Franchise Stars Rosters '06

[GForce]

I plan on bringing my Franchise Stars roster set to OOTPBB 2006. For those of you who don't know, here's the overview:

This project features 28 teams. 26 teams prior to the last 4 expansion squads have their greatest players ever. The last 4 expansion teams have been combined into 1 squad in Arizona. There is also a Washington Grays franchise, featuring many Negro League stars and some Japanese players as well. Placed in the AL East (easily the league’s toughest division), the race between Washington, the Red Sox and the Yankees (with the Indians, Tigers and Orioles within an arm’s reach) is very fun to watch.

Players are assigned ages based on when they played. Old-time players are older, leading to guys who started in the 20s-40s/50s being in their prime. Current players are included, but are young and need time to develop into their talents. This dynamic creates a situation where rosters need to be thought about and deal with up and comers. I’ve seen other projects resembling this one put every player at 18 or 20. To me, that defeats the purpose of a thorough roster, because some of the guys will ALWAYS be held behind another at the spot.

Players are rated to correlate to performance in "80's style" baseball. Frank "Home Run" Baker will not hit a max of 12 home runs in a season as he did in his career, but closer to 30-40 to reflect the difference in generation. These guys aren't just imported, but studied and rated accordingly to make a true universe rated on the same scale. Without doing that, a set like this just doesn't work, IMO.

The first June draft is set to include greats from the Negro Leagues and Japan who are not included on the Washington roster.

Changes For Franchise Stars 2006:

-- Remodeling of ratings based on BPs Translated Batting Statistics, which place all players on equal footing across eras. My first method evaluated players by their total #s compared with the decade in which they were most prominent. While a fair measuring stick (given the alternatives), it certainly has its flaws. Doing things this way should prove much more accurate in the ratings department.

-- Accurate L/R splits for players (both pitchers and hitters) based on data compiled by Retrosheet (believe they only have this since 1968, but whoever they have it for I will adjust it accordingly). The versions for OOTP5 and OOTP6 used generic splits.

-- Adjustments to defensive ratings using BPs RATE metric, which should produce more accurate defensive performance.

-- Make coaching staffs/minor league managers as accurate as I can.

-- Enter historic park effects for stadiums used in the set

-- Add new players, move players to different teams based on the past few years (my set as is based as of 2004). When all is said and done, each franchise should have between 50 and 75 players to choose from.

I hope you all enjoy this project as much as I'm enjoying putting it together. Any questions or comments, please feel free.

Thanks!

GH

[GForce]

I have already calculated revised defensive ratings for 13 franchises. Hopefully within the week I will have all these numbers ready for entry.

GH

[GForce]

3 more teams of defensive ratings done, so it's 16 out of 28 (27 really, since I have no real numbers to go by for Negro Leaguers).

GH

[dougaiton]

This looks like a great project, GF.

[GForce]

Thanks, Doug. I'm really excited about the prospects for this set. The first version was good and very well received, but I could have done it much better, and I'm going to this time around. No idea how long it will take, but the finished product should be very enjoyable.

GH

[Hammer755]

Gregg,

Do you foresee the forced minor league fictional players as a problem with your rosters?

[GForce]

Originally Posted by Hammer755

Gregg,

Do you foresee the forced minor league fictional players as a problem with your rosters?

Well, it's going to be an unfortunate thing I have to deal with. If you can delete levels of the minors, I could make it only 2 levels of minors, which would make me have to have 75 guys per franchise. That would be a REAL stretch for the franchises who began in the 60s or later, but it could theoretically be done. I just don't want to cut it to one level, making 50 guys a franchise and wipe guys out.

I'll have a better idea once I have the game. It's a definite issue, but I won't know how severe until I'm actually working with it.

GH

[rewc27]

I'm really looking forward to this. I enjoyed it with OOTP6 and really glad you are redoing it for the new version. Good job and your hard work is much appreciated.

