Historical Sim w/Full Minors can't be done
 

Yes it can. I am working on a simulation from 1901-2010, with FULL minors. No independent leagues, but all teams, as they are today, affiliated with their appropriate teams (or unaffiliated, if their team hasn't started up yet). Yes, the results will put some fictional players in the mix with the real players, but in the end, I would like to see some players have some minor league stats, and then come up through the ranks.

It's not easy, as I have to fill in the rookie league rosters with real fictional players every other June, it seems. But I have to adjust settings along the way anyway. Plus, it's good to see how key players are developing.

I'm in 1910 now. I'm using the Arod database, and have made some modification on the aging and development speed options. The batter aging speed is set to .400, the development speed is set to 1.850. The pitcher aging speed is set to .750 and the development speed is set to 4.300. I also made sure that the minors started after the major league started up.

As it rolls along, I'll put up a few tidbits, just to show you how things are going.

Initially, it seems that Ban Johnson's beloved American League isn't doing too well in the World Series (yes, I instituted it in 1901) for the first 10 years. The Boston Americans won in 1901, and the Cleveland Naps won in 1904, but the AL lost every other World Series through 1910. The Pirates won in 1902, The Reds won in 1903 and again in 1908. The Cubs dominated for three years, winning 1905-1907 and the Phillies won in 1909 and 1910.

In 1910, a young man by the name of Fred Merkle won the Sporitng News Rookie of the Year award. It's interesting that he won this in 1910 because IRL, he debuted in 1907, committing the infamous Merkle Boner in 1908. He didn't play in any minor league games, and due to the lack of a draft, it's unclear where he hid for 2 years. But at any rate, Fred Merkle, your 1910 Sporting News Rookie of the Year.

Im at work now so i cant check this but cant you modify the
player creation for each level. If so couldnt you fill the minors with say
Triple A at .25
Double A at .15
Single A at .10 or something like that so only a 1yr wonder might make the league. Or would this screw up the real players when they get sent to the minors if they are too good for the minor leaguers. Then again shouldn it be that way since they are that much better than minor leaguers.

Hmm...I'll back up the league (coming into 1915 - the birth of the Babe) and see if modifying the creation thingies makes a big change...

I did that, and what I found was that I can modify the player creation equivalencies only at the Major League level. In the other levels, I can only modify the playing level of the different levels.

yeah if you can change major league equivalencies for ML performance to where players stayed in AAA, AA, A for most of their career unless they were the very rare case where they became an average player. I wouldnt mind fictional players making it to the big leagues for a year or two like it happened in real life. As long as there isnt 20 of them becoming the next Hank Aaron. I was thinking maybe of taking 1.00 for the major league equivalencies and maybe
subtracting 75 % of that and divide the rest between the other levels with say AAA getting 50%, AA getting 35 %, and A getting 15%.
So if you use 1.00 for the major league equivalencies then
Majors =1.00
AAA=.22
AA=.19
A=.08
Or something like that. I just dont know how much effect it would have on the creation of fictional minor leaguers or if it would work.
Again i do not care if a minor league player makes it to the big leagues for a few years since a lot players did that in real life.

As an aside, as of 1915, Eddie Cicotte still hasn't made it out of the minors...

?

I don't really understand what you're trying to do, but if you're using the arod-garlon db, there are only enough players for the major leagues and maybe triple-A.

You have to create the other players to fill out all your levels of minors.



Also:

The arod\garlon database imports players in their first full season. Merkle's first year is 1910 in the arod db.

In doing a historical simulation, I thought it was less than good for there to be no minor leagues. So, I thought, how hard would it be to put fictional players in the mix to create the full minor league effect? It's not easy, because even when I fill the rosters, roster management makes it a bit challenging. I'm pretty much babysitting the simulation year after year. It's interesting to see who rises to the top and who just kind of muddles through in the minors.

With the Merkle thing, I was making an observation more than I was "complaining".

I didn't get far with it - I think three years - but I started a league in 1980 with historical players and filled all the minors with fictional players. To ensure that none of the fictionals would make it out of the minors (at least not with any regularity), I put all the player creation modifiers at .200. The positive was that, indeed, no fictional players that I could find got any major league time. The negative was that the minor league stats for real players were super-unrealistically inflated (think ERAs hovering around 0.30, for instance). I guess I could have upped the .200, but that would have increased the chances of fictionals making it to the majors, which I really didn't want. Like I said, I didn't spend much time with it.

Yet another reason why OOTP2006 stinks and OOTP 6.51 still rules the baseball sim world.

Ctorg,

Did you use the same general strategy for each level of play. I used the same settings and schedule for each level and so far the best career era for
a minor league pithcer is 1.46 and that player only made it has far as AA in a 11 year career. The AAA career leader in wins only made it to the majors for 49 games and finished with a 6.20 era. I am sure there were some strange pitching stats but i think most players with a below 1.00 career era was only around for a few seasons or never made the majors. I wish there was a way to find out how many fictional players actually made it to the majors and for how long so that you would have a better idea of whether too many made it to the majors. Anyways i only ran the league from 1903-1921 but i was just curious if those settings would make any difference.

Yeah, it was a minimal setup. I had all the same settings in the league. I was probably just too extreme in setting all the modifiers to .200. The tradeoff, to me, was that I would get only real players in the majors, which seemed to work. But I sacrificed realistic minor league stats to do it, which kind of defeated the purpose of having a minor league to begin with. If I had more free time, I'd try higher modifiers, maybe even up to .500 or so.

