What the heck?!? Is historical minors even playable?

[Orcin]

But the players in my case were released, not retained by the organization that owned their rights. If the feature worked properly, the players would be retained by their parent organization.

(I don't understand the comment about the AI being the AI?)

[Spritze]

the AI released 57% of the Dixie players before the season even ended is what I mean. I have no idea why.

[Orcin]

Originally Posted by Spritze

the AI released 57% of the Dixie players before the season even ended is what I mean. I have no idea why.

You're saying this happened in your test?

[Spritze]

Yup

[Orcin]

Originally Posted by Spritze

Yup

So, you think that the program is working as intended? Did other teams in other minor leagues release 57% of their players, i.e. AI being AI?

[Spritze]

No idea.

Personally I do not play with minor leagues anymore.

[Orcin]

Ok, perhaps someone else would care to look at my test.

I ran a 1971 league up to the final day of the MLB season. All 14 Dixie Association teams had complete rosters of 25-26 players. On the first day of the off-season, those teams disappeared because the league disbanded and ALL of the players in the Dixie Association became free agents. None of the player's history showed any mention of their release. The franchises that owned these players lost them.

The Albuquerque Dukes of the DIXA became the Albuquerque Dukes of the PCL. Their roster is now empty. The Dodgers' new AA affiliate is the El Paso Dodgers. Their roster is also empty.

The Charlotte Hornets of the DIXA became the Charlotte Hornets of the Southern League. Both teams are AA affiliates of the Minnesota Twins; the only thing that changed was the league. All Charlotte Hornets players are now in the free agent pool and the new Charlotte roster is empty. This team did not even change affiliation and lost all of its players!

I can go on, but I now have 634 free agents - most of whom were minor league players whose teams changed league/affiliation/or whatever.

These files are available for testing by someone that can look into the problem, but the test is also easily replicated. It will fail every time. The 1971 season is a glaring example because of the big movement, but every time a minor league team changes for any reason the parent will lose players. Every year.

This is not the "AI being the AI". The system does not work properly, and makes historical minors unplayable.

[thehef]

Originally Posted by Orcin

This is not the "AI being the AI". The system does not work properly, and makes historical minors unplayable.

This ^^^

I guess the developers have to ask themselves whether they want historical minors to work, or if it will just be a soon-to-be-forgotten footnote as future versions of OOTP are rolled out... Abandoning it would be a shame given how close it currently is to being playable, and how much work folks (Spritze, BigRod, others?) have put into making all of these players available.

[sprague]

Originally Posted by thehef

This ^^^

I guess the developers have to ask themselves whether they want historical minors to work, or if it will just be a soon-to-be-forgotten footnote as future versions of OOTP are rolled out... Abandoning it would be a shame given how close it currently is to being playable, and how much work folks (Spritze, BigRod, others?) have put into making all of these players available.

My feeling is what most people want would be the spritze hs db. Players enter at 18 or 19. We get tons of player, with full career, Even Japan and negro league players if we wish.
Then we make our own minor league system.
I Get the idea of wanting to start in a particular year and having every team have their full stock of minor players. But the db might just need an extra column, affiliation. If playing that way, in 1954 all players hit the affiliate team, and ai sorts them based on minor leagues or reserve roster. Non affiliate players, such as joe Baumann that year, are still in the game just list as free agents.
Start with an inagural draft and affiliation no longer matters.
I think this would give a ton of options, including simple import of any individual player from this db, and might be the one with the least amount of work to have ready for ootp 18.

[David Watts]

Originally Posted by sprague

My feeling is what most people want would be the spritze hs db. Players enter at 18 or 19. We get tons of player, with full career, Even Japan and negro league players if we wish.
Then we make our own minor league system.
I Get the idea of wanting to start in a particular year and having every team have their full stock of minor players. But the db might just need an extra column, affiliation. If playing that way, in 1954 all players hit the affiliate team, and ai sorts them based on minor leagues or reserve roster. Non affiliate players, such as joe Baumann that year, are still in the game just list as free agents.
Start with an inagural draft and affiliation no longer matters.
I think this would give a ton of options, including simple import of any individual player from this db, and might be the one with the least amount of work to have ready for ootp 18.

