes.

[FantasyDrafter]

Originally Posted by Will Beh

A couple things to keep in mind;
The sliders are not related to the development lab as mentioned in the OP.
Without 100% scouting accuracy you might not see exactly the changes that were made.
Even if you have 100% accuracy, on a 20 to 80 scale it's possible you won't see an increase because the resolution is to coarse.
As mentioned in the OP and in the emails you get from the scout, there will be other changes in the scouting report because standard player development still occurs while they are in the lab, and the reports just pick up all changes.

I understand the bars are not supposed to impact the lab, but they are supposed to impact the behind the scenes development that is going on, which is why I mentioned it.

I will continue messing around with it, but if an OUTSTANDING result in a player who has already filled their potential bars results in nothing, I will definitely think twice before dedicating a slot to a player like that in the future. Conversely, a player who has a NO IMPROVEMENT result in the control program and zero invested in the development bar, but his control goes up, while the SUCCESSFUL control program only sees the potential control go down?

Personally not the user experience I would be expecting.

[snepp]

The only way you're going to know for sure is to check the editor the day prior to the completion of the lab task, then again the day of.

[OutS|der]

Originally Posted by snepp

The only way you're going to know for sure is to check the editor the day prior to the completion of the lab task, then again the day of.

These are the only real ratings, everything else is based on the talent in your league, when that changes then ratings change.

OOTP really needs to stop calling the displayed bars player ratings when they are more an indication of talent level, ratings are found in the editor.

[tucky22]

I've also noticed an underwhelming improvement of players through the Development Lab, especially when receiving the Outstanding completion. I believe the ratio between the 4 completion types and rewards for the first 3 are fair, but I was unhappy with the outstanding rewards. Sometimes I saw no potential increase or even an Outstanding New Pitch only netted a 45 potential. So I created a test league and have ran about 10 seasons worth of labs with 20 players every offseason in commissioner mode to track the actual increases. I have noticed that:
-When a player has a potential of <475(~70 potential) I noticed 0 increase in potential, although depending on development level a large increase in current ratings did occur
-When the player has a potential between 375-425 (~50-55) I noticed an increase of 0-17 potential gain with a fair amount of current rating development
- When the player was 275-325(~40-45) I notice a 20-43 increase in potential and again, a fair amount of current rating development.
These increases were the same between pitchers and hitters, and I haven't noticed a difference between difficulty levels. Again, the new outstanding pitch learned is anything but an "above average" pitch as the development report says, even after a few more years of development, I saw minimum upgrade in potential (again highest reached a 376 or ~45 overall). I wasn't expecting to be able to turn my 45 power outfielder into an 65 power guy over one offseason, but an outstanding result should end up more than a 3% max return on average/above average talents, even if it does decrease other stats, such as k rate in this scenario.

Last thought is on the New Pitch and Secondary Pitch Improvement categories, is there any way to incorporate a way for us to select the pitch type they work on/try to learn? I don't need my fastball/cutter pitcher to learn a sinker or fastball/sinker guy to learn a cutter, which tends to happen. And selecting which pitch type to improve on would be nice, especially when a guy has a 4 pitch repertoire and there is one bad pitch you want him to improve or even drop.

[tonnage]

I found this to be quite interesting, although not what I expected nor wanted. In my fictional league, I have Pete Rose (yes, that Pete Rose) on my team. He is listed as a 55 first baseman and a 40 second baseman. I need him at 2nd, as I have a very good 1st baseman. I wanted to improve him defensively at 2nd so I sent him to the development lab to work on his defense. He successfully completed his training and his defense at 2nd went from 40 to 45, not great but at least better. I am now at game 43 of my regular season and at the last scouting report, Rose dropped from the new 45 rating back to his original 40 rating. This is like six weeks after he improved to 45. He's currently 29-years-old in my save - not sure why he regressed?

