Inclusion of the international leagues - not getting enough hype

[Habsfan18]

Personally, I think this is huge.

Will be cool to see guys who aren't getting the cash they want or the playing time, head to Japan, Korea or Mexico for a year or two. Or scout the next great international prospect and bid on their services using the new posting system.

I think this really adds another neat element to the game.

Anyone else excited for this?

[Lukas Berger]

I couldn't be more excited

[haveband]

Last year when I went to Lukas with the idea of adding International leagues, he was just as passionate about the idea as I was. As a matter of fact he suggested all the leagues we are currently doing. I think I only brought up Cuba, Japan, Korea and Mexico. We both are also very excited the addition of the Dominican and Venezuelan Summer leagues.

[Lukas Berger]

For both haveband and I having the int leagues included in game has been a long time dream. We're thrilled it's finally happening.

That being said, haveband deserves pretty much all the credit in the world for bringing up the plan of adding the int leagues, presenting it first to Markus and doing everything he's been able to do to make it happen.

So if you're passionate about the int leagues, he deserves all the thanks you can give!

We're thrilled to be able to be able include the real int leagues, the DSL and VSL in the roster set and really hope everyone will enjoy them as much as we've enjoyed working on creating them!

Now it's time to get back to work, there's still a lot more for us to do!

[dward1]

can you explain how players who have played in the US will migrate to these foreign leagues? is it purely money based, i.e Japan offers Paul Maholm $750,000 while Dodgers offer him $600,000 or is it prestige-based, where players almost always want to play in the MLB if they have any offers and the money must be significantly higher or a player has no sure roster spots in the US so goes to a foreign league?

thanks, I'm pretty excited about these leagues especially if we can alter them for fictional leagues

[Lukas Berger]

Originally Posted by dward1

can you explain how players who have played in the US will migrate to these foreign leagues? is it purely money based, i.e Japan offers Paul Maholm $750,000 while Dodgers offer him $600,000 or is it prestige-based, where players almost always want to play in the MLB if they have any offers and the money must be significantly higher or a player has no sure roster spots in the US so goes to a foreign league?

thanks, I'm pretty excited about these leagues especially if we can alter them for fictional leagues

I don't really know about that yet. I know Markus has some stuff up his sleeve to keep player movement realistic, but we're going to have to wait a little longer to see just what he has planned and how it all works out.

[dave1927p]

I'll be excited when I see more about it.

[MUFC1878]

This is the addition I'm looking forward to the most.

[ThatSeventiesGuy]

Originally Posted by Habsfan18

Anyone else excited for this?

Oh, hell yeah! Main reason I preordered this season instead of waiting for the All-Star sale. Also why I'm picking up the pace on my *** facegen project.

[nico1270]

this is why i picked this version and not 14.

Will they have to learn foreign languages like it is in FM?

[SirMichaelJordan]

Originally Posted by dmytron

Will they have to learn foreign languages like it is in FM?

I doubt the language barrier matters as it does with communication between players in Football (Soccer)

[SirMichaelJordan]

Figured I should post this here. It's a article comparing Foreign leagues to it's MLB/MiLB counterpart.

Should be helpful for setting PCM's if needed.

http://www.nationalsarmrace.com/?tag=clay-davenport

I’ve been working on this post for weeks; now is as good a time as any to post it. I’ve always wondered, since we hear so much about players’ tearing up winter leagues or hear wonderful stat lines from players coming over from foreign countries (as we are now in the Yu Darvish mania). So what is the talent-equivalent of the various leagues outside of the conventional MLB-AAA-AA-A-rookie levels? I did a bit of digging around, asking questions and came up with the following approximations. Feel free to debate if you think otherwise.

Japan: the [league redacted] League rates, by various accounts, as a mid AAA-level talent league. Baseball Prospectus’ Clay Davenport did a stat-heavy analysis in 2002 and concluded that the *** was at least AAA level, perhaps close to MLB level. However, the prevalence of mediocre players from the US going to Japan and being super-stars seems to indicate that Japan is no better than AAA, and may be a bit weaker. And, not to claim this is about talent levels per race, but there have only been a very small number of Japanese-born players who were really impact players upon arriving here.



Foreign LeagueUS Pro Equivalent Estimate

Japan (***) Mid AAA

Dominican Winter League Mid AAA

Puerto Rican Winter League Mid-Low AAA

Venezuelan Winter League Low AAA/High AA

Mexican Pacific (Winter) Low AAA/High AA

Mexican Summer Low AAA/High AA

Arizona Fall League Low AAA/High AA

Atlantic League (Ind) High AA

Cuba High-A

Taiwan/China High-A

Korea High-A

American Association (Ind) High-A

Can-Am League (Ind) High-A

Frontier League (Ind) Low-A

Other Independents Rookie Ball

European (Dutch, Italian) Low Division 1

Other Foreign (Australia) Div 1/ Div 2

In the past, I just set the sabers to the league's equivalent (with edits like lowering power for asian leagues and raising their other stats) and it worked out fine. But I wonder how detailed the PCM's are going to be this year. The old templates all seem to have 1.000's

[dishnet34]

Yeah, this particular feature is one of the main reasons I'm trying this game for the first time. Excited to see how it turns out in-game.

