star players left in AAA to collect dust

[Dwight Schrute]

another question by me

i have some leagues in the 1960 i am playing around with no recalc. i have noticed sometimes big stars are keep in AAA instead of one the big club. in the latest example 1962 league (starting in 62) i am the cubs. the giants keep orlando cepeda in AAA yet he is fully developed 5 star player (ratings 1-100 he has contact 72 and power 68) coming off a 1961 campaign of 46 hrs. willie mccovey moved to the OF and the player at first for the majority of the time was dick philips a .240 hitter 10hrs. cepeda far outrated him in every way even defensively. i realize its october now and seasons end but i cannot see how philips would even be considered. philips hits 8th in the order.

i have also seen this in another league started in 1960 with roberto clemente. he was fully developed 4.5 star player yet the AI keep in AAA for about 5 seasons with no one relly any better ahead of him.

this is quite annoying and reason for it and any work around for it?

also in the first league mention roberto clemente was released by the team w/o playing a game for the pirates-what the heck? we was not in the FA pool but found when looking at all players from league.

thanks for your comments in advance

[SandMan]

Uhm - Strange indeed. My only thought was that these players are not being rated by a scout highly or correctly. With recalc off you run the risk of players not developing. I have seen crap players take talent increases just enough to outshine real life stars who don't get the talent increases.... Just a thought.

[Dwight Schrute]

thanks forgot to mention coaches and scouts are off.

not sure why this happens

[Dwight Schrute]

this afternoon i thought i would do a work around and make a draft league from 1962. creating a new game, dumping all players into a draft pool, writing down 8 key players for each team then drafting them to those teams then running a draft to fill the team.

so i run into the same problem no cepeda, clemente, marichial, pascual in the draft pool and others (t gonzalez cf, mantilla, versalles). it seems that these players had some activity from AI before i dumped all the players. the action by the AI is being demoted, put on irrevocable waivers or just released.

interesting that i am having problems with the same players no matter the league. can my database be corrupted. any suggestions would be helpful.

waht to do?

[SteveP]

I have played 1960s leagues a lot, and have not experienced these problems at all. It's very hard to guess what might be happening to you. In your shoes, I would be considering radical steps, including a complete re-install. Have you done any customizing, in terms of settings or whatever? Don't know how that might explain things, but it's worth asking. I'd even consider posting in tech support -- what you are seeing just doesn't happen!

(Also, it's not because you are playing with recalc off. There is nothing wrong with playing historicals that way -- it might explain something different happening with a very small number of players, but nothing more than that.)

[Spritze]

Back in the days before re-calc this happened quite a lot in historical leagues and yes weirdly enough it was always the same players, Clemente, Spahn, Cepeda etc. For some reason OOTP just hated their particular sets of skills. They generally ended up playing very few years in the majors and normally only had one or two good years and a lot of pine time.
It was the implementation of recalc which made this challenge mosey on off into the sunset.
Nothing wrong with playing with re-calc off however. Just be willing to accept these sorts of oddnesses. Comes with the territory.

[SteveP]

Originally Posted by Spritze

Back in the days before re-calc this happened quite a lot in historical leagues and yes weirdly enough it was always the same players, Clemente, Spahn, Cepeda etc. For some reason OOTP just hated their particular sets of skills. They generally ended up playing very few years in the majors and normally only had one or two good years and a lot of pine time.
It was the implementation of recalc which made this challenge mosey on off into the sunset.
Nothing wrong with playing with re-calc off however. Just be willing to accept these sorts of oddnesses. Comes with the territory.

Have to disagree. I actually ran a series of tests with OOTP9, to see what exactly the differences were between using recalc or no recalc (and also neutral vs real stats). Having recalc off did not produce extreme differences from real life, and certainly nothing like what was described in the OP. Whether you have recalc on or off, you will get some players who have better or worse careers than in real life, but with recalc off the "surprises" have a somewhat higher level of unpredictability. However, 80-90% of players will perform pretty much as they did IRL. Recalc off did not cause star players, including the ones named in this thread, to sit on the bench in my tests. I happen to like playing with recalc off, and I hate to see people discouraged from using that option if they find it appealing.

