FY Player Draft, Starting Pitchers

niu354 · 07-16-2020, 07:21 PM

Can anyone help me understand why my draft classes have so few starting pitchers? My first game was ruined because I had base pitcher stamina set to "3-year period", and I'd get 2-5 starters in the entire pool. I changed that setting to "entire career" and now I'm getting 15, which still isn't much. What am I doing wrong?

luckymann · 07-17-2020, 11:17 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by niu354

Can anyone help me understand why my draft classes have so few starting pitchers? My first game was ruined because I had base pitcher stamina set to "3-year period", and I'd get 2-5 starters in the entire pool. I changed that setting to "entire career" and now I'm getting 15, which still isn't much. What am I doing wrong?

Some more information about your league would be great.

What setup are you using? What year? That sort of thing.

niu354 · 07-17-2020, 04:33 PM

Historical league starting on 1982 season. Use real draft classes for each year, so the real world 1983 draft pool was just revealed for what will be the 1982 draft in this game. I have OOTP development engine on. Not using random eras or real life lineups or anything like that. Just set it up to spin-off an alternate MLB reality using the same players. I’m basing stamina on entire career. That’s everything I can think so. Are there other setting you wanted to understand? Appreciate the help!

luckymann · 07-19-2020, 03:31 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by niu354

Historical league starting on 1982 season. Use real draft classes for each year, so the real world 1983 draft pool was just revealed for what will be the 1982 draft in this game. I have OOTP development engine on. Not using random eras or real life lineups or anything like that. Just set it up to spin-off an alternate MLB reality using the same players. I’m basing stamina on entire career. That’s everything I can think so. Are there other setting you wanted to understand? Appreciate the help!

Have you cross checked it as it is appearing in your league v the real thing?

https://www.baseball-almanac.com/dra...ft.php?yr=1983

quillenl · 07-19-2020, 08:15 AM

15 looks right for 1983. Check link below for stats of all players who debuted for 1983...

https://www.baseball-reference.com/l...3-debuts.shtml

Now, this where I don't necessarily agree with how the engine calculates stamina... but it gets them realistic statistical results so who am to question...

The engine looks like it uses some combination of games, games started, and innings pitched and their ratios to determine stamina. The cut off for not making the cut is similar to a player like Mark Thurmond in your pool. Guys like him will generate with a stamina of 2... which is someone who realistically will never make more than an emergency start or two in your league. In real life he spent the first 4 years of his career as a starter. You'll see similar with players like Dave Righetti and more aggravatingly Dennis Eckersly who will likely generate with a stamina of 3.

Stamina does not adjust in game similar to other ratings... so it has to generate with a one size fits all value. Sadly this means many players, who were considered starting pitchers, won't be realistic starters in game due to the assigned stamina necessary to project them towards their career games to innings pitched ratio.

niu354 · 07-20-2020, 11:53 AM

Here are all the pitchers in the 1983 draft sorted by stamina (1-20 scale).

niu354 · 07-20-2020, 12:07 PM

Thanks luckymann and quillenl. That helps with the initial question of "Is this normal?" This leads me to another question.

With only ~15 starting pitchers coming in per season, it seems like there would be a serious shortage of them over time. Probably in a majors and absolutely in the minors. How do people combat that? I see people running historical sims starting in the 1870s so there has to be some tricks?

Editing players?
Modifying default stamina settings (i.e. much higher than zero)?
Changing AI strategy?
Other?

quillenl · 07-20-2020, 01:54 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by niu354

Thanks luckymann and quillenl. That helps with the initial question of "Is this normal?" This leads me to another question.

With only ~15 starting pitchers coming in per season, it seems like there would be a serious shortage of them over time. Probably in a majors and absolutely in the minors. How do people combat that? I see people running historical sims starting in the 1870s so there has to be some tricks?

Editing players?
Modifying default stamina settings (i.e. much higher than zero)?
Changing AI strategy?
Other?

