Realistic Minor League Stats

[neojonas]

I would like to have the most realistic modern minor league stats. I have the standard MAL league with full minors and a college and high school feeder league. I've noticed as I go down in league quality the batters dominate more and more. By the time I get to HS feeder league the average ERA every year is in the 9's and average batting average is about .300.

I'm curious what suggestions you all have to make minor league stats as realistic as possible. I noticed the MLB quickstart has different League Total Modifiers. If I recall I think the AAA ones were about .1 lower. Are the modifiers for the MLB quickstart better to use for the MAL standard league default modifiers?

The other thing I was wondering if people are using is the "Automatically control in-game engine to match league totals (only recommended for minors)" for their minor leagues? I see the MLB quickstart uses these by default also.

Just wondering if anyone has experimented with these and have any suggestions. Thanks!

[Markus Heinsohn]

I suggest using the default settings that the MLB quickstart uses. When you create a standard game in OOTP 10, these settings should already be there by default too...

[KySteveH]

Originally Posted by Markus Heinsohn

I suggest using the default settings that the MLB quickstart uses. When you create a standard game in OOTP 10, these settings should already be there by default too...

The MLB quickstart has minor league modifiers all default (1.000). Furthermore, the league totals are the same for each level, but do not match the actual (real-life) league totals for that league. Last night I ran some sims and each level was different...One Rookie league had a league average ERA over 10.00, and the leader was around 7.50. On the other hand, some leagues were pitching-dominated. The problem seems to have been made much worse, not better, with patch 1.

I guess I will continue to fiddle with the knobs, but this seems like it's much harder than it has to be. To me, if I edit the league totals for a certain league to have a batting average of .265, the BA should be about .265 for that league. .260 would be fine , and so would .270, but .320 isn't. Am I expecting too much...maybe so.

I wonder if I should stop messing with the league totals, and starting editing the PCMs for minor leagues. The PCMs are offense-only, so if I lower homeruns for a certain league, maybe I will get less home runs. Or more. Or neither. I guess I'll need to test.

[KySteveH]

Originally Posted by KySteveH

The MLB quickstart has minor league modifiers all default (1.000). Furthermore, the league totals are the same for each level, but do not match the actual (real-life) league totals for that league. Last night I ran some sims and each level was different...One Rookie league had a league average ERA over 10.00, and the leader was around 7.50. On the other hand, some leagues were pitching-dominated. The problem seems to have been made much worse, not better, with patch 1.

I guess I will continue to fiddle with the knobs, but this seems like it's much harder than it has to be. To me, if I edit the league totals for a certain league to have a batting average of .265, the BA should be about .265 for that league. .260 would be fine , and so would .270, but .320 isn't. Am I expecting too much...maybe so.

I wonder if I should stop messing with the league totals, and starting editing the PCMs for minor leagues. The PCMs are offense-only, so if I lower homeruns for a certain league, maybe I will get less home runs. Or more. Or neither. I guess I'll need to test.

Wow, here's something that is disappointing...looks like some farm teams have only 10 pitchers onm the roster. That seems to have changed from the pre-patch 1 release as well. Would anything have changed in the logic of how OOTP decides how many picthers to keep, I wonder? Can I change it back?

[neojonas]

Originally Posted by Markus Heinsohn

I suggest using the default settings that the MLB quickstart uses. When you create a standard game in OOTP 10, these settings should already be there by default too...

Sorry I misspoke (mistyped I guess). The League Totals and their modifiers are the same between the MLB quickstart and the MAL standard league by default. The difference between these two are the Sabermetric Player Creation Modifiers. The MLB quickstart has them much lower then the defaults from a MAL standard setup.

Not sure if it's the PCM difference making minor league stats different or the fact that the MLB quickstart has "Automatically control in-game engine to match league totals (only recommended for minors)" checked for their minor leagues. These are the only differences I can see off hand between the two setups.

[KySteveH]

Originally Posted by neojonas

Sorry I misspoke (mistyped I guess). The League Totals and their modifiers are the same between the MLB quickstart and the MAL standard league by default. The difference between these two are the Sabermetric Player Creation Modifiers. The MLB quickstart has them much lower then the defaults from a MAL standard setup.

Not sure if it's the PCM difference making minor league stats different or the fact that the MLB quickstart has "Automatically control in-game engine to match league totals (only recommended for minors)" checked for their minor leagues. These are the only differences I can see off hand between the two setups.

Hmmm...any chance you might post the PCMs from the MAL setup? I only have stats exports right now, not the full game.

Also, do you fully understand that checkbox you mentioned? I can't really get my head around it.

[SteveP]

I'll try to throw a little clarity into this, if I can:

First, I haven't done much with the 2009 MLB game, to see what happens with the new minor league League Totals, so keep that in mind.

Second, don't mess with the League Totals unless you understand what you are doing. Basically, if you increase one of them (HRs, for example) you will actually decrease the resulting stats. If you are going to edit the LTs, you have to edit all of them. And I think the only practical way to do that is to edit in league totals from RL, if you think you have a better set of those than the ones that appear for that league in the game.

Third, you can edit the League Total Modifiers (LTMs) to your heart's content, and they tend to work in a pretty straight forward way (raise one by 10%, and resulting stats will be about 10% higher). However, there are limitations on what you can do in minor leagues with LTMs.

If you have the new option checked, to have the game engine control results in the minor league, then the LTMs don't do anything. They are pre-empted. OTOH, it is probably a good idea to have option checked, if you have LTs for your minor league which are different from the LTs in the major league (whether they were created that way by the game, or you edited in your own LTs).

If the LTs for your minor league are the same as the major league, editing the LTMs for the minor league will have an impact, but only for a season if you are playing with the automatically calculate league total modifiers after every season option checked. If that is checked, the new LTMs that are calculated for the major league (at the start of the next preseason) will automatically be copied to all of your minor leagues. So, you would have to do your own manual edits again.

[neojonas]

Thanks for the clarity SteveP. I've been reading a lot of your posts on this subject and they really help.

Ignore my questions about minor league sabermetric PCM above. Those wouldn't really be causing weird minor league stats because I realized those are only used on league creation. 20 years later in a sim, those numbers don't really do a thing.

I think I'm going to have to play around with these 3 checkboxes - (1)"Automatically adjust league totals modifiers after each season for historical accuracy", (2)"Automatically import historical player creation modifiers", and (3)"Automatically control in-game engine to match league totals (only recommended for minors)".

Since I'm doing a fictional league starting in 2009 and simming out 20 years to build up history, I didn't think I'd want to use any of the "historical" checkboxes, but I'm thinking about trying checkboxes 1 and 3 to keep the minor league stats as constant as possible.

Of course I just saw the manual suggests "Note: We strongly recommend you use these two options in conjunction. Note: If you are not using historical leagues or fictional leagues based on historical data, you should leave both of these boxes unchecked.". So now I'm worried checkboxes 1 and 2 will mess something up on my fictional league, especially checkbox 1 only. But I guess the MLB quickstart has all these checkboxes checked and it's not a fictional league.