Are there any improvements to the feeder system?

[Honorable_Pawn]

Originally Posted by Mr. Marlin

The one thing I'm leery of is the stats on the game-created draft pool players. Are they supposed to be career stats or pre-draft season stats? Does anyone here know?

I think it is supposed to be the senior season. HS baseball has probably like 45 games. The stats do not appear to be career to me.

In my opinion, what matters here is that if feeders were to be eliminated would the default generated stats create meaningful data? I'm all for removing them and focusing on a more-specific "player generation". The higher potential players need to abuse the competition. It needs to be obvious to me "at an eyeball evaluation-level" who the prospects are.

That's when I check their profile...

And...boom...a neat little summary equaling just one sentence. Something as simple as, "This kid was an All-American 2 years in a row."

Or, "This kid is raw power. Good with the bat."

Keep it simple and let's just see 2-4 years of history. All these extra leagues are just weight. I really don't need to see who has the all-time record in HR's or which team has never made the playoffs. I simply just would never check. The entire step can be eliminated.

Less is more.

[Lukas Berger]

I'm not sure I'm getting all the talk about the stats correlating with potential.

IRL, HS stats literally mean nothing and provide NO value in projecting a player's future performance or draft status.

College stats are certainly quite a bit more predictive, but how many college stars have been MiLB flameouts, or never been considered prospects? Too many too count.

Look at what a total non-prospect like Raph Rhymes did in the SEC. He hit .431 one season! Ok, yeah ba itself doesn't mean much, but still, .431! In the SEC! He also hit .483 in in Junior College.

Another MiLB depth guy, non-prospect type is Jordan Ribera. He lead the NCAA in HR's in 2010 with 27! He wasn't even drafted after that season, though he was eligible!

How about the pitcher generally considered to be among the greatest in NCAA history, Michael Roth?

He made MLB, but only as a (bad) LOOGY, whom the Angels unceremoniously dumped this offseason.

As for good players with bad college stats, how about Bobby Parnell?

These are just the first few examples that occurred to me, there are hundreds and even thousands more.

So the stats, whether game generated or feeder generated, shouldn't actually mean too much. There should be good prospects with mediocre stats and poor prospects with great stats, just like in real life.

[jpeters1734]

Originally Posted by lukasberger

I'm not sure I'm getting all the talk about the stats correlating with potential.

IRL, HS stats literally mean nothing and provide NO value in projecting a player's future performance or draft status.

College stats are certainly quite a bit more predictive, but how many college stars have been MiLB flameouts, or never been considered prospects? Too many too count.

Look at what a total non-prospect like Raph Rhymes did in the SEC. He hit .431 one season! Ok, yeah ba itself doesn't mean much, but still, .431! In the SEC! He also hit .483 in in Junior College.

Another MiLB depth guy, non-prospect type is Jordan Ribera. He lead the NCAA in HR's in 2010 with 27! He wasn't even drafted after that season, though he was eligible!

How about the pitcher generally considered to be among the greatest in NCAA history, Michael Roth?

He made MLB, but only as a (bad) LOOGY, whom the Angels unceremoniously dumped this offseason.

As for good players with bad college stats, how about Bobby Parnell?

These are just the first few examples that occurred to me, there are hundreds and even thousands more.

So the stats, whether game generated or feeder generated, shouldn't actually mean too much. There should be good prospects with mediocre stats and poor prospects with great stats, just like in real life.

I completely get where you're coming from. But the way I look at it, and it is just my opinion, if the stats are truly meaningless, why have them there at all? It's because we want to look at something. I want to see if I'm drafting a 2 time all American or golden spikes winner.

All I want is a better fleshed out history for the amateur players. I think that this can be accomplished by having a big a amateur list that generates stats each year until the player is drafted. We all can agree that feeders as they are now, are not an ideal solution. Even the creator, himself, said so. I really think that the best way is to improve how the generated amateurs are presented to us.

[Lukas Berger]

Originally Posted by jpeters1734

I completely get where you're coming from. But the way I look at it, and it is just my opinion, if the stats are truly meaningless, why have them there at all? It's because we want to look at something. I want to see if I'm drafting a 2 time all American or golden spikes winner.

All I want is a better fleshed out history for the amateur players. I think that this can be accomplished by having a big a amateur list that generates stats each year until the player is drafted. We all can agree that feeders as they are now, are not an ideal solution. Even the creator, himself, said so. I really think that the best way is to improve how the generated amateurs are presented to us.

I do agree with all this.

I'm not saying the stats are truly meaningless. HS stats, yeah. They're worthless.

College stats have value. Generally the best prospects do have great stats in college. But there are a TON of exceptions and a lot of non-prospects who have great college stats as well.

