Weird things happening in league?

[BorgPokerPro]

Hey All

So I started in 1986 , very low trades, and historical debut on. I then simmed a season to make sure I had it setup right and I did as in season 2 1987 Tom Glavine was on the Braves and so on. But some weird stuff happened that would never happen and wanted to know is this common and how I can stop it. Keep in mind I DONT want real transactions on as I want some difference between my leagues and what happened in mlb

After only 3 seasons in Baltimore Cal Ripkin Jr was let to become a free agent and signed with the Yankees?

How in the hell?

[actionjackson]

Originally Posted by BorgPokerPro

Hey All

So I started in 1986 , very low trades, and historical debut on. I then simmed a season to make sure I had it setup right and I did as in season 2 1987 Tom Glavine was on the Braves and so on. But some weird stuff happened that would never happen and wanted to know is this common and how I can stop it. Keep in mind I DONT want real transactions on as I want some difference between my leagues and what happened in mlb

After only 3 seasons in Baltimore Cal Ripkin Jr was let to become a free agent and signed with the Yankees?

How in the hell?

What does your Game > Game Settings > League Settings > Financials page look like? If you have it set up properly, it will have "Minimum Service Years for Free Agency" set to 6 years, and "Service Years Required for Arbitration" set to 3 years. I suppose it's possible that the Orioles non-tendered him rather than do arbitration or sign a deal with him, but I highly doubt it.

Also, is recalc on or off? (Game > Game Settings > League Settings > Historical > Historical Player Ratings > "Recalc player ratings based on real stats after each year"). If it is off, Mr. Ripken is at the mercy of the player development system and probably won't behave as he did IRL, and therefore he could've taken a hit to his ratings and had the Orioles non-tender him rather than sign him or take him to arbitration.

[BorgPokerPro]

geez getting the settings right in this game is like a full time job lol

[actionjackson]

Originally Posted by BorgPokerPro

geez getting the settings right in this game is like a full time job lol

Yes, yes it is. You may have to scrap leagues and start over multiple times. It's all part of the learning process grasshopper. You will get there. Hard to see it when leagues are messing up all over the place, but you will. Think of the settings like fundamentals in baseball. It takes a long time to learn them, but boy is it ever worth it when you do.

[Reed]

I have learned that whenever I want to start a different type league tit's best to set up a test league first. S it up, back it up, and sim several seasons, and then if it looks okay, restore the backup and start your league.

[Umeboshi]

I don't think this is an issue with settings. I think there is either a bug here, or at the very least the game is creating very unrealistic results which I don’t know how to fix by using settings.

What follows is how I reproduced a situation where minor-league prospects are becoming free agents much earlier than they are supposed to in a historical game.

Create a new historical game using the wizard; all options are default except:

• Season: 1958
• Import real minor leagues: yes
• Select a team: Pittsburgh Pirates

In creating this game, I did not go into advanced mode and tweak anything before starting the game, so what I have here is just the default game settings as produced by the wizard. One thing in particular that I’d like to point out is that, in a standard game, you can set configure things like the length of service time required to reach major and minor league free agency, but those options are NOT available to change, or even view, when you start a historical game.

After creating the game, I go into “do not disturb” mode and sim forward to the day before off-season starts. At this point, everything seems normal: there are very few (often zero) free agents shown in the MLB Transactions / Free Agents tab. Each team’s Upcoming FA list includes maybe a dozen or so players whose minor league free agency eligibility is listed as“Eligible after this season” in the Contract & Status tab.

I turn off “do not disturb” mode and made sure that I haven’t delegated any roster responsibilities that might lead to any of the players in my organization getting released. Then, I sim forward to the first day of off-season. A smallish number of players show up in the Free Agents tab (3-12 or so, as I remember, depending on the simulation run).

A few weeks after the season ends (thus, late October or early November) an ‘event’ occurs where the game does some heavy processing loading and processing the player databases. After puzzling over what was happening for a bit, I realized that what the game is doing is here is adding into the game (as free agents) players who had not played in 1958. For example, Earl Wilson played in the minor leagues from 1953-1956, sat out the 1957 and 1958 seasons, and then resumed playing in 1959. Earl wasn’t available in my game when I started it, since he wasn’t on any US major or minor league roster at the start of the 1958 season, but he did resume playing in 1959. So, sure, this seems fine as well (well, I’m not sure if sitting out for those two seasons actually makes him a free agent, but that’s maybe a discussion for a different thread).


So, as a result of this ‘event,’ now I see perhaps 650 or so players in the MLB Transactions / Free Agents tab.

