[byzeil]

I use feeder leagues. I find it adds greatly to immersion and I like that I have HS and/or COL stats to help evaluate players.

It used to be I did a lot of customizing of the feeders but I did quite a bit of testing in OOTP19 and it seems to me that the default feeders set up by OOTP do a pretty good job of things, at least they seem good to me. The one change I make is I set it so all new players (after the initial creation of players) are created as freshman(youngest) or freshman and sophomores(youngest+1).

There is one issue that I have found that is big for some and not so much for others(referred to by jfb8300 above). Players who are drafted out of HS and do not sign go on to college but many of them end up not playing for a year between HS and College because of the way the game determines eligibility by birthday). To me this isn't huge, I just think of it as the player playing JV or being red shirted.

The obvious difference between feeder players and the generated draft classes is that the feeder players play games for multiple seasons and the generated players have generated stats for 1 season. I find the former more helpful and immersive,

The other big difference is that to my understanding the generated draft class takes into account the talent in the parent league (please correct me if I'm wrong here). So if your parent league is pitching heavy the draft class will lean towards hitting. Whereas the feeders produce talent based on the PCMs of the feeder league and not based on the parent league.

I also use the IC and international sources of players )international amateur free agents, international free agents, scout finds, players from indy leagues).