Spring training
 

It's kind of silly to have 60 players in Spring Training if you don't follow the reality in that teams have two lineups playing each day: the away lineup, which has 3 major leaguers (usually the borderline ones), and the home lineup which has 6 major leaguers.

Otherwise, there's no way for 60 players to play in games.

I do it, at the start. I trim the roster gradually as spring training goes along. I don't start any position players two days in a row (except right at the end, when I might have trimmed it to the point that I have to do that). I make sure all of them get a few starts. I use a six-man starting rotation and I prioritize rest for relievers.

I have failed to use a few pitchers, in some years, but it only happens if I'm close to 30 pitchers to begin with. If the breakdown is closer to 40-20 or even, probably, 35-25, everybody plays.

And I still lose guys to season-ending injuries, but I think I'd lose more if I played my first-tier guys more often.

Similar to Baldguy, I take 60 players to spring training and gradually pare it down over the course of the 30 games.
I basically carry my 26 man roster and most of the AAA roster. After that, I will bring up my top prospects from AA and A just to give them a taste.
They are usually the first cuts after 10 or so games.
I don't play out of the games, let the AI handle it.
My goal is to try and get at least 20 starts out of what I believe will be my starting position players and at least 15 out of the ones I believe will make the Opening Day roster.
(Since I sim, the CPU will sometimes use them as pinch hitters in games where they do not start. I don't count that as a game started).
I also go with a six-man rotation, usually with starters No. 5 and 6 battling out for the final spot in the regular season. This gives everyone five starts before Opening Day.
As for pairing down the roster, after 10 games from 60 to 50, after 15 games 50 to 45, after 20 games 45 to 40 and 35 players for the final five.
The only issue I have with spring training is the schedule. We only play the National League teams, I play as the Cardinals, Ias 'd rather see a mix of AL and NL teams but I have no idea how to set that up and I don't take spring training serious enough to figure it out.

That's nice. But usually in real life, you start paring down during the last week.

28 game ST schedule and I play out all of my games. I enjoy seeing the prospects in action and how the invites do too.

My MLB players get about 40-50 PA. My SP, 5- 4 inning starts. Bullpen 8-10 innings. Clears the rust and leaves plenty of AB's and Innings for the others. By the last three games all of my starters have in their games. That leaves 3 games for youngsters to start. Also leaves approx. 5 games for random batters to play.

The "last two" on my ST roster may struggle to get enough time, but they are going to be "lets have a look if we get time" types, so no loss really. The rest have no problem at all getting into games.

I agree with the OP that sixty is too many. I reduce that to fifty. IRL there are numerous "B" games and split-squad games to provide more playing time. It would be laborious to manually schedule these in OOTP. (I have done it; but only for my team; which seems unfair...) Even with the reduction to fifty on the ST roster, it's hard to find playing time. Pitchers are easier, since they only go 2-3 innings at most, to start. So I have numerous cuts, beginning with the first week. The hardest evaluations are the guys who must be on the final roster or get cut or trade = no options left.

Some year, because I love ST, I am going to set up separate Grapefruit and Cactus Leagues, with B games with split squads. No idea how or if this would influence player readiness for the season. It would be fun for me though.

The other aspect of ST I like is the last few days before the start of the regular season, when teams are heading north, and play the last few games with rosters and lineups set. The LA teams and Bay area teams typically play home and home games. Or teams will play in places like Charlotte or Nashville or Montreal or Buffalo that would love to have an MLB team. I try to schedule these last Spring games too.

While it doesn't help in terms of showing you stats I believe that just being on the roster and in camp will increase player development so it's good to bring up the young guys just from that exposure.

You can always set strategy for number of pitches thrown to ensure more guys get into games if you sim.

