Promote/Demote Control by Minor League Managers

[endgame]

The pics below are my current settings. It's July 16th in my league this season. I've gone back and forth at various times of the season with who controls the demotions and promotions at the minor league level throughout the history of this league, now in its fourth year.

There are likely a variety of reasons I end up 'taking it back' and micro-managing, but wanted to see what any of your thoughts might be as to how to improve either using the option or measuring its activity.

The only practical (easy) way, it seems, to monitor how much and what kind of movement is taking place is to go to the minor league team's home page, select the transactions log, and examine it at that level. I end up becoming impatient when I fail to find any movement I haven't personally initiated during some intervention. Eventually, I start to wonder whether the settings are functioning as they should and reassign myself to global control of those decisions.

I attached the eval settings to further inquire whether you are finding the minor league managers utilize this in their decisions to promote/demote. Lacking any real data, due to my incessant vacillation, I'm left with only intuition, which tells me the lower ranks are assessed with different criteria. I'm aware of the minor league control problems associated with lineups, positional backups, fatigue, and general role assignments, but I'm unclear whether there is a decision deficiency (or as I said above, are the decisions being made at all?) with regard to movement in the league ranks themselves.

Let me know what you're finding about how it's working and how you're measuring what occurs. Thanks in advance.

[1998 Yankees]

eg, your intuition is telling you the same thing that mine told me. The AI is simply not going to manage your minor leagues as well as you can.

Neither one of us has firm data, but anecdotal evidence is enough to indicate that this is so and the awareness of this is the reason why you keep going back to managing things yourself. Basically, you don't trust the AI and neither do I.

The difference between us is that I have already made that decision and have stuck to it to my great satisfaction. However, let's see if some other folks have something to say in AI's favor.

[kcroyalgm]

Things to say in AI's favor in managing minor leagues:
1. Uhm . . .

[myasu]

I totally agree with you guys. (Not trusting the AI controlling the promotion/demotion minors)

I do it all by myself.

[phightin]

Originally Posted by 1998 Yankees

However, let's see if some other folks have something to say in AI's favor.

Being that I do so many other things manually on a day to day basis I just don't have the time to really scope my whole minor league system to decide on promotions/demotions etc, so I just let the AI handle it. I'm currently in my 4th season, and while it isn't as satisfying as handling it all myself I would say that the AI does an adequate job for me to be content with it. From what I've noticed the AI only really takes current ability into consideration when promoting/demoting etc and not potential. While this can be kind of annoying as you would want your 1st round pick to be in single a ball by his second year over some 28 yearold bum at least etc it still ensures that if and when he develops he'll go through the ranks as other players have for me. And usually if player is going to develop they will regardless of if you handled it or not. Just my two cents.

[StyxNCa]

I guess it matters on how someone values their minors. Personally, I control everything in the minors since I have noticed the AI putting players in levels that it's own evaluation says they shouldn't be in. I believe I read someplace that when players are in the wrong level it hurts their development.

I also use ghost players and only have players in the minors that I have drafted or traded for. I don't have any players that the AI added when it had control because they were all terrible players with terrible potential ratings. By terrible I mean things like ratings in the 1-10 range on a 1-100 scale. What made it worse was checking the free agent list and seeing players with much better potential still sitting as free agents.

Another thing I despised was when I allowed the AI to handle signing and releasing players it would end off releasing my first round draft pick and sign some sorry suck player. I didn't draft the player just to have him cut and signed by someone else.

Basically, the AI does not build a system the way I want it built. There are things I value more and things I value less in a player than the AI does so the only way to make sure my team has a future is to handle everything myself, as time consuming as that may be.

[phightin]

Interesting point about the players playing at a level that would hurt their development, and wonder if anyone could shed more light on the subject. The thing is though I don't really think it can hurt a player that much to play in single A or double A etc if he isn't ready. As I've noticed most of my picks that have flamed out have all proceeded rather slowly through my system, and the one's that have worked out well proceeded more quickly as they usually do in real life. I think it's just simply a matter of if a guy can player or not. Excluding the triple a level for batters most players at all levels of the minors have very similar low ratings.

[endgame]

Let me try this again more directly. For those of you using minor league managers to control your demotions and promotions, how do you monitor what they're doing?

