Fix Minor Lg career management

teak88 · 01-23-2008, 02:59 PM

Maybe there is a way to do this - so pls tell me - but I don't think so...

When I have the AI manage "minor league transactions" or "set up minor leagues", it does so w/o regard to where a player is in their career; ie, it moves players up and DOWN in the minor leagues based upon their relative skill/rating. Thus an avg C or 2Bman may move up to AAA, but then later be moved back down to A or AA because some one better has come along; even tho he's 27 yrs old. If you send down a journeyman MR from the MLs to AAA, he will often end up in A ball.

However, irl players only go up; with a very few exceptions. They go from A to AA and are expected to continue to develop. If they do, they eventually get promoted to AAA and so on; if they don't, they are released/traded. There is always someone better coming along. A tough world, but that's the way it is. Up or out!

And, in practice in ootp, a lot of these 24-27 yo journeymen end up istaying n AA, thus blocking younger talent from moving up.

Now I can manage this manually and I do; and having age limits on the minor leagues helps a bit. But it would be great if the AI could model career management better.

Anyone have a work around?

Who Killed Kenny? · 01-23-2008, 04:02 PM

You could try changing the settings for the AI to favor younger players. This has kept my minors fairly young although I do see the problem you've brought up too.

wlight1 · 01-23-2008, 07:43 PM

I think this is a case where OOTP just differs slightly from real-world MLB. In baseball, if you're a 27-year-old pitcher and you can't get AAA batters out, your career is pretty much over. It's assumed that whatever talent the scouts once saw in you, will either never develop or was never there in the first place.

In OOTP, we have a little more information. We know that a guy may just be a "late bloomer," and we can tell the difference between those guys and the players who will never ever (barring a massive talent spike) be worthwhile players at AAA or above. There's some reasonable purpose behind sending a player with that profile back to AA or even A to see if he'll continue to develop at least to the point you can eventually squeeze 30 good innings out of him with the big club.

And as is always said, the game doesn't know the names. If a guy can't hack it at AAA, or is the 13th-best pitcher at that level when a better player comes down the pipeline, who's to say it's better for the organization to cut him rather than bust him down to AA? I think the players themselves in OOTP are a little less fungible, because you have to have a full roster of scrubs supporting your handful of hot prospects at each level. In real baseball, there are so many millions of kids out there that there's some idea that any given minor leaguer has a shot to someday play in the majors. Whereas in OOTP, 90% of players are pretty much guaranteed to never be useful other than as placeholders, and for the most part we know which players those are.

And it's not like it never happens in real baseball, either. Check out Matt Garza's 2007 journey.

01-23-2008, 02:59 PM	#1 (permalink)
teak88 Minors (Double A) Join Date: Apr 2004 Posts: 107	Fix Minor Lg career management Maybe there is a way to do this - so pls tell me - but I don't think so... When I have the AI manage "minor league transactions" or "set up minor leagues", it does so w/o regard to where a player is in their career; ie, it moves players up and DOWN in the minor leagues based upon their relative skill/rating. Thus an avg C or 2Bman may move up to AAA, but then later be moved back down to A or AA because some one better has come along; even tho he's 27 yrs old. If you send down a journeyman MR from the MLs to AAA, he will often end up in A ball. However, irl players only go up; with a very few exceptions. They go from A to AA and are expected to continue to develop. If they do, they eventually get promoted to AAA and so on; if they don't, they are released/traded. There is always someone better coming along. A tough world, but that's the way it is. Up or out! And, in practice in ootp, a lot of these 24-27 yo journeymen end up istaying n AA, thus blocking younger talent from moving up. Now I can manage this manually and I do; and having age limits on the minor leagues helps a bit. But it would be great if the AI could model career management better. Anyone have a work around?

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01-23-2008, 04:02 PM	#2 (permalink)
Who Killed Kenny? Minors (Triple A) Join Date: Mar 2007 Posts: 216	You could try changing the settings for the AI to favor younger players. This has kept my minors fairly young although I do see the problem you've brought up too.

01-23-2008, 07:43 PM	#3 (permalink)
wlight1 Minors (Double A) Join Date: Dec 2007 Posts: 186	I think this is a case where OOTP just differs slightly from real-world MLB. In baseball, if you're a 27-year-old pitcher and you can't get AAA batters out, your career is pretty much over. It's assumed that whatever talent the scouts once saw in you, will either never develop or was never there in the first place. In OOTP, we have a little more information. We know that a guy may just be a "late bloomer," and we can tell the difference between those guys and the players who will never ever (barring a massive talent spike) be worthwhile players at AAA or above. There's some reasonable purpose behind sending a player with that profile back to AA or even A to see if he'll continue to develop at least to the point you can eventually squeeze 30 good innings out of him with the big club. And as is always said, the game doesn't know the names. If a guy can't hack it at AAA, or is the 13th-best pitcher at that level when a better player comes down the pipeline, who's to say it's better for the organization to cut him rather than bust him down to AA? I think the players themselves in OOTP are a little less fungible, because you have to have a full roster of scrubs supporting your handful of hot prospects at each level. In real baseball, there are so many millions of kids out there that there's some idea that any given minor leaguer has a shot to someday play in the majors. Whereas in OOTP, 90% of players are pretty much guaranteed to never be useful other than as placeholders, and for the most part we know which players those are. And it's not like it never happens in real baseball, either. Check out Matt Garza's 2007 journey.