Standard 5 week spring training schedule has the AI pair down the roster to 50 players three weeks in and then down to 40 a week later. That's close to real life I believe. Everyone seems to get playing time but it's clear the non-roster invites get less so. I use that time to look at how my prospects that are close to being ready are doing but with such little sample size that's hard to do. The vets I completely ignore their stats output because it doesn't tell me anything. There REALLY should be some kind of special spring training report we could use that would leverage the scouting engine. A mix of a quantitative and qualitative report specifically about spring training (ex: prospects really coming along...vets starting to slow down etc).

It starts a little earlier than that.

The Atlanta Braves, for example, during 2023 spring training, optioned 2 players to the minors on March 15; outrighted 1 player on March 19; optioned 5 players to the minors on March 20; optioned 1 player on March 23; recalled 1 player on March 27; and released 1 player on March 28.

On March 30, the day before opening day, 3 players were put on the 60-day DL and 1 on the 15-day DL; 1 player was optioned to the minors, and 4 players had their contracts selected from the minors.

That's funny how in football you have hard nosed deadlines for roster sizes for pre-season but in MLB it's meh whatever you feel like just be ready for opening day.

You do have a couple of options for ST roster size, only bring those you want to ss IE less than 60. Or change the spring roster size for the league to what you think is a more manageable number.

Whatever else happens during the Spring, be ready for that ferocious activity in the last few days before Opening Day. [I am reminding myself to be ready, because it catches me by surprise.]. As IRL, teams are struggling to make those last cuts, dealing with players who have no more minor league options, scrambling to pick up castoffs from other teams - not to mention the Rule V guy that looked so good, and now you have to keep him on the active roster for a year or lose him. It's fun because the need to keep guys on the 40-man roster forces the teams with more talent to either trade or waive their excess players. Which means the bottom-feeders can pick up some decent players for their thinner rosters. Those last few cuts are always the hardest to make. I try to be like a buzzard, waiting pounce on that blue chip prospect some team is trying to sneak past waivers.

I reduce spring training size to 50 and I think this works well without. I usually keep it simple, alternate starting squads daily and last week I play mostly the starting 26.

Is it possible to create a spring training schedule and select it like you would a regular season schedule?

I agree with the consensus though that its long overdue for Cactus and Grapefruit leagues and split-squad, etc.

Overhaul Spring Training!!

I always change my spring training rosters to the max possible. I normally run my spring training like the Major Leagues. I usually have 60-70 players on my spring roster. Everybody will play some. They may not all start, but I do bring them in as replacements. I trim my roster gradually thru camp. I strt out with my starting pitcher going 2 innings, and they work their way up to 4-5 inning by the end of camp. Later in ST I also will bring players over from Minor League camp for 1 or 2 games. Use them as late replacements when my roster gets smaller, and I need them rather than have all my starters go the entire game. I bring them over for 1 or 2 games, and then send them back to their Minor League team.

The default for ST is 5 weeks. There is an option to make it 6 weeks that would add 6 or 7 games? IDK as I've always just gone with default 5 weeks.

My guess is 6 weeks is the max the internal coding for an "OOTP year" will handle? Have games outside that window and risk things may go wrong?

I wonder if you could simply open the game created ST schedule in the editor and make some dates double headers? Might get you to a split squad feel without a lot of work or headaches? Maybe worth a try. :)

When I bought ST tickets this year there were I think only two games listed as split squad. So I don't get the issue here.

It seems to me the feature that players learn new positions faster in ST could compensate for the game not simulating split squad (or intra squad) games.

I agree with this. OOTP does ST, similar to how it does financials, in an abstract way. No real world structure or true life schedules. In the end it gets you to where you need to be, ie players gaining some experience and shaking off rust. This works well for me.

I'd find split squads and "other things" more in depth for ST to be too much. However, I get that some want more realism in their game, and that's ok too.

In 2023, out of 491 MLB spring training games, 147 involved at least one split squad (29.9%). Number of split squad games by ML club:

id personally love if they did put double headers to act as the split squad games or at least give us the option to do so. i mainly rebuild a team then after i have the team in a good place quit and move to the next so i love being able to evaluate what i have in spring