Do you guys play with ghost players?

[Libid21]

I'm trying to play a realistic league but a bunch of my minor leaguers got injured. I don't know if I should go through all the trouble of signing a bunch of one-year stop gap players or if I should just turn on 'Ghost Players'... what do you guys think?

[Sparrow]

Originally Posted by Libid21

I'm trying to play a realistic league but a bunch of my minor leaguers got injured. I don't know if I should go through all the trouble of signing a bunch of one-year stop gap players or if I should just turn on 'Ghost Players'... what do you guys think?

I always prefer signing players to make it work, but I understand the argument for using ghost players as well. Personally, I like the level of management required to keep the minors competitive, and developing players simultaneously.

[Afino]

I try to keep a full minor league system on each level, but sometimes I come up a couple players short and I like ghost players so I don't have to go sign scrubs that I don't care about anyways.

[SteveP]

Originally Posted by Libid21

a realistic league

You have to say more about what that means. Historical often needs ghost players because the Lahman DB doesn't produce enough "real" players to deal with injuries, etc. A 2009 league doesn't need ghost players. There are some situations that aren't clear one way or another.

[BMW]

Originally Posted by Libid21

I'm trying to play a realistic league but a bunch of my minor leaguers got injured. I don't know if I should go through all the trouble of signing a bunch of one-year stop gap players or if I should just turn on 'Ghost Players'... what do you guys think?

The real bottom line is do you enjoy signing one-year stop gap players? If that level of micro managing doesn't interest you, that's what the Ghost Players option is for.

I have two online leagues that I am in and they both have Ghost Players turned on. It just reflects the fact that we can't hold up simming because one of 30 owners doesn't have a single-A shortstop.

I probably would use Ghost Players if I was trying to sim a season in a solo league really fast. If I'm at the point where I'm telling the sim to not bother to stop if a player is injured for a week, I probably also don't want to deal with some 20 year old Rookie Ball player getting a bruised elbow.

Another way to alleviate this without Ghost Players is to set the roster sizes of your minor league teams to more than 25 players each. Set them to 28 or 30 so you can carry those extra fielders.

In real life, the lower levels of the minors actually have 30-35 man rosters in order that when there's your first injury of the season at AAA, you can grab a backup from lower levels and not have to go and start signing players.

[snepp]

I basically do what BMW said, keep a couple extra players around to avoid as much shuffling as possible. I don't DL minor leaguers unless they're going to be out for multiple months, or there are too many injuries at the same time (rare), which leaves lineups intact for when the players are healthy again.

27 - AAA
27 - AA
30 - A
40 - R