Lots of Newbie questions.

[GJMac]

OK, first thanks in advance for anyone who takes the time to read and even answer my questions. I've been playing EHM for some time, and thought I would check out OOTP.

I've loaded Rolens DB and I'm managing the Mets. I've left scouting off until I get the feel of things.

1) I have many players in the minors who are rated max potential rating of 20 - 25. Are these guys worth anything other than just filling out your minor league rosters? Should I waste my time trying to trade them for something of value?

2) I have one minor league team with only 8 batters/fielders. Is that OK? Do I have to fill out the roster?

3) I completed the rookie draft and so now have 25 new players that all get dumped unto my rookie league team, leaving me with 50 players on the team. Is this OK? Should I try to spread the new guys around to
different minor league teams? Should I just release the worthless prospects with a potential of 20-25 so these new guys can play?

4) There are so many great coaches, I was able to staff all my teams with hitting and pitching coaches with 100 in their main skill. Is this common?

5) My understanding is that potentials like contact potential is measured against major league talent, while current contact rating is against the current league the player is in, so his current rating may be higher
than his potential. However, I have some major league players who's current contact is higher than his potential. How is that possible?

6) I traded for Matt Caine. Good young pitcher sailing along at 10 and 4 with a 2.80 ERA. Stuff, movement and control potential in the 50s and 60s. All of a sudden I get a scouting report that he is strugling and his
stuff potential drops to 22! his current stuff is still at 57, but what happened? Should I dump him before his nunbers drop? Did I do something wrong with him? Is he too young at 22 to be pitching in the majors (even
though he was 10 - 4)?

7) I'm saddled with Tom Glavin. No one wants the overpaid vet. Current rating is 21 (stuff = 11, Movement = 19, control = 23). Horrible. I would expect him to be shelled every start. However, he's 14 - 9 with a 5.00 era. How could he be giving me servicable innings when his ratings stink? He's actually thrown some complete games giving up only 1 or 2 runs! of course he had a few where he was shelled early.

8) How should I respond to the scouting reports that tell me either a player is struggling or that he made an adjustment and is improving?

Thanks again!

[bp_]

Originally Posted by GJMac

1) I have many players in the minors who are rated max potential rating of 20 - 25. Are these guys worth anything other than just filling out your minor league rosters? Should I waste my time trying to trade them for something of value?

They are scum. Don't bother trying to trade them for an upgrade.

2) I have one minor league team with only 8 batters/fielders. Is that OK? Do I have to fill out the roster?

I'm guessing this is one of the short season leagues (rookie leagues). You won't have to fill these until June-ish as they don't start play until after the draft (check the schedules for those leagues and you'll see).

3) I completed the rookie draft and so now have 25 new players that all get dumped unto my rookie league team, leaving me with 50 players on the team. Is this OK? Should I try to spread the new guys around to
different minor league teams? Should I just release the worthless prospects with a potential of 20-25 so these new guys can play?

You have to maintain a certain # of players on each minor league team or you will get an error so don't release them all. Just release many of the 20-25 guys since they waste roster space and might steal some abs from the real spects on your team.

4) There are so many great coaches, I was able to staff all my teams with hitting and pitching coaches with 100 in their main skill. Is this common?

I don't play with coaches on so I can't say but I wouldn't be surprised. I'd suggest turning coaches off if it is this easy to load up.

5) My understanding is that potentials like contact potential is measured against major league talent, while current contact rating is against the current league the player is in, so his current rating may be higher
than his potential. However, I have some major league players who's current contact is higher than his potential. How is that possible?

I don't think this is correct. Overall rating works as you describe I believe. Individual talents in OOTP often can exceed their potential rating. Some players just "play over their head."

6) I traded for Matt Caine. Good young pitcher sailing along at 10 and 4 with a 2.80 ERA. Stuff, movement and control potential in the 50s and 60s. All of a sudden I get a scouting report that he is strugling and his
stuff potential drops to 22! his current stuff is still at 57, but what happened? Should I dump him before his nunbers drop? Did I do something wrong with him? Is he too young at 22 to be pitching in the majors (even
though he was 10 - 4)?

That's a big hit. You might want to consider moving him if you can get a good offer.

7) I'm saddled with Tom Glavin. No one wants the overpaid vet. Current rating is 21 (stuff = 11, Movement = 19, control = 23). Horrible. I would expect him to be shelled every start. However, he's 14 - 9 with a 5.00 era. How could he be giving me servicable innings when his ratings stink? He's actually thrown some complete games giving up only 1 or 2 runs! of course he had a few where he was shelled early.

I don't know how but I've noticed this happen with other poorly rated players on my squad.

8) How should I respond to the scouting reports that tell me either a player is struggling or that he made an adjustment and is improving?

Thanks again!

You may want to promote/demote the player if the stats back up the report.

[GJMac]

Thanks BP_ !

[Curtis]

And for a different perspective (from a Mets fan)…

1) A good rule of thumb is that a player with a 22 potential will (should) never play higher than Rookie level, a 24 not higher than Short A, a 26 not above Single A and a 28 not above AA. If they can provide useful at bats for your organization without taking development time away from your prospects, keep them, play them, love them, sigh when they retire. There certainly is a place in the game for career minor leaguers. But bp is right — don't bother trying to trade them.