No tricks really. For the most part the engine does a really good job of keeping things going. I haven't spent much time analyzing it, but I imagine some of those guys who get 4+ stamina being capable even a season or two more than they were in real life would make up the difference. If you look at any given season there are only a couple memorable starting pitchers... the rest who you could argue having higher stamina played a couple of years (and often terribly).

I've not found it to be a noticeable issue. With a 5 man rotation, and a 26 team league, you have 130 SP slots... so 15 per draft would mean these guys are averaging 8-9 years for their careers. That seems a bit high to me... so my hunch is you'll typically see more than 15 for a draft class going forward. For all I know 1983 could just be an awful year for SPers.

Regardless, I would not sweat it too much... will work itself out just fine with no editing of players needed.

niu354 · 07-20-2020, 03:17 PM

OK - what happens with the minor leagues? If you assume 6 squads per organization, I would think you need 780 SP...

quillenl · 07-20-2020, 03:34 PM

Minor Leagues are a huge can of worms when you are using the historical database. You are looking at (on average) 7 rounds of players available each season. That number starts smaller at the beginning of the century... and will be bigger during the 21st century... but it's 7 rounds of players on average.

That is enough for a single level of Minor League baseball. You will never have Minor Leagues that look realistic relying solely on the historical database. I go a single level to solve this for myself... otherwise you need to use ghost players, supplement your minors with something else (fictional players and/or international players).

The minor league database solves that issue, but it comes with it's own huge headaches. Any customization you do to the minors will be lost each season. When Minor League Teams disband you'll find everyone that was n that team is now a free agent (so long 18 year old 4 star prospect). You get the gist.

If you care about your minor league rotation you need to either:
1) Supplement your league with real Minor Leaguers via either (a) using Real Minors setting and living with it's issues or (b) learning to manually import players from that database (which this new patch MAY make practical).
2) Supplement with fictional players via either (a) turning on international discoveries or (b) learning how to use the generate fictional players button to supplement your minor leagues (careful with this one).

If you want to primarily see real life major league results skip all this and just go with a singe level of minors. Ignore the minors for the most part outside of the occaissional player you draft who still has a bit of development left.

niu354 · 07-20-2020, 04:33 PM

Aha....I'm using the minor league database. I'm assuming it uses that if I select "Import real minor leagues (1915+)" upon league creation. So what you're saying is I'm getting the worst of both worlds in the minors.

The minor league starting pitchers that I'm seeing (based on their stats) have stamina of 1 and 2, so my lower minors will be all messed up with all relief pitchers. And on top of it, I'll have the issues you mentioned when minor league teams fold/move.

But the good news, more importantly, is the majors should continue to operate without much issue. Perhaps with a slight shortage of SP.

quillenl · 07-20-2020, 04:52 PM

If you are accurately impporting real minor leaguers from 1983/1984 I would expect to see many more with higher stamina. Ironically, the guys that were starters in the minors their entire career will have great stamina... and there are a LOT of those guys. You should be seeing 40 to 60 rounds of draftable players if you are pulling in the minor leaguers correctly.

Just sharing that last part so you can confirm you are getting the minor leaguers too. Sounds like you have the right option selected... but I'd expect a lot more starters if that is so.

quillenl · 07-20-2020, 04:56 PM

Starting me a 1982 test league to run to the draft and see if the pools match up.

quillenl · 07-20-2020, 05:19 PM

Potentially good news... I let the 1983 Amateur class auto generate with Use real Minor Leagues and have a pool that consists of 149 players with at least 10 Stamina using the 1-20 scale. Enough players generated for a 49 round draft.

That's good news, because it can work the way you want. You'll have to deal with minor league teams disappearing.. but you can work around that. Meanwhile, we just have to figure out what is different between your league and this one I just threw together.

In the meantime, ensure you have this box checked in your settings. You said you do, but there is another spot to check it when you created your league... and finding out this got unchecked somehow might save a lot of time.

niu354 · 07-20-2020, 08:31 PM

That is promising! I would expect a distribution somewhat similar this chart (bottom right of the screenshot), which is all the major league pitchers in 1982.

