No Possibility of Empty Minors, Right?

[Charlie Hough]

Based on what I can find in the manual and my own attempts at creating new games, it appears that it is impossible to create empty minor leagues below a historical league that I've imported from Lahman.

I would like to have empty leagues to eliminate the possibility of fictional players from ever appearing in the majors, while giving the players that I import from Lahman an opportunity to play in the minors and have roster spots there. Otherwise, too many of them seem to retire because they get stuck on a major league reserve roster for a year or more. So, even though some are only 30 years old and still effective, they retire because they haven't been playing at any level. Is there any way to create empty minor leagues and then have the game populate them over time with the reserve players from the 40-man major league rosters?

[disposableheros]

Originally Posted by Charlie Hough

Is there any way to create empty minor leagues and then have the game populate them over time with the reserve players from the 40-man major league rosters?

no.

if you are going to have minors, you have to have enough players to fill out a roster since there are no more ghost players.

[Charlie Hough]

Thanks for the quick reply. I'd rather see an option to populate the minors with ghost players, so the reserve players from the 40-man rosters have a place to be assigned, and so they will hopefully still see the possibility of getting back in the majors instead of retiring early.

[Zeyes]

Originally Posted by Charlie Hough

Thanks for the quick reply. I'd rather see an option to populate the minors with ghost players, so the reserve players from the 40-man rosters have a place to be assigned, and so they will hopefully still see the possibility of getting back in the majors instead of retiring early.

I'm not sure the problem is in the existence of the reserve roster itself, because it basically is a minor league with ghost players; you just don't get any stat output (which was bogus in OOTP6.5 anyway). I haven't tracked it scientifically or anything, but my impression is that major league-quality guys who get stuck in a minor league are quite likely to retire early, as well, especially if they have previously had more than a cup of coffee in the majors. In other words, the problem might rather be that players in general don't show enough patience if their career is in a rut, and a fix to that area would positively impact both reserve rosters and minor leagues.