When to promote from the International Complex?

[JMDurron]

Originally Posted by 24Rocks

I have another Question How do you guys use so many Minors, I always have AI do the Minors but when I started In OOTP there was 3 Minors thats it with like no players now there is full minors and full players if you want to or if you have feeders and after OOTP 7 just cut out every thing but AAA, AA, 2 A teams, so i can keep track of my players some just get lost don't you think?

I usually promote at 18 if I payed alot for them or if i have a lot of injury's and my lowest team gets to 25 players because alot of the ones decline if you leave them there to long and there overall ratings dont progress well when they are 23 and stuck in A ball, now this doesn't always happen but overall i think the ones that i promote early have better success at least on my team and the few that I traded away

Well, I use the MLB Quickstart setup, where my team has AAA, AA, High A, Low A (both listed as A in the game, but there is a hierarchy), Short Season A, and Rookie League. I don't find it particularly difficult to track my top prospects, and 95% of the rosters on all these teams aren't going to pan out into anything useful anyway.

I never, ever let the AI manage my minors. It's better to leave a guy in the wrong place for too long than to have the AI promote/demote people that don't deserve it, or release players, etc.. I've seen too much waiver wire stupidity to trust the AI with any aspect of management of my roster.

This is my system, but everybody is different. Every offseason, THE DAY BEFORE THE PRESEASON STARTS, I take a look at all of my minor league teams.

For this, I define "top prospect" as a player with sufficient potential ratings to be a MLB player.

At each level, from AAA to R (two exceptions here), I do the following:

1 - Check final season stats. Automatically promote players with an OPS+/ERA+ of 125 or better for their league level. A players from both High and Low A go to AA. SA players all go to the High-A team. AAA players are not promoted, pending MLB roster moves.
2 - Check my spreadsheet where I track top prospects. Top prospects with OPS+/ERA+ between 100 and 125 move up to the next level
3 - Automatically demote players with an OPS+/ERA+ of 75 or worse down one level. AA players go to the High-A team. R players remain as potential cannon fodder down the road.
4 - Move all players from Low-A to the High-A team.
5 - Run a Minor League System Report. If my scouting spreadsheet of a top prospect and the AI Report (Possibly Ready, or Ready) indicate that a player is ready to move up, then the player moves up. This is why this must be done before the preseason starts, since the AI evals get scrapped on that day. This is particularly key for the pitchers, as position players learning new positions might be making the pitcher's stats look worse than his actual ability level. This is only done for my top prospects.
6 - Check all levels for an appropriate positional mix. Top prospects that are blocked take priority over anybody else. Non-prospects move up/down as necessary cannon fodder to fill positional holes. I try to keep some solid glove men for these roles to help the pitchers stats at that level in the upcoming season.
7 - Divide all Single-A players into High-A and Low-A. I put everybody on the High-A team to start to make it easier to see what I have. All top prospects stay with the High-A team. The High-A team gets priority on the positional mix, the cannon fodder goes to the Low-A team.

During the season, I check the position ratings for every position players on the 1st of every month, to ensure that my top players learn as many positions as possible in the minors. There's no telling where my MLB needs will be by the time they are ready, if they are ever ready at all.

I also fully scout (I use the editor to scout, but never edit, but to each his own) every minor league player 3 times per season - Opening Day, June 1st, and August 1st. This is to catch any talent boosts or declines to the point where prospects become cannon fodder, and vice versa. If my system is thin, I'll promote promising prospects to the next level when appropriate during this scouting session. If my system is stacked, I'll generally only promote during the offseason, aside from necessary injury promotions.

Nobody gets lost. It's occasionally tedious, but running into the occasional talent boost, or a stud player who is ready to learn yet another position on his way to The Show makes it completely worth it.

Originally Posted by Avindian

Keep in mind the Rule V service clock too; the moment they hit a minor league roster, you start that particular clock. However, they won't learn as much in the complex as they will in the minors.

18 is a good year to promote them; 20 is too late in my opinion. For an exceptional talent, 17, but unless you desperately need prospects, I wouldn't send anybody from the complex straightaway to the minors.

In my experience, the players in the complex will gain batting/pitching and fielding *ratings*, but the key is the lack of fielding *experience* that will be accumulated. I check the actual ratings to see when a Complex player is at the level where he can play at my R or SA level, at which point up he comes. That's generally been around 18 or 19 for my entire sample size of maybe 2 useful players to come out of my complex. The guys who never really make the leap become cannon fodder at age 20.

I'd also never send somebody straight from the complex to the minors, mostly due to Rule V concerns more than development risk.

[deknegt]

About people saying that they don't get enough PT if you promote them to the minors too soon, you can always set up some personal strategy that increases, like force start.

[Rockfan616]

I would probably let the AI handle it, but I will check on them in the offseason to see how they are progressing before putting them on a minor league team. I would probably start with either the DSL or the VSL however.

[goalieump413]

Above all, if you promote what you think is "too soon", check their playing time and ask for scouting reports, etc. PT is like "location" in real estate terms. It matters a lot, and if you need to trade a couple of players sitting in the way of an up and coming player, do it.