I have the setting you mentioned checked. But in the process of looking it up, I noticed a setting called "base roles/positions on..." Yours is set to AI evaluation and mine is set to Real Life Stats. Could that have anything to do with it? I changed it to AI Evaluation and got a message about AI Controlled teams being modified. The draft pool stamina didn't change though, so either it doesn't matter or it's too late to fix. Any thoughts?

quillenl · 07-20-2020, 09:17 PM

Roles positions won't affect stamina. That said, you should have over 1000 players in your draft. Based on your initial post it looks like you only have Major League players n your draft... so less than 200.

Any chance you checked using minors at some point after league creation? If the Draft Pool was created prior to having that checked it would explain what we are seeing. If so, it's fixable...if not the following is still worth testing...

1) Ensure you are in Commissioner Mode
2) Delete all players in Draft Pool
3) Go to League Events Screen and chane ddate for Draft Pool is Revealed to the next day of your sim
4) Advance a day and draft pool should repopulate... hopefully with over 1000 players.

That doesn't work, or anything looks screwy... just CTRL-ALT-DEL and crash OOTP. Game will not save as long as you don't click that dialog box that pops up and just let Windows close it.

niu354 · 07-20-2020, 09:36 PM

There were 1,160 players in the draft pool, so no issues there. It's tough for me to remember what I've tampered with since I've been stressing over this for a while, so I'm going to try the steps anyway. Already deleted the draft pool and reset the reveal date, just a few days away from the next one. More to come...

niu354 · 07-20-2020, 10:09 PM

Finished...same results with 15 starters. Any other ideas? I confirmed the rest of my settings on that screen match yours.

niu354 · 07-20-2020, 10:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by quillenl

You'll have to deal with minor league teams disappearing.. but you can work around that.

Correct, I don't mind this at all. I have to override some settings like roster limits each year anyway, so no sweat.

niu354 · 07-20-2020, 11:04 PM

I just tested a 1983 game (so 1984 draft) and am getting roughly the same results with 17 starting pitchers. So either there's a setting I'm consistently doing wrong or there's something wrong with my minor league database (which I've never touched).

**EDIT** Scratch the database theory, I think. I installed the new beta version of the software, which updated that file. Still same result.

In the historical ratings section, do you match my settings?
Base Ratings On = Neutralized Stats
Base Fielding Ratings on = Entire Career
Base Pitcher Stamina on = Entire Career

07-16-2020, 07:21 PM	#1
niu354 Major Leagues Join Date: May 2020 Location: Antioch, IL Posts: 422	FY Player Draft, Starting Pitchers Can anyone help me understand why my draft classes have so few starting pitchers? My first game was ruined because I had base pitcher stamina set to "3-year period", and I'd get 2-5 starters in the entire pool. I changed that setting to "entire career" and now I'm getting 15, which still isn't much. What am I doing wrong?

07-17-2020, 04:33 PM	#3
niu354 Major Leagues Join Date: May 2020 Location: Antioch, IL Posts: 422	Historical league starting on 1982 season. Use real draft classes for each year, so the real world 1983 draft pool was just revealed for what will be the 1982 draft in this game. I have OOTP development engine on. Not using random eras or real life lineups or anything like that. Just set it up to spin-off an alternate MLB reality using the same players. I’m basing stamina on entire career. That’s everything I can think so. Are there other setting you wanted to understand? Appreciate the help! Last edited by niu354; 07-17-2020 at 04:35 PM.

07-19-2020, 08:15 AM	#5
quillenl All Star Reserve Join Date: Apr 2015 Posts: 581	15 looks right for 1983. Check link below for stats of all players who debuted for 1983... https://www.baseball-reference.com/l...3-debuts.shtml Now, this where I don't necessarily agree with how the engine calculates stamina... but it gets them realistic statistical results so who am to question... The engine looks like it uses some combination of games, games started, and innings pitched and their ratios to determine stamina. The cut off for not making the cut is similar to a player like Mark Thurmond in your pool. Guys like him will generate with a stamina of 2... which is someone who realistically will never make more than an emergency start or two in your league. In real life he spent the first 4 years of his career as a starter. You'll see similar with players like Dave Righetti and more aggravatingly Dennis Eckersly who will likely generate with a stamina of 3. Stamina does not adjust in game similar to other ratings... so it has to generate with a one size fits all value. Sadly this means many players, who were considered starting pitchers, won't be realistic starters in game due to the assigned stamina necessary to project them towards their career games to innings pitched ratio. __________________

