TCR and pitcher/batter development aging
 

I see so much chatter on these primarily TCR. What are good balanced settings?

It depends on what you want to achieve in your modern and historical simulations.

Personally I prefer to place the aging (hitters and pitchers) below the default, this with the goal that some players will have careers into their 40's for example (Justin Verlander).

With the TCR it depends on how much "surprise" you want in your league, I think with the TCR at default you can expect some kind of year to year variation of top players and the occasional surprise from the minors.

I use a TCR of 115 currently, I think it generates players with careers not as linear as in default, like for example in IRL Justin Turner or Max Muncy, players who peaked late in their careers.

The default settings.

You’ll get as many responses as there are posters! It depends on what your goal is in simming. If you want results as close to IRL as possible, TCR should be zero, and development at the 1.00 default settings. If (like me) you enjoy some divergence from reality, and “what if” possibilities, you can increase TCR from the 100 (default) and adjust the player development and aging as you see fit. I tend to increase TCR to the 150 range, and both development and aging to 1.15 (so young players mature slightly faster, and old players age slightly faster). YMMV. It’s fun to experiment, as long as you are okay with surprises. In historical sims, aggressive changes will effectively prevent you from “cheesing” the game by drafting HOF players when they are unknowns. They may never develop.

I only play historical simulations and I can move the TCR up from time to time, not much as I said before max 115.

I play with development activated and ratings recalculation OFF, with TCR of 100 I have found surprises like Mark Langston never made it to the big leagues, he was always a player with a Potential of 20 (he never got above A if my memory serves me correctly).

By just having the OOTP Development Engine ON, Recalculation OFF and a TCR close to default you can get a lot of players that did not perform as they did IRL.

As mentioned before, if you want to be as real as possible in the simulation it is better to leave the TCR 0 (this means that the players will reach their maximum potential without variations) and Recalculations ON so that each year the players have a similar performance and you can have the real year to year variations.

I've usually stuck to defaults. My newest game I'm doing 1.5 on TCR and .8 on both of the agings, but with injury frequencies on high. Should generate a bit of chaos.

Am currently doing a historical-fictional hybrid (though most of players are historical).

TCR 100 until ASG then 125 to end of season, to add a bit of variable. However, have since gone to 75 for the year. Reason being, other settings provide variables: long term injuries VERY LOW, short term injuries MODERN, fatigue VERY HIGH, suspensions LOW, historical rosters OFF. Plus, with AI eval 5/55/30/10 a decent historical players could get caught in an unfriendly home field (eg ex flyball SP in a HR park) and be traded or released or platooned thus effecting performance.

I turn off TCR and play pure development engine

AI controlled teams are always going to make strange decisions regarding rosters when stats have a lot of weight in player evaluation.

In both historical and modern games I do not under AI evaluation Ratings below 70. Since a player with two "bad" months as you mention but still with very good ratings can be demoted to AAA, released or traded for lower rated players.

In my historical games I don't use the recalculate ratings every year because knowing the history it is very easy to cheat the system, when you know that such a player has a MVP season 3 years in the future and has just been released by a team.

I always have the OOTP Development Engine ON.

Reminder to some: If you're historical using recalc TCR affects only ratings changes during the season. It doesn't carry over into the next season. Recal determines the next ratings.

I would think that 100 (default) is plenty realistic. If it's challenge you are looking for, then you might want to crank it up. I think that's the question you have to ask yourself..."am I looking for realism or challenge"? The good news with TCR is you can probably go somewhere in between such as 125 or 150.

what they have out of the box should be decent for this.. this sort of data is readily available and athey used it to guide the modelling.

there are posts with graphs showing comparisons.. may or may not have been using same source data, but it was good. the post i think of made different suggestions but definitely erred on rose-colored glasses side of things, if i recall, and not significanly different than default.

if you reduce TCR too much you reduce potential of top-end talent a bit, fwiw. some of these things are tuned to teh rest of the game and changing them will impact other aspects. Some tcr products are higher than anythign will be generated, so you take away that 1/million type player. they aren't comon so you shouldn't see a swing in league wide stats at all, but individual records may be lower over time with very low TCR.

when ive messed with longevity or rate of development, i'ts always been small deviations. .950 or 1.050... little faster, little more longevity. probably can't even notice with human eye, but it makes me feel warm inside.

I do 200. But I typically play in smaller leagues with small drafts so I find that 200 isn’t even enough sometimes honestly