The problem is that this ‘event’ often results in several minor-league prospects with low professional service time being placed into the Free Agents tab as well, when they should not be:





So, on the above screenshot, I’ve highlighted the names of three prospects that should not have reached free agency, as far as I can tell: Al Jackson, Mike Cuellar, and Gary Peters. All three of these players did play in the minors during the 1958 season, they have no major-league service time, their time-as-a-professional ranges from 1 year+169 days to 2 years+169 days, and the game lists them as not eligible for minor league free agency, both before and after this event occurs.



…



So, exactly why are these prospects becoming free agents?



Is the computer AI releasing them for some reason? This can’t be it, at least in the case of Al Jackson, since he was in my organization, I had control of the roster, and I certainly did not release him. In the case of Peters and Cuellar, there was no reason for the computer GMs to release top prospects. As far as I know, the only reason the AI might do this is there was a roster limit, but I purposely did not set any roster or service time limits in this game.

Are they reaching their minor-league service time limits? Well, I don’t know for sure, since I don’t know of any way to view or set the free agency service time limits in an historical game (as opposed to a standard game, where you can). They certainly aren’t anywhere near the usual service time limit for minor league free agency, which is six years.



…



So here are a few complicating issues:

• I cannot reproduce this situation where these prospects enter free agency every time I run this game. In one simulation run, all three of these prospects entered free agency as a result of this event; in other simulation runs, none, or only one or two of these prospects entered free agency. So, whatever is happening, it seems more complicated than that the game is simply using an odd service time limit for reaching free agency.
• I also have not been able, so far, to determine exactly when the ‘event’ occurs … the most usual time seems to be about 2 weeks after the end of the season, but it’s not consistent for every simulation run.
• It’s possible that other minor league players are reaching free agency too early, not just prospects … I just haven’t looked very hard at the less-talented people to see if this is happening to them as well.

[actionjackson]

Originally Posted by Umeboshi

I don't think this is an issue with settings. I think there is either a bug here, or at the very least the game is creating very unrealistic results which I don’t know how to fix by using settings.

What follows is how I reproduced a situation where minor-league prospects are becoming free agents much earlier than they are supposed to in a historical game.

Create a new historical game using the wizard; all options are default except:

• Season: 1958
• Import real minor leagues: yes
• Select a team: Pittsburgh Pirates

In creating this game, I did not go into advanced mode and tweak anything before starting the game, so what I have here is just the default game settings as produced by the wizard. One thing in particular that I’d like to point out is that, in a standard game, you can set configure things like the length of service time required to reach major and minor league free agency, but those options are NOT available to change, or even view, when you start a historical game.

After creating the game, I go into “do not disturb” mode and sim forward to the day before off-season starts. At this point, everything seems normal: there are very few (often zero) free agents shown in the MLB Transactions / Free Agents tab. Each team’s Upcoming FA list includes maybe a dozen or so players whose minor league free agency eligibility is listed as“Eligible after this season” in the Contract & Status tab.

I turn off “do not disturb” mode and made sure that I haven’t delegated any roster responsibilities that might lead to any of the players in my organization getting released. Then, I sim forward to the first day of off-season. A smallish number of players show up in the Free Agents tab (3-12 or so, as I remember, depending on the simulation run).

A few weeks after the season ends (thus, late October or early November) an ‘event’ occurs where the game does some heavy processing loading and processing the player databases. After puzzling over what was happening for a bit, I realized that what the game is doing is here is adding into the game (as free agents) players who had not played in 1958. For example, Earl Wilson played in the minor leagues from 1953-1956, sat out the 1957 and 1958 seasons, and then resumed playing in 1959. Earl wasn’t available in my game when I started it, since he wasn’t on any US major or minor league roster at the start of the 1958 season, but he did resume playing in 1959. So, sure, this seems fine as well (well, I’m not sure if sitting out for those two seasons actually makes him a free agent, but that’s maybe a discussion for a different thread).


So, as a result of this ‘event,’ now I see perhaps 650 or so players in the MLB Transactions / Free Agents tab.

The problem is that this ‘event’ often results in several minor-league prospects with low professional service time being placed into the Free Agents tab as well, when they should not be:





So, on the above screenshot, I’ve highlighted the names of three prospects that should not have reached free agency, as far as I can tell: Al Jackson, Mike Cuellar, and Gary Peters. All three of these players did play in the minors during the 1958 season, they have no major-league service time, their time-as-a-professional ranges from 1 year+169 days to 2 years+169 days, and the game lists them as not eligible for minor league free agency, both before and after this event occurs.



…



So, exactly why are these prospects becoming free agents?



