AI Not Properly Filling Minors/Majors

Ksyrup · 04-05-2007, 10:56 AM

I'm finding that in my 2-league universe, the minor league teams for one of the leagues have between 3-14 players (most around 6 or 7), despite the fact that there are about 100 FAs sitting idly by. Not only that, but some teams are playing with seriously screwed up rosters - one major league team had 5 pitchers, but also 5 catchers, on its active roster. Meanwhile, their minor league team had no pitchers, but fully 2/3s of the FA were pitchers.

Ksyrup · 04-05-2007, 11:24 AM

Man, this is awful. Not a single pitcher in the minor leagues for this one league, and the major league pitching is nearly all 36+ years old guys. One team has 1 SP, aged 42. Meanwhile, there's a ton of FA pitchers available.

Ksyrup · 04-05-2007, 11:44 AM

Uh yeah. So halfway through 1953, one of the teams has 4 MRs and a CL and I see that 12 position players have had to be called in to pitch. This universe is compromised. Damn!

If I manually add pitchers to each team (which I really don't want to do), does anyone know if they'll stick, or will the AI just override and kick them all off?

sixto · 04-05-2007, 11:54 AM

Are the FA pitchers available any good?

I wonder if this is something sort of like I used to see in OOTP 2006 but haven't had a chance to observer in 2007 - that the game generated players with so little talent that they wouldn't be of interest to even the lowest level leagues.

I've always thought that was a flaw of OOTP - previous versions of the game generated an overabundance of one-star players who would hit .120/.140/.180 at the major league level, as if a player who could hit .200/.250/.300, or even .250/.280/.330, at the major league level would be helpful to any team.

The game needs to be unafraid to generate players who could hit an empty .230-.260 in the major leagues, or pitch with a sub-7.00 ERA.

If this is irrelevant to this problem I apologize for the rant.

Has anyone observed this trend in 2007? Is ksyrup's issue because the players in the FA pool are so horrendous they aren't worth signing?

Ksyrup · 04-05-2007, 12:04 PM

That may very well be it.

The way I've set this league up might be factoring into it. This is a 2-league universe that is relying totally on the MLB historical players to fill both leagues. There are plenty of players to do that with, but you're right, the problem might be that the AI is passing on the pitchers that could fill the roster spots it needs to fill because they are so bad. The problem with that, though, is just a quick look finds guys on the rosters who are comparable or worse than some of the FAs.

This league is fairly unique, I think, because of the fact that I'm not using a draft for either league and I'm only using the historical auto-place for the MLB league, not the FL league. Originally, I tried a setup where all players got placed into the FA pool, and I noticed a similar issue where not enough players were being signed. In that league, everyone got dumped into the FA pool, and there were guys who would turn into productive players just sitting in FA. So I had to scrap that idea. I think that's partially what's going on here, with the added issue that most of the guys in the FA pool are MLB cast-offs.

So my guess is that the AI isn't strong enough to figure out how to properly construct a roster from scratch. If you give it a roster fed with a draft or auto-place, it can fill in the cracks, but throw it a bunch of FAs and ask it to keep reconstructing a valid roster year and year, and I don't think it can.

I understand why, because this type of league is probably not the kind 99.9% of OOTP players use, but I find it fun in trying to recreate more of an "open" league structure where guys are just out there to be signed and it's a FA free-for-all. Especially when recreating early baseball history, because that's about all there was before minor league alliances and drafts.

Neags23 · 04-05-2007, 12:04 PM

I've run into something similar. Which brings up a question I have about ghost players. Just because ghost players are available, does that mean that a lowest level team should have fewer players than the limit if there are FAs available? That is, why should a team only have 6 players when there are FAs available? Shouldn't the ghost players only come into effect if there's no other way to fill the roster? Or is that not the intent of ghost players?

Lots of questions for me to just say that I've run into something similar, though not to the extent that position players have been called in to pitch.