07-20-2020, 11:53 AM	#6
niu354 Major Leagues Join Date: May 2020 Location: Antioch, IL Posts: 422	Here are all the pitchers in the 1983 draft sorted by stamina (1-20 scale). Attached Images

07-20-2020, 12:07 PM	#7
niu354 Major Leagues Join Date: May 2020 Location: Antioch, IL Posts: 422	Thanks luckymann and quillenl. That helps with the initial question of "Is this normal?" This leads me to another question. With only ~15 starting pitchers coming in per season, it seems like there would be a serious shortage of them over time. Probably in a majors and absolutely in the minors. How do people combat that? I see people running historical sims starting in the 1870s so there has to be some tricks? Editing players? Modifying default stamina settings (i.e. much higher than zero)? Changing AI strategy? Other? Last edited by niu354; 07-20-2020 at 12:09 PM.

07-20-2020, 03:17 PM	#9
niu354 Major Leagues Join Date: May 2020 Location: Antioch, IL Posts: 422	OK - what happens with the minor leagues? If you assume 6 squads per organization, I would think you need 780 SP...

07-20-2020, 03:34 PM	#10
quillenl All Star Reserve Join Date: Apr 2015 Posts: 581	Minor Leagues are a huge can of worms when you are using the historical database. You are looking at (on average) 7 rounds of players available each season. That number starts smaller at the beginning of the century... and will be bigger during the 21st century... but it's 7 rounds of players on average. That is enough for a single level of Minor League baseball. You will never have Minor Leagues that look realistic relying solely on the historical database. I go a single level to solve this for myself... otherwise you need to use ghost players, supplement your minors with something else (fictional players and/or international players). The minor league database solves that issue, but it comes with it's own huge headaches. Any customization you do to the minors will be lost each season. When Minor League Teams disband you'll find everyone that was n that team is now a free agent (so long 18 year old 4 star prospect). You get the gist. If you care about your minor league rotation you need to either: 1) Supplement your league with real Minor Leaguers via either (a) using Real Minors setting and living with it's issues or (b) learning to manually import players from that database (which this new patch MAY make practical). 2) Supplement with fictional players via either (a) turning on international discoveries or (b) learning how to use the generate fictional players button to supplement your minor leagues (careful with this one). If you want to primarily see real life major league results skip all this and just go with a singe level of minors. Ignore the minors for the most part outside of the occaissional player you draft who still has a bit of development left. __________________ Last edited by quillenl; 07-20-2020 at 03:54 PM.

07-20-2020, 04:33 PM	#11
niu354 Major Leagues Join Date: May 2020 Location: Antioch, IL Posts: 422	Aha....I'm using the minor league database. I'm assuming it uses that if I select "Import real minor leagues (1915+)" upon league creation. So what you're saying is I'm getting the worst of both worlds in the minors. The minor league starting pitchers that I'm seeing (based on their stats) have stamina of 1 and 2, so my lower minors will be all messed up with all relief pitchers. And on top of it, I'll have the issues you mentioned when minor league teams fold/move. But the good news, more importantly, is the majors should continue to operate without much issue. Perhaps with a slight shortage of SP.

07-20-2020, 04:52 PM	#12
quillenl All Star Reserve Join Date: Apr 2015 Posts: 581	If you are accurately impporting real minor leaguers from 1983/1984 I would expect to see many more with higher stamina. Ironically, the guys that were starters in the minors their entire career will have great stamina... and there are a LOT of those guys. You should be seeing 40 to 60 rounds of draftable players if you are pulling in the minor leaguers correctly. Just sharing that last part so you can confirm you are getting the minor leaguers too. Sounds like you have the right option selected... but I'd expect a lot more starters if that is so. __________________ Last edited by quillenl; 07-20-2020 at 04:55 PM.

