Our patience paid off, sounds like we're more on track now. Thanks devs

Has anyone done some test over a few season to check if the the engine produces more realistic draftees' development? If yes I would be delighted to finally start a new save game. Thank you guys!

Just did a quick test by myself.
I simmed until June 2025 and checked each year how quickly draftees advanced to the MLB.
Every June 1st, I had approximately 5 players drafted in the previous year, who reached the major with spending zero to very very few time (for pitchers at most 20-30 innings pitched) in the minors.
Unfortunately I am still seeing players with 40-45 overall rating (on 100% scouting accuracy) who might directly jump into the majors. In the upcoming 2025 draft class there is even a starting pitcher with 50 overall rating.
As this problem appears to be along for quite a while, I would be interested to know if this is intended by the devs or will be finally adressed in an upcoming patch.

I am not seeing what you are seeing, did you start the game with the latest patch or before? Did you delete all future draft classes if using a legacy patch game? As i mentioned above, i do not see players move to the MLB until later in the year a year after they are drafted.

I just started a standard MLB game with the latest patch.

EDIT:
Maybe I was a little overestimating. I just went through every draftee from 2022 to 2024 in my test save.
There are currently 6 players out of the 2024 draft who reached the majors by 2025. 5 out of 6 had very few appearences in the minors. In the draft classes 2022 and 2023 there where just a couple of players who had these few appearences in the minors before making their big league debut. So I tend to guess that those results tend to be more in line than I previously thought. I don't know what is wrong with those 2024 guys. Maybe bad luck?

I think those may be outlier years due to most of those classes are "real draft classes" and may have a few players more further along than generated classes. Most of those classes will start showing in '25 to "26 in a standard game i believe.

2026 has a starting pitcher in the draft pool with 55 overall rating. :rolleyes:

Whats there age? Also was it a player that has full HS and College career stats at this point?

I mean, there's nothing wrong with this imo as long as it's a guy here and there, and not 10 per draft.

Most drafts have one or two players who are more or less close to MLB ready, Andrew Vaughn, Garrett Crochet, arguably Leiter this year.

They may not always go directly to the majors, but there is usually at least one guy who arguably could do so if a team was so inclined.

Yes, and from what I am seeing in a few test leagues - although all fictional- it is close to what Lukas is saying. Pre- patch it was upwards of a dozen guys going to the majors almost immediately but after the patch it is down to maybe 1-3 year getting to the majors by mid season of their first pro year.

I would like to see it a little lower, maybe the one guy every couple of years getting there that quickly, but I can certainly live with this so as someone who very clearly felt there was an issue before I would say it is now solved.

I can’t speak for those who use modern day real life leagues though as I typically run only fictional with a 25 round draft held in the offseason and with 5 levels of minors in my solo leagues.

Agreed…a smidge lower would be almost perfect…but this is much better

Are young players developing slower or is the AI just keeping a mediocre veteran to block a better young player?

I haven't had a chance to play with the new patch. I just hope that it's not causing prospects to be 25 before they are ready for the majors or that the AI will still promote a young player who's better than a vet, not just keep them blocked just because they are young.

If my universe generates a 20-year-old phenom, I don't want him in AAA killing the level for 4 years, or anything like that.

It is better but for example in a std game, still seeing those guys that come up quick get promoted very quickly. These guys were picked 5th and 7th. Rated 45/65 and 35/60 on draft day 100% accuracy, now rated 65/65 and 55/60. This is a regular occurrence every year.

Also, the amount of 23 year olds in the draft is a lot better, but there are consistently one or two (usually batters) in the draft who are well developed and solid 60+ prospects.

There is one 23 year old in the 2021 real mlb prospects list rated 168th (a pitcher)
The highest rated 22 year old batter is 90th (catcher).

These older guys with good ratings seem to be generated the same year of the draft and have only one year of college stats. Why?

I don't mean to be pedantic, but it does seem a bit funky this year. Anyone else seeing this?

Prospect development has changed a lot this year, but its a lot more realistic than previous versions. Prospect development has been a weak point in this game for the better part of a decade, and I'm glad there we finally saw major efforts to fix it.

Sure there's probably a few too many players fast tracking through the minors in this version, but in previous versions you constantly had top 100 prospects slashing .200/.250/.300 in rookie ball for 3 years before inevitably becoming studs. I'll take a few too many fast trackers if it means the top prospects are actually the players succeeding in the minors.

As to the MLB ready 22/23 year old draftees we're seeing, I think this is mostly due to the way draft classes are generated rather than players developing too fast. IRL most guys who are projected to go in the first few rounds declare for the draft before their college eligibility runs out. Take a look at the ages of the top draft prospect list on MLB.com:

https://www.mlb.com/prospects/draft/

Highest rated 22-year old at #43. Highest rated 23-year old at #149. Upward of half of the top-50 are high schoolers aged 17 or 18. Now compare that to a typical OOTP draft class. Far more highly rated 22-23 year olds, far fewer highly rated 17-18 year olds.

The reality is there are a quite a few MLB ready 22-23 year olds. Its just most of them were highly sought after amateurs who declared for the draft years before they would turn 22-23. OOTP doesn't model this.

Could this happen AFTER the first couple default draft classes? With OOTP switching to generating draft eligible players at 14 so we have 4 years of generated HS stats, and then those players being drafted or going to college, in theory shouldn't we be seeing the same?

There's still a bunch of players in the draft classes that get generated with only 1 year of stats (college, JUCO or HS). For whatever reason only some of the draft eligible players are generated at 14.

Also, I'm not sure what the logic is behind whether or not a college player will declare for the draft in his junior year as opposed to his senior year for example. It could be 100% random for all I know. This is important as IRL there are a lot of highly rated 21-year old college prospects, but very few highly rated 22 or 23 year olds.

The game will generate guys with only 1 year of stats (ie. HS senior, JuCo players, or College Junior/Seniors) if we get to the draft and don't have enough guys available.

Otherwise, we generate players at the base levels (HS Freshman or Co Freshman) so that they have the full stat levels. All college juniors are eligible, so in a steady-state game you won't tend to have a lot of college seniors as draftable (it will be mostly guys who either go unsigned or undrafted as juniors).

Is it possible to patch this where the game will generate enough 14 year old players to the point draft classes are always stocked with enough "4 years of stats" players?

Was about to ask the same thing.