January Draft

[Bobfather]

for a few seasons, I had my draft at the winter meetings. But most of my draft picks went to half-season teams, so they just sat around not playing till June. With the draft irl taking place in January, and OOTP does too, will this be adjusted?

[sam10gle]

IRL First Year Amateur draft is during All-Star Week in July.


Rule 5 draft is during Winter Meetings.

[tonnage]

Yes, my draft takes place in early July, which I believe is the default setting?

[Bobfather]

I stand corrected thank you.

[Charlie Hough]

This raises a good point for historical leagues and any other league where your draft might take place in December or otherwise a few months before the new season. The development team has said it's looking into this, but here are the potential issues:

If you're playing in a historical league where the draft is held in December by default, players who went straight from the draft to an MLB roster can start their career too soon, as early as opening day rather than after June, when the MLB draft historically took place. This happens with players who went straight from college to the MLB, such as Dave Winfield, who will be on the 1973 Padres' opening-day roster in OOTP rather than having to wait until June, when he was drafted in real life.

Also, if you're playing with historical minors, where all players are imported when they made their pro baseball debut rather than when they made their MLB debut, some players who started in short-season A ball can end up on an opening day MLB roster in their rookie year. Part of this is because the sim is not properly assessing the league level of their historical first-year stats in pro baseball, and I've reported that. Hopefully it gets fixed for OOTP 24, but an early draft date compounds this problem.

If you're playing a modern league where your draft is in December instead of June or July, the same thing can happen. Players who are supposed to be coming out of college can end up starting their minors careers as early as April or May instead of June or July.

[BBGiovanni]

I always have a rookie league start playing in April to solve this problem.

[PSUColonel]

Eventually I think there’s a decent possibility there will be a separate international draft held in January.

[szathkey]

There is also the issue of expansion, especially in expansion-era historical. If the draft is not held right after the end of the regular season, there are not enough players to fill minor league teams that come with the expansion team.

[Charlie Hough]

Originally Posted by szathkey

There is also the issue of expansion, especially in expansion-era historical. If the draft is not held right after the end of the regular season, there are not enough players to fill minor league teams that come with the expansion team.

To get this truly right, expansion teams should draft players at least one year before they join MLB in OOTP. For example, the Marlins and Rockies drafted their first players in the June 1992 amateur draft, several months before the expansion draft and well before they began MLB play in the 1993 season. Then they added more players to their minor league affiliates from the June 1993 draft. The Rays and Diamondbacks drafted their first amateurs in 1996, two years before their franchises debuted in MLB, so they had two drafts' worth of players to stock their minor league clubs ahead of time.

However, this would require OOTP to create those organizations without actually making them part of MLB or the schedule yet. That would probably create all sorts of challenges.

[szathkey]

Agreed.

Somone wrote a guide for a workaround...not sure if I can find it again, but will edit my post with the link if I track it down.

[szathkey]

Here it is...

https://www.reddit.com/r/OOTP/commen...xpansion_team/

[der_k]

I actually do a mock ammy draft every year (outside of ootp, picking last in each round) and transfer those players to my system via commissioner mode when I run an expansion team. (Also do a mock draft for my fictional counterpart team)