Ksyrup · 04-05-2007, 12:08 PM

Re ghost players, that's exactly right. That's what I'm seeing - the minor leagues for the FL have few players, but I have it set on "no limit" and there are tons of FAs available. It might be a combination of the ghost players taking roster spots and/or some of the FA being so bad that the AI wouldn't sign them regardless of need. Perhaps when a team's minor league gets low, it fills up with ghost players who rarely leave and thus clog the minor league system.

Would it help if I had a second minor league - would that possibly "free up" the AAA league and leave the AA league with these problems?

Ksyrup · 04-05-2007, 01:25 PM

This is interesting...since it seemed like this issue had only started to occur recently (like in the past 5-10 years of a 40 year sim), I decided to change the minor league roster limit from unlimited back to 35. I had orginally changed it from 25 to 35 because of the sign-and-release issue, and when even 35 didn't help, I went ahead and put it on unlimited. It occurred to me that I hadn't seen these problems until after I made that change.

So, I put the minor league roster limit back to 35, and while several teams are still having some major issues, other teams have auto-corrected and signed some pitchers. So I think this is tied to the sign-and-release bug - the game is not finding the proper balance with FA signings. There are either too many and they keep signing and releasing the same ones over and over, or there are too few, and teams go years without updating their pitching staffs.

Neags23 · 04-05-2007, 01:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ksyrup

I had orginally changed it from 25 to 35 because of the sign-and-release issue....

So I think this is tied to the sign-and-release bug - the game is not finding the proper balance with FA signings. There are either too many and they keep signing and releasing the same ones over and over, or there are too few, and teams go years without updating their pitching staffs.

When you say sign-and-release, do you actually mean draft-and-release? To my knowledge the sign-and-release bug was fixed after extensive testing by RonCo. There's even a dev diary about it, iirc.

Ksyrup · 04-05-2007, 03:37 PM

No, I don't use draft. This is sign-and-release. I posted a separate topic about it, where it was suggested to go with the 35-man rosters, then when that didn't work, someone suggested the unlimited, which brings me to part of the reason, I believe, for the issues I'm experiencing now.

In this league, even with 35-man rosters (1 minor league), I was having a block of guys picked up and dropped by every team in the league pretty much every day of spring training.

Ksyrup · 04-05-2007, 03:48 PM

I just checked this again, and it's basically damned if you do, damned if you don't.

With the unlimited minor league rosters, the AI isn't signing enough people to fill out the teams. I mean, there are 25 guys on the major league teams and 5-10 on the minor league teams, but the AI is ignoring pitchers and loading up on 5-10 C, 1B, and OFs. As a result, teams are left with skeleton pitching staffs. However, with the unlimited roster setting, the sign-and-release isn't happening at all.

So to combat the poor AI roster management, I put the roster limit back to 35. On this setting, the teams are better stocked (right now, there are only 2 out of 8 teams with less than 4 SPs on the major league rosters and several teams have a few pitchers and up to 25 guys on their minor league rosters). BUT the sign-and-release is back with a vengeance. My April transactions page would probably take a ream of paper to print out.

It's too bad, because this league is just getting good (I just let it auto-sim for a few years and I'm up to 1968).

But I'm seeing those two issues influence each other, and it's either/or right now.

battists · 04-10-2007, 10:59 PM

Ksyrup,

Is there any way for you to post a copy of this league to our FTP site?

Ksyrup · 04-11-2007, 11:48 AM

I believe I still have it, but I'll have to check tonight.

Ksyrup · 04-12-2007, 10:52 AM

I still have this league, although I was switching between different minor league roster limit rules during the sim (once I realized the problem) and then ended up simming way past the issues by 15 or so years. An issue is still there, and you can see in the stats for particular teams from the 40s-60s how bereft of pitchers they were, but I'm not sure you'd be able to do anything to synch that up with what my settings were at the time. So, I don't know how helpful the league files will be, but if you still want them, just tell me what I need to zip up and where to send them.

