[thomamon]

Does anyone else notice when they use a feeder league, there is too much talent in the draft? In our online league, there are usually about 25 players in a 20 round draft rated 4 1/2 stars or better.

Is there a way to fix this?

[Curtis]

This had been reported in OotPB2007, but was supposedly fixed for Version 9.

[Who Killed Kenny?]

In my experience this only occurs for a few seasons and then gets normal. Probably the initial creation of players is off.

[Syxx34]

There are settings in game setup that need to be altered. As I have been messing around with them. I have a file that I modified. College and high school feeder leagues are pretty stable throughout. However the structure of the template is lil diffrent.

MLB, AAA, AA, A, RL (Each league has 30 team - 1 for each organization)

Each Organization has about 60 real players.

I just modified the structure and added the RL, NCAA, and High School League. As I took everything from CBL_Cardinals mod.

[Corsairs]

Originally Posted by Who Killed Kenny?

In my experience this only occurs for a few seasons and then gets normal. Probably the initial creation of players is off.

To add to this, my experience is that after the "big bang" players have left the system the problem actually reverses. You'll end up with not nearly enough talented players. Or at least I should say there won't be nearly enough well-rated players; their true talent may of course be higher than what's reported if you're using scouts.

Markus addressed this issue, explaining that scouts overrated players in OOTP 8 and version 9 is simply correcting that issue. That's good information to have. However, even given that the change is intentional, the sheer dearth of well-rated players makes distinguishing players in the draft pool very difficult.

Here's another thread on the topic - re: Weak Draft?

[1998 Yankees]

thom, could it be something as simple as that new scouting wrinkle, favor tools vs. favor ability?

I know from my own experience that a scout who highly favors ability hates just about everybody in the amateur draft. I like this guy because he's blue numbers across the board and is lights out in judging established talent but he's useless for the draft. Recently, I have been ignoring him and using OSA and college stats for the draft with better results.

Could you have the reverse situation in that your guy highly favors tools?

[thomamon]

Originally Posted by 1998 Yankees

thom, could it be something as simple as that new scouting wrinkle, favor tools vs. favor ability?

I know from my own experience that a scout who highly favors ability hates just about everybody in the amateur draft. I like this guy because he's blue numbers across the board and is lights out in judging established talent but he's useless for the draft. Recently, I have been ignoring him and using OSA and college stats for the draft with better results.

Could you have the reverse situation in that your guy highly favors tools?

We don't use scouts in our league

[1998 Yankees]

Then the only other thing that I can think of is perhaps you are generating too many players. Seen the file below before? Just some ramblings that I accumulated on the subject.

[1998 Yankees]

Dola.

thom, in a PM you said "I thought I did it right, but 3 feeder leagues for a MLB set up is getting me 900 players for a 20 round draft when its set to make enough players for 21 rounds."

Well, I just looked at my own setup. I have 64 college teams with 25-man rosters. They have a four-year (18-21) age span, so figure each school generating 1/4 or 6 guys for the draft every year. That's only 384 players.

Much depends on the size of your parent league, however, which you don't mention. Mine is 30 teams, same as MLB. My draft is the same as yours; 30 teams picking 20 rounds = 600 players total.

That means I am short 216 players and that is why I have the Draft Feeding Mode set for Feeder League + Additional Players to fill out the draft.

As I said above in this thread, my scout sucks for the draft, for reasons stated. Using OSA and college stats, however, I don't think I have seen talent inflation.

I think you guys are generating too many players from your feeder leagues.

[1998 Yankees]

Dola II.

Let me quote from that text file above, the first paragraph which was written by some sage here who unfortunately must remain anonymous:

There are a number of threads in the OOTP forums complaining about the ability of the game to manage the talent coming into leagues through feeder leagues. In a nutshell, the game seems to generate highly talented players as a more-or-less fixed percentage of all players generated. The more draft rounds and feeder teams that you have, the more players will be generated, and eventually the league will go through 'talent inflation'. That is, if you have a lot of draft rounds and a lot of feeder teams, you will sooner or later have a highly-talented league with a lot of free agents.

Frankly, you are generating 50% more players with your feeder leagues than you should if your "MLB set up" is 30 teams, IMO.

EDIT: A quick fix for that, if I am right and you don't want to delete any feeder teams, is to extend the age min/max range. Make it 18-22 (five years) or even 17-22 or 18-23 (six years); that will cut down on the number of annual "graduates," I think.

[Corsairs]

Originally Posted by 1998 Yankees

I think you guys are generating too many players from your feeder leagues.

I have to wonder if the talent DEflation witnessed by myself and several others is a result of the opposite situation: too few players being generated. Our parent league is 24 teams (25-man rosters). The feeder system includes one 40-team league and one 20-team league, each with 31-man rosters and 4-year age spans. The parent league's Draft Feeding Mode is set to "Feeder League Players only".

