An Un-Official Guide to Minor League Management

[moore4807]

Originally Posted by chucksabr

The problem in this case was that the 60 day IL was not available to me for this minor leaguer on the 40-man roster. My only options were waive or release.

I waived him and, of course, no one picked him up. Once he passed through waivers, I put him back on the AAA roster.

Then ... and here's the very best part ... then and only then was the 60 day IL made available to me. Go figure.

I don't know if it's like that in real life, but it's like that in OOTP.

Nice Was your player on the 40 man roster first? (if so he would have an asterisk next to his name - even down in minors) I automate my minors to Asst. GM usually so I haven't had to do it manually for a little while, but I do remember that my SS who was a swingman utility player between AAA/MLB was down in AAA and broke his kneecap or something. After my injury message box came up, I looked at him and he was in the AAA injury list (yes not 60 day) but his 40 man roster spot was open and he was listed in the injury report as being out 10-11 months..

So your correct that remove the player from 40 man roster option is NOT there, but maybe because I automate the minors - the game does it for me?

[moore4807]

Originally Posted by ALB123

I don't know if this is different because I'm in a historical sim (currently in 1987) but every injury in my minor leagues is only able to go on the 10-Day disabled list (which was abolished in 1984) UNLESS they are on the MLB club's 40-Man Roster. Then a 60-Day DL is possible AND free's up that player's spot on the 40-Man Roster.

I first read the OPs unofficial guide several seasons back in my saved game. I liked a lot of what is proposed and I've tried to follow jpeters1734's system as best as I could. Unfortunately, I have not been very successful in following the guide as closely as I wanted. I'm going to try and layout a scenario similar to mine.

MLB Team has 3 SP's and 1 CL you wouldn't replace. C is solid. 1B is solid. SS is solid. 3B is solid. LF is solid. CF is solid but aging. So, those 6 position players ain't goin' nowhere! While RF and 2B aren't rock-solid, I do have 2 awesome Utility players who are fast and can each play 5 positions. But, as much as I value them, they could be replaced. Overall, I'm left with 3 Pitchers, 2 Infielders and 3-4 Relief P's that could be replaced by better players.

AAA Team has some great players too! An LF, CF & 1B are awesome prospects, but not so awesome that I would replace tried & true MLB'ers. So they have to play AAA until I feel like replacing an MLBer or two. I have a 2B who should be in the majors on any team, but not good enough to warrant losing one of my MLB util players, not yet. 2 of my AAA SP's could be brought up and probably will at the half-way point. My AAA rotation is going to be awful, but MLB is what matters, right?

AA Team has 1 really good SP, 1 Good SP, and 2 really good pos. players. SS & RF.

Class A Advanced Team has a HoF CF. Everything else is anybody's guess. As you can see, I've got many roadblocks to making my MLB squad. That's a good thing! Unfortunately, that means my AAA talent is going to live in AAA-land for years, barring injury. Some AA talent will make it to AAA, but I don't want to promote 'em just to bench them. I'd rather they keep playing ball all season in AA, most likely.

If you have a really good MLB team you just can't promote according to a schedule. Most of those really good MLB'ers are going to be playing for years to come. Again, that's the goal, right? If any of my young players turn into anything worthwhile by the time they're in A+ ball their progress is going to slow because of the players ahead of them (unless they play different spots, of course). Pitchers, not so much...you can never have too much pitching, right?

Is it recommended to just cut good AAA players who have aged and appear to be blocked due to MLB talent? I've got 26 and even a couple of 27-year-olds still in AA because of the cascading effect of having better players ahead of 'em...Even though that 26-year-old is really good, his AAA and MLB. If my MLB SS blows up his arm and knee I'll have that AAA SS replace him and feel ok that I'm not losing much if anything at all. Then, finally, my AA SS will move up to AAA. In time, he'll be playing SS at 32 years old in AAA if a better, younger player doesn't come along. Is it sometimes better to cut someone like that recently promoted AAA SS so I could put a much younger AA SS in his place, even though that AA SS is 1.5 stars and the old SS is 3 stars? Who knows, maybe with every day playing the 1.5 SS might progress to 2.5 or maybe even 3, if lucky.