So it shouldn't be possible to draft well just based on stats in OOTP. There needs to be plenty of exceptions to the general 'great prospect, great stats' rule of thumb, enough to get you in real trouble if all you're looking at is stats. And I do think the game does ok with this now.

That's all I'm saying.

[Mr. Marlin]

Originally Posted by lukasberger

I do agree with all this.

I'm not saying the stats are truly meaningless. HS stats, yeah. They're worthless.

College stats have value. Generally the best prospects do have great stats in college. But there are a TON of exceptions and a lot of non-prospects who have great college stats as well.

So it shouldn't be possible to draft well just based on stats in OOTP. There needs to be plenty of exceptions to the general 'great prospect, great stats' rule of thumb, enough to get you in real trouble if all you're looking at is stats. And I do think the game does ok with this now.

That's all I'm saying.

Oh I know this does not translate to how a real life scout operates. I'm not trying to win with the actual Marlins, I'm trying to win with the OOTP Marlins. I've played with feeder leagues and without and I'm telling you with feeder leagues I can draft a good crop of players with no help from my scouts just by analyzing the feeder stats. Over four 20 round drafts I'll average 10-15 major league quality players. Take away the feeders and just use the generated stats of draft pool players and I'd be lucky to get 2-4 major leaguers in the same number of drafts.

What I'd love to see would be enough stat history, rankings, and awards won by pool players for their career prior to the draft. Not just a single line from a single season (if that is what we are getting). Basically I want the outcome of having feeders without having feeders.

Not much!

[Honorable_Pawn]

Originally Posted by lukasberger

I do agree with all this.

I'm not saying the stats are truly meaningless. HS stats, yeah. They're worthless.

College stats have value. Generally the best prospects do have great stats in college. But there are a TON of exceptions and a lot of non-prospects who have great college stats as well.

So it shouldn't be possible to draft well just based on stats in OOTP. There needs to be plenty of exceptions to the general 'great prospect, great stats' rule of thumb, enough to get you in real trouble if all you're looking at is stats. And I do think the game does ok with this now.

That's all I'm saying.

I appreciate your point that HS stats are not great predictors of future ability. I agree somewhat. However, it is far too common with feeders to see some great potential kid get picked high. Often enough he hit well below league average.

This kid would never make in front of a scout's eyes, yet, he gets picked in the 1st round. At least with game generated stats they look reasonable. I'm just not on board with feeders.

[Honorable_Pawn]

Originally Posted by Mr. Marlin

Basically I want the outcome of having feeders without having feeders.

Here it is. Bingo. My thoughts exactly.

[Lukas Berger]

Originally Posted by Honorable_Pawn

I appreciate your point that HS stats are not great predictors of future ability. I agree somewhat. However, it is far too common with feeders to see some great potential kid get picked high. Often enough he hit well below league average.

This kid would never make in front of a scout's eyes, yet, he gets picked in the 1st round. At least with game generated stats they look reasonable. I'm just not on board with feeders.

Fair enough. I will just respond with this link to the HS stats of a guy playing in the Cardinals system who was drafted in the 8th round a couple years ago. He was being talked about as a potential 1st rounder after his junior season (!!!) and actually slipped to the 8th round.

Yeah this is an extreme example, but it's a good illustration of what I mean.

Chris Rivera's (Placentia, CA) Baseball Stats | MaxPreps

[Lukas Berger]

Originally Posted by Mr. Marlin

Oh I know this does not translate to how a real life scout operates. I'm not trying to win with the actual Marlins, I'm trying to win with the OOTP Marlins. I've played with feeder leagues and without and I'm telling you with feeder leagues I can draft a good crop of players with no help from my scouts just by analyzing the feeder stats. Over four 20 round drafts I'll average 10-15 major league quality players. Take away the feeders and just use the generated stats of draft pool players and I'd be lucky to get 2-4 major leaguers in the same number of drafts.

What I'd love to see would be enough stat history, rankings, and awards won by pool players for their career prior to the draft. Not just a single line from a single season (if that is what we are getting). Basically I want the outcome of having feeders without having feeders.

Not much!

Sure, again fair enough and I like your suggestions a lot!

But take a look at real MLB team's typical past drafts. I've actually posted some stuff on this before, but 1-2 guys per 40-50 round draft draft is far closer to the average amount of solid MLB caliber players that real MLB teams get than 4-5 per 20 rounds.

There's been talk of the Cardinals 2009 draft being one of the single greatest drafts ever. SI wrote a long article on it a year or so ago. They got two stars and three solid regulars from that draft.

However, even including that draft, going two years forward and two years back, for five total drafts, and the full total becomes two stars and five solid regulars, plus 10-15 replacement players. That from a five draft period that includes of the better drafts in the history of MLB!