[Will Beh]

Originally Posted by tonnage

I found this to be quite interesting, although not what I expected nor wanted. In my fictional league, I have Pete Rose (yes, that Pete Rose) on my team. He is listed as a 55 first baseman and a 40 second baseman. I need him at 2nd, as I have a very good 1st baseman. I wanted to improve him defensively at 2nd so I sent him to the development lab to work on his defense. He successfully completed his training and his defense at 2nd went from 40 to 45, not great but at least better. I am now at game 43 of my regular season and at the last scouting report, Rose dropped from the new 45 rating back to his original 40 rating. This is like six weeks after he improved to 45. He's currently 29-years-old in my save - not sure why he regressed?

Just the randomness of talent change in this case I think

[omg_pwnasaurus]

It's certainly possible he had money on positional regression

[tonnage]

Originally Posted by omg_pwnasaurus

It's certainly possible he had money on positional regression

Lol! Good one.

[FantasyDrafter]

Spent the last few days going through multiple seasons with the same team I had before, utilizing the same min/max strategy throughout the organization - at this point I’m pretty sure 75%+ of my club has the sliders adjusted (it may be 90+, I’m trying to lowball it). I just finished the 2027 season.

I won’t go into everyone individually, but some thoughts based on my experience:

- ratings changes from a successful lab (yes I ran a scouting report prior to the lab completing and checked the editor to get a true before/after) are not generally not particularly huge. Outstanding can maybe be up to a 10% increase under the hood it seems? Most common result is no improvement. If you have a disastrous lab it hurts in the short term, but players can recover.

- min/max seems to have very little effect. I have had success with maxing out a rating that was reported to have regressed in a scouting report, but that is likely RNG. I am thinking of it as encouraging the player to work on that, and maybe when they have an increase it is bigger the more you have invested, but i cant say anything for certain. It isn’t a broken mechanic where you can push a player +20 past their initial scouting potential from when they were acquired (assuming very high scouting). It feels like a requested focus, not a cheat code.

- personally I don’t find it more likely you will decrease a stat having nothing in the bar. It happens, don’t get me wrong, but it isn’t a death sentence for a stat. I will continue with my gut feeling from the beginning that you don’t need any points in defense, base running or stamina to have a successful player. Given what I have done with my org, if the bars were extremely powerful I would have expected at the end of the 2027 season to have a club full of relief pitchers who were pretty wild and a slow, defensively challenged group of everyday players at all levels. Simply hasn’t happened. Nor should it in my opinion. I am treating the bars as if zero is the baseline and any increase you give to a bar is a nudge in that direction (which is how I want it to work) and it has worked that way for me. Here is the big question: IS THE JUICE WORTH THE SQUEEZE? If I’m being honest, probably not.

- I had a big issue season 1 where my lower minors were TERRIBLE. I spent a little time on it (but honestly not very much) and at the end of the 2027 season they might be too good. AAA won 100 games, AA and A+ still under .500 but no longer a disaster, A - .561, FCL - .673, DSLs played .900 and .700 ball. I am not managing those teams, but I did spend more time organizing after the 2025 season. I did not have the AI cutting players and somehow I wound up with 69 players in the FCL at one point. I let the AI cut for a day and they got rid of the dead wood pretty effectively (I only signed back 2 players. I will do that during every offseason going forward I think.

[jcard]

Originally Posted by FantasyDrafter

Spent the last few days going through multiple seasons with the same team I had before, utilizing the same min/max strategy throughout the organization - at this point I’m pretty sure 75%+ of my club has the sliders adjusted (it may be 90+, I’m trying to lowball it). I just finished the 2027 season.

I won’t go into everyone individually, but some thoughts based on my experience:

- ratings changes from a successful lab (yes I ran a scouting report prior to the lab completing and checked the editor to get a true before/after) are not generally not particularly huge. Outstanding can maybe be up to a 10% increase under the hood it seems? Most common result is no improvement. If you have a disastrous lab it hurts in the short term, but players can recover.

- min/max seems to have very little effect. I have had success with maxing out a rating that was reported to have regressed in a scouting report, but that is likely RNG. I am thinking of it as encouraging the player to work on that, and maybe when they have an increase it is bigger the more you have invested, but i cant say anything for certain. It isn’t a broken mechanic where you can push a player +20 past their initial scouting potential from when they were acquired (assuming very high scouting). It feels like a requested focus, not a cheat code.

