Draft size

[DUBBOH11]

I changed the draft size to 15 and got a message saying that if I didn't have 25 rounds the league might run of of players in the future. Has anyone ever seen this pro blem. I was thinking about making it even smaller. I do have ghost players on. Any help on this would be appreciated.

[elfdog428]

I have never run into a message like that but it probably refers to the fact that if you continue to run the draft, the teams in your Major level could eventually run out of players due to age, injury, whatever else. Ghost players only affect the minors. Depending on the number of teams you have in your league, you will need to try to equal out any loss of players with the draft or you may have to create some fictional ones as the years pass by.

[satchel]

The NPBL (link in my sig) is a 28 team league (expanded from 24 six seasons ago) and we've always used four- or five-round drafts (for 32 seasons), and never had a problem.

Think of it this way: take the total number of players in the draft, and figure out how many people are going to be retiring from your league every year. Are as many people going to be retiring every year, from each team, as the team will be gaining in the draft? If your league has a typical age spread, you're going to see an average of about five people per team per year retiring, if even that many, due to age or career-ending injuries. Take a couple of teams and look at their oldest players. How many, at a time, are going to pass the age of 35?

The concern that your league will run out of players, due to too small of a draft, is minimal, in my opinion.

[jmknpk2]

I remember seeing that message, but haven't in a while. Are you running version 9? I have been running several OOTP9 leagues with 10 or 15 rounds without any problem.

[Curtis]

Originally Posted by DUBBOH11

I changed the draft size to 15 and got a message saying that if I didn't have 25 rounds the league might run out of players in the future. Has anyone ever seen this problem? I was thinking about making it even smaller. I do have ghost players on. Any help on this would be appreciated.

Yes, running outof players has been known to happen. Since you're playing with ghosts you don't need to keep your minors filled, which the game engine doesn't appear to recognize. If all you're interested in are warm bodies, then as satchel said, you should be fine with fifteen rounds, or even fewer.

How many affiliated minors per organization do you have? I believe the game engine is set to alert you if the number of rounds of draft drops to less than five times the number of minor affiliates.

I personally find that (four times minors + four for the majors/international level) is sufficient. If your organization has four minor affiliates it works out the same (20 rounds). If three or fewer you get more rounds, and if five or more you get fewer rounds than the default.

The thing you might encounter, even if you don't run out of players, is that you might run out of worthwhile players. If you drop much below the recommended minimum you might lose out on late round surprises, and the overall quality of the league could decline over time. I suspect that satchel's league may not use affiliated minors, in which case they wouldn't run into that problem.