I haven't done a full analysis so could be wrong, but from the analysis I have done it appears that the single most likely number of future MLB regulars for a team to expect to get out of any given draft is 0!

[Cryomaniac]

Originally Posted by Honorable_Pawn

Keep it simple and let's just see 2-4 years of history. All these extra leagues are just weight. I really don't need to see who has the all-time record in HR's or which team has never made the playoffs. I simply just would never check. The entire step can be eliminated.

Less is more.

I would like to have those things if I want (I usually don't, but I do like the idea of feeder leagues).

[24Rocks]

Even college stats aren't a good look at what there capable of in one of my online leagues we don't use feeders we use the game generated players and the guy who has hit 750 HR had only 1 in college Player Report for #18 Walt 'Dutch Hammer' Geldof
So if these stats more represented there talent

[Assos]

That man really raked them in! Guess he liked wood more then aluminium!

[mpejkrm]

Originally Posted by lukasberger

Sure, again fair enough and I like your suggestions a lot!

But take a look at real MLB team's typical past drafts. I've actually posted some stuff on this before, but 1-2 guys per 40-50 round draft draft is far closer to the average amount of solid MLB caliber players that real MLB teams get than 4-5 per 20 rounds.

There's been talk of the Cardinals 2009 draft being one of the single greatest drafts ever. SI wrote a long article on it a year or so ago. They got two stars and three solid regulars from that draft.

However, even including that draft, going two years forward and two years back, for five total drafts, and the full total becomes two stars and five solid regulars, plus 10-15 replacement players. That from a five draft period that includes of the better drafts in the history of MLB!

I haven't done a full analysis so could be wrong, but from the analysis I have done it appears that the single most likely number of future MLB regulars for a team to expect to get out of any given draft is 0!

Yes, while I realize it's realistic to only get one to two major leaguers, I don't feel it's realistic to only get minor league relievers and defensive specialist infielders with no bat after the fifth round or so. We see a lot of projectable young HS guys that will sign overslot IRL that go in rounds 5-20, but those types of players don't exist in OOTP. You see pitchers with two pitches and a terrible changeup that will only be able to pitch in relief. And guys who cannot hit. And I can never find good defensive catchers in the draft, high school or college. While yes, you're going to have a good amount of busts, we should still be able to get guys who can still be org top 50 after the fifth round.

I think I'm rambling so hopefully you get the gist of what I mean.

[Lukas Berger]

Originally Posted by mpejkrm

Yes, while I realize it's realistic to only get one to two major leaguers, I don't feel it's realistic to only get minor league relievers and defensive specialist infielders with no bat after the fifth round or so. We see a lot of projectable young HS guys that will sign overslot IRL that go in rounds 5-20, but those types of players don't exist in OOTP. You see pitchers with two pitches and a terrible changeup that will only be able to pitch in relief. And guys who cannot hit. And I can never find good defensive catchers in the draft, high school or college. While yes, you're going to have a good amount of busts, we should still be able to get guys who can still be org top 50 after the fifth round.

I think I'm rambling so hopefully you get the gist of what I mean.

I do get what you mean.

I think this is currently ok in OOTP as is.

I've seen you mention this a few times before. If it really bothers you, and you think there really may be an issue, the thing to do is not just to give and opinion based on anecdotal evidence, but to do this:

Run some long term sims, with different levels of tcr settings but focusing on the default tcr setting in the MLB set (is it 100?, I forget) and track how lower round picks turn out, and where good players in general come from after a 20-25 year sim or so.

Then post the results in beta, where Markus will be sure to see them, and where we can get some discussion about them going. Preferably along with some real life data that shows the same results for rl MLB and where this differs from OOTP.

It'll be a lot of work, but if you're going to convince Markus that the current model for player creation needs changing, you're going to have to give him some compelling hard evidence He runs a great deal of sims to get the levels for stuff like this right, and isn't likely to change it without some compelling reason to do so.

[Lukas Berger]

I'm just going to do a quick thing here. You mention rounds 5-20.

Round 15 of the MLB draft from Baseball Ref starting in 2010 and going back 20 years through 1991, adding up MLB players and how good they were over their career:

Total picks: 600

less than 0 WAR: 30
0-1 WAR: 13
1-2 WAR: 5
2-5 WAR: 9
5-10 WAR: 4
10-15 WAR: 1
15-25 WAR: 3
25-50 WAR: 1
50+ WAR:

So out of 600 picks you have 68 future MLB players. 43 of whom aren't really even MLB caliber, but essentially replacement level.

So 25 genuine MLB players. Roughly one per year.

14 never even put up the equivalent of one All-Star caliber season for their entire career.

Only 9 were solid regular MLB players for any length of time and only 4 could realistically be classified as good players. Even then most were hardly great. So 0.5 per year.