07-20-2020, 04:56 PM	#13
quillenl All Star Reserve Join Date: Apr 2015 Posts: 581	Starting me a 1982 test league to run to the draft and see if the pools match up. __________________ Last edited by quillenl; 07-20-2020 at 05:03 PM.

07-20-2020, 05:19 PM	#14
quillenl All Star Reserve Join Date: Apr 2015 Posts: 581	Potentially good news... I let the 1983 Amateur class auto generate with Use real Minor Leagues and have a pool that consists of 149 players with at least 10 Stamina using the 1-20 scale. Enough players generated for a 49 round draft. That's good news, because it can work the way you want. You'll have to deal with minor league teams disappearing.. but you can work around that. Meanwhile, we just have to figure out what is different between your league and this one I just threw together. In the meantime, ensure you have this box checked in your settings. You said you do, but there is another spot to check it when you created your league... and finding out this got unchecked somehow might save a lot of time. Attached Images __________________

07-20-2020, 08:31 PM	#15
niu354 Major Leagues Join Date: May 2020 Location: Antioch, IL Posts: 422	That is promising! I would expect a distribution somewhat similar this chart (bottom right of the screenshot), which is all the major league pitchers in 1982. I have the setting you mentioned checked. But in the process of looking it up, I noticed a setting called "base roles/positions on..." Yours is set to AI evaluation and mine is set to Real Life Stats. Could that have anything to do with it? I changed it to AI Evaluation and got a message about AI Controlled teams being modified. The draft pool stamina didn't change though, so either it doesn't matter or it's too late to fix. Any thoughts? Attached Images

07-20-2020, 09:17 PM	#16
quillenl All Star Reserve Join Date: Apr 2015 Posts: 581	Roles positions won't affect stamina. That said, you should have over 1000 players in your draft. Based on your initial post it looks like you only have Major League players n your draft... so less than 200. Any chance you checked using minors at some point after league creation? If the Draft Pool was created prior to having that checked it would explain what we are seeing. If so, it's fixable...if not the following is still worth testing... 1) Ensure you are in Commissioner Mode 2) Delete all players in Draft Pool 3) Go to League Events Screen and chane ddate for Draft Pool is Revealed to the next day of your sim 4) Advance a day and draft pool should repopulate... hopefully with over 1000 players. That doesn't work, or anything looks screwy... just CTRL-ALT-DEL and crash OOTP. Game will not save as long as you don't click that dialog box that pops up and just let Windows close it. __________________

07-20-2020, 09:36 PM	#17
niu354 Major Leagues Join Date: May 2020 Location: Antioch, IL Posts: 422	There were 1,160 players in the draft pool, so no issues there. It's tough for me to remember what I've tampered with since I've been stressing over this for a while, so I'm going to try the steps anyway. Already deleted the draft pool and reset the reveal date, just a few days away from the next one. More to come...

07-20-2020, 10:09 PM	#18
niu354 Major Leagues Join Date: May 2020 Location: Antioch, IL Posts: 422	Finished...same results with 15 starters. Any other ideas? I confirmed the rest of my settings on that screen match yours. Last edited by niu354; 07-20-2020 at 10:19 PM.

07-20-2020, 11:04 PM	#20
niu354 Major Leagues Join Date: May 2020 Location: Antioch, IL Posts: 422	I just tested a 1983 game (so 1984 draft) and am getting roughly the same results with 17 starting pitchers. So either there's a setting I'm consistently doing wrong or there's something wrong with my minor league database (which I've never touched). EDIT Scratch the database theory, I think. I installed the new beta version of the software, which updated that file. Still same result. In the historical ratings section, do you match my settings? Base Ratings On = Neutralized Stats Base Fielding Ratings on = Entire Career Base Pitcher Stamina on = Entire Career Attached Images Last edited by niu354; 07-21-2020 at 12:32 AM.