- personally I don’t find it more likely you will decrease a stat having nothing in the bar. It happens, don’t get me wrong, but it isn’t a death sentence for a stat. I will continue with my gut feeling from the beginning that you don’t need any points in defense, base running or stamina to have a successful player. Given what I have done with my org, if the bars were extremely powerful I would have expected at the end of the 2027 season to have a club full of relief pitchers who were pretty wild and a slow, defensively challenged group of everyday players at all levels. Simply hasn’t happened. Nor should it in my opinion. I am treating the bars as if zero is the baseline and any increase you give to a bar is a nudge in that direction (which is how I want it to work) and it has worked that way for me. Here is the big question: IS THE JUICE WORTH THE SQUEEZE? If I’m being honest, probably not.

- I had a big issue season 1 where my lower minors were TERRIBLE. I spent a little time on it (but honestly not very much) and at the end of the 2027 season they might be too good. AAA won 100 games, AA and A+ still under .500 but no longer a disaster, A - .561, FCL - .673, DSLs played .900 and .700 ball. I am not managing those teams, but I did spend more time organizing after the 2025 season. I did not have the AI cutting players and somehow I wound up with 69 players in the FCL at one point. I let the AI cut for a day and they got rid of the dead wood pretty effectively (I only signed back 2 players. I will do that during every offseason going forward I think.

Always nice when someone shares the products of their structured investigations. Thank you.

One question, potentially to your benefit also: In evaluating the changes either for different attributes or for different baseline ratings of a given attribute, are you factoring in the particular non-linearity of different attributes along their rating scales?

[jdolecek49]

Originally Posted by Will Beh

With the addition of the development lab and the player development focus, there's a lot new to learn! Let's dive into them both here, starting with the more flashy of the two

DEVELOPMENT LAB
As the final out is recorded and the World Series trophy held high, teams are already looking towards the next year. Coaches, trainers, and staff are up the next day at the crack of dawn, moving pitching mounds into place, setting up cameras, loosening their arms, and prepping plans for the players they will be working with. Coming in shortly thereafter are the players their organization has a keen focus on, ones who may benefit from some in-depth work throughout the offseason. With the amount of resources each player receives, space in the lab is limited. When they arrive to kick off the offseason, the players are greeted by coaches with a tailored program to help them improve on an aspect of their game. Then, over the course of the program, the players will come in day in and day out to the facility, working with coaches, trainers, data scientists, and other staff. By the end, the hope is that they will have made improvements to the area of focus, whether it be through mechanical changes, experience, or simply hard work. Some players will go into the new season with a new pitch, some will have found their power stroke, while others may not have been able to make any improvement at all.

Quick overview of in-game mechanics
- The development lab (also called the "practice facility" in some historical games) opens at the beginning of the offseason, and stays open until the season begins.
- Programs can only be handed out if the player will be able to complete it prior to the season starting. This means in most standard and fictional games, which drop you in right before the season starts, the dev lab will be open but there will not be many available programs.
- Programs are generally written such that they last either the length of the offseason, or the length of spring training.
- The number of slots in the lab is limited, but this can be changed in the game settings.
- Once a player has completed their program, that slot will become available to be filled again (as long as there is time left)
- After a program has been selected for a player and they are put in the lab, you will have five days to cancel and take them out. The first five days are an intake assessment for the facility staff to determine the how the player is looking going into the training. By the end of this initial assessment, your scout will compile a new scouting report on the player. The intake assessment is only for the coaches and scout to see where the player is at going into the training.
- A player can only attempt the same program once per offseason. For example, they are not able to improve baserunning twice, although they can do it once and then do something else as well.

