Signing/Releasing Same Players Over and Over
 

Looking through the transactions for my league, I see a sequence at the end of spring training over the course of 3 days where the same 4 guys are being signed and simultaneously released by every team in the league each day.

Could you give a little more info about your league setup (#teams, salary cap?, minor roster limits, ect)? Also, is this one you created in OOTP2007 or imported from another version?

This is an OOTP2K7 league, no salary cap. I have two leagues set up, each with 1 minor league - an MLB historical league and a fictional league. MLB had 16 teams, fictional had 8, both had 1 minor league with a 25-man limit.

Maybe the 25-man limit was the problem - I know the game suggests not having less than 35, but I'm trying to control the number of players accumulating in the minors, so I set them to 25. I posted a question in the general forum about the reason for the 35 man limit, but never got a response so I went ahead and tried it.

I'm not sure if that's the issue, though. This happened with the minor league teams in the fictional league, and none of those teams are close to the 25 man limits. I lowered it to 25 to mainly keep the MLB minor league teams from accumulating too many players, because they are sharing free agents.

Limits have been the main cause of sing-and-release in the past. I've tested with 3, 4, and 5 levels of minors and found the issue was resolved, but I've not tested with only a single level.

What is the reason for the 35-man limit and why/how does it affect the game? In this particular case, these minor league teams had far short of even 25 players on their rosters when this happened.

It's not a huge deal, but perhaps the biggest issue is that they're eating the contract every time they sign and release the guy, right?

Personally, I would use greater than 25 limits to model the minors in OOTP today just because OOTP does not yet model minor league DLs (that's a 2008 feature, I'm fairly sure). Mechanically, I think the greater limits just provide a little more buffer for the game's AI to retain injured players.

The impact to the game is varied.

It certainly affects players retained when injured. It has had some influence on the sign-and-release in the past, and it will obviously affect draft-and-release (as it should...assume you have a 50-round draft, and only 10 open positions while using limts...a lot of guys will get drafted and released). Limits may have other influences when integrated with other algorithms. For example, the scouting algorithm ranks players ... the limits tell the AI how many they can keep, hence driving the trade and release algorithms...if scouting is "poor" on a star, you see him traded or released more often with limits than without. You can come up with lots of thought experiments to help determine how limits impact the game.

I think I can probably raise my limits. What I'm doing with this particular universe is fairly unique - I'm using the MLB league's historical players to feed both the historical and fictional leagues I'm running in this universe. I'm OK with the talent distribution issues between the leagues, but I want to make sure enough talent is out there to be signed, which is why I wanted to limit the MLB minor league teams' roster size. But as I look at the league, the minor league teams in the fictional league aren't really signing many guys anyway, even though there are, at this point, 200+ FAs. So I guess I can raise those limits without much of a problem.

Basically, the lower your roster limit on your lowest minor league, and the fewer the number of minors, the more sign-and-release you get. 35 was picked because testing showed sign-and-release with a ML-default minors setup was minimal with a roster limit of 35.

If I add another level of minor leagues, will that (a) help to stop the problem and (b) encourage teams to sign more FAs? I've got like 200+ FAs sitting around, and while I'm sure most of them are crap, there are teams with less than 10 players on their minor league rosters, which makes no sense to me (unless those 200 are truly not worth signing and wouldn't be signed even if I had 5 levels of minors).

OK, I started a new universe, 2 leagues each with a 35-man minor league. And I'm having sign-and-release issues worse than before (or maybe I'm just paying more attention to it). Blocks of guys being released and signed every day by every team. And I also noticed that Lou Gehrig was released and signed 12 times in a 2 week period (3 times the same team cut him twice!) during spring training in 1923. That's ridiculous.

Seems to be a problem regardless how much you set the roster limits for minors.

Seems to be a sign and release problem with AI teams if there a roster limit set for minor leagues. Also draft and release.

For now until fix, is to play with no roster limits for minor leagues. AI handles that very well.

jb,
Is this the worst AI you ever seen?

nope. Why would you say that?

Your not happy with ootp 2007?

I think OOTP 2007 is the best version so far. The AI overall is pretty good.

I found the same sign and release problem in the preview version and it was cause by putting limits on minor league roster.

I know Ronco is looking into it. I pretty sure it will get fix soon.

For now play with no minor league roster limits.

Just to add my 2 cents in on this with first hand experience...

Simmed a league 30-40 years with 20 teams, expanded league with 4 more teams and jumped in with a franchise. AAA, AA, A, R all set to limit of 25 except Rookie with 35 limit. So, 24 teams now with 4 minor leagues. (HS and Col feeder not included with this league).

Expansion draft went perfect. When the 1st year player draft came along I had 23 players in the Rookie League, 12 spots open. Draft was set to 20 rounds. AI teams had the same or less spots open, some even full to the 35 limit in the R league. I let my #1 scout draft the 20 rounds, clicked over to the next day and aarrgghh!

I pretty much expected to only get 12 players and lose 8 based on the fact I had 12 open spots in R league. The AI did indeed give me 12 draftees, however, the 8 I didn't get were my first 8 picks, not the last 8 picks! Interestingly the AI teams received all there picks (no sign/release, not even one) and more interesting the AI teams instantly signed the 8 picks I lost!

So, no limit on the R league from now on or I'll make sure there are 20 spots open for the next draft.

Am I correct in assuming that every time a team signs and then releases a guy, they eat the contract? If so, then this has obvious implications on the financial part of the game, too. No wonder all of my teams are running in the red 95% of the time.

If a player is signed to a minor league contract and then released, the team doesn't lose any money.