With 24 teams in the parent league and 20 rounds for the draft, we need 480 players to graduate from the feeder system each year to fully populate the draft. Our setup produces right about that 480 number. In testing I've found it usually produces between 490-505 players, although this season it only produced 470 players (so we're going to be short during the final round.

You could probably label our feeder system as "lean"; it produces just enough players to populate our draft, with little to no extras. Maybe the game is very sensitive to the number of players coming out of the feeder system each year, with talent rapidly tailing off if there's just enough to populate the pool or inflating if there's a bunch of excess being produced?

[thomamon]

OK, I only had 3 feeder leagues for my league which is MLB set up. 2 college and 1 HS, which totaled 90 feeder league teams, which is what is suggested for a MLB set up with 5 levels of ML. I have it set to make enough players for 21 rounds since i have a 20 round draft. I was getting 900-1000 Draft entrees each year. I also had it set to fill the draft with feeder leagues and create the players it is short.

So I decided to delete one feeder league and see what happened. We're now getting just about the exact number of draftees that we need. The first year, we had a good amount of 5 star palyers and the talent level seemed good. So I start simming ahead, now I'm 15 years since I set it to 2 feeder leagues. Now, I get 100 five star specs, about fift 4 1/2. And as I go forward the number of good specs keeps growing like Gremlins seeing the light.

I think there are major problems with feeder leagues that need to be adjusted.

[Corsairs]

Very bizarre. I see precisely the opposite occurring; talent falls off the table and never recovers no matter how many years we sim forward or whether the scout grading the draft favors "tools" or "ability". Of course you mentioned that you don't play with scouts, so I guess you're seeing the "true" ratings. I'd be interested to see the results if you turned scouting on; would your scouts still grade all the players so highly?

[thomamon]

Originally Posted by 1998 Yankees

Dola.

thom, in a PM you said "I thought I did it right, but 3 feeder leagues for a MLB set up is getting me 900 players for a 20 round draft when its set to make enough players for 21 rounds."

Well, I just looked at my own setup. I have 64 college teams with 25-man rosters. They have a four-year (18-21) age span, so figure each school generating 1/4 or 6 guys for the draft every year. That's only 384 players.

Much depends on the size of your parent league, however, which you don't mention. Mine is 30 teams, same as MLB. My draft is the same as yours; 30 teams picking 20 rounds = 600 players total.

That means I am short 216 players and that is why I have the Draft Feeding Mode set for Feeder League + Additional Players to fill out the draft.

As I said above in this thread, my scout sucks for the draft, for reasons stated. Using OSA and college stats, however, I don't think I have seen talent inflation.

I think you guys are generating too many players from your feeder leagues.

HOw long has your league been going for? Can you send me the .dat's?

[thomamon]

Originally Posted by Corsairs

Very bizarre. I see precisely the opposite occurring; talent falls off the table and never recovers no matter how many years we sim forward or whether the scout grading the draft favors "tools" or "ability". Of course you mentioned that you don't play with scouts, so I guess you're seeing the "true" ratings. I'd be interested to see the results if you turned scouting on; would your scouts still grade all the players so highly?

You want me to zip the .dat's and you can check it out for yourself?

[Corsairs]

Originally Posted by thomamon

You want me to zip the .dat's and you can check it out for yourself?

Sure, I can take a look if you like.

[thomamon]

Originally Posted by Corsairs

Sure, I can take a look if you like.

http://www.digitizethis.net/test4.lg.zip

Maybe you all will find something I am missing in the settings?

[1998 Yankees]

Another quick fix that I thought of (if my theory is correct and you are producing too many players for your draft, thus skewing your talent around): Make sure your feeder league roster sizes are set for only 25 or so, not 35-40. As I said in my PM, I think I am right (with a nod to our learned colleague Corsairs).

[Afino]

My only concern is there always is a glut of MR/CL types very highly rated in the draft. I'd say out of the 20 best players on a yearly basis, 12-14 are MR or CL.

In a 1950's league that doesn't use many relievers, it bothers me because there isn't much talent at the OTHER positions to balance this out.

What I've also seen is there is 2 or 3 highly-rated SP's (75-80 potential), but then after that they just fall off the table (50-55 potential) and maybe not even worth a late first rounder/early 2nd rounder in a 16 team league with some of the other talent that's on the table.

[thomamon]

Originally Posted by 1998 Yankees

Another quick fix that I thought of (if my theory is correct and you are producing too many players for your draft, thus skewing your talent around): Make sure your feeder league roster sizes are set for only 25 or so, not 35-40. As I said in my PM, I think I am right (with a nod to our learned colleague Corsairs).

I don't think I have a roster size set. But that problem doesn't have anything to do with too much talent, does it?