Developing Minor Leaguers

[koeske]

I'm new to OOTP, having started playing just about a month ago, and have been both excited and mystified by player development thus far.

In my first 3-4 years, I had a lot of my highly rated prospects pan out. I had the best minor league system in the league with like 5 or 6 of the top 100 including 3 of the top 10 at one point. But at the same time it wasn't ridiculous. One of my major pet peeves in all baseball games I have played up to this point is the utter predictability of player development, and even with all these talented players in my system in the beginning, not all of them were high round picks, so I figured I was lucky, but not like it was too easy.

Well after those half-dozen guys made it to the big league club and turned my team's fortunes around with 4 or 5 consecutive trips to the playoffs, I couldn't seem to draft anyone with real talent. And for the next 5 or so years I didn't have a single prospect scratch the top 100. They'd be rated extremely highly, by the same very highly rated scouts, but after 1 year or sometimes less they would have an enormous dip in potential. I wouldn't be alarmed if this happened for a single draft or for a couple first-rounders, but it just happened with practically all of my prospects. They just about all tanked. So I thought maybe I was doing something wrong.

I was wondering if there is some minutiae to this that I may have not picked up on that is leading my team to disaster. If anything I had better coaching on average as time progressed since I continued to retain my coaches as they improved with age. I tried not to push anyone along, or keep anyone at a level that they were dominating.

This was the case with pretty much all of my prospects but seemed most obvious with my hitters. The pitchers would have their potential ratings dip to the minimum or near minimum, but would put up solid numbers at each level and the staff would say they were ready to move on. The hitters however would hit like .210 and never get an endorsement from the coaches. This has in general been my impression. Hitters are far more difficult to develop. What do I do with a guy who has the max in potential but is hitting .160 in rookie ball or single a? I feel like there's just no hope because my coaches say that he's ready for that level and he has the ratings but he doesn't produce. And if he goes on hitting that poorly for half a season then his potential hits rock bottom. And if I can move him down so that his numbers improve, then he is playing below where the coaches say he should be and his potential drops also. It's like a lose-lose kinda thing. All suggestions would be greatly appreciated.