Is the computer AI releasing them for some reason? This can’t be it, at least in the case of Al Jackson, since he was in my organization, I had control of the roster, and I certainly did not release him. In the case of Peters and Cuellar, there was no reason for the computer GMs to release top prospects. As far as I know, the only reason the AI might do this is there was a roster limit, but I purposely did not set any roster or service time limits in this game.

Are they reaching their minor-league service time limits? Well, I don’t know for sure, since I don’t know of any way to view or set the free agency service time limits in an historical game (as opposed to a standard game, where you can). They certainly aren’t anywhere near the usual service time limit for minor league free agency, which is six years.



…



So here are a few complicating issues:

• I cannot reproduce this situation where these prospects enter free agency every time I run this game. In one simulation run, all three of these prospects entered free agency as a result of this event; in other simulation runs, none, or only one or two of these prospects entered free agency. So, whatever is happening, it seems more complicated than that the game is simply using an odd service time limit for reaching free agency.
• I also have not been able, so far, to determine exactly when the ‘event’ occurs … the most usual time seems to be about 2 weeks after the end of the season, but it’s not consistent for every simulation run.
• It’s possible that other minor league players are reaching free agency too early, not just prospects … I just haven’t looked very hard at the less-talented people to see if this is happening to them as well.

I don't know for a fact because I'm not in front of your game, but I would think this should be covered by the settings at Game Settings > League Settings > Rules > Roster Rules and by the settings at Game Settings > League Settings > Financials > Financial & Free Agency Settings. If you're in 1958 (with regards to "Financials"), you're still playing in the Reserve-Clause Era, which means no free agency. There should still be a bunch of settings in there for minimum service years though.

The other thing that could be happening is the old "AI attempting to put good prospects through waivers and losing them via the waiver wire" bug. That's never fun.

I can't be too sure though because I play random debut historicals with free agency/arbitration enabled (no Reserve Clause), and reserve rosters instead of the 40-man roster, so I never see this kind of thing. Try an advanced search on prospects, waivers or something like that and see if you can find others that have had similar problems to what you're seeing on OOTP17. I wish I could help you more with this, but that's all I can suggest for now.

[Umeboshi]

Yes, i didn't really consider that 1958 was in the reserve-clause era when I made my earlier post in this thread, and thanks for reminding me of that.


If I start a historical game in 1986 (as BorgPokerPro did), free agency is configurable in the settings:





But, if you start a historical game in 1958, you only get the following settings, so there isn't much to configure:





... which of course makes sense, since free agency (in the post-1975 sense) did not exist in 1958.


But ... that doesn't change my mind that there is a bug here; in the reserve-clause era, it should be even *less* likely that low-service-time prospects should end up in free agency.


I did do an advanced search to see if anyone has reported similar problems, but this thread was the only thread i found where someone noticed a similar problem that I found.


To summarize:

• This issue does occur in reserve-clause era historical games, and it can't be fixed by settings, since there are none.

• While there might be some issues with the AI, I don't understand why a low-service-time prospect on a team that *I* control the roster for would end up as a free agent, if he played the previous season, unless *I* released him (which I didn't).

If no one has a suggestion as to how this can be fixed by the user configuring the game properly, I will do a bit more research and then post something in the bug forum.


I'm of course curious to see if I can reproduce this in OOTP 18, but that will have to wait a week or so I guess

[Painmantle]

you most certainly can start a league in 1958 (or any year) and institute Free Agency /financial systems etc...immediately during set up

When the Set-up Wizard gets to step 2, in the bottom left corner is ADVANCED MODE, click that and it takes you to a screen where all the normal options are available League/Teams/Rules/Options/Players/Historical/ Stats & AI

Go to the financial page and un-tick Enable Reserve-Clause Era Rules (And make any other changes you like) and viola, your league starts with Free Agency in 1958 (or what ever year you choose)


note: un-ticking Enable reserve Clause Era Rules is what opens up all the other settings your looking for

[Painmantle]

with regard to players suddenly showing up as free agents, were these players by chance on Minor league teams which were either disband or changed affiliations? I haven't messed around with OOTP18 enough to confirm this phenomena, but it was certainly happening in OOTP17 when using historical minors. The game wasn't relocating prospects of those teams onto other teams within the orgizination, it was just releasing them into the free agent pool

[Umeboshi]

Originally Posted by Painmantle

you most certainly can start a league in 1958 (or any year) and institute Free Agency /financial systems etc...immediately during set up

When the Set-up Wizard gets to step 2, in the bottom left corner is ADVANCED MODE, click that and it takes you to a screen where all the normal options are available League/Teams/Rules/Options/Players/Historical/ Stats & AI

Go to the financial page and un-tick Enable Reserve-Clause Era Rules (And make any other changes you like) and viola, your league starts with Free Agency in 1958 (or what ever year you choose)


note: un-ticking Enable reserve Clause Era Rules is what opens up all the other settings your looking for

Yes, totally agree that you can enable and configure free agency by un-ticking the “Enable Reserve-Clause Era Rules” checkbox. So, yes, I can start my league with free agency in 1958 or whenever.