Ksyrup · 04-13-2007, 08:28 AM

I'm not sure if this has just been dropped, but I hope the sign-and-release issue is being looked at. Now that I'm actually playing the game instead of just simming, it's becoming even more frustrating. I'm seeing guys who have been cut that I would like to sign, but no matter how many of these guys there are, or how many times I make them an offer after they have been signed and then cut again, they do not sign with me. I've even offered, as a test of this, a substantial major league contract to a guy asking for a minor league contract, and he accepted a minor league contract from another team. I have a feeling that not only is the sign-and-release thing a bug, but my original offer is still trumping any subsequent offer I make, so that I never really have the chance to sign these guys. So far, I have resisted the temptation of just placing the guy on my roster and giving him the contract I offered him, but I'm coming close to doing that. I hope this is being looked at.

battists · 04-13-2007, 08:50 AM

Well, frankly, NOTHING is being looked at right now, because Markus is taking some well-deserved rest, based on this:

http://www.ootpdevelopments.com/boar...d.php?t=143588

But we'll certainly try to look at it more closely when he returns!

Ksyrup · 04-13-2007, 09:40 AM

Well sure, I understand that! I just want it to be on the list.

Do you still want me to send that league where I was having issues with the sign-and-release and lack of pitching on ML rosters? If so, just tell me what files you need and where to send it (PM me if you need to).

battists · 04-15-2007, 12:15 PM

If you could post it to our FTP site using the FTP instructions in the FAQ forum, that would probably help...

Nutlaw · 05-12-2007, 07:37 PM

Ksyrup, did you ever post the requested files?

Did this issue get any better with the beta patch?

Nutlaw · 05-20-2007, 11:06 AM

Since this thread has not received a reply in a week, it will be closed. If you need any further assistance, please ask a moderator to re-open it. Thanks.

04-05-2007, 10:56 AM	#1
Ksyrup Major Leagues Join Date: Feb 2002 Posts: 413	AI Not Properly Filling Minors/Majors I'm finding that in my 2-league universe, the minor league teams for one of the leagues have between 3-14 players (most around 6 or 7), despite the fact that there are about 100 FAs sitting idly by. Not only that, but some teams are playing with seriously screwed up rosters - one major league team had 5 pitchers, but also 5 catchers, on its active roster. Meanwhile, their minor league team had no pitchers, but fully 2/3s of the FA were pitchers.

04-05-2007, 01:25 PM	#8
Ksyrup Major Leagues Join Date: Feb 2002 Posts: 413	This is interesting...since it seemed like this issue had only started to occur recently (like in the past 5-10 years of a 40 year sim), I decided to change the minor league roster limit from unlimited back to 35. I had orginally changed it from 25 to 35 because of the sign-and-release issue, and when even 35 didn't help, I went ahead and put it on unlimited. It occurred to me that I hadn't seen these problems until after I made that change. So, I put the minor league roster limit back to 35, and while several teams are still having some major issues, other teams have auto-corrected and signed some pitchers. So I think this is tied to the sign-and-release bug - the game is not finding the proper balance with FA signings. There are either too many and they keep signing and releasing the same ones over and over, or there are too few, and teams go years without updating their pitching staffs. Last edited by Ksyrup; 04-05-2007 at 01:26 PM.

04-05-2007, 03:37 PM	#10
Ksyrup Major Leagues Join Date: Feb 2002 Posts: 413	No, I don't use draft. This is sign-and-release. I posted a separate topic about it, where it was suggested to go with the 35-man rosters, then when that didn't work, someone suggested the unlimited, which brings me to part of the reason, I believe, for the issues I'm experiencing now. In this league, even with 35-man rosters (1 minor league), I was having a block of guys picked up and dropped by every team in the league pretty much every day of spring training. Last edited by Ksyrup; 04-05-2007 at 03:39 PM.

04-05-2007, 11:24 AM	#2
Ksyrup Major Leagues Join Date: Feb 2002 Posts: 413	Man, this is awful. Not a single pitcher in the minor leagues for this one league, and the major league pitching is nearly all 36+ years old guys. One team has 1 SP, aged 42. Meanwhile, there's a ton of FA pitchers available.