2) If you're already past the amateur draft (June 15th in your world?), then you do need to think about filling out your bench on that team. My rule is to never have fewer than 24 players on a roster, and never fewer than ten pitchers. The upper end at each level would run maybe twelve pitchers out of 28 total players. If you have too many players, they'll just sit and not get developmental time. If you have too few, you can't cover injuries. In my second league, I had five major league (Mets, of course) pitchers go down in two weeks, three of them starters. You have to pull guys up from AAA to fill in (or replace, if the injury is severe), then pull up from AA to refill AA, then pull up from A to…, well you get the idea. If you carry 26-28 players at each level, you'll have enough of a cushion that you can cover anything but a plane crash without having to get frantic in the free agent market.

3) You should keep the best 25 players, in terms of current rating, on your Mets' roster, then the next best 26 (or whatever) in Tidewater and the next in Binghampton. Below AA you should be looking for the 72-84 players with the highest potentials. Of that subgroup, put the third with the highest currents at A, the middle group at Short A, and the worst third at Rookie. Anyone you have left after that, release.

That was the simple version. The exceptions are where you show you worth as a GM. Obviously, it's not as simple as taking the 73-81 players with the highest currents. You need to decide how many starters you'll keep (maybe 15-17 if you're using a five man rotation), then the three best closers, the X best middle relievers, the Y best outfielders, the six or seven best catchers, the three to six best first basemen, the Z best infielders. And you'll need to go through that same allocating process for the prospects with potential later.

Make sure you're aware of all the positions your players can play. You may find that you have a third baseman who's a better second baseman than any of your second basemen. I'm amazed at how many muti-position players there are. I just checked through My Nippon Ham organization the past few days. None of my catchers or first basemen can play multiple positions, but out of 36 total outfielders and non-1B infielders, only three are single psition players, while 25 play two and eight play three. Be aware of your flexibilty and make use of it.

The last thing to point out here is that there will be some times when you'll place a weaker (current) player at a higher level than a stronger player of the same position. One reason for doing that, which I'm encountering with Nippon Ham, is that your entire organization might be weak at a particular position (in my case, starting pitcher), and your fourth or fifth player at that position might have a high potential. If you have a slightly weaker player who has pretty much fulfilled his potential already, you might keep him up in order to let the high potential guy develop at AAA. I'd seriousle recommend that if the high potential guy had a forty or lower for his current, because he'd be in over his head in the majors and might suffer a developmental setback.

Another reason for doing it is if you have (my team again) three middle relievers struggling for the last spot, two of them 29/30s and one 28/28, but the 28/28 refuses to be assigned to the minors. You really shouldn't be playing guys with currents in the red (or preferably even orange) zone at the ML level, but my team is THAT weak. I had a choice between releasing him and eating his salary, trading him (which I'd done with his twin brother three weeks before), or sending the two slightly better guys down and keeping him up for mopup work. As bad as my team is, I'm going to require a LOT of mopup innings, so he stayed.

4) It seems pretty random to me. I've started four universes in four months. One of them had personnel like you describe, two had only bottom-of-the-barrel coaches and scouts available as at-start replacements, and one (the one I'm in now) had a nice mix.

5) bp is right. For whatever reason (and it doesn't make much sense to me, either) a large number of players, mostly older ones, will have at least one current rating higher than its corresponding potential.

This might be a good place to point out something I skipped up in 3): Many players over the age of thirty will have overall potentials much higher than their current values. This does NOT make them prospects. At some point, and I don't know where it is, players will stop appreciably improving and remain forever short of their potential. Some people think that happens by age 28; I'm morally certain it happens by the time they turn thirty. When assigning your 72-84 high potential players around the lower minors, don't kid yourself that that 38 year old starting pitcher with the 28/58 rating will ever be anything more than a 28.

6) It is possible to develop players too quickly and hurt their development. Your best bet is to wait to promote players until their current overall is a point higher than the guidelines I listed up in 1). Promoting to the majors is a more arcane art. If at all possible, I think you should wait until his current overall hits the yellow zone, but if a player is at or within a point of his potential, or he's age thirty-plus, you shouldn't hurt anything by moving him up, if you have a dire need. In this case, I think bp's advice is good.

7) It's hard to believe Glavine's ratings would be that low, but disbelief aside, some players will outperform their ratings, and some will overperform. I tried to create a player to match Ty Cobb's career averages, and he underperformed by about a hundred points (batting average). There's just one word to describe this game, and that word is, "You never can tell."

8) By checking against the numbers you wrote down for that player earlier. You DID keep a hardcopy of all your players' overalls, didn't you? You can not trust the evaluation reports. I got a report that one of my St. Lucie outfielders had made a correction in his swing, thus improving his potential. When I raced down to check the guy out for myself, I discovered that his 'improvement' was for MINUS five points on both his current and potential ratings, which I never would've realized if I hadn't kept a hardcopy to check against. The last seven words of bp's reply are the most important, "…if the stats back up the report." As Ronald Reagan said, Trust, but verify."

Good luck.