In past versions - and, from a developer's standpoint, Markus quite intelligently removed it - any given player's history would show his up and down movement annoyingly often. Now, we have the home page of the team and its transaction log; seemingly, nothing more. Is that what you use? Do you monitor the movements at all? Does any movement actually take place? How do you know it did, by watching one or two specific players? Do you only look at AAA and let the rest of the chips fall where they may?

I know there's some fundamental problems with the AI's covering positional needs, i.e. if a backup catcher in AA goes down to injury, the remaining catcher will play until he can't walk, he's injured, and even then, no one from Single A is called up to assume that catcher's position. It'll simply be filled with a 2B who's not getting any playing time or on that order. Admittedly, unless someone has contrary observations, that area needs work, but promotions should, in part, be influenced by those positional needs.

But how do you even know what those managers are doing?! After all, if we defer all responsibility to them, shouldn't we have a method in place to see what's occuring? If you look at a player in AAA, for instance, and see he's spent time that same year in AA and Single A, there's no record whether he's accumulated that time in any linear frame, or whether he's simply put in a couple of days here and a couple of days there. Has he, in fact, moved at all in the last month or two? How do you check? Do you check? Does it even matter, or is the answer for most of you simply to control it yourselves as the responses in this thread, so far, seem to indicate?

I'll deal with how it makes it choices later, if we can first simply get an answer to what choices it's actually making and when. Has anyone looked very closely?

[1998 Yankees]

Originally Posted by phightin

Being that I do so many other things manually on a day to day basis I just don't have the time to really scope my whole minor league system to decide on promotions/demotions etc, so I just let the AI handle it. I'm currently in my 4th season, and while it isn't as satisfying as handling it all myself I would say that the AI does an adequate job for me to be content with it. From what I've noticed the AI only really takes current ability into consideration when promoting/demoting etc and not potential. While this can be kind of annoying as you would want your 1st round pick to be in single a ball by his second year over some 28 yearold bum at least etc it still ensures that if and when he develops he'll go through the ranks as other players have for me. And usually if player is going to develop they will regardless of if you handled it or not. Just my two cents.

I should clarify that I use ghost players, which makes tracking a fraction of the players that you deal with much easier.

Originally Posted by endgame

Let me try this again more directly. For those of you using minor league managers to control your demotions and promotions, how do you monitor what they're doing?

eg - sorry, I'll try to answer your question more directly this time. As I noted above, I now play with ghost players which makes managing the minor leagues much easier. Even now, though, I still use the same tool as in the past before I started using ghost players: the Minor League System Report.

Now, of course, I know my key minor league players like the back of my hand but when I was dealing with full rosters, I found using the Minor League System Report to be very useful to show me "before and after" snapshots. The key is to open the report in external browser and save it somehow for comparison.

I have a PDF maker that is ideal for this purpose, but I believe you can save each report, labeling it by date, in HTML format. You could probably see differences just be saving this report weekly.

Then you will notice the nonsense that phightin talks about; the 28-year old playing ahead of your number 1 draft choice in rookie league because the old guy has yellow ratings and the new kid is still red or orange. And you will be able to tell when AI did that by looking at previous reports.

[endgame]

'98,

I didn't mean to imply anyone, especially you, was non-responsive. I just wanted, in addition to my other concerns, to see if I was incorrect in my assumption that there was no 'easy' way to track the decision-making. Apparently, there isn't. While I would prefer to delegate the task to good managers and be able to assess their own worthiness, it's likely I'll just return the accountability to my own hands, again.

[1998 Yankees]

Originally Posted by endgame

'98,

I didn't mean to imply anyone, especially you, was non-responsive. I just wanted, in addition to my other concerns, to see if I was incorrect in my assumption that there was no 'easy' way to track the decision-making. Apparently, there isn't. While I would prefer to delegate the task to good managers and be able to assess their own worthiness, it's likely I'll just return the accountability to my own hands, again.

Well, what did you think of the weekly saving of the Minor League System Report in HTML? You can line those up in your browser to focus on changes from one report to the next.

[endgame]

Originally Posted by 1998 Yankees

Well, what did you think of the weekly saving of the Minor League System Report in HTML? You can line those up in your browser to focus on changes from one report to the next.

I may attempt that technique, if I find both the ambition and skills to pull it off comfortably. Thanks again for your comments.

