Blocking fictional players from ML

SteveP · 11-11-2008, 06:58 PM

I am puzzled about how this feature is supposed to work. I am talking here about the fictional players generated by the game to fill out minor league teams. I assumed that if I tried to move a fictional player to my active roster, the game would block that. Not so. Is this feature only intended to block the AI from moving such players to an active roster?

SteveP · 11-14-2008, 12:16 PM

Bump

PhillieFever · 11-15-2008, 09:48 AM

Yes,that is correct,you can move fictional players up to the ML level,but the CPU cannot.I tried implementing that feature once and wound up deleting the league because I hated it so much,in my opinion,you're better off with ghost players.

Rondell Tate · 12-16-2008, 07:02 PM

The problem w/ not allowing any call ups is that is over-values marginal major leaguers. In the 1940s, for instance, middle infielders seem to be in short supply for whatever reason, so a real bum winds up with a lot of value simply because he got 10 GP over three years IRL.
The fact is, when he played, there were probably 20 guys as good as he was, give or take, any one of whom could have made the show for a week here or there, given the right breaks. It's a fact that talent is a pyramid: at every level down, there are more players capable of playing. Not allowing callups distorts that by simulating a world where there are a finite number of players. Instead of a VORP of 0, you essentially create an artificial VORP of infinity, because there are no replacement players.
(Think of the Washington Capitals emergency backup goalie the other night ... they activated their webmaster to warm the bench after their No.1 guy got hurt ... in a league with no imaginary players, you wind up needing to cover that kind of eventuality with a genuine major-leaguer ...).
The most-realistic option is to go in to each of your feeder leagues when you are setting up the game and reducing their talent modifier by at least .2 (20 percent or so).
So if a AAA league starts batting at, say, .850 (in relation to the bigs), knock it down to .650; AA from .720 to .520 and so on.
Do this across the board, at every minor-league level, and the computer will generate players who will occasionally make the bigs (during an injury bug) but never be the best players. At 20 percent, the absolute best imaginary player after four seasons (I happen to have him) is a fourth- or fifth-outfielder type ... he bats seventh when he starts (rarely) and plays good defense, but he won't be an all-star or league the lead in anything (well, strikeouts if you bat him enough).
If 20 percent isn't enough, take them all down 30 or 40 percent. At 40 percent, even the "greatest" created players are strictly fill-ins for injuries, left-handed one-out relief pitchers and the like, and they become pretty much indistinguishable from the worst "real" players, as they should be.

SteveP · 12-18-2008, 03:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rondell Tate

The problem w/ not allowing any call ups is that is over-values marginal major leaguers. In the 1940s, for instance, middle infielders seem to be in short supply for whatever reason, so a real bum winds up with a lot of value simply because he got 10 GP over three years IRL.

I agree with you. I started the thread because I was puzzled about how this feature worked. However, it only makes sense to have fictional players in order to create more robust organizations in historical leagues when you are using the Lahman DB. If you don't let them fill in for injured players, etc., what's the point. Your ideas caused me to do some experimenting with creating fictional players, and I think I came up with a pretty good alternative that I'll pass along FWIW.

My goal was to have two minor league levels with fictional players who could fill a slot on the active roster when need be, but who would not become success factors for a team. What I did was to authorize three minor league levels, but no fictional players, during game creation. Then I authorized fictional players for the two lower levels only -- which meant they had relatively low ratings. Then I made sure that "ghost players" was turned off, and had the AI reorganize the minor leagues. Most of the fictional players ended up in the two upper leagues. Then I went through and moved any players remaining in the lowest minor league teams up to the middle one, and eliminated the lowest minor league altogether.

The result looked very good. The AI will still put some fictional players on the active roster, because of fielding/position ratings (for some reason, the AI is overly generous with these ratings for fictional players -- probably something to do with how the game creates fictional players for fictional leagues). But I don't think these players will be a significant block to the development of real players.

Just a different way of doing what you proposed, I think.

thehef · 12-29-2008, 08:46 PM

Just wondering if Rondell Tate and/or SteveP have an updates on how their workarounds for this are coming along... Also, a question for each:

Rondell - When you say, "if a AAA league starts batting at, say, .850 (in relation to the bigs), knock it down to .650...," what are you saying is batting at .850? I don't think that would be the relation of the AAA league batting avg compared to the Majors league batting avg. Where would you find this .850 number (or what numbers would you use to calculate it)?