I can't speak to how the game performed in versions prior to OOTP9, and perhaps recalc was necessary to offset flaws in the player development model. However, I think you should look at other possible explanations for the problems described here.

[Dwight Schrute]

i wondered if it was the database. i was using sprtize's. so i moved over to gambo 2009 but the same thing happened to the same players. in a draft league 1962, cepeda released, clemente in minors with a much worst player in his place, marichal, pascual in AAA..argh! even with a new database.

thinking of re install any thoughts

thanks again for the comments thus far

ps all i need for re install is the order id number, right?

[Spritze]

Originally Posted by SteveP

Have to disagree.

Have to re-disagree with the disagreement postulated by the excellent Mr. Steve P.

I also tested this using Versions 5,6,7 and 8 and found the same challenges as Mr. Dwight.

Re-installing won't fix it. Only recalc will.

Or don't recalc and just be aware it happens sometimes. Not in every league exactly the same way but in general it will happen in generically similar ways in most leagues.

Just keep in mind that to the OOTP AI Clemente is decidedly not the Clemente of human memory and what recalc does is force him to be the Clemente the human player expects him to be and to have the value the human player expects. Otherwise the game uses Clemente in the same way it would use a Joe Slobotnik with Clementes stats.

[SteveP]

Originally Posted by Spritze

Have to re-disagree with the disagreement postulated by the excellent Mr. Steve P.

I also tested this using Versions 5,6,7 and 8 and found the same challenges as Mr. Dwight.

Re-installing won't fix it. Only recalc will.

Then maybe this is one item where the game works better on a Mac than on a PC. I certainly urge people to run their own tests and check their comfort level about the results they get.

I do think your explanation using the example of Clemente is reasonably apt. With recalc on, Clemente may have a couple of bad seasons, but you know he's going to perform in the future. With recalc off, you can't know for sure that this will happen: he may have the potential but it never pays off. For my money, I think that makes playing the game more like being in the shoes of an owner, GM or manager of the day. If seeing a Clemente or a McCovey or a Cepeda have a bad career is too painful to contemplate, then you have to use recalc.

Having said that, I will stick to my overall assessment that having recalc off does not produce a lot of historically distorted results -- and I don't think it explains what the OP describes IMHO. But that's about all I can contribute. I hope the original poster finds a satisfactory solution.

[Spritze]

Originally Posted by SteveP

If seeing a Clemente or a McCovey or a Cepeda have a bad career is too painful to contemplate, then you have to use recalc.

Having said that, I will stick to my overall assessment that having recalc off does not produce a lot of historically distorted results.

I also conclusively concurr with both of these statements and assessments by Mr. SteveP.

[Dwight Schrute]

latest update. .
i made the 62 league a recalc to see if that would work. dumped all players into a draft pool and ....NO CLEMENTE, MARICHAL, CEPEDA. prob other but at that point i just about threw the computer across the room. ARGH!!

so it makes no difference recalc no recalc.. using spritze 2008db

[Dwight Schrute]

so i think of using the editor to place these players on the correct team- i drafted 4 players from each team as a bae for the club than hold the rest of the draft. so SF gets mays, mccovey, cepeda and marichal as their 4.

i was able to pull up the league in the selection field but when i get to the team, i select it i stays on the team in the selection field but then goes blank. never showed up on the team. i was able to place on different team-baltimore- well than i think to force the trade to get him on the team. i set it up than the team rep says " i am sorry a player you offer does not match our league rules!" this is a one for one deal cepeda for a scrub-so apparently these player i am having problems with do not match the league rules.

[SteveP]

Originally Posted by Dwight Schrute

so i think of using the editor to place these players on the correct team- i drafted 4 players from each team as a bae for the club than hold the rest of the draft. so SF gets mays, mccovey, cepeda and marichal as their 4.