[Orioles1966]

My plan is to have the Mexican(Summer League) play Japan(***) in Inter-League games. Might add a Fictional North American League into the mix with plenty of AAA players .

[Lukas Berger]

Originally Posted by SirMichaelJordan

Figured I should post this here. It's a article comparing Foreign leagues to it's MLB/MiLB counterpart.

Should be helpful for setting PCM's if needed.

clay davenport at Nationals Arm Race





In the past, I just set the sabers to the league's equivalent (with edits like lowering power for asian leagues and raising their other stats) and it worked out fine. But I wonder how detailed the PCM's are going to be this year. The old templates all seem to have 1.000's

I've already spent some time on the PCM's and hope to fine tune them even more, with some additional input from Markus, before the rosters are released.

That's a good link, thanks for posting it. I found it some time ago and used it in my assessment of the int leagues.

I don't entirely agree with the article's conclusions, as those I've talked to who are in a position to know, and some other studies I've seen, rate the levels of play in Japan and Korea as being higher than the article describes.

All things being equal I'll go with the opinion of Clay Davenport over most anyone else. He knows the int leagues incredibly well and is as good a baseball mind as there is outside of MLB front offices. The article's author's reasoning is less than convincing to me and factually inaccurate in a couple places.

Will add some of my thoughts on the articles thoughts in case anyone cares:

1. The track record of Japanese players in the US is far, far better than the article admits. In fact the majority of Japanese players moving to the US have actually outperformed both expectations and their contracts.

2. For every AAAA player who becomes a star in Japan there are another two to three AAAA players who were even better in the US who fall flat on their faces and end up spending most of their time in the Ni-gun (AAA). It's not unusual for those guys to be released before their contract is up.

The few Balentien types who do become *** stars actually progress as players and finally start to reach their potentials. The same thing happens in MLB. Chris Davis ring any bells? Many times MLB teams simply give up on AAAA players far too soon and *** teams sometimes reap the rewards.

3. Of course it's also worth noting that the level of play in Japan is just a little lower than in MLB and in the case of some AAAA players that and the slower velocities in general are the additional boost they need to thrive. But if the level of play was actually as low as the article's author describes, I don't think you'd see nearly as many "busts" among AAAA type guys in the *** as there are.



As for the statements on Taiwan and Korea, while I think the article gets Taiwan's level about right, it's low on Korea. Korea is generally accepted as falling somewhere between the levels of the CPBL and the ***, not on par with the CPBL.

Additionally the statements that Taiwan and Korea mostly serve as feeder leagues for the *** are simply factually inaccurate. Very, very few players from either the CPBL or KBO ever move to the *** at all. Maybe one or two per year at the most. There's also very, very little movement from the *** to the KBO and only slightly more from the *** to the CPBL. So there's no accurate way to say that Taiwan or Korea are feeder leagues for Japan. They aren't.

I also disagree with the article's assessment of top D1 teams compared to R level teams. Top D1 teams are significantly better than R teams imo, but that's a discussion for another time.

Beyond that stuff though, I'd have to generally agree with the other levels the article postulates.

Anyhow didn't post all this to criticize the article too much, just to provide some info on where my assessment differs and thus some of the differences you'll see in the ratings of the real players in the roster set and likely the PCM's as well.

[ThatSeventiesGuy]

I think, from what I've heard, that the Aussie league should be a bit higher - A-ball, at least. And as lukas said, Japan and Korea are somewhere between majors & AAA - sort of AAAA. Other than that, though, can't argue much.

[Lukas Berger]

Well, Korea's a bit lower than Japan. I have Korea at AA level, shaded slightly toward AAA. Whereas Japan is at AAAA level.

As for Australia, yeah, you're certainly right on that. There are a lot of guys who play in AAA or AA in affiliated ball who also play in Australia in winter, so I think an overall assessment of A level is certainly not too high and may even be a bit low.

[endgame]

Lukas, it may be a lot of people assume this addition is purely for those using real rosters and playing the MLB setup with the game, but as you and I have discussed briefly, this addition will offer expansion opportunities even for existing fictional worlds, right? Can you take a shot at how people outside that 'real' mainstream might make use of this coming attraction?

[Lukas Berger]

Originally Posted by endgame

Lukas, it may be a lot of people assume this addition is purely for those using real rosters and playing the MLB setup with the game, but as you and I have discussed briefly, this addition will offer expansion opportunities even for existing fictional worlds, right? Can you take a shot at how people outside that 'real' mainstream might make use of this coming attraction?

As we discussed, my understanding is that all the int leagues will come included with the game as individual templates as well as in a full roster set.

So for those who play fictional or other formats it should be quite easy to add the int leagues to their current universe along with all the proper settings and other int league focused features.

You'll just need to import the templates to your current league. Then if you don't want the real players you can simply delete them, have the game generate fictional players, and voila you'll have a new fully functional league in your universe.

I think that's what you're getting at, right? Would any further explanation or clarification be useful?