[GForce]

Thanks a lot. I'm excited about the project. I'll be posting very frequent updates as to progress.

GH

[GForce]

One thing about the defensive ratings, as I just finished going through the greatly impressive Oakland A's squad.

My first endeavor with this, I went with range factors which, while hardly a perfect measure, were really the best I had. TangoTiger's Ultimate Zone Rating was what I used for my last edition of TotalMinors, but for full career stuff, range factor was the best I had.

I've since converted to BP's RATE metric, which is the big reason for my redoing the defensive ratings from top to bottom in this set. Dougaiton posted a method Darkhorse came up with to convert that into a rating. RCBuss came up with more detailed version of it from there.

I've taken a bit of a combination for my purposes here to come up with defensive numbers I am pleased with. You will see that a 100 range rating basically will not exist in this set. If a guy is 80+, he's an EXCEPTIONAL fielder. There will be a few 90+ guys. But I am thrilled with these defensive numbers and thank Darkhorse, RCBuss and Dougaiton (for bringing it to my attention in the first place) for getting me on this track.

If you care to know defensive range ratings for any particular players in the set, let me know and I'll be glad to provide them.

GH

[GForce]

Up to defense for 20 teams done.

GH

[GForce]

Defensive ratings have been compiled. They have not been entered yet, but I have all the data. Really interesting stuff to look at...the Cardinals overall defense, for example, is just exceptional.

GH

[GForce]

The next step will be the reconstruction of the hitting ratings. I hope to have my spreadsheet formulated today and I can start entry tomorrow.

I also have to consider how I'm going to handle the roster size issue. There are many more players I can add, but with the fictional minor leaguers I want to try and find a workaround for that. I don't know if I should just be doing 1 minor league team be franchise and then leave any overflow on the reserve roster, cut the ones with more than 50 down to 50 and put the extras as free agents, or another method. I'll certainly have a better idea as of Wednesday.

GH

[GForce]

One of the flawed decisions I made when doing the original Franchise Stars set was with respect to ages and career stage.

Basically, I had all players age the same way. 25 year olds were at such and such percent of thier peak ratings, 22 years olds at a different percent. That's just stupid. So for this version it's going to be adjusted. Players will be relative to their peaks as they were at that age in real life. So if a guy was an all-star starter at 22, he won't be at the same spot relative to his peak as a 22 year old with a mere cup of coffee.

As I've analyzed things to be improved in this project, this is probably the biggest change, getting guys off the same development curve.

GH

[GForce]

I actually have pitchers to add to the game before I work on the new ratings sheets. So that will be put off a few days. Which is good, because it will give me time to figure out what to do about the roster sizes/minors.

GH

[GForce]

The first snag seems to be this: In the OOTP6 version, I had created a couple of hundred Negro League and Japanese stars to be available in the Amateur Draft at the end of the first season. However, when you import into the new version, these players are brought over as regular free agents and there is no way to reset them that I can see. I'm hoping I can adjust this somehow, but right now I don't see a way to.

GH

[Erich Ingram]

Gregg what are the possibilities of you expanding the Franchise stars to add a Japanese League and a Negro League or a combination of both that would play along side the MLB version. And would allow the players to move between leagues.

[GForce]

Possible down the line. I want to complete it in the vision I originally set out for first, but that could certainly be a possibility at a later date. Very cool idea, just fear that with my time as limited as it is, OOTP2007 will be out before I could complete that

GH

[Erich Ingram]

Yeah I understand the limited time thing.

[CareerOver]

G-Force, I really enjoyed your first Franchise set. In fact, that was my main league for 6.5(1)..:-) I must have spent God knows how long simming that league. Did you get any idea of how to handle your latest snag with the Ammy draft/Negroes/Free Agents...don't sweat it too much if you don't have to. Are you better off just making Negros and Japanese players on their own team? I'm really anxious to use your new version for OOTP2006, man. What makes your set unique is everyone's ages. I just really appreciate your contributions to the OOTP community.