SteveP - As I understand your workaround, you're basically ending up with AA players on your AAA teams and A players on your AA teams (or something like that). Over time, though, won't some of the existing fictional players (and new ones created over the years) become the kind of excellent fictional player that you are trying to prevent? Or perhaps I'm missing something.

Thanks in advance.

SteveP · 12-30-2008, 12:15 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by thehef

SteveP - As I understand your workaround, you're basically ending up with AA players on your AAA teams and A players on your AA teams (or something like that). Over time, though, won't some of the existing fictional players (and new ones created over the years) become the kind of excellent fictional player that you are trying to prevent? Or perhaps I'm missing something.

Your description of what I did is accurate. Since I figured out this technique, I've only been playing it out one time, in a league that I'm playing very slowly (for reasons having nothing to do with this). So I can't give you a definitive answer about the long term. However, I'm pretty confident that none of these players is ever going to make the All-star team. One or two of them might become objects of AI-initiated trades at some point. But so far, I'm happy with the way this is working out.

Teams have a ready supply of backup players in case of injuries and the like. For example, in my own team, my two main catchers were injured, one with a CEI and the other with an SEI. Then a catcher I traded for was injured. Without the fictional players, I would have been down to one catcher who played in the ML for only a few days IRL. And frankly, I don't think his career made him any more "valid" than the fictional catcher I played instead.

My only real qualm is that in general these fictional players are over-rated in fielding/position, for some reason. As a result, the AI will tend to use them as starters a little more often than should be the case. I could edit them, but haven't chosen to do so yet -- so I guess that means it's not annoying me too much.

The other possible negative is that in the minor league report, the players on the AAA team are always shown as being overmatched. It's possible that Rondell's technique solves this problem -- if it is a problem worth worrying about.

Rondell Tate · 01-01-2009, 08:15 PM

I am also playing slowly right now ... but I've gotten through four or five seasons and there are no fictional hitters on my leaderboards to speak of (a handful of pitchers, but I expect pitchers to be less predictable.

As far as the Hef's question on the number ... I'm not at the computer that has OOTP right now, but when you set up a minor league in the (IIRC league setup screen) there's a set of numbers for a variety of skills (avg, power, etc.) that start at about .850 for AAA leagues and get gradually lower for lower-level leagues. I think they represent the talent level for created players, although I haven't researched it beyond playing w/ the numbers, and it works ... reduce those numbers and the created players get worse.

I would suggest for anybody who is interested in historical leagues that play like historical leagues, you should drop all the numbers by at least .200 or .300 in the original setup from the default, then speed-sim a couple of years and scan the leaderboards. If you are still seeing more "fake" leaders than you want, drop it another .200. You'll quickly find a comfort zone (unless your comfort zone is zero, in which case, just use ghost players).

I find it provides me w/ a handy pool of scrubs, when I want a backup catcher to fill in while my hotshot prospect gets a year of AB in the minors, or when I have a run of injuries at one position, etc. I've set every skill at every level down about .300 from the default (power I set farther down because 40 HR would make up for a lot of other failings) and the very, very best created hitter has made one all-star team in a fluke season he couldn't re-create. Maybe 20 percent of my pitchers are created, mostly in the pen.

And as SteveP noted, there are no easy adjustments for speed and defense, so there tend to be a few too many pinch-runner/glove men on the end of the bench. For me, this is a better trade-off than turning my third-string real-life catcher into a valuable commodity just because there's a shortage of catchers.

I'll post a few details when I get home tonight, from the other computer.

thehef · 01-03-2009, 12:19 AM

Hey Rondell, regarding this...

Quote:

So if a AAA league starts batting at, say, .850 (in relation to the bigs), knock it down to .650; AA from .720 to .520 and so on. Do this across the board, at every minor-league level..."

... I'm still trying to figure out exactly what you're adjusting downward... When I look at any of my leagues, I see that at the Major League level under Game Setup > League Setup > Strategy, there are 11 "Traditional OOTP Player Creation Modifiers" (5 for batting, 4 for pitching, 1 for running, 1 for fielding). Then under that there are 5 "Sabermetric Player Creation Modifiers" (batting avg, xtra-base hits, HR's, BB's, K's). However, at all Minor League levels, the 'Traditional' modifiers aren't there; just the Sabermetric ones. Are the Saber ones those to which you are referring? Or am I way off here?