- Programs have several general levels of difficulty, ranging from very easy to very hard. However, the difficulty is also influenced by a number of other factors including but not limited to; player personality, coaches, ratings, player age, position, and other program dependent factors.
- The difficulty influences the likelihood of the different outcomes of the lab for a particular player, which fall into four general categories; poor, no improvement, successful, outstanding
- A successful result will usually mean that the player improves their current rating in the area of focus. For other programs that target ratings that do not have current or potential (like increasing velocity) the result will be a simple increase in that area. This result is relatively common, depending on the difficulty of the program.
- A no improvement outcome is exactly as it sounds; the player doesn't make any gains. This is also quite common, depending on the program.
- A rare outcome is the outstanding completion. In this case, the player went above and beyond, something just clicked for them. For programs that target ratings with potential (power, eye, etc.) you will see not only an increase in the current rating, but also an increase in potential rating. For programs that do not target ratings with potential (like increase velocity, improve speed, etc.) the gains will be larger than a regular success.
- Another rare outcome is the poor performance. This occurs when something goes terribly wrong during training. Maybe the player gets in the habit of overswinging when trying to improve power, or makes some negative alteration to his arm slot when trying to learn a new offspeed pitch. In this case, there will be some negative outcome which can vary greatly.

- The best way to see how your player did is by reading the mail your scout will send to you at the end of their program. But if there were some changes, the scout will also create a new scouting report where you can view changes to the ratings since the initial intake scouting report. But keep in mind, this report may show changes that the player experienced naturally, since some of the programs are so long that regular player development will occur as well.
- When a player succeeds or fails at a program, there is a small hit to their morale depending on the result.

- You can see how your player is doing throughout their time in in the lab by their progress. This will include whether they are struggling, frustrated, on track, or excelling, which are synonymous with the four outcomes listed above.
- The progress gets updated daily, since every day the player gets in their work, and so you may see a guy frustrated for a while, but eventually turn it around and finish on track, for example.

- There may be additional things that I did not remember to mention, so if you have questions please ask.

Tips
- If your players' progress is very bad at the start, don't worry, it's very likely to change as he gets more days under his belt. If he's struggling 5 days out of a 4 month long program, it's negligible overall.
- Unless you are really being risky, don't bother putting players in to work on something where their current rating is already at the potential. In this case, only an outstanding outcome will be beneficial, since they won't have room to improve their current rating. Granted, you can always put guys into programs to improve their pitches, or defense, or speed, etc., since those don't have a potential cap.
- As mentioned above, player personality has an impact on how well they do in the lab. So keep that in mind if you are choosing between two guys to send in. It's not a huge influence, but it is there.
- Because the lab opens immediately when the offseason begins, free agents have not yet filed. Be careful not to put guys into the lab who are about to walk. If you ask AI to fill the lab you will not run into this problem.
- There are probably dozens of additional tips that I don't even know yet, so if you find anything please comment it. I'm really excited to learn about how people best use the system.


PLAYER DEVELOPMENT FOCUS
Players throughout the year will have routines, and standard things they do to practice, get better, and maintain themselves. They will work with coaches who can guide them and help them with these exercises on a daily basis. Before this version of OOTP, this was generally captured in the coaching influence on standard player development.
However, players do not all have the same routines. The power hitting DH is not going to get a coach to hit him groundballs for hours; he's going to have a coach helping him in the cage instead. The players only have so many hours in a day. The new player development focus sliders (found on the Development tab on the player screen) allow you to split up their finite time into the areas of their game that you want them to spend time on with coaches. This essentially allows you to micromanage how coaching influence gets applied to their different ratings.

Quick overview of in-game mechanics
- This is not functionally related to the development lab. Since the development focus builds off of the existing development system, it is always there and influences the player at all times.
- To adjust a slider, you need to take out of one rating slider to put into another. I.e. you need to get the time from somewhere.
- When all sliders are at the middle state, this is just the same as the old coaching influence of past games.
- When you give more to a rating, not only will it improve development, which includes current ratings as well as talent increases, but it also influences how well a player who has already maxed out his current ratings will maintain it and even fight off the aging curve if he's getting older.
- However, since you need to take the time from somewhere, the aspects of his game that a player neglects will suffer opposite to the above.
- Being 10 points below the halfway mark is actually more detrimental in terms of the probabilities than it is beneficial to be 10 points above the halfway mark

Tips
- It is a subtle passive system, on the scale of coaching influence, so it may be hard to see a clearly noticeable impact. I would personally spend about as much time on setting player focus as I would spend on getting good coaches. I would probably set it for my major league roster, for top prospects, and for a few intriguing guys. However, you can set it for your entire organization if you would like.
- Once you set a player's focus manually, don't forget to tick the lock checkbox to prevent the AI from changing it. The AI control options can be found in the manager settings, and you can give the AI control over setting the focus for your minor league players, major league players, or both.

