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Rondell Tate · 02-06-2009, 10:58 PM

I decided to try an extreme ... I dropped the player creation modifiers to the .200 to .250 range to see what happened. The result was a free agent list full of absolutely useless players (topping out at 5 on a 20-point scale, lots of 2s and 3s) with a bunch of 18- to 20-rated glove guys and a bunch of 18- to 20-rated speed guys, who were useless at everything else.

So every team had two rank amateurs who ran like Willie Mays Hayes sitting at the end of the bench, which ruined a close game (leadoff walk, 20/20 pinch runner, steal, steal, sac fly, game over).

The computer also doesn't seem to recognize them as useless, so it will still insist you throw in two or three garbage players in a trade to "even it up" even though you know they'll never amount to squat.

But the early 1930s was dominated by a few great hitters and a lot of banjo hitters who had grown up in the dead ball era, so when I set the modifiers to .350 and .400, the best created players merged nicely with a lot of the weak hitters who were still clogging rosters in 1933.

And that was my goal with this league ... to simulate an environment where for every marginal real-life big-leaguer, there are at least a couple of imaginary players at the same level who "might have been" big leaguers if they hadn't been injured, or had an off day when the scout was in the park, or playing in East Pitchfork, N.D., so nobody knew they were any good. I also didn't want to create anybody with more than, say, a part-time role for a couple of years. And although I'm in my first season, I pretty much guarantee that no created players will even make an all-star team with mods set at .400.

And there's no significance to the spread between, say, .350 and .400 ... I find adjusting the numbers before I start playing tedious, so I only change the first number. If a number starts as .x50, it winds up as .(x-z)50, just so as to save keystrokes.

I suspect that in a better hitters' era, like the mid-50s or the Steroid Era, that you will get marginal-at-best results with the player creation modifiers in the .500 to .600 range. Higher than that and you'll start seeing the best created players turning into useful journeymen, although not stars.

Having played with a few leagues (in the 1920s, 30s, 60s and 70s) as a rule of thumb, I would suggest to anyone looking for "no replacements better than a journeyman" to SUBTRACT .250 to .300 points from the starting AAA level for each skill, and .350 to .500 from starting AA level for each skill (AA players are usually younger therefore show more development so you want them to be worse to start).

For eras when offenses are down, subtract another .100 to .200 in each category. Keep power at the low end of your scale or will get the occasional Dave Kingman ... a .200 hitter who never walks and strikes out 120 times a year but who can hit 40 HR ... and nobody wants an imaginary HR champion.

If you absolutely, positively want your replacements to be Mendoza-line hitters, make all the settings in the .350 to .400 range, even in a pitchers' era. Anything lower and you might as well have ghost players.

For further realism, stay in commissioner mode long enough to edit your FA list ... sort for speed and dock most of the track stars' ratings, then repeat the process with glove men (although I find it's rarer to see the game making five defensive replacements than to see them bring in pinch runner after pinch runner ... particularly in an era like the 30s when a full pitching staff might be eight guys, so there's plenty of room to swap players ... it's like they have the US 4x100 relay squad on the bench).

Finally, as to the minors ... I haven't noticed that the real-life players dominate even in a minors filled at the .200 to.250 level (they don't typically tank, either), but when you bring up one of the total scrubs to the bigs, they get SHELLED ... ERAs in the mid-teens and 0-for-15 streaks. It's like calling me up ...

If there's interest, I'll build and share a quick start file for the 30s. There's a couple of tweaks I want to make with my current league anyway (I didn't slow down the speed guys).

02-06-2009, 10:58 PM	#17 (permalink)
Rondell Tate Minors (Double A) Join Date: Aug 2008 Posts: 169 Thanked 1x in 1 post	I decided to try an extreme ... I dropped the player creation modifiers to the .200 to .250 range to see what happened. The result was a free agent list full of absolutely useless players (topping out at 5 on a 20-point scale, lots of 2s and 3s) with a bunch of 18- to 20-rated glove guys and a bunch of 18- to 20-rated speed guys, who were useless at everything else. So every team had two rank amateurs who ran like Willie Mays Hayes sitting at the end of the bench, which ruined a close game (leadoff walk, 20/20 pinch runner, steal, steal, sac fly, game over). The computer also doesn't seem to recognize them as useless, so it will still insist you throw in two or three garbage players in a trade to "even it up" even though you know they'll never amount to squat. But the early 1930s was dominated by a few great hitters and a lot of banjo hitters who had grown up in the dead ball era, so when I set the modifiers to .350 and .400, the best created players merged nicely with a lot of the weak hitters who were still clogging rosters in 1933. And that was my goal with this league ... to simulate an environment where for every marginal real-life big-leaguer, there are at least a couple of imaginary players at the same level who "might have been" big leaguers if they hadn't been injured, or had an off day when the scout was in the park, or playing in East Pitchfork, N.D., so nobody knew they were any good. I also didn't want to create anybody with more than, say, a part-time role for a couple of years. And although I'm in my first season, I pretty much guarantee that no created players will even make an all-star team with mods set at .400. And there's no significance to the spread between, say, .350 and .400 ... I find adjusting the numbers before I start playing tedious, so I only change the first number. If a number starts as .x50, it winds up as .(x-z)50, just so as to save keystrokes. I suspect that in a better hitters' era, like the mid-50s or the Steroid Era, that you will get marginal-at-best results with the player creation modifiers in the .500 to .600 range. Higher than that and you'll start seeing the best created players turning into useful journeymen, although not stars. Having played with a few leagues (in the 1920s, 30s, 60s and 70s) as a rule of thumb, I would suggest to anyone looking for "no replacements better than a journeyman" to SUBTRACT .250 to .300 points from the starting AAA level for each skill, and .350 to .500 from starting AA level for each skill (AA players are usually younger therefore show more development so you want them to be worse to start). For eras when offenses are down, subtract another .100 to .200 in each category. Keep power at the low end of your scale or will get the occasional Dave Kingman ... a .200 hitter who never walks and strikes out 120 times a year but who can hit 40 HR ... and nobody wants an imaginary HR champion. If you absolutely, positively want your replacements to be Mendoza-line hitters, make all the settings in the .350 to .400 range, even in a pitchers' era. Anything lower and you might as well have ghost players. For further realism, stay in commissioner mode long enough to edit your FA list ... sort for speed and dock most of the track stars' ratings, then repeat the process with glove men (although I find it's rarer to see the game making five defensive replacements than to see them bring in pinch runner after pinch runner ... particularly in an era like the 30s when a full pitching staff might be eight guys, so there's plenty of room to swap players ... it's like they have the US 4x100 relay squad on the bench). Finally, as to the minors ... I haven't noticed that the real-life players dominate even in a minors filled at the .200 to.250 level (they don't typically tank, either), but when you bring up one of the total scrubs to the bigs, they get SHELLED ... ERAs in the mid-teens and 0-for-15 streaks. It's like calling me up ... If there's interest, I'll build and share a quick start file for the 30s. There's a couple of tweaks I want to make with my current league anyway (I didn't slow down the speed guys).