What I meant to say (and I guess I didn’t express it clearly) was that … if you *do* have that box ticked, so that you *are* playing with the reserve-era rules, the game doesn’t really implement the reserve-era rules correctly, and there is no way, as far as I can tell, to fix that by configuring the game. In other words, the game provides many options for configuring free agency, but it doesn’t provide any options for configuring reserve-clause era rules (other than by turning them on or off as a whole).

I mentioned a couple bugs in my earlier posts in this thread but here’s another:

During the reserve-clause era, why is there *anyone* in the Upcoming FA list? There should be no such thing as an “upcoming” free agent during that era. In the reserve-clause era, there was no time limit for reaching free agency (I think the game is applying a six-year path to minor-league free agency, which isn’t appropriate for that era.). In the reserve-clause era, the only ways a player could get free of the NL/AL team that owned the rights to him was if that team released him, or by jumping to a league (e.g., 1913 Federal League) that didn’t respect the NL/AL reserve-clause.

This was in OOTP 17, and I still haven’t checked whether these issues still exist in OOTP 18.

[Umeboshi]

Originally Posted by Painmantle

with regard to players suddenly showing up as free agents, were these players by chance on Minor league teams which were either disband or changed affiliations? I haven't messed around with OOTP18 enough to confirm this phenomena, but it was certainly happening in OOTP17 when using historical minors. The game wasn't relocating prospects of those teams onto other teams within the orgizination, it was just releasing them into the free agent pool

Yes, that is quite possible … I checked my game, and I noticed that the set of minor-league affiliations has just turned over to the ones for the upcoming year, so that could well have dumped some guys into the free agent pool. Thanks for pointing that out, I hadn’t noticed that.

In fact, the situation with Earl Wilson (who I mentioned back in post #6 in this thread) is a different, but related, situation to the one you just mentioned. Earl played for the Red Sox organization from 1953-1956 and was out of organized ball from 1957-1958, and then returned to organized ball in 1959. I started my game in the 1958 season, and so the game (correctly) starts 1958 without Earl, then brings Earl back into the game when the 1958 season is over. But, when it does, it dumps him into the free agent pool, instead of returning him to the Red Sox organization. This isn’t historically correct, since sitting out one or more years during the reserve-clause era did not enable a player to become a free agent.

[Painmantle]

Well as far as the reserve clause era goes, not every player was retained, many were released of their contract and sought employment elsewhere. It was a common thing back then for various reasons. I think your issue is not with players that got released, but with the quality of certain players that were released. And just because you feel the player was too good to lose doesn't mean the AI saw that. But I believe the issue(s) run deeper than an AI release of players, I believe their is a fundamental flaw in the game that forces this to happen, once a player has no team, he is released in stead of being relocated in the organization before the disbandment or movement of the minor league franchise

Players from the 40's-50's and 60's who "Sat out" years were most likely in the Military during WWII, Korean and Vietnam Wars. I have also noticed that players who were not playing baseball at the time the league was started show up as Free Agents in their first year back IRL, I also think players started in the league but then subsequently missed years ended up in the free agent pool the year they returned to RL baseball.

It would take more research to confirm these phenomena, but I do know that these are likely not random occurrences but have a common denominator(s) And since my main goal is to have an online league using Historical Minors the issue needs to be figured out. I'll have a 3 day weekend to dink around with OOTP18, hopefully that will be enough to get an Idea of what is happening

[PSUColonel]

Originally Posted by actionjackson

Yes, yes it is. You may have to scrap leagues and start over multiple times. It's all part of the learning process grasshopper. You will get there. Hard to see it when leagues are messing up all over the place, but you will. Think of the settings like fundamentals in baseball. It takes a long time to learn them, but boy is it ever worth it when you do.

It shouldn't have t one though. This is the biggest complaint I hear from people.

[actionjackson]

Originally Posted by PSUColonel

It shouldn't have t one though. This is the biggest complaint I hear from people.

Shouldn't have a steep learning curve? I think that's a sign of a really good game, but to each their own. If it's got a steep learning curve, that's a sign of a deep game no? There are other games on the market that are easier to learn, but they're nowhere near as good as OOTP.