Also, not like it's a big deal, but are you finding that your actual (not fictional) players who do not make the major league roster end up tearing it up in the minors because they are significantly better than the fictional ones?

Thanks in advance.

Rondell Tate · 01-04-2009, 08:48 PM

I've tried attaching the screenie of my settings ... and yes, I'm modifying the Sabermetric Player Creation Modifiers.
In case the file doesn't load, I'm using : BA.600 EBH .650 HR.500 W.600 K.650 in AAA and in AA: BA.500 EBH.400 HR .350 W.500 K.500
No particular rhyme nor reason, just trial and error.
And I hadn't looked up the minor league leaders before ... it's a mix (Bill Freehan has the single-season HR title; Bill Stenhouse the single-season K by pitcher record. Some created player leads in all the batting pct. categories based on one fluke season (382AB when he TORE UP AA). He played 112 MLB games for Cleveland the next year and hit .257 with DH-quality defense at 2B (-7.3 VORP) spent the next year as a decent DH in AAA and was released. He's in the Dodgers system and looks like a career backup. He scouts at 10(10) 6(6) 13(14) and is about as good as created players get in my world.
I would be interested to hear if other players have any insight on this.

thehef · 01-08-2009, 12:56 PM

Hey SteveP & Rondell: Thanks for the info. As you progress through your historical sims, please post updates on how your processes are working. I, for one, am very interested. Thanks!

SteveP · 01-17-2009, 03:47 PM

A minor update on my own experimenting. In the end, I decided that I had to do some editing on the fictional players. My objective was to have the fictional players act in the role of useful backups and replacements for teams depleted by injuries and the like, but not have them be impact players or have ratings/stats higher than the average historical player. In that respect, I found that it was important that these players not be outstanding in any dimension of the game. So that led me to editing fielding, SB/baserunning, and bunting ratings on these players when they showed up on the active rosters of any of the teams. I assume these ratings are created at random without regard to the type of league (ML vs MiL, for example), or the era. A little extra hassle, but I was getting rosters that were too slanted toward the fictional players (especially on expansion teams). FWIW

Rondell Tate · 01-18-2009, 02:06 AM

I played five years and got no fictional players on the leader boards to speak of, with the settings above. SteveP is right about speed/defense ...
I'm giving up the game for a while though. I think the WS is rigged and it's taking all the fun out of it. I made the WS four times in five years and lost every one ... Bob Gibson and Sandy Koufax combining to go 1-5 with ERAs in the low 8.00s over the past two WS (1964/65) despite winning almost 90 games in the regular seasons. Dick Radatz, my closer, had an 0.96 ERA in the regular season and blew three saves in the WS (ERA over 10) ... final game (as it turned out) ... ninth inning bloop singles to the 8 hitter and a PH w/ a Mendoza-line average, then a three run homer and I lose by one?
I just can't bring myself to play through another year, put in all the hours, just to see the game decide I have to lose. Not worth the frustration.
I'll go play Civ IV for a couple months ...

Rondell Tate · 02-04-2009, 10:00 PM

I started a new league in the 1930s but set the modifiers down to .250 to .200. That's overkill by my standards. No useful players, just glove/speed merchants at the end of the bench, and it's obvious who's real or not, which detracts from the game.
At .350 to .400, I got players so close to the real-life scrubs they were indistinguishable and I found myself not really caring if Joe Smith was a real or fake .239-hitting shortstop.

thehef · 02-05-2009, 11:45 AM

SteveP & Rondell Tate - Thanks for your updates.

Rondell Tate: Could you please clarify your last post:

Quote:

I started a new league in the 1930s but set the modifiers down to .250 to .200. That's overkill by my standards. No useful players...

... and ...

Quote:

At .350 to .400, I got players so close to the real-life scrubs they were indistinguishable...

In your earlier posts you mentioned dropping the modifiers for AAA by .200, so it's .650 instead of .850. In the quotes above are you talking about the amount that you reduced the modifiers (.850 minus .250/.200, then .850 minus .350/400), or are you referring to the number to which you reduced the modifiers (set them at .250/.200; too much, and .350/.400; just right)?

And what is the significance of two numbers in each case? (.250 and .200; .350 and .400.)