I hope I haven't written an unreadable pile of dog-doo. Hopefully, anyone who hasn't fallen asleep yet will get the gist of what I'm asking. I'd love to hear people's thoughts on this.

Not "Dog Doo" at all... Not to hijack the thread - but you describe what keeps us GM's here and in real life up at night

The theory that I go by is most players (80%) don't mature until age 23-25 and half of them flame out in 5-7 years - the remaining 10% are the names you remember for decades and HOF its the 80% to 90% players that make or break your teams dreams!

Now those players are what you want to lock up to 3 year deals - not longer - because you cant predict the age and ability curve so most players once they are past the entry level contracts - ask for BIG $$$.

1) You will break your budget trying to keep all those players, so you have to evaluate the age into the factors of who you keep on the farm. You don't want a lot of $2.5M or higher contracts playing primarily at AAA!! (unless you are playing as Yankees Dodgers or Red Sox with virtually unlimited $$$)

2) You can figure you get two shots at most players from 25-28 and then 29-32 to those 3 year contracts, you can ask for a slightly lower salary for the protection of the three year, and it makes it easier to trade them and not get the overpaid veteran's comment from the other AI GM's.

3) when you find that type backlog at AAA that you describe - that's where my strategy of continually churning the minors and feeding it from trades starts to make sense. You can usually get prospects by selecting that in the shop player function of trades. The three headed monster of Trades, Waivers and Free Agents means you should NEVER have to keep a player who is costing you $$ at AAA, just because your MLB starter "may" get hurt!

4) Everyone has their own beliefs and I'm not winning enough to think of myself as any kind of "expert". This is just what seems to work for me and I've been doing it for 5 years - I usually lose interest 15-20 years into the simulation and that's my own fault - but I saturate baseball until football and hockey start up

[ALB123]

Thanks, moore4807. I appreciate your thoughts on these matters. They sound very reasonable, so I'll keep what you've said in mind as my seasons progress.

[Kobie]

I've been trying out these guidelines. One way to not worry about the DFA taxi squad for a little while is to stash them on your short-season A team until after the draft. Also, while keeping control of promotions/demotions, I've given my minor-league managers the ability to sign minor-league FAs as needed in case I can't replenish something due to injury.

[jpeters1734]

Originally Posted by Kobie

I've been trying out these guidelines. One way to not worry about the DFA taxi squad for a little while is to stash them on your short-season A team until after the draft. Also, while keeping control of promotions/demotions, I've given my minor-league managers the ability to sign minor-league FAs as needed in case I can't replenish something due to injury.

yeah, putting them in SS is a good option. The only time you'd have issues is if you were playing with pro time limits. Be careful about letting the AI sign players for you because they will also release players for you

[jpeters1734]

I made a few edits to this. I wrote it originally for a specific online league so a rewrote some of it be be more generalized

[BBGiovanni]

Originally Posted by jpeters1734

Tampa is a good example of why I just delete the DSL. You almost have to immediately promote everyone that comes through the int complex to the DSL just to have enough players for 2 teams. Or have a lot of players repeat the league multiple times just for filler players.

Lots of times I just unaffiliate the DSL and let it sit there! I always think of tweaking it to make it an indy league for the DR but I always just forget.

Originally Posted by jpeters1734

Yep, Short season leagues are completely fine being incomplete while in their offseason. The draft will get them filled up for you.

This quote made me think... wouldn't it be nice to be able to designate a particular team to receive draftees and/or minor league signings? Lots of times I end up finding guys a couple of weeks later I'd forgotten about because they went in the DSL instead of the GCL or vice versa and I didn't check there. And it would be great if the draftees were assigned straight into the A-SS and/or Advanced Rookie teams, then you could just move the high schoolers out rather than have to sort through all the GCL/AZL/DSL lists

[clamel]

Looks like very nice advices, BUT
shouldn't one cosnider messing a bit with the different leagues considering Active Player age, Pro Service and that stuff.

Starting a "standard" league, in quick start the DSL teams are overfilled and a lot of players are over 20 years (some with AA experience)
It might help the AI to figure out what players to put in the different levels based on your advice.
The backside might be a huge amount of players are being released. If the AI think a 22 year old player that played in Double A fits in DSL maybe he should be released ?