So you had the same modifers for each level? I used the same stategy settings but i had different modifiers for each level. Now that i think about it i guess it would probably be better to use the same modifier for all minor leagues. Reason being that the way i was doing it i was only limiting AA players to say .300 avgs and then AA to .275 avg. Thats not what i want. I want players to be able to hit .350 on any level but a .300 hitter in A may only be equal to a .275 in AA and .250 in AAA.

How are you handling roster sizes for minor leagues? I fill the minor league teams with fictional players but after the first ten years i am getting illegal rosters because theres not enough pitchers. I am using the garlon database but i am thinking there just isnt enough players even using the original lahman to keep the rosters stocked. So i guess i will just have to create a fictional player as needed. It will slow the sim down but i prefer a slow sim so i can enjoy the season more. Still i wish the game would do it automatically.

Actually, I didn't think you could set PCMs for affiliated minors. I didn't even look. I set the major league PCMs to .200, since setting major league ones affects all fictional players in the affiliated minor leagues as well. PCMs don't affect players imported from Lahman, though, so real players imported fine but any generated fictional players were always scrubs. I was generating fictional players a lot, so there was always a good supply. I only ran the league for a few seasons, though. I went on to some other brilliant idea that I've since abandoned for yet another brilliant idea (as is the course of my history with OOTP leagues).

Ctorg,

It was MLEs i ment not PCMs. I also forgot to disable player development
so i am strted another test season. This time set the MLEs to .65 for all levels. BTW does the Historical Modifier And Totals Options do anything if you check it in Minor League settings? Does it create players more accurately related in comparison to historical players? Almost forgot to run the draft for historical players before adding fictional players to the minor leagues. I wonder if adding fictional players to the minor leagues teams after the major league rookie draft each year would mess up the stats for the fictional players already in the league. Otherwise i might as well not use minor leagues and go back to ghost players. But i prfer fictional players because i can actually see who a historical player may have had to compete against to stay in the Majors. I think of the fictional players as the minor league players nobody has heard of. I guess i want the historical players to dominate the Major leagues and the fictional to dominate the Minor Leagues.

I used PCMs because their ability to affect ratings has been shown and well-documented, while I'm still finding a lot of uncertainty about exactly what MLEs do. Since you're using a database to generate the real players, either way the MLEs and PCMs will only affect the extra fictional players you add to the league.
I think that's the idea. I haven't played around with it much, though.

I'm guessing that there's an optimal MLE or PCM - maybe around .65, actually - that will make it so that fictional players rarely show up in the majors but do well enough in the minors to make them realistic.

Right now i just wish the game could figure out that every team needs a pitching staff. I dont mind stopping my league to create a new fictional pitcher because i use the stoppage in play as time to look at
the storys in the season. But every time i create a pitcher i cant get the computer to sign one. Im sure im probably not doing something.

I guess i could create fictional players for each minor league every season since that seems to work. But would this only create fictional players to fill up the rosters or will it mess up the stats? Create fictional players by team doesnt seem to always work. What i mean is that i get a message saying a minor league team needs more pitchers but when filling fictional players for that team it still doesnt give them any pitchers. Even if they are free agents.

To me it seems like the AI doesnt want to follow its own rules. For example it knows a minor league team needs 3 pitchers and it wont sign one. Now on areal team even if you wanted A-Rod and sent a hitter to the minor leagues well if the rosters are full and every team had the minimum of pitchers, you would have to cut a hitter somewhere in the minor leagues. But it doesnt seem like the game understands this concept and only wants the best players no matter what.

I'm up to 1934 in this simulation, and now I'm running into what I fear is the bug where the All-Star game isn't scheduled. I have the All-Star game option checked and it's checked to automatically schedule allstar game...but when I look at the schedule, there's no all-star game...I've even regenerated the schedule, and it's not showing up.

Am I stuck?

Never mind...it worked itself out...

I wish the AI had an option to do this..when it finds that a team has fewer than the allowed number of players (why it's allowed to raid its teams like this is beyond me in the first place), instead of telling us, and making me go and fill with fictional players, why can't the game engine have an option to do it by itself? All of the functions are there..they just need to be tied together!

Sometimes the computer owners are picky. If you create one player - some owners may be intrested, some not. A team with plenty of players may pick him up rather then the team that needs him. So the only way that i found to work all the time (so far) is to mass create, every time a team comes up short. You can dumb down the players (or set the creation modifiers low), but a team may still want someone worthy of that level of baseball (hey, they are not total britney's). What has worked so far (since it is usually the minors that are short), is 25 players per league - so if you have a ML,AAA,AA,A you'd need to create 100 players. Dumb down as needed.

One thing i wondered, is if you change the 'country' file after you create your universe, and set it to only a few countries, would this have any effect on the arod/garlon database usage, or could you use it to ID fakes when you create them?

Here's the latest thing I'm trying...I'm at 1943 in my historical sim. About 3 times a year, I have to fill some minor league organizations with fictional players. It's not too bad, actually, since I know when to expect it. One happens in early April (not consistently), the next is in June, when the rookie leagues start up (every season) and the last is in late August. Save for the rookie leagues, only one or two leagues have to be touched during the season.

I have modified the arod database to add about 50 fictional players for each team for each season. The fictional players have American names and all hail from 5 fictional towns in North Dakota. Their stats have been set to 50% of what the league average is for that year. I'm going to plug it in and see if I have to still make adjustments.