04-05-2007, 11:44 AM	#3
Ksyrup Major Leagues Join Date: Feb 2002 Posts: 413	Uh yeah. So halfway through 1953, one of the teams has 4 MRs and a CL and I see that 12 position players have had to be called in to pitch. This universe is compromised. Damn! If I manually add pitchers to each team (which I really don't want to do), does anyone know if they'll stick, or will the AI just override and kick them all off?

04-05-2007, 11:54 AM	#4
sixto Hall Of Famer Join Date: Jul 2002 Posts: 2,262	Are the FA pitchers available any good? I wonder if this is something sort of like I used to see in OOTP 2006 but haven't had a chance to observer in 2007 - that the game generated players with so little talent that they wouldn't be of interest to even the lowest level leagues. I've always thought that was a flaw of OOTP - previous versions of the game generated an overabundance of one-star players who would hit .120/.140/.180 at the major league level, as if a player who could hit .200/.250/.300, or even .250/.280/.330, at the major league level would be helpful to any team. The game needs to be unafraid to generate players who could hit an empty .230-.260 in the major leagues, or pitch with a sub-7.00 ERA. If this is irrelevant to this problem I apologize for the rant. Has anyone observed this trend in 2007? Is ksyrup's issue because the players in the FA pool are so horrendous they aren't worth signing?

04-05-2007, 12:04 PM	#5
Ksyrup Major Leagues Join Date: Feb 2002 Posts: 413	That may very well be it. The way I've set this league up might be factoring into it. This is a 2-league universe that is relying totally on the MLB historical players to fill both leagues. There are plenty of players to do that with, but you're right, the problem might be that the AI is passing on the pitchers that could fill the roster spots it needs to fill because they are so bad. The problem with that, though, is just a quick look finds guys on the rosters who are comparable or worse than some of the FAs. This league is fairly unique, I think, because of the fact that I'm not using a draft for either league and I'm only using the historical auto-place for the MLB league, not the FL league. Originally, I tried a setup where all players got placed into the FA pool, and I noticed a similar issue where not enough players were being signed. In that league, everyone got dumped into the FA pool, and there were guys who would turn into productive players just sitting in FA. So I had to scrap that idea. I think that's partially what's going on here, with the added issue that most of the guys in the FA pool are MLB cast-offs. So my guess is that the AI isn't strong enough to figure out how to properly construct a roster from scratch. If you give it a roster fed with a draft or auto-place, it can fill in the cracks, but throw it a bunch of FAs and ask it to keep reconstructing a valid roster year and year, and I don't think it can. I understand why, because this type of league is probably not the kind 99.9% of OOTP players use, but I find it fun in trying to recreate more of an "open" league structure where guys are just out there to be signed and it's a FA free-for-all. Especially when recreating early baseball history, because that's about all there was before minor league alliances and drafts.

04-05-2007, 12:04 PM	#6
Neags23 All Star Starter Join Date: Apr 2006 Posts: 1,577	I've run into something similar. Which brings up a question I have about ghost players. Just because ghost players are available, does that mean that a lowest level team should have fewer players than the limit if there are FAs available? That is, why should a team only have 6 players when there are FAs available? Shouldn't the ghost players only come into effect if there's no other way to fill the roster? Or is that not the intent of ghost players? Lots of questions for me to just say that I've run into something similar, though not to the extent that position players have been called in to pitch.

04-05-2007, 12:08 PM	#7
Ksyrup Major Leagues Join Date: Feb 2002 Posts: 413	Re ghost players, that's exactly right. That's what I'm seeing - the minor leagues for the FL have few players, but I have it set on "no limit" and there are tons of FAs available. It might be a combination of the ghost players taking roster spots and/or some of the FA being so bad that the AI wouldn't sign them regardless of need. Perhaps when a team's minor league gets low, it fills up with ghost players who rarely leave and thus clog the minor league system. Would it help if I had a second minor league - would that possibly "free up" the AAA league and leave the AA league with these problems?