How about limit the Active Roster sizes to on these lower league levels, or the AI looks to fill them up with all sorts of quality.

[ALB123]

Originally Posted by clamel

Looks like very nice advices, BUT
shouldn't one cosnider messing a bit with the different leagues considering Active Player age, Pro Service and that stuff.

Starting a "standard" league, in quick start the DSL teams are overfilled and a lot of players are over 20 years (some with AA experience)
It might help the AI to figure out what players to put in the different levels based on your advice.
The backside might be a huge amount of players are being released. If the AI think a 22 year old player that played in Double A fits in DSL maybe he should be released ?

How about limit the Active Roster sizes to on these lower league levels, or the AI looks to fill them up with all sorts of quality.

Yes! Many ootp players set limits on age and/or service time for individual minor league systems. It's a good way to help you keep your farm clubs organized without having to scroll through player lists over and over looking at a player's Age & ML Service Time.

You probably don't want 27 year old players or guys with 8 years in the minors taking up spots in your Rookie or Rookie+ leagues, right? So, setting some limits will alert you to that fact rather than a player possibly slipping through because you were paying more attention to ratings than Age, for example. It happens to me quite often, I hate to admit.

I think jpeters1734 has written an awesome guide with this thread. But, at the same time, what works for him might not be perfect for you. So, keep that in mind too. For me, I think I tend to be too soft on my younger guys or those with a fair bit of service time, but still lingering in Low A Class, for example. The downside of that is I'm taking at-bats and defensive growth innings away from someone else who should be getting those at-bats or innings pitched, etc. I'm working on being better with that, I promise jpeters1734!!

Based on your questions, you probably GM very similar to the way that I do compared to the hard-nosed, battle-scarred & very wise GMs in the thread, like it's creator jpeters1734. We just need more experience and we'll get there too.

I don't have Dominican Summer League in my game because I'm playing a Historic Universe and I'm currently in 1991. So, I can't speak intelligently about the DSL. But, with regular low-level minor league teams, like Rookie, Rookie+ and maybe even a Short Season A Class team if that's all you have, I recommend you keeping the allowed Roster Size higher than AAA, AA, A+ and even Low A teams. And, I recommend starting off conservatively with the Age or Service Time limits.

[Timofmars]

Like some others here, I don't think age is important for sorting your minors. Age is just an indicator of how much time the player has to develop toward their potential before their development slows down and stops. There are players that are almost fully developed at even 20 or 21 and should be in or around AAA, for example.

I just go by the player's ratings, or what the AI thinks is the right level (which also seems to be based on ratings). So I have no problem even putting a 23 year old in a rookie league. But my best prospects get priority on where they play. So the 23 year old will get pushed out if the space is needed for a better prospect.

Determining who are the best prospects isn't based only on potential. For me, that is a combination of age and potential. Older prospects with high potential but who are still a long way from reaching that potential are less valuable than the prospects who are most surely going to reach their potential with time to spare. And even more so when you consider that potential can randomly increase, and younger players that are already close their old potential will have much better chance of reaching the new potential.

So yeah, age isn't really important to me for what level a player plays, but it is important for trades. I'll look to trade prospects I think are unlikely to reach their potential in exchange for some ones that probably will end up being better players in the end, even if their potential is currently lower. The sooner you do this, the better, it seems. The longer you wait, the more the AI (or other online managers?) will start to devalue the player. You may have noticed this using the "make it work" button in trades, where you may see the AI will accept your age 20 SP with 60 potential, but thinks your age 23 SP with 70 potential isn't enough because he probably won't reach that potential.

The OP's method of forcing promotion through the minors based on age seems to be a kind of indirect, abstract way of measuring whether players are on track to reach ML levels of ability. For example, it may lead him to trade away players earlier who are not likely to reach at least minimal ML potential, and maybe get a better deal in that trade compared to waiting until later.

