filling historical league with moderate fictional players

[memphisbrian]

I've been toying around with the game for a month or so now, and I'm trying to set up a semi-historical league that uses real players (from the Gambo DB) and fills in fictional players where needed.

My goal: To run a full organization with as many real players as possible AND with full rosters at each level.

Using MLB, AAA, AA and A, there aren't enough players to fill up every roster. Instead of filling those teams with fictional players, I created two feeders leagues (NCAA and HS). The NCAA league has 25 teams (I've since reduced it to 20), and the HS league has 30 (reduced to 24).
I intended the following:

- Real players would rise to the top leagues
- Fictional players would be backups and roster filler, with the occasional fictional player making it to the majors, and perhaps being a decent player
- Most of the top players drafted would be real, with the fictional players filling up the middle and back end of the draft.
- With each 1st-year player draft, the new crop of real players would force out a number of fictional players

I started the league in 1981, and by 1985, the fictional players had a few leage leaders in MLB, several in AAA, more in AA and almost all in A. I started with a 20-round draft, but when I saw that I still had real players going in round 20, I expanded it to 30 rounds.

Somewhere around 1984, I reduced the Sabermetric Player Creation Modifiers in NCAA and HS in the hopes that I could make some of these fictional players less effective, but I haven't seen a whole lot of impact yet.

Thoughts?
Suggestions?

[SteveP]

Using the Gambo DB you have a lot of real players in your league. Rather than spending a lot of time trying to add even more players, considering reducing the number of levels in your minor league structure, and/or using ghost players to fill gaps. You may be going to a lot of trouble for minimal extra value.

I would give you a different suggestion if you were using the Lahman DB, because there you do have a shortage of real players to work with.

FWIW

[memphisbrian]

Originally Posted by SteveP

Using the Gambo DB you have a lot of real players in your league. Rather than spending a lot of time trying to add even more players, considering reducing the number of levels in your minor league structure, and/or using ghost players to fill gaps. You may be going to a lot of trouble for minimal extra value.

I would give you a different suggestion if you were using the Lahman DB, because there you do have a shortage of real players to work with.

FWIW

I've tried the ghost player route (briefly) before, but I wasn't sure how that really worked. If my AAA catcher is a ghost player and my AA catcher isn't even AAA-worthy, what happens when my MLB catcher gets hurt? I can't call up the ghost catcher, and the AA catcher would get creamed. I'd rather use a mediocre fake catcher than a bad real one.

[No Pepper]

Please list what modifiers you were and are using. There's two sets, I forget what they are called, that are used to characterize your talent pool.

In a possible workaround - though it might not work now - what you could do is create a new nation where your fictional players come from and use the fictional player limits to limit how many can show up on major league rosters. This alone won't solve the talent level issue you have but it could further limit the impact fictional players have on your league.

Although it might be different with Gambo's DB, the real players import as being "major league ready" and will therefore dominate the league leaders in your upper levels if they are positioned there. The fictional players will need time and development to reach similar talents.

[memphisbrian]

Originally Posted by No Pepper

Please list what modifiers you were and are using. There's two sets, I forget what they are called, that are used to characterize your talent pool.

In a possible workaround - though it might not work now - what you could do is create a new nation where your fictional players come from and use the fictional player limits to limit how many can show up on major league rosters. This alone won't solve the talent level issue you have but it could further limit the impact fictional players have on your league.

Although it might be different with Gambo's DB, the real players import as being "major league ready" and will therefore dominate the league leaders in your upper levels if they are positioned there. The fictional players will need time and development to reach similar talents.

Regarding the Gambo DB, yes, most of the top incoming players are indeed MLB-ready.

I don't have the game in front of me right now, but it was just the "sabermetric" modifiers - HR, walks, batting average, strikeouts, maybe one or two more. Now that I'm reading OOTP Baseball Manual - Strategy & Equivalencies Page more closely, I see that the sabermetric modifiers do not affect the quality of new players created in subsequent years. So it seems I need to adjust the traditional modifiers instead.

[SteveP]

Originally Posted by memphisbrian

I've tried the ghost player route (briefly) before, but I wasn't sure how that really worked. If my AAA catcher is a ghost player and my AA catcher isn't even AAA-worthy, what happens when my MLB catcher gets hurt? I can't call up the ghost catcher, and the AA catcher would get creamed. I'd rather use a mediocre fake catcher than a bad real one.

It's been a while since I messed around with Gambo's DB, but as a recall, the typical team organization had about 135 players in the first season. That's a pretty robust organization if you are primarily focused on having backups for your MLB teams. In addition, the neutralized stat type DBs that are around tend to boost the abilities of the rookie players (not supposed to, I know, but IMHO, they do). So I would think it would be hard for a team to get that crippled at a position. Could be wrong, but I'd give it a try first before going into a lot to work to solve a purely speculative problem.

The primary benefit of the ghost player option is that it allows your minor league teams to play their games when they would otherwise get short handed. Doesn't work perfectly, and many of us are hoping that OOTP10 will solve some of those problems.

OTOH, if you really want to look at all the options for adding fictional players to your league, check out this thread if you haven't done so already:

http://www.ootpdevelopments.com/boar...layers-ml.html