Finally, to both SteveP & Rondell Tate: Are you finding that your actual (not fictional) players who do not make the major league roster end up tearing it up in the minors because they are significantly better than the fictional ones? I would think their stats would be better than they should be. Not saying this is a big problem, just wondering if it is happening and, if so, to what degree.

Thanks in advance.

SteveP · 02-05-2009, 12:15 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by thehef

Finally, to both SteveP & Rondell Tate: Are you finding that your actual (not fictional) players who do not make the major league roster end up tearing it up in the minors because they are significantly better than the fictional ones? I would think their stats would be better than they should be. Not saying this is a big problem, just wondering if it is happening and, if so, to what degree.

Sorry, I know you've asked this question before, but the best answer I can give is some combination of "I don't care" and "no, I don't think so." When I create a historical league, I use the feature in the game setup process that reduces ratings for players with low ABs or IPs. As a result, many of the historical players who start out in the minors have lower ratings anyway. On the other hand, they also tend to be the ones that the AI says "are ready for the major league". Obviously, I want them to stand out from the fictional players, so that the AI will be more likely to promote them over the fictional players. Even so, I still see a few fictional players getting preferential treatment, so I have to think that with my approach the historical players aren't looking like supermen in the minors.

As a further update, in conjunction with some other tests I've been doing, I actually exported the roster (after creating fictionals) and did a wholesale ratings adjustment on steal/baserunning and fielding for the fictional players. Before, I had been doing this individually as fictional players made it onto active rosters. However, the AI would then just rotate other fictional players onto the rosters. Not a big problem, but I'm glad I took the trouble to do a global fix. Not too difficult for anyone with some Excel skills. You can also fix bunt ratings -- a problem I discuss in another thread.

Rondell Tate · 02-06-2009, 09:58 PM

I decided to try an extreme ... I dropped the player creation modifiers to the .200 to .250 range to see what happened. The result was a free agent list full of absolutely useless players (topping out at 5 on a 20-point scale, lots of 2s and 3s) with a bunch of 18- to 20-rated glove guys and a bunch of 18- to 20-rated speed guys, who were useless at everything else.

So every team had two rank amateurs who ran like Willie Mays Hayes sitting at the end of the bench, which ruined a close game (leadoff walk, 20/20 pinch runner, steal, steal, sac fly, game over).

The computer also doesn't seem to recognize them as useless, so it will still insist you throw in two or three garbage players in a trade to "even it up" even though you know they'll never amount to squat.

But the early 1930s was dominated by a few great hitters and a lot of banjo hitters who had grown up in the dead ball era, so when I set the modifiers to .350 and .400, the best created players merged nicely with a lot of the weak hitters who were still clogging rosters in 1933.

And that was my goal with this league ... to simulate an environment where for every marginal real-life big-leaguer, there are at least a couple of imaginary players at the same level who "might have been" big leaguers if they hadn't been injured, or had an off day when the scout was in the park, or playing in East Pitchfork, N.D., so nobody knew they were any good. I also didn't want to create anybody with more than, say, a part-time role for a couple of years. And although I'm in my first season, I pretty much guarantee that no created players will even make an all-star team with mods set at .400.

And there's no significance to the spread between, say, .350 and .400 ... I find adjusting the numbers before I start playing tedious, so I only change the first number. If a number starts as .x50, it winds up as .(x-z)50, just so as to save keystrokes.

I suspect that in a better hitters' era, like the mid-50s or the Steroid Era, that you will get marginal-at-best results with the player creation modifiers in the .500 to .600 range. Higher than that and you'll start seeing the best created players turning into useful journeymen, although not stars.

Having played with a few leagues (in the 1920s, 30s, 60s and 70s) as a rule of thumb, I would suggest to anyone looking for "no replacements better than a journeyman" to SUBTRACT .250 to .300 points from the starting AAA level for each skill, and .350 to .500 from starting AA level for each skill (AA players are usually younger therefore show more development so you want them to be worse to start).

For eras when offenses are down, subtract another .100 to .200 in each category. Keep power at the low end of your scale or will get the occasional Dave Kingman ... a .200 hitter who never walks and strikes out 120 times a year but who can hit 40 HR ... and nobody wants an imaginary HR champion.

If you absolutely, positively want your replacements to be Mendoza-line hitters, make all the settings in the .350 to .400 range, even in a pitchers' era. Anything lower and you might as well have ghost players.

