The only baseball sim I've ever gotten addicted to...

[md5423]

Originally Posted by gehrig38

So I had the first draft in my league where I participated. Couple things are evident. With the league expanding from 16 to 20 this past offseason, there are still a ton of prospects and it now appears that's why there are so many good players.
Which actually is cool, as my league expands the talent will spread out, but for now it's pretty packed.
Also, my two lower teams, the rookie and short season teams, I have slotted as teenage and 20-22 year old rosters. So to start the season I had almost no players on the rosters.
I set the draft for 45 rounds with 50 rounds of players generated.
There should be a setting that forces HS and College kids (that are free agents) to sign before my two rookie teams season starts. Their schedules are cranking up and I don't have enough players to fill out their rosters.
Believe it or not I feel almost like starting over, which isn't entirely a bad thing, since I am learning some new things about how to setup a league like this.
I am wondering. If I start a league with 16 teams, and plan to expand, how many HS and College Teams should I put in the feeder leagues to make sure there are ample players to fill out 5-6 Minor League teams for each, as well as leave a good pool of free agents?
And FWIW my Arizona team has lost every possible way there is to lose a game. I can't believe the crap that's happening. 3 run lead, 2 outs no one on, walk, single, triple, homer...
I've lost a metric crap ton of games after the 7th with a pretty decent bullpen, some amazing stuff.
I traded a ton of players and picks to grab 3 of the top 5 draft slots, targeting Starters only to find out the 4 top rated starters were all 80 2 pitch pitchers! So middle relievers in essence. No matter, I am going to bring them up as starters hoping they learn another pitch.
That's another thing I was curious about. You can convert high stamina relievers to starters, hoping they get a 3rd pitch. In real life they actually WOULD get AT LEAST a 3rd pitch as starters, no matter how bad it is, they'd have one.
I'd love to see something where I could assign what I wanted that third pitch to be and tinker with it if it didn't work.
Say I had a high 90's reliever, fastball, slider, I'd go for the split as a third pitch, a strikeout pitch and possibly a CB as a good change of speeds strike. Just thought I'd throw that out there.

I had the same thing in my fictional league, there were too many talented players in the league and I had a 24-team league. To get my league to my liking, I had to start it over 3 teams and it was annoying because it took me like 2 or 3 days to get it how I liked it (I would sim like 40 years to get some history), but in the end it is worth it, so if you want to fix something there is nothing wrong with starting over.

To answer your question about how many rounds you need to fill all the minor leagues, I have full minors and I am currently having a 25-round draft with players generated for 27 rounds and it seems to be working well, but maybe 30 rounds would be OK also.

Just wondering, do you play with ratings or stats-only? Because I was playing with ratings and I saw that all the players had really good ratings, so I changed it to stats-only and I am really enjoying it, however the draft really can be a crapshoot.

[Questdog]

Originally Posted by gehrig38

There should be a setting that forces HS and College kids (that are free agents) to sign before my two rookie teams season starts.

If you turn off the bonus negotiation options, all draft picks sign immediately upon being drafted.

And even with it on, it should only be the top draft picks that don't sign immediately (Top 5, I think).

[Qwerty75]

Originally Posted by gehrig38

In real life they actually WOULD get AT LEAST a 3rd pitch as starters, no matter how bad it is, they'd have one.

This would seem to lend support to the idea to get rid of fixed endurance ratings and have pitchers develop pitches and stamina based largely on usage patterns. So, if a pitcher gets starts in the minors, a third pitch would develop as a matter of course and he would have a starter's endurance after a period of "stretching out." Conversely, those used as relievers wouldn't have a third pitch develop and would have limited stamina after not starting for a certain amount of time.

I think it's an interesting idea, but probably a difficult programming challenge. Would be pretty cool if it would be implemented well, though.

[gehrig38]

Couple of other things.
It appears HS players can be drafted after only 1 year of HS 'service', which I assume means just one year of varsity now that I think about it, that's cool.
Also, College seniors should have little leverage in signing, but it feels like they have more. Where do they go if they don't sign? What do they do? Independent League? If that's the case it'd be awesome to have that as some side league I could scout.
If anyone has any suggestions for me on how many schools in HS and College Feeder leagues I should start with I'll take it. Think I may restart the whole thing with a more appropriate number of teams, and grow them as I can.
One more thing. I would imagine given the ease with which the Fireman of the Year Award is calculated, it would be easy to include as one of the games yearly awards, instead of having to manually do it?
Is that an option?

[gehrig38]

Originally Posted by Qwerty75

This would seem to lend support to the idea to get rid of fixed endurance ratings and have pitchers develop pitches and stamina based largely on usage patterns. So, if a pitcher gets starts in the minors, a third pitch would develop as a matter of course and he would have a starter's endurance after a period of "stretching out." Conversely, those used as relievers wouldn't have a third pitch develop and would have limited stamina after not starting for a certain amount of time.

I think it's an interesting idea, but probably a difficult programming challenge. Would be pretty cool if it would be implemented well, though.

That's a dangerous path to tread Just because you become a starter doesn't mean you gain stamina, many guys just don't have the body or the arm to do that. But ya, the upper tier guys, bigger guys physically, tend to be able to muster more stamina as they age and as they gain innings.
This would be an option that could possibly be major feature creep if the right engineers aren't doing the work

[Questdog]

Originally Posted by gehrig38

Couple of other things.
It appears HS players can be drafted after only 1 year of HS 'service', which I assume means just one year of varsity now that I think about it, that's cool.
Also, College seniors should have little leverage in signing, but it feels like they have more. Where do they go if they don't sign? What do they do? Independent League? If that's the case it'd be awesome to have that as some side league I could scout.
If anyone has any suggestions for me on how many schools in HS and College Feeder leagues I should start with I'll take it. Think I may restart the whole thing with a more appropriate number of teams, and grow them as I can.
One more thing. I would imagine given the ease with which the Fireman of the Year Award is calculated, it would be easy to include as one of the games yearly awards, instead of having to manually do it?
Is that an option?