So If a player has a very high rating in speed do we still need to keep a lot of focus on his speed every week in practice or is it safe to remove some of his focus and apply it elsewhere and what should the outlook be if a player has already met all of his potential ratings? is the focus then pointless?

[Syd Thrift]

Originally Posted by jdolecek49

So If a player has a very high rating in speed do we still need to keep a lot of focus on his speed every week in practice or is it safe to remove some of his focus and apply it elsewhere and what should the outlook be if a player has already met all of his potential ratings? is the focus then pointless?

Speed is not a rating that has a potential attached to it and generally speaking a player will debut with the highest speed of his career (which is also generally speaking what happens in real life, to the point that FanGraphs in particular will commonly give out, say, 60/50 ratings in that category). It might still be useful to allocate time to it to keep it from degrading or to increase the chance of random luck, I don’t know.

If a player has maxed out their potentials, yeah, that screen is unlikely to do much. If you want to get a maxed out player to improve in an area, the method to do that is the offseason development lab.

[Syd Thrift]

I re-read this in the light of the morning and, in the interests of pointing out that I am dumb, I am wrong. What was I even talking about?

The real reason you don't see only say 3 SPs rated as 80 given a cohort of 150 of them: standard deviations assume a normal distribution. OOTP ratings are not normally distributed, which is how you'd see things if they were arranged in a classic bell curve. At best the way to describe the ratings is if you're looking at only the long tail on the right side of a normal-distribution bell curve. Just to get into this league, just to get a shot at the minor leagues, even, you're multiple standard deviations better at baseball than the mean. So, like, even if ratings looked like a tail, you should not only see more 50s than 60s, but you should see more 40s than 50s, more 30s than 40s, and more 20s than 30s. The majority of guys rated 40 or lower are going to be buried in the minors or else released/retired/undrafted, but that's how it *should* look and that right there I'm sure makes SDs tough to parse.

That covers the low end but on top of that, OOTP's actual ratings are a bit fuzzier than that, a bit flatter than normal distribution would imply but I think based more on the talent distribution of modern baseball, and also more random and not self-correcting if, say, too many (or too few!) players have a given talent level the way you'd need with a truly smooth curve. The end result is that if you wanted to be completely right and true with SDs so that only 3 guys out of 150 had 80s, you'd have fewer 55s and 60s too and I think at some point the devs said "yeah, let's try to do this in spirit but let's not go too crazy".

[trengilly]

Originally Posted by Will Beh

A couple things to keep in mind;
The sliders are not related to the development lab as mentioned in the OP.
Without 100% scouting accuracy you might not see exactly the changes that were made.
Even if you have 100% accuracy, on a 20 to 80 scale it's possible you won't see an increase because the resolution is to coarse.
As mentioned in the OP and in the emails you get from the scout, there will be other changes in the scouting report because standard player development still occurs while they are in the lab, and the reports just pick up all changes.

I had two batters one doing Quality of Contact and the other Two Strike Approach.

With 1 day left in the Development Lab they were both projecting Outstanding. I used the editor to check their ratings and then progressed one day to finish the lab.

Both reported Outstanding success and the notification emails said that both their current and potential levels had increased.

Checking in the editor again both players current ratings had Increased about 40 points. But in both cases their Potential values had Decreased around 40.

The editor should be accurate? The checks were one day apart, and no other values on their batting ratings page changed at all, so it didn't appear any standard development was taking place.

It really did appear that current increased but potential decreased (possible bug?).