For further realism, stay in commissioner mode long enough to edit your FA list ... sort for speed and dock most of the track stars' ratings, then repeat the process with glove men (although I find it's rarer to see the game making five defensive replacements than to see them bring in pinch runner after pinch runner ... particularly in an era like the 30s when a full pitching staff might be eight guys, so there's plenty of room to swap players ... it's like they have the US 4x100 relay squad on the bench).

Finally, as to the minors ... I haven't noticed that the real-life players dominate even in a minors filled at the .200 to.250 level (they don't typically tank, either), but when you bring up one of the total scrubs to the bigs, they get SHELLED ... ERAs in the mid-teens and 0-for-15 streaks. It's like calling me up ...

If there's interest, I'll build and share a quick start file for the 30s. There's a couple of tweaks I want to make with my current league anyway (I didn't slow down the speed guys).

thehef · 02-07-2009, 06:44 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Rondell Tate:
Having played with a few leagues (in the 1920s, 30s, 60s and 70s) as a rule of thumb, I would suggest to anyone looking for "no replacements better than a journeyman" to SUBTRACT .250 to .300 points from the starting AAA level for each skill, and .350 to .500 from starting AA level for each skill (AA players are usually younger therefore show more development so you want them to be worse to start).

So if I'm looking for "mostly replacements that are almost as good as a journeyman," or something like that, I'm thinking I'd go with the larger numbers in your scale: Subtract .300 from the AAA level, and maybe .450 from AA. Any suggestions for single A? At the rates you suggest for AAA & AA, it looks like I'd be dropping the single A numbers to next-to-nothing. Wonder if that's feasible...

I see from both Rondell Tate's posts and SteveP's, that going thru and editing - one way or another - high glove and speed ratings is pretty much a necessity when pursuing these goals... It sure would be nice to have a sortable field or indicator that would note fictional players vs real/historical ones...

Quote:

Originally posted by Rondell Tate:
If there's interest, I'll build and share a quick start file for the 30s.

Sure. I'm curious what - in general terms - your minor-league structure would be.

Thanks to both of you for proving details and updates.

SteveP · 02-07-2009, 09:32 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by thehef

It sure would be nice to have a sortable field or indicator that would note fictional players vs real/historical ones...

That actually can be quite easy to determine, depending on what your overall approach is.

Basically, you can do it by player ID number. First, you need to know with some accuracy how many historical players you have in your the league. They will always have ID numbers lower than that. The fictional players will always have higher ID numbers (usually at the next higher 100). So, this makes it easy in Excel. If you are trying to deal with it from within the game, and you don't have actual pictures for the historical players, then it is a little more trial-and-error. The best indicator I think is that the fictional players will not have "real stats" in their profiles. So, if you think someone might be fictional, then check that in their profiles. Hope that helps.

Rondell Tate · 02-07-2009, 10:33 PM

What I said was NO replacements better than a journeyman. I have two "tests" whether the replacements are about right for a given league:

1) Are there a lot of them playing regularly? If so, I will reduce the starting modifiers further, as I want them available if needed, but not bumping decent real life players to the minors.

2) Are any of them stars, and if so, how many? Usually, they show up in pitching, which like real life seems to have more variance. Reducing all the AAA numbers by .200 to .250 points, I have never seen a real star hitter ... one player who made an all-star team in one year, but he wasn't going to get any votes for the Hall of Fame. In that league (I played 1960-1965 or 66), there were typically 2-3 replacements per team, mostly middle relievers. If that's still too many for your taste, then set the numbers down .300 across the board. I would save the game as a quickstart, then add the minors with adjusted numbers and let it run off 3-4-5 years, then check the records for names you don't know. If it's not to your liking, you can either adjust your quicksave as needed or simply start for real.

Subtracting .300 from AAA (you'll pretty much start at .500 to .550 in AAA) is for guys who want the best replacement player to hit .225 in the bigs ... possibly unless you're in the dead ball era. That game doesn't interest me and I haven't played with it to see.