But I feel it's very imprecise, especially for the best players. The best players should be ML-ready at an earlier age, since they will still have a lot of growth ahead to go from weak ML player, to average, to elite. They should be at higher minor league levels earlier, so keeping them at a lower level because of age may hurt their development. But OP's method may do well for players who are far behind in development but have high potential. You might get the most value out of these players by trading them as early as possible in exchange for more reliable prospects, which is what OP's method seems to do, although elite potential players probably will still perform well enough at their age-appropriate league levels, but that wouldn't indicate to you that they are off-pace for reaching their own high level of potential (so you may miss the chance to trade them while they are still highly regarded).

There is also the problem that OP is depending on stats to determine if a player is able to handle the level they are at, but bad players can do well and good players can play poorly, so you probably shouldn't put much confidence in the stats of a rookie minor leaguer, especially considering how short the seasons can be.

[Timofmars]

I would also consider where a player's potential is. If a player's potential is spread out among several different attributes, I think the player is more likely to gain those abilities compared to if all his potential is concentrated in one attribute. This seems especially true for pitchers, like when their best potential pitch is also their lowest rated one in terms of current ability. That best potential pitch is probably the biggest factor in their potential stuff rating, but needs the most development luck to reach that peak. So you may want to trade away these players or at least watch their development more closely.

Consider the coaches too. Put your player on the minor league team that has a coach that matches his type (power, contact, eye). Or put him with a coach that specializes in the thing that he needs to the most growth in. Or if your higher level coaches are one type, then maybe put him with a different coach now to develop that attribute better now while you have the chance, since the other attributes will develop better later under the other coaches at the higher levels.

I think players are fairly flexible on what league level they can play without development suffering. I would guess players might more easily suffer from being overmatched, compared to when they are "ready" for the next level but you keep them down. I mean, putting up 0 WAR suggests they are at replacement level, which should be fine, but I'd think putting up 2 WAR is certainly within the average range too. Maybe at least 3 or 4 WAR is starting to be a bit too easy?

But I think the difficulty of the level also depends on what role they are playing. If the player is playing a new position in order to learn it, he'll find it harder than if he were playing his best position. The AI recommendations for what level a player should be at seems to reflect this, since the recommendation can change instantly if you change what position the player is set to, even pitchers switched between SP and RP/CL. So for example, if you have a player that is barely good enough for a league at his main position, you may want to demote him if you're trying to teach him a new position. Or if you have a good A- SP prospect who is not quite ready to start in the earlier starting A seasons, maybe he'll be good enough as a reliever. Sometimes it is the opposite, not good enough as RP, but good enough as SP, which sounds counter-intuitive, but they seem to be judged by different standards. RPs are expected to pitch better because of the stuff bonus they get. Also, if I have a prospect that's too good for the ML but there's no place for him in the team at the moment, I like to play him as DH, as it both helps reduce chances of injury and make it more challenging (as he may be too good for AAA as a SS, for example, but playing as DH means he's expected to hit a lot better than a SS). Note that I'm confident the setting of the player role on the player page doesn't matter one bit. It depends on how you use the player in the game.

I let my older fully developed vets play in any league level. If I just have worthless prospects at a position, I like to let the vets play instead to help the performance of the team. It helps make everyone happier as they get better happiness the team record morale, and chemistry morale, which help slightly in development. Though if I have a fully developed player who is actually worth something as a backup to my ML team, or as a trade asset, I often won't play them in games, so then there is little risk of injury. Although I will play them enough at the start of the season to knock off any offseason rust.

[kq76]

Wow, this is awesome. I wish I had stumbled onto it years ago. Thank you!

I have some question maybe you can answer.

So I'm used to only using 3 levels (I'd rather just use reserve rosters, but without minors for rehab stints I found that long-injured players are too likely to immediately get re-injured), but I'm starting to think I need to use even more levels.

I looked at the MiL teams for default MLB in OOTP24 and I noticed they all have AAA, AA, A, A+, and 2-4 R teams. None have a A- team. I understand the minor league system was completely overhauled IRL not long ago and Wikipedia says short A and advanced Rookie were eliminated. Do you still use them or have you adapted?

My bigger question however is, while I understand your opening post details all the leagues you like to use, what do you think is the bare minimum one should use? I was thinking of adding an R (maybe 2 like MLB) and an A, but reading your post I'm wondering if I really should have more.

Why do I want to use the bare minimum? Well, I don't love managing my minors and I'd rather keep the file size down. Having so many minors would really ramp up both I would think.

