Draft Talent Seems Low

[hank9481]

OOTP Guru Community,

I have a specific inquiry that I'm hoping someone can simply answer for me. We've just converted our 6.5 league to OOTP 2007/8, and I have a feeling our talent pool is inflated.

We've now gotten to the draft, and with all creation modifiers set simply to 1.000, our draft pool is full of what seems to be extremely below-average talent. We use a 2 to 8 talent scale, and there are maybe 3 to 5 players in a pool of 1000 who have more than a 6 in talent in any area. The rest are 2 through 5's with 4's seeming to be the greatest concentration.

We don't have scouts on; however, I've attempted to create some draft pools in side files to see what might be the problem and then copy these over to our file. Each time, the ratings seem to change leading me to believe our league's talent pool is so significantly inflated that it's causing the draft pool to appear to be below average.

My question is is this possible or does the 2 to 8 talent scale pull strictly from the player's actual ratings? For example, under the editor, if a player is a 175 in stuff, does that always correlate to a certain number on the 2 to 8 scale, or can it change based on the overall talent level in the league?

Otherwise, it seems my league has a problem with the draft that I cannot explain or fix. I'm hoping someone can provide me some help or point me in the right direction.

It just stands to reason that in a pool of 1000 players, there would be a couple 7 and 8's out there in terms of potential. Right now, there are none. I'm trying to find an explanation as to why.

[wlight1]

Originally Posted by hank9481

My question is is this possible or does the 2 to 8 talent scale pull strictly from the player's actual ratings? For example, under the editor, if a player is a 175 in stuff, does that always correlate to a certain number on the 2 to 8 scale,

Yes, that one. Those ratings are on an absolute scale, and are not relative to other players of the league. The only rating that is comparative to the rest of the league is the OVERALL and POTENTIAL ratings (usually denoted by the "star" ratings).

As for the underlying cause of this problem, someone much smarter than me will be along shortly to help you.

[darkcloud4579]

It's just how it works. I find increasing the player creation modifiers tends to help this along some. It's all a matter of personal preference, but it's not really endemic to the game being flawed. "Special" players are inherently rare, but I get the idea of "gems" found in later rounds and they do exist, but they're readily apparent and it takes time for them to reveal themselves.

But yeah, the shortcut is simple. Bump the creation modifiers for a few years and see if that helps anything. Or as a short-term solution, I draft a few rounds and then go to the free agent pool and "create fictional player" and then add extra players to the draft to "spice" things up a bit.

[sixto]

If you increase the player-creation modifiers, does the game compensate by making those ratings appropriately more volatile? If you have a draft pool with just 3-5 five-star prospects, one would assume that those players would need to have a high probability of being stars, so your league will have some stars 5 years down the road. And you would assume that the lesser players would stick pretty close to their expected path as well, since you need a fair distribution of players to maintain expected overall talent levels.

If you have a draft pool with dozens of 5-star prospects, you necessarily have to increase the volatility of the ratings or else you will have a league full of superstars (actually, I might suggest that MLB actually IS a league full of superstars, if you put it in context, but that is a different discussion).

Also, in my observation of baseball, what OOTP calls "talent bumps/drops" is often the result of both diagnosed and undiagnosed injuries. Were Brien Taylor and Ryan Anderson major busts because they just turned out to suck? No, they were either damaged goods or they got hurt once they started playing, or both. You can increase the overall talent levels if you increase the chance that players, especially hard-throwing pitchers or pitchers with big sliders, are more injury prone.

Injuries, I should add, are also a factor in pitcher stamina. Pitchers like Jason Isringhausen became relievers after suffering major injuries. IMO it would be better to tie stamina into factors like this than to just randomly assign it.

[bp_]

You'll surprised with what guys with 5's in talent on your scale can now do compared to 6.5. We use a similar scale in OTM and the draft, IIRC, is similar to what you mention.