I suggest starting your AAA at about .600 (.500 for power) and your AA at .500 (.400 for power). I don't bother with A ball, because I neither want nor expect these guys to develop into big leaguers. The only reason I bother with AA is I can set them to unlimited rosters and use it as a giant slush fund of replacements (my most recent game, my AAA team have four pitchers hurt and w/out AA to fill the roster, I would have had real prospects pitching 350 innings to make up the slack. Instead, I signed five useless FA starters, assigned them to AA and made sure there were bodies in the AAA rotation so my real players didn't get ruined in the minors.

But I have never seen any player starting at .200 or .250 for player creation modifiers develop into a useful ML replacement, so if you want A ball, that's probably a safe modifier.

As far as adjusting for speed/glove, I haven't tried exporting and batch-adjusting the Excel files (although I'm going to now). Usually, I go into the AAA and AA rosters and the FA list before starting play, as those are all fictional players, and take down most of the speed guys.

As SteveP said, you can always check later by seeing if they had real life stats. If I get the levels right for a given era, I can't tell the difference without checking there, which makes for more "realistic" management decisions.

11-11-2008, 06:58 PM	#1
SteveP Moderator Join Date: Aug 2008 Posts: 3,109	Blocking fictional players from ML I am puzzled about how this feature is supposed to work. I am talking here about the fictional players generated by the game to fill out minor league teams. I assumed that if I tried to move a fictional player to my active roster, the game would block that. Not so. Is this feature only intended to block the AI from moving such players to an active roster?

11-15-2008, 09:48 AM	#3
PhillieFever Hall Of Famer Join Date: Apr 2008 Location: Elk Twp. NJ Posts: 6,763	Yes,that is correct,you can move fictional players up to the ML level,but the CPU cannot.I tried implementing that feature once and wound up deleting the league because I hated it so much,in my opinion,you're better off with ghost players. __________________ We're All Wednesday Aren't We? WAWAW

01-04-2009, 08:48 PM	#10
Rondell Tate Minors (Double A) Join Date: Aug 2008 Posts: 169	I've tried attaching the screenie of my settings ... and yes, I'm modifying the Sabermetric Player Creation Modifiers. In case the file doesn't load, I'm using : BA.600 EBH .650 HR.500 W.600 K.650 in AAA and in AA: BA.500 EBH.400 HR .350 W.500 K.500 No particular rhyme nor reason, just trial and error. And I hadn't looked up the minor league leaders before ... it's a mix (Bill Freehan has the single-season HR title; Bill Stenhouse the single-season K by pitcher record. Some created player leads in all the batting pct. categories based on one fluke season (382AB when he TORE UP AA). He played 112 MLB games for Cleveland the next year and hit .257 with DH-quality defense at 2B (-7.3 VORP) spent the next year as a decent DH in AAA and was released. He's in the Dodgers system and looks like a career backup. He scouts at 10(10) 6(6) 13(14) and is about as good as created players get in my world. I would be interested to hear if other players have any insight on this. Attached Images Last edited by Rondell Tate; 01-07-2009 at 07:44 PM. Reason: Garbled

02-04-2009, 10:00 PM	#14
Rondell Tate Minors (Double A) Join Date: Aug 2008 Posts: 169	Update I started a new league in the 1930s but set the modifiers down to .250 to .200. That's overkill by my standards. No useful players, just glove/speed merchants at the end of the bench, and it's obvious who's real or not, which detracts from the game. At .350 to .400, I got players so close to the real-life scrubs they were indistinguishable and I found myself not really caring if Joe Smith was a real or fake .239-hitting shortstop.

11-14-2008, 12:16 PM	#2
SteveP Moderator Join Date: Aug 2008 Posts: 3,109	Bump

12-16-2008, 07:02 PM	#4
Rondell Tate Minors (Double A) Join Date: Aug 2008 Posts: 169	The problem w/ not allowing any call ups is that is over-values marginal major leaguers. In the 1940s, for instance, middle infielders seem to be in short supply for whatever reason, so a real bum winds up with a lot of value simply because he got 10 GP over three years IRL. The fact is, when he played, there were probably 20 guys as good as he was, give or take, any one of whom could have made the show for a week here or there, given the right breaks. It's a fact that talent is a pyramid: at every level down, there are more players capable of playing. Not allowing callups distorts that by simulating a world where there are a finite number of players. Instead of a VORP of 0, you essentially create an artificial VORP of infinity, because there are no replacement players. (Think of the Washington Capitals emergency backup goalie the other night ... they activated their webmaster to warm the bench after their No.1 guy got