Needless to say, you shouldn't have to be doing work-arounds like this. Are all these problems occurring with the Spritze db? If so, maybe that offers a clue as to what to investigate. I've only looked at that db, never really did anything with it, so can't speculate. Do you have these problems using the Lahman db?

In any event, don't keep hitting your head against a brick wall. There's some technical breakdown involved.

[Dwight Schrute]

after the draft the a/i put those said player in AAA...now its still january so we will see.. next i will try the lahman... do you sim historical, steve? which db do you use?

thanks

[SteveP]

Originally Posted by Dwight Schrute

after the draft the a/i put those said player in AAA...now its still january so we will see.. next i will try the lahman... do you sim historical, steve? which db do you use?

thanks

I don't sim historical, I play historical. (in other words, I play it game-by-game, not season-by-season). Mostly 1960s, but not exclusively. Part of the attraction of that period is that the leagues are smaller which makes it easier to fine-tune the AI for each of the teams to get more realistic behavior.

I use the lahman, but I've learned some tricks for adding fictional players that aren't too highly rated, so that I get a more robust league (I only use 2 levels of minor leagues at most). I decided not to use the Spritze db because I want the players to be on the correct teams for whatever year I am doing. I have tried to use Gambo's db, but there is a bug that occurs when using neutralized stats. The bug is only on the Mac (for all I know, it may only be occurring on my Mac ), so that's out for me until it gets fixed in OOTP10 (I hope). Also the neutralized stats, whether it's the Garlon/Spritze that come with the game or Gambo's, have a tendency to cause star players to end up on starting lineups a year or two too early, and also to stay starters until they retire, which annoys me perhaps more than it should. I also ran into some problems with pitcher ratings with the Gambo, but never got very far into figuring out what exactly was causing those problems.

[TribeFanInNC]

I typically do what SteveP does too, using the Lahman db with few minors (I usually only use AAA which pretty much functions as a reserve squad with recalc on).

I unfortunately don't have any experience with the other DBs. I've never had problems with guys getting stuck in the minors, but I have had problems with guys having to share ABs or IPs. I had a solo league where the 61 Giants traded for Robin Roberts and somebody else (I forget who) and pushed Jack Sanford and Juan Marichal to the bullpen despite the fact that they were perfectly good starters. I subsequently traded for Sanford at a discount, but that is another story

I also don't draft usually either - I prefer my players to end up where they are 'supposed' to. It could be when you draft the players, there could be clogs in the system they end up in, like Clemente is stuck behind Roger Maris or another hot performing player. Or like the situation I described where the AI acquires too many SPs.

[stevebydac]

To chime in -- I am testing a fictional league now, and I am seeing the same thing. But my case is perhaps more bizarre. I have three "major leagues". One is MLB equivalent, the others are set at .960 and .920. The .920 league has several players like you describe.

The worst example is a 1B for New York, Kawasaki. He is 32, has a career 1.146 OPS in the this lower-level major league, and has been named Outstanding Hitter five times and won a Triple Crown. Yet he has been waived 6 times in his career, and now sits in their AAA team with a 1.297 OPS after 57 games. It's not like he's slipped -- he had a 1.039 OPS for the big club last season.

And, because I have two better major leagues, he hasn't been grabbed by anybody else either! (free agents can move among my leagues). Really crazy.

[SteveP]

Originally Posted by stevebydac

To chime in -- I am testing a fictional league now, and I am seeing the same thing. But my case is perhaps more bizarre. I have three "major leagues". One is MLB equivalent, the others are set at .960 and .920. The .920 league has several players like you describe.

It was easier for me to comment about anomalies in a 1960s league, because I have done so many of those. In your case, there is another possibility to consider. One of the known problems with OOTP is inconsistent or poor AI player evaluation tendencies that impact things like trades, waivers, free agent hiring, promotion/demotion. This is one of the specific areas of planned improvement in OOTP10.

[stevebydac]

Thank you for the input Steve.