04-05-2007, 03:48 PM	#11
Ksyrup Major Leagues Join Date: Feb 2002 Posts: 413	I just checked this again, and it's basically damned if you do, damned if you don't. With the unlimited minor league rosters, the AI isn't signing enough people to fill out the teams. I mean, there are 25 guys on the major league teams and 5-10 on the minor league teams, but the AI is ignoring pitchers and loading up on 5-10 C, 1B, and OFs. As a result, teams are left with skeleton pitching staffs. However, with the unlimited roster setting, the sign-and-release isn't happening at all. So to combat the poor AI roster management, I put the roster limit back to 35. On this setting, the teams are better stocked (right now, there are only 2 out of 8 teams with less than 4 SPs on the major league rosters and several teams have a few pitchers and up to 25 guys on their minor league rosters). BUT the sign-and-release is back with a vengeance. My April transactions page would probably take a ream of paper to print out. It's too bad, because this league is just getting good (I just let it auto-sim for a few years and I'm up to 1968). But I'm seeing those two issues influence each other, and it's either/or right now.

04-10-2007, 10:59 PM	#12
battists Hall Of Famer Join Date: Jul 2004 Posts: 18,506	Ksyrup, Is there any way for you to post a copy of this league to our FTP site?

04-11-2007, 11:48 AM	#13
Ksyrup Major Leagues Join Date: Feb 2002 Posts: 413	I believe I still have it, but I'll have to check tonight.

04-12-2007, 10:52 AM	#14
Ksyrup Major Leagues Join Date: Feb 2002 Posts: 413	I still have this league, although I was switching between different minor league roster limit rules during the sim (once I realized the problem) and then ended up simming way past the issues by 15 or so years. An issue is still there, and you can see in the stats for particular teams from the 40s-60s how bereft of pitchers they were, but I'm not sure you'd be able to do anything to synch that up with what my settings were at the time. So, I don't know how helpful the league files will be, but if you still want them, just tell me what I need to zip up and where to send them.

04-13-2007, 08:28 AM	#15
Ksyrup Major Leagues Join Date: Feb 2002 Posts: 413	I'm not sure if this has just been dropped, but I hope the sign-and-release issue is being looked at. Now that I'm actually playing the game instead of just simming, it's becoming even more frustrating. I'm seeing guys who have been cut that I would like to sign, but no matter how many of these guys there are, or how many times I make them an offer after they have been signed and then cut again, they do not sign with me. I've even offered, as a test of this, a substantial major league contract to a guy asking for a minor league contract, and he accepted a minor league contract from another team. I have a feeling that not only is the sign-and-release thing a bug, but my original offer is still trumping any subsequent offer I make, so that I never really have the chance to sign these guys. So far, I have resisted the temptation of just placing the guy on my roster and giving him the contract I offered him, but I'm coming close to doing that. I hope this is being looked at.

04-13-2007, 08:50 AM	#16
battists Hall Of Famer Join Date: Jul 2004 Posts: 18,506	Well, frankly, NOTHING is being looked at right now, because Markus is taking some well-deserved rest, based on this: http://www.ootpdevelopments.com/boar...d.php?t=143588 But we'll certainly try to look at it more closely when he returns!

04-13-2007, 09:40 AM	#17
Ksyrup Major Leagues Join Date: Feb 2002 Posts: 413	Well sure, I understand that! I just want it to be on the list. Do you still want me to send that league where I was having issues with the sign-and-release and lack of pitching on ML rosters? If so, just tell me what files you need and where to send it (PM me if you need to).

04-15-2007, 12:15 PM	#18
battists Hall Of Famer Join Date: Jul 2004 Posts: 18,506	If you could post it to our FTP site using the FTP instructions in the FAQ forum, that would probably help...

05-12-2007, 07:37 PM	#19
Nutlaw Hall Of Famer Join Date: Apr 2003 Posts: 9,538	Ksyrup, did you ever post the requested files? Did this issue get any better with the beta patch?

05-20-2007, 11:06 AM	#20
Nutlaw Hall Of Famer Join Date: Apr 2003 Posts: 9,538	Since this thread has not received a reply in a week, it will be closed. If you need any further assistance, please ask a moderator to re-open it. Thanks.