How many draft rounds are you running? I'm currently running 12 and I think even that is more than necessary. I might cut it down to 9. I imagine that would greatly impact everything.

[jpeters1734]

Originally Posted by kq76

Wow, this is awesome. I wish I had stumbled onto it years ago. Thank you!

I have some question maybe you can answer.

So I'm used to only using 3 levels (I'd rather just use reserve rosters, but without minors for rehab stints I found that long-injured players are too likely to immediately get re-injured), but I'm starting to think I need to use even more levels.

I looked at the MiL teams for default MLB in OOTP24 and I noticed they all have AAA, AA, A, A+, and 2-4 R teams. None have a A- team. I understand the minor league system was completely overhauled IRL not long ago and Wikipedia says short A and advanced Rookie were eliminated. Do you still use them or have you adapted?

My bigger question however is, while I understand your opening post details all the leagues you like to use, what do you think is the bare minimum one should use? I was thinking of adding an R (maybe 2 like MLB) and an A, but reading your post I'm wondering if I really should have more.

Why do I want to use the bare minimum? Well, I don't love managing my minors and I'd rather keep the file size down. Having so many minors would really ramp up both I would think.

How many draft rounds are you running? I'm currently running 12 and I think even that is more than necessary. I might cut it down to 9. I imagine that would greatly impact everything.

Hi, thanks for enjoying!! I updated this guide a little bit in the OOTP21 forum (see my signature for the link), but the gist is the same.

Both guides were written before the unfortunate minor league restructuring, which definitely changes a lot of things. To answer your first question, I've since adapted. However, I do sometimes re-add rookie advanced and short-season A for old times' sake.

When I'm playing a real-life save set-up with just the 20 rounds, I will normally leave all my drafted players in the complex for the rest of that first season except well-developed college players, which will go to single A after a week or two in the complex.

To answer your bigger question, it depends on the number of draft rounds + international amateur player finds I would even factor in the percentage of high school vs college players in your draft pool. Essentially, you always want to have enough roster spots for all incoming players. You're using 12 rounds, but I don't know about international amateur players.

A very broad rule of thumb is to plan to replace 5 players at each level, each offseason (That's 5 for each team if you have multiple teams at one level). Your ML roster is replenished in free agency and AAA callups. If you desire to only have 9-12 rounds, two levels are enough assuming that your international amateur finds are at a normal level. I would consider a low percentage of HS players in your pool. Only two levels means that at the lowest level, you'll have well-developed players and any player just drafted out of high school will be very over-matched.

But since you have three levels, you definitely don't want to go lower than 12 rounds. If you really want to go lower, you probably would want to cut a level.

As for what I think the minimum amount of levels is, I say 5. But that's because I want to see drafted HS players move up levels every year. In my opinion, legit prospects should never repeat a level. In a 2 or 3 level system, HS players almost certainly will have to repeat levels. If you're intent on a small system, I don't think it will harm anything because every other club will have the same restraints.

I hope this helps. Please feel free to ask any follow-up questions. I love talking about this kind of stuff

[kq76]

I was trying to wrap my head around how different players would progress through the system after the re-organization and then I read the following on about Rookie Advanced:

In practice, many major league teams would have either one affiliate at this level or one affiliate in Class A Short Season but not both, making them de facto equivalent.

And with already knowing that they cut the draft from 40 to 20 rounds and what you already explained about Short A and Rookie Advanced, it clicked. With not having to have places for those rounds 21-40 players who would normally have found their places in Rookie, they can now move all the players who would have gone to Short A and Rookie Advanced to just Rookie. So I suppose the only other real difference between now and before is pretty much everyone goes to Rookie instead of the college and highschool players getting separated.

So I am just going to go with adding 1 A and 1 R. I don't have the rounds necessary for another R like IRL.

It's a bit sad to think those 21+ round players will never have a chance to progress through the minors anymore, but I suppose that if they're really determined they can still go the independent route. I suppose it may be better than thinking you had a good shot at the bigs simply because you were drafted at all. It might encourage more kids to stay in school and take their studying more seriously.

I wonder, has anyone seen any difference in the types of players MLB teams draft now? Are they focussing even more on college players or some other difference?