Rookie talent drops - immediately after draft?

[sox9418]

Hello,

The ATHL has just conducted our mid-season draft in our second season in v2007. The league does not use scouts and is a fictional 24-team league with 10 rounds for the amateur draft. Multiple owners are commenting that their prospects are going from great to dirt within the first few weeks of the draft. The majority of these drops in potential are seen with no commentary in the development reports. Of the top 19 picks in Round 1, 6 experienced significant to devastating drops, all within a few weeks of the draft.

Examples of some of the drops:

Contact 6, Power 5 to Contact 4, Power 2
Stuff 8 to Stuff 4
Overall 7-7-7-7-10 when drafted dropped to a 4-7-5-5-10

I saw comments in this thread:

http://www.ootpdevelopments.com/boar...ml#post2411412

that the talent hits are fairly well known - is this the case? Is there a fix or workaround? Are the symptoms we're seeing, dramatic drops in the weeks immediately following the draft, what has been reported earlier? My searches of previous posts seem to have players fizzling out over the course of the season or the next few seasons - I didn't see too many say that they blow up immediately.

Thanks

[Nutlaw]

How many levels of minor leagues are you using? Players who perform exceedingly poorly are more likely to take talent hits. If you are putting these new draftees up against competition that is too strong for them, then that is likely your problem.

[sox9418]

We have three minor league levels - A, AA, AAA. These players all went into Single-A ball. Do we need to add a Rookie level?

[drprestwood]

It should be noted that a lot of these players appeared to be performing just fine...excellently, in some cases. And yet, there appeared to be a talent crash.

[Nutlaw]

Originally Posted by drprestwood

It should be noted that a lot of these players appeared to be performing just fine...excellently, in some cases. And yet, there appeared to be a talent crash.

They were performing well at the time of the talent drop, specifically? If most of them were performing well, then you probably don't need another level of minors.

Well, there is some random chance that players will take potential hits. Furthermore, the younger they are, the more likely they are to gain or lose potential. Large drops without mention in the development reports is unusual. Usually only smaller potential drops go unreported. You don't happen to know whether they might have had a series of smaller drops, do you?

All in all, only about half of first round prospects are supposed to really pan out in the end. This fits real life data fairly well. I don't know if you are experiencing a bug or not, but realize that potential drops will happen fairly regularly to young players.

[drprestwood]

Certainly true. The shock here was that it was so many players so soon after the draft and that the jumps were so substantial. Most of the players hadn't had smaller drops - they hadn't even been in the league for a month.

We also saw a few established prospects take absurd drops - I had a starting pitcher in AAA who looked to be about ready that I was about to call up who was 8/7/9, and then took a hit and was 4/7/8 and lost 2 grades on his velocity. I can't remember seeing a drop like that outside of severe injury cases.

[sox9418]

Nutlaw,

The drops continue and the natives are starting to get restless. Is this something we should supply a league file for Markus to look at? Any way to tell if it's not the normal development progression? Should we be implementing development modifiers to offset this behavior?

[injury log]

This is indeed how the game is designed; to ensure some prospects don't pan out, the game subjects them to instantaneous, often debilitating, Potential hits. It is not a bug. Of course, many users have complained that this is unrealistic- for what possible reason could the player's Potential have changed so suddenly and so drastically? I certainly think this would feel more realistic if the decline in Potential was gradual, not immediate.

Still, that's how the game works, and these Potential hits are common and severe; as Nutlaw points out, half of the first round of a draft class should not make it to the Majors, so many hits are needed. As Nutlaw points out, hits are more common when players are overmatched, so adding a Rookie level might help. Otherwise, you have at least minimal control in Game Setup- you can lower the 'Talent Change Randomness', which will mean that hits happen less often, though they will be just as harsh. There are other Player Development settings, but I don't think they will address the issue.

[Nutlaw]

Originally Posted by injury log

Otherwise, you have at least minimal control in Game Setup- you can lower the 'Talent Change Randomness', which will mean that hits happen less often, though they will be just as harsh.

As IL pointed out, you can go to Game Setup-> Player & Picture Options (tab) -> Player Options (heading) to find the Talent Change Randomness setting. As is written in-game, the settings are: (100 = average, 1 = minimum, 200 = maximum). If you don't like the number of talent drops that you are seeing, I would recommend running a few tests with various values to find a level that you and your league are comfortable with.

[sox9418]

Thanks IL, Nutlaw - we'll play around with it.

I think it would be easier to stomach if we had more of those 6-8 round picks coming out of nowhere, but we'll keep an eye on it.

Thanks!

[Nutlaw]

Okay, I'll close this one out for now then. However, if you need any further assistance, please don't hesitate to ask questions in Tech Support.