"Fixing" feeder leagues.

[Syd Thrift]

Most, in fact, just about all guys who are good enough to play even in the minor leagues in high school end up playing shortstop or center field. Even in college you see this in play: most of the time, a major league caliber player especially is usually (but not always) not going to be a guy you put in first base or left field.

On top of that, high schools and colleges both generally play schedules with weird sets of off-days because, you know, school. As a result, ace starters and relievers - i.e. the guys who will move on to play in the major leagues - get an inordinate amount of starts.

How I would like to resolve this:

High School
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Have a maximum of two players per team. I know, I know, this involves ghost players, but bear with me here: I think that, given the way ratings are set up, ghost players in HS especially is the best way to handle this. One player can be at a position - perhaps OF if they throw lefty and IF or C if they're a righty - and another at pitcher.

Then have the team on maybe a 2 man rotation.

College
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You can allow more players here but maybe not too many more - averaging perhaps 3-4 guys per team, with a max of, say 8 or 9, perhaps? We don't want to see pro-caliber players in backup roles. Since there are more guys filling more positions, you can be a *little* bit more liberal with where guys go, but nevertheless even a Prince Fielder type (assuming this version goes to college) should probably be playing LF unless there's already someone on the team there.

And then you could still go with a 2-3 man rotation.

All the other ghost players in both HS and college have ratings somewhere between, say, 1 and 5. Very, very low ratings. The fact that there are more college guys per team means that the level of competition should be a little bit higher, but let's not go crazy here!

The reasons why my idea is awesome:
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1. Right now, the computer does a pretty decent job of not generating too many 1Bs, MRs, and the like. Unfortunately, when you turn on feeder leagues this can change, especially if feeders are providing 100% of your draft pool. This would rectify that.

2. This should also allow for a bit of tough decision-making that isn't really in OOTP at the moment, and that's deciding whether or not a guy's glove is good enough to keep at a position. It's one thing to do this when you've got a big crop of 3B, SS, and 2B and you have to make a decision whether or not a guy's bat warrants moving them down the defensive spectrum. It's another thing entirely when just about *every* 19 year old you sign is initially listed at SS or CF and you have to decide if they have the range, arm, and hands and so on to stay where they are or move on down.

3. For stats-only players, this ought to significantly ramp up the challenge of the draft. Just like in real life, *everyone* who is good enough to draft out of high school is putting up monster numbers. In college, you still see guys putting up gaudy numbers in this system, which is exactly what you want.

4. For high schools, limiting the number of players per team would allow folks to have much, much larger HS feeder "leagues", which is also realistic (and which might also be a resource hog, but dammit, some of us have fast computers and are willing to try!).

5. See above for colleges. As an example, I'm running a league that's now in 1936 with all minor league levels represented down to C. I've set up my feeders to produce roughly 34 rounds' worth of players (since many of those teams are unafilliated, the draft is still only 18 rounds in length). Even with 16 teams in the majors and 34 rounds' worth of players, I *still* only have I think 42 colleges and 20 "high schools" represented (I've taken the time to name the colleges and the HSes tend not to make sense so I set it to be roughly 2/3rds collegians). It'd be really neat to be able to raise that to, say, 120+ colleges (for references sake there are ~125 in first division NCAA football) and a couple hundred high schools, which you could probably set up if the game followed my route.

[Papa3]

If something like this ever gets implemented pleeeaaase let it be an option. Personally, I would hate this.

[Syd Thrift]

I guess it'd be "ideal" if we had no ghost players and just lots and lots of crappy HS and college level ballplayers. I'm not sure folks have the requisite processing/memory for that just yet though.