I would love to see the historical minors work. It's a very cool idea.

That being said, I would end up using what Sprague just described a ton. So much more versatile.

[mitchkenn]

Originally Posted by David Watts

I would love to see the historical minors work. It's a very cool idea.

That being said, I would end up using what Sprague just described a ton. So much more versatile.

i agree, but last i saw Spritze said his db wasn't working well with the draft as it is in OOTP 17 and he was thinking of abandoning it. (hope that never comes to pass.) Maybe the draft issue could be resolved in 18.

if the minors can't be fixed so players stay within an organization when the minor teams disappears, then it would be GREAT if we could at least create our own minor leagues. i don't know how the current system, if it isn't drastically changed in 18, would allow manually created teams to co-exist with the game generated ones. IF that were possible, then when an affiliate vanished, there could be a self created team to absorb those players. that would take a LOT of testing to figure out the implications and resolving the conflict with the game setting up and taking away it's own minors. But it's an idea that could be looked at, maybe?????

[mitchkenn]

this issue of teams losing affiliates and players going to FA might be for specific years???
i had issues with my game not loading any minors after i tinkered with the Milb csv file. Must have deleted the wrong file when i thought i restored an edited file last week ..... anyway, unlicensed, uninstall and reinstalled yesterday.
today .... ran a test on 1920-1923 Pittsburgh and their Wichita affiliate. When Wichita became a Cubs minor league team in 1923, the players that WERE on Pitts Wichita went to Pitts reserve roster, and the Cubs had both Wichita (AA) and Los Angeles (AAA), with no reserve roster.
Don't know if the issue of affiliate players going to FA is after a certain date, or what ... but the game got 1923 right, so maybe it's a glitch in programming that can be corrected based on 1923? Just a thought.

[Le Grande Orange]

The problem with historical minors, as I see it, is trying to do the entire minor league system (or near enough so) in one go. It would have been much better, I think, to have added it in stages. For example, focus initially on the Triple-A level. Get those leagues (which, really, were the same three for most of minor league history: American Association, International League, and Pacific Coast League) right, with league schedules, logos, etc. Even player movement is not out of the question, since, being the 'premiere' minor leagues, there is likely more coverage and details to be found about them.

With a historically authentic top-level of minors working properly, then the lower classifications could have been added, with the benefit of the experience gained from doing Triple-A.

Alas, for some reason, it was decided to go all-in.

[jpeters1734]

adding the historical minors is an amazing idea. I would really hope that they wouldn't just give us the players and scrap the teams. that would be such a shame. I was blown away when I found out that my made up team based off my home town, the Oil City Oilers, were actually a real team affiliated with the Pirates back in the 40's!!! There's so many fantastic logo and uniform sets in the mods forum that you can dress all these teams properly if you wanted to. I sincerely hope that the idea of this thread does not move to them scrapping the thing. The only thing wrong, in my opinion, is players being released automatically when a ML team loses all affiliates. And of course a loan feature would be nice and could be used in multiple new ways.

[hillm2ca]

This may be off topic but it would be nice to be able to "watch" some of my minor league team's games every once in a while. I am not sure if there is a way to do this in OOTP 17, but I would like to occasionally "peak" into a game or two just to get a sense of how my prospects are doing, outside of merely reading box scores and statistics.

[jpeters1734]

Originally Posted by hillm2ca

This may be off topic but it would be nice to be able to "watch" some of my minor league team's games every once in a while. I am not sure if there is a way to do this in OOTP 17, but I would like to occasionally "peak" into a game or two just to get a sense of how my prospects are doing, outside of merely reading box scores and statistics.

you absolutely can! click on the baseball to view the current games, change the league, and watch any game you choose!