Only seniors should be available to be drafted (HS or College). There is no option for underclassmen to turn pro. Probably since your league is new, the seniors only had one year of play.

I simulate 70s amd 80s style baseball and have all my draftees come from HS and College teams. You get, on average, 5-6 players per HS and College team that are seniors, so a basic rule of thumb is to divide the players needed in your amateur draft by 6 and this is how many feeder teams you need to have all your draftees supplied by feeder leagues (HS and College). I personally go a bit higher, just so every player in HS and College isn't drafted. (Don't like the guys that couldn't hit in HS getting offered pro contracts) My current 16 team major league is supplied by 120 feeder teams (80 HS and 40 college).

[Questdog]

P.S. anyone who is drafted but fails to sign by the deadline waits until the next draft and re-enters. There is no option for them to sign as free agents elsewhere (indy leage).

[gord]

Be careful when using feeder leagues - there is a known bug that gives all college and HS players in the feeders Major League service time during the season. Won't affect much during the first few seasons, I guess, but they'll become minor league free agents 3-4 years before they're supposed to.

[oman19]

Originally Posted by gehrig38

That's a dangerous path to tread Just because you become a starter doesn't mean you gain stamina, many guys just don't have the body or the arm to do that. But ya, the upper tier guys, bigger guys physically, tend to be able to muster more stamina as they age and as they gain innings.
This would be an option that could possibly be major feature creep if the right engineers aren't doing the work

Since you touched on stamina would be interesting to get your take on pitch counts and such. Had a nice long chat with my other buddy who plays OOTP about pitch counts IRL.

Do you think pitch-counts help save young arms or do you think it conditions the arm not to be able to throw as many innings?

[Questdog]

Originally Posted by gord

Be careful when using feeder leagues - there is a known bug that gives all college and HS players in the feeders Major League service time during the season. Won't affect much during the first few seasons, I guess, but they'll become minor league free agents 3-4 years before they're supposed to.

This is a bug in OOTP12, but was not a problem in OOTP11 and will, for sure, be fixed soon.

[gehrig38]

Originally Posted by Questdog

This is a bug in OOTP12, but was not a problem in OOTP11 and will, for sure, be fixed soon.

So any league I start in the meantime will have players broken like this?

EDIT: But I can go in and change their service time in the editor, nice. Painful right now, but nice.

[Questdog]

Yes. But this is a very high priority item on the patch list.

[Questdog]

If you know how to work a spreadsheet program, this can be quickly and easily fixed yourself (if you can't wait for the patch). Just do a roster export of the College and HS leagues (seperate for each). Open those text files in a spreadsheet, go to column V (ML Service Time) and fill the column with zeros. Save the file as a .csv file and re-import. The files are exported as text files, but you can import .csv files.

Edit: Of course, as soon as you re-import and begin playing, the service time will begin to accrue again, so pick the best time to do it for your league in relation to your draft and just be sure to do it each season until this is fixed.

[gehrig38]

Where do those files get dumped when I export them?

[Questdog]

In the individual save game folders there is a folder called import_export. This is where they go.

[gord]

@gehrig38: I set up three different college feeder leagues in my game. One is a two-year league to simulate JuCo players, one is a three-year league to simulate college players that leave after their junior year and a full four-year college league. I have them staggered in terms of teams so that there are a few two-year college players and more four-year players. I just didn't like having all of my drafted players be either 18 or 22 years old.

[phenom]

I'm sweating the two-pitch SP thing now. I have the honor (!) of the #1 overall pick in the upcoming draft of one of my online leagues, and there's a pretty clear-cut #1 stud who was virtually unhittable in college ball, but he only has two pitches. I'm considering passing on him for a slightly less talented SP who has three pitches.

[gehrig38]

Originally Posted by gord

@gehrig38: I set up three different college feeder leagues in my game. One is a two-year league to simulate JuCo players, one is a three-year league to simulate college players that leave after their junior year and a full four-year college league. I have them staggered in terms of teams so that there are a few two-year college players and more four-year players. I just didn't like having all of my drafted players be either 18 or 22 years old.

Consider this idea stolen, this is a great way to do this, though it still doesn't stop me from resetting service time.
Going to start with a 10-12 team league so I need to figure out how to setup feeder leagues # wise, and minor league teams as well.
Guessing I'll go with 15-18 yr old high school, 17-19 yr old Juco and 18-22 yr old college leagues.

[gord]

Originally Posted by phenom

I'm sweating the two-pitch SP thing now. I have the honor (!) of the #1 overall pick in the upcoming draft of one of my online leagues, and there's a pretty clear-cut #1 stud who was virtually unhittable in college ball, but he only has two pitches. I'm considering passing on him for a slightly less talented SP who has three pitches.

Unless you want to spend a #1 pick on a future stud closer, I'd suggest looking more closely at a 3-pitch starter.

[oman19]

Originally Posted by gehrig38

Consider this idea stolen, this is a great way to do this, though it still doesn't stop me from resetting service time.
Going to start with a 10-12 team league so I need to figure out how to setup feeder leagues # wise, and minor league teams as well.
Guessing I'll go with 15-18 yr old high school, 17-19 yr old Juco and 18-22 yr old college leagues.

From the ootp manual.
I used this method and it seemed to work pretty well when I was using feeder leagues.

Feeding First-year Player Drafts through Feeder Leagues

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. 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. So, using the default of a 5-year age range, we calculate as follows:

• [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.