[phightin]

Endgame I certianly hear your frusturation about the whole thing, and the truth is yes there is no easy way around this. For me I simply just know my top minor leaguers off the top of my head and check up on them on fairly regular basis to see how they're doing etc. I haven't really seen any instances where the AI has abused or misused them through promotion/demotion nor have I really gotten the sense that their development has been hurt. I think a great option for future games would be the ability to manage certain players in your minors, promotion etc and let the ai handle the rest. Like I said though imo despite what the manual says about having a player who isnt ready to be promoted etc hurt his development I dont really see this as possible due to the fact that it is a game with a model that it has to follow for every player. Anyway my main philosophy is I keep a short list of 10-15 players in my head that are my top prospects and the rest of my minor leaguers to hell with them. After all in real life an mlb team's draft is considered successful if 2 players from their entire draft ever make it to the show the rest is just a nice bonus.

[Killebrew]

This may be related, if not please ignore!

There is a function selection in league/game setup that says something like "Allow AI to make player moves". When I do test simming (solo mode - 1 human team versus all AI teams) and forget to select this "Allow AI to make player moves" drop down then the AI does not move players up and down in the minors. Once I select it the AI actually makes it's moves. Is it possible that is happening to some people who put the AI in charge of promotions and demotions of the minor leaguers? That actually seems pretty likely to me.

[StyxNCa]

I see no reason to not use ghost players in the minors. There is no need to keep garbage players hanging around down there other than to fill a roster spot. It's a lot easier to keep track of players when there are no trash players on the rosters. It becomes very difficult, for me anyway, to remember who "my" players are and who are the AI players, so I just don't have any AI players. This way, I just look at the minor league reports from the GM page and I know where everyone is. If I allow the AI to promote/demote, those players are, with few exceptions, always in the wrong league. If I also allow the AI to sign/release players (even with ghost players turned on) it will fill every roster spot on each team, not to mention release some of my better prospects. This irks me to no end. So better to use ghost players and turn the AI control off completely.

I don't care what record my minor league teams have since the minors are about developing players, not winning championships, although winning a championship is nice, but that doesn't concern me (and proof is looking at where all my teams down there are in the standings). I reckon some people out there want to win those championships so they need full rosters because, trust me, you won't win any divisions using ghost players.

Anyway, just my thoughts.

[Sweed]

endgame, I let the AI run my minors. With them full I simply don't have the time to micromanage them so I take the good with the bad. I haven't watched closely but I do believe it has done, over all, an adequate job of promoting players that should be moving up.

I also see, at least in my league, that unnecessary player movement has been pretty much eliminated. That is the 21 rated player moving from A to AA back to A etc. is a thing of the past. My minor league rosters stay pretty stable now in v9. I know some report they still have the issue so maybe I'm one of the lucky ones?

The worst thing I see on occasion is a guy stuck at a low level because of a logjam in the league above. If he's someone I'm counting on developing I'll cut someone above and usually the AI makes the right call and then moves him up. If the guy holding him back is also developing I may go another level up and make some cuts hoping to get him promoted also.

I know there's been a lot of discussion on improving pbp and Markus even commented in that thread that he intended to do so. That's all fine and good I always will defer to Markus and the way he wants to develop the game. But the issue with AI running minors, IMHO, is more important and could be helped a lot if Markus would add a feature that, at the minor league level, would let us..

Lock players at the level we wanted them to play at.

Lock them in the position we want them to play.

Lock them in the batting order and to start unless tired.

And of course similar locks for pitchers.



It's a feature that would help all players of OOTP. Online, solo, fast sim, play out every game. Hopefully it is on the list for OOTP 10.

[StyxNCa]

Originally Posted by Sweed

Lock them in the position we want them to play.

You can already do this one. As far as your other suggestions, they are great.

[endgame]

I need to revisit this again. I checked through all of the comments, including Killibrew's idea that maybe a checkbox wasn't cleared, but everything is as it is in my original settings. Nothing changes. No one moves unless I move them OR - as I did just before Spring Training is about to begin - I select Ask AI to Setup Complete Minor League System from the Transactions screen. Does it just not happen often, even monthly?

Should I have to select this option in order to get any promotions and demotions? If I recall, a couple of iterations ago, this is the way I handled it on a monthly basis. But if I recall correctly, I abandoned that concept because all it did was fill positions, and not necessarily promote/demote based on tools or talent.

[endgame]

bump. still curious.