Strange Problem with a Fictional League and CubbyFans' rosters

[ShaneCarson]

I have created a fictional league of 12 teams and 12 minor league teams. When I go to do the inaugural draft I have been importing rosters that were exported from Cubbyfans' roster set as we want to use real MLB players. For some reason though, it is setting the majority of starting pitchers to middle relievers. I am not sure why it is doing this and it certainly hinders the draft. I am not sure if the CPU teams will draft based on the fact that they are MR or ability and I have missed out on pitchers I thought were gone but were in fact just listed under the relievers. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to fix this? If needed I can upload the league template along with the exported rosters .txt file.

BTW, I am playing the game on a Mac if that is any help. Thanks!

[ShaneCarson]

Can someone please help me with this? Any ideas would be appreciated.

[Kelric]

Manually edit every pitcher in Commish mode so their Position properly reflects their Endurance.

That's all I can think of.

No idea if the AI will properly understand that a 9 out of 10 endurance MR should be used as a starter or not. I would hope yes, but one never knows.

[ShaneCarson]

That seems like it would take ages.

[1998 Yankees]

Originally Posted by ShaneCarson

Can someone please help me with this? Any ideas would be appreciated.

You say you already have rosters.txt exported? If you have Excel, I would call up the file in that and tweak the endurance ratings upward on selected players. It's a mod, after all; low numbers in that column could account for SP's being converted to MR's by the game.

If you know Excel, it would not be that hard to carefully sort the database (the whole thing, not just the column) by endurance ratings and use paste special, multiply to nudge them up by some factor. Bear in mind that the base ratings for this range from 1 to 250. I don't think the database has to be put back in the orginal order, but make no other changes within rows or columns.

Back up the game, import the edited file which you have saved in csv comma delimited format (extension .csv, which you have to change to .txt for the game to recognize it before importing), and see what happens. Of course, as Kelric mentions, the game might not acknowledge the changes but I think it's a good bet.

[wlight1]

I am now having a similar problem in a new fictional league. This may be coincidental, because all my players are fictionally created. The season's just started on April 1, and all the teams just made their cuts for the end of Spring Training. Every pitcher (only about 20 of them, it's a 12-team league so far) in the FA pool & on the waiver wire is marked MR; all but a handful have Endurance ratings over 15 and a couple even have 19s & 20s.

Is this a function of guys getting pushed down the depth chart on the Spring Training staff, getting marked 'MR' by their teams, then being released still called 'MR'? If the game does this, why do we even maintain the archaic pitching 'role' designations if everything is based on talent and endurance now? I'm afraid these players will ask for less because they don't "know" that they can be starting pitchers... and would they ever get converted back to SP by a team needing a spot start?

[1998 Yankees]

Originally Posted by wlight1

Is this a function of guys getting pushed down the depth chart on the Spring Training staff, getting marked 'MR' by their teams, then being released still called 'MR'? If the game does this, why do we even maintain the archaic pitching 'role' designations if everything is based on talent and endurance now? I'm afraid these players will ask for less because they don't "know" that they can be starting pitchers... and would they ever get converted back to SP by a team needing a spot start?

This interested me because I play fictionally. I bolded the two sentences which I think are at play.

The AI has the capability (and right?) to convert player positions and possibly at this time there happened to be an unusual number of pitchers with high endurance. Some were converted to MR before being dropped; it would be interesting to see if some of them were converted back to SP if and when they are reacquired.

I think this is as it should be, playing fictionally. Don't forget OP's problem was from using real rosters containing players who, IRL, were never relievers. The AI does not know that, of course.

You made a good point, though, that OP may take into consideration in his game.

[wlight1]

Originally Posted by 1998 Yankees

The AI has the capability (and right?) to convert player positions and possibly at this time there happened to be an unusual number of pitchers with high endurance. Some were converted to MR before being dropped; it would be interesting to see if some of them were converted back to SP if and when they are reacquired.

I think this is as it should be, playing fictionally. Don't forget OP's problem was from using real rosters containing players who, IRL, were never relievers. The AI does not know that, of course.

Of course, you're right. AI-controlled teams have every right to call their players what they choose -- as long as there is some rhyme and reason to it. It looks to me like there were several teams where a ton of pitchers got ST invites, and when the pitching depth chart ran, everybody that wasn't one of the top 5 starters got slotted in the bullpen and re-assigned to the 'MR' role designation. Then when Opening Day rolls around, it's time to pare down the roster, a bunch of guys get pushed through waivers, and this set of players keeps the 'MR' role.

I wouldn't be surprised if this same phenomenon was related to what the OP is seeing, because the MLB rosters assume 30 teams, and with only 12 teams in his fictional league, there would be a huge number of players that we know & think of as 'starters' that would be pushed into bullpen roles. Of course, in his case he's seeing it before any players are even on teams, which is interesting.

Anyway, my point is, I have no problem with this happening, assuming that the pitchers in question "know" that they have high endurance ratings, i.e. are capable of being starters, when they're looking for compensation in the form of contracts or extensions -- it would be unfortunate for them to get locked into the 'MR' role because of this circumstance. I'll shortlist them all and see what happens to them. One guy actually just got signed on 3/31; one of my fears with all the improved realism of roster management in OOTP8 was that the AI wouldn't be able to keep up... this is either a classic case of an AI team signing a guy to a slightly above-minimum contract and then releasing him, eating the salary (which used to happen all the time and was just a fact of life with solo leagues), or the team in question is just trying to sneak him through waivers during a busy transaction period, which would actually be pretty smart. Time will tell.

[wlight1]

Originally Posted by wlight1

Time will tell.

For the record: I've been checking back on these guys, and it's now early May in my league. There were 10 guys under discussion that I had originally seen on the waiver wire. 9 of them were either claimed on waivers or retained by their original team. 8 of those 9 were sent down to AAA, 1 is still at the major league level. All 9 are currently listed as SPs. The 1 who was released is still marked as MR.

So I'm looking at this as further evidence of my hunch -- these players were spot-start/long-relief quality guys on teams with 5-man rotations, so were called relievers and put on waivers. Once cleared waivers and sent to AAA, they're now good enough in context to be used as starters, and are put back into those roles.

Just in case anyone else was still interested.