[thehef]

Originally Posted by sprague

My feeling is what most people want would be the spritze hs db. Players enter at 18 or 19. We get tons of player, with full career, Even Japan and negro league players if we wish.

Is that the same db as the pro debut db?

Originally Posted by sprague

Then we make our own minor league system.

For me, that would be way cool only if we could make all of the minor league changes in the csv file and have OOTP read & import then, as opposed to having to painstakingly make all of the changes manually each year.

Originally Posted by Le Grande Orange

The problem with historical minors, as I see it, is trying to do the entire minor league system (or near enough so) in one go. It would have been much better, I think, to have added it in stages. For example, focus initially on the Triple-A level. Get those leagues (which, really, were the same three for most of minor league history: American Association, International League, and Pacific Coast League) right, with league schedules, logos, etc. Even player movement is not out of the question, since, being the 'premiere' minor leagues, there is likely more coverage and details to be found about them.

With a historically authentic top-level of minors working properly, then the lower classifications could have been added, with the benefit of the experience gained from doing Triple-A.

Alas, for some reason, it was decided to go all-in.

Starting with AAA is a very interesting idea. That means you'd be starting in 1946 (first year of AAA). In this scenario, starting a game in any year prior to 1946 could simply be done with a draft. Problem is, both the Phillies and Senators had no AAA team that year. Philly's top team was single-A, and Wash's top team was AA. So maybe starting with the complete AAA, AA, and A system would be an option... And I suggest that only as a way to narrow the scope but make it actually work (before making it more-robust, adding indy's & negro leagues, going back to 1901, etc.; basically, it's the opposite of the all-in-but-it-doesn't-work approach.)

Still, I think historical txns for minor-leagues needs to be included, in some form.

[Le Grande Orange]

Originally Posted by thehef

Starting with AAA is a very interesting idea. That means you'd be starting in 1946 (first year of AAA). In this scenario, starting a game in any year prior to 1946 could simply be done with a draft.

Not literally Triple-A; I meant the top tier of minors, which has been pretty much consistent (other than the first decade or so of the National Association). One could make adjustments to the real-life affiliations for game play purposes.

Originally Posted by thehef

One could make adjustments to reality So maybe starting with the complete AAA, AA, and A system would be an option...

The second tier of minors was reasonably consistent after 1920, but varied considerably beforehand. The third tier saw quite a bit of turnover in leagues.

[ra24mpa]

Originally Posted by Le Grande Orange

The problem with historical minors, as I see it, is trying to do the entire minor league system (or near enough so) in one go. It would have been much better, I think, to have added it in stages. For example, focus initially on the Triple-A level. Get those leagues (which, really, were the same three for most of minor league history: American Association, International League, and Pacific Coast League) right, with league schedules, logos, etc. Even player movement is not out of the question, since, being the 'premiere' minor leagues, there is likely more coverage and details to be found about them.

With a historically authentic top-level of minors working properly, then the lower classifications could have been added, with the benefit of the experience gained from doing Triple-A.

Alas, for some reason, it was decided to go all-in.

My two cents:
The devs should continue the work they began and make the historical aspect better (please don't give up on it - it's the main reason I'll purchase OOTP 18), but I think there's a way to combine history with the quote above: a separate DB that will allow players to be imported during the season they first were promoted to high-A or AA IRL. This way, there are fewer placeholders (as it were) to deal with. You'll only have to concern yourself with people who are a few lucky breaks away from actually making it to the show. It's the best of both worlds.

[thehef]

Going back to the OP... In my testing, I have generally seen that when a minor league team unaffiliates with an MLB team, those players stay with that MLB organization, going either to other affiliates in that MLB org, or to the reserve roster (if no other affiliates). In the case of the 1930 Pirates losing their only affiliate (Wichita Falls) for the 1931 season, many of those Wichita Falls players retired after the season. For some, I can't really tell what happened (they may have been free agents or on the reserve roster for a season before retiring). However, several others remained in the Pirates organization.