The top 5 guys were:

Jake Peavy - 38.9 WAR
Bill Mueller - 23.8 WAR
Jeremy Guthrie - 20.0 WAR
Jose Cruz Jr. - 19.5 WAR
Will Venable - 12.4 WAR

So even of the top 5, only 2 of these guys are anything like stars. Guthrie, Cruz and Venable are just decent players, average starters at best, who've had fairly long careers.

And, it's worth noting Guthrie didn't sign as a 15th round pick. He went to college and became a 1st round pick. So really, he probably doesn't belong here since he'd be double counted in the first round in a full study. This is also true of a few of the other guys who put up decent numbers, including Mike Pelfrey, who's in the 2-5 WAR slot.

Do you think the results from the 15th round of OOTP's drafts for a 20 year period would yield less than four-five 10 WAR+ players, or 3 (2) good and 2 very good players? 1 good player every four or five years?

I bet OOTP would actually do better than that...

[jpeters1734]

we just got lukasbergered! "Trademark Pending"

[mpejkrm]

I wasn't really talking about the guys that do become stars, but more the guys that get drafted (and 95% of them are busts), but I do get carried away. I'll put this one to bed. Hopefully we just get three years of college and commitments.

[Lukas Berger]

Originally Posted by mpejkrm

I wasn't really talking about the guys that do become stars, but more the guys that get drafted (and 95% of them are busts), but I do get carried away. I'll put this one to bed. Hopefully we just get three years of college and commitments.

I like talking about this sort of thing, feel free to keep the discussion going if you'd like.

I'm just not sure what you mean by "I wasn't really talking about the guys that do become stars, but more the guys that get drafted"?

Those projectable players you mention don't really project as future MLB players, except in rare cases. Maybe they would if they absolutely reached their peak potential, but there's generally little to no chance they reach that potential.

I think some of the problem here is that team prospect sites and prospect sites in general get way too carried away about guys, and project low round picks as having far, far higher ceilings than they actually have.

That leads to the unrealistic view that these guys are genuine potential decent future MLB players, when in fact, most of them don't have more than a prayer of ever getting to that point.

[jpeters1734]

Originally Posted by lukasberger

I like talking about this sort of thing, feel free to keep the discussion going if you'd like.

I'm just not sure what you mean by "I wasn't really talking about the guys that do become stars, but more the guys that get drafted"?

Those projectable players you mention don't really project as future MLB players, except in rare cases. Maybe they would if they absolutely reached their peak potential, but there's generally little to no chance they reach that potential.

I think some of the problem here is that team prospect sites and prospect sites in general get way too carried away about guys, and project low round picks as having far, far higher ceilings than they actually have.

That leads to the unrealistic view that these guys are genuine potential decent future MLB players, when in fact, most of them don't have more than a prayer of ever getting to that point.

So you're telling me only a select few from the pirates top 20 prospects list will actually make an impact?

[mpejkrm]

Originally Posted by lukasberger

I like talking about this sort of thing, feel free to keep the discussion going if you'd like.

I'm just not sure what you mean by "I wasn't really talking about the guys that do become stars, but more the guys that get drafted"?

Those projectable players you mention don't really project as future MLB players, except in rare cases. Maybe they would if they absolutely reached their peak potential, but there's generally little to no chance they reach that potential.

I think some of the problem here is that team prospect sites and prospect sites in general get way too carried away about guys, and project low round picks as having far, far higher ceilings than they actually have.

That leads to the unrealistic view that these guys are genuine potential decent future MLB players, when in fact, most of them don't have more than a prayer of ever getting to that point.

Well, here's what I mean. Let's flash back to 2009. I'll be taking a look at BA's top 200 prospects, where they went in the draft, and what they were projected to do.

Zack Von Rosenberg (another busted pick by the Bucs, sigh) was ranked 41st on BA's list of the Top 200 prospects. Here's an excerpt from his scouting report:

He has advanced command of three solid pitches: an 88-91 mph fastball with good life, a curveball with nice depth and a changeup with deception. He has a 6-foot-5, 205-pound frame and a clean delivery, so his velocity should increase, especially when he stops playing shortstop when he's not pitching.

Von Rosenberg went in the sixth round, flopped out as a starter and is now trying to revive his career in the bullpen. Here's another example. Brooks Hall was ranked 134th in that same list.

Hall has good size and at times stays tall and uses his 6-foot-5 frame to his benefit, driving an 88-92 mph fastball down in the strike zone. At his best, he hit some 94s, and he also showed the ability to spin a power slider that could be a plus pitch. His frame has projection as well.

Hall went round four. He struggled early, has gotten it back on track slightly but doesn't flash as good stuff and will be 25 midseason.

What I'm trying to see is that these kinds of players DO get drafted, but most of them bust out. But then you've got success stories, such as Wil Myers.