Suggestion
When setting up a league that has minor league levels attached to it, scale the average attendance value for the minors as a percentage of the value selected for the major league.
Reason
It makes the setting up of a league quicker and easier. The player doesn't have to go in and set the average attendance values for each attached minor league in order to get a set up reflective of the current real-world scenario.
Priority
Medium.
The Proposal in Detail
As mentioned, by scaling the minor league attendance of affiliated minors to the value selected for the major league parent league, it makes setting up the league quicker and easier. The player only has to go in and make changes to the average league attendance in a given minor league if they want to do something different from the attendance relationship in the real world.
Here's how the attendance relationship worked in the 2006 season. Below is the per-game average attendance for each classification, along with the percentage value of the major league figure:
Code:
MLB = 31,307 100.0%
----------------------
AAA = 6,451 20.6%
AA = 4,342 13.9%
A-Adv = 2,055 6.6%
A = 3,422 10.9%
A-SS = 3,211 10.3%
R-Adv = 1,542 4.9%
In 2006, AAA level leagues on average drew 20.6% of what the majors drew in attendance, AA leagues drew 13.9%, and so on.
It's these percentages which would be used to determine the average attendance value or an affiliated minor league. If a player creating a league set their major league average attendance as 25,000 then the attendance setting for the AAA level leagues would be 5,150 while for AA leagues it would be 3,475 and so on.
Of course, if the player wanted to go in after the leagues were created and set new values for average attendance for the majors and minors, they could do that. The scaling proposed is strictly at the point when the league is first created and is intended as a convenience to help make setting up a league based on modern-day defaults quicker.
An additional possible refinement would be to scale the attendance percentages based on the league year selected. That is, different percentages would be used for a league set up to start in 1950 than one set up to start in 1990 or 2006; the percentages used would be based on the actual real-world major/minor values from that year.
The percentages for the actual 1950 season were (using the minor league classification level names in effect that year):
Code:
AAA = 22.5%
AA = 20.0%
A = 10.0%
B = 8.0%
C = 6.6%
D = 4.3%
The percentages for the actual 1990 season were:
Code:
AAA = 19.2%
AA = 10.4%
A-Adv = 5.6%
A = 5.9%
A-SS = 6.5%
R-Adv = 5.8%
Having scaling percentages for each year, or a range of years, would require some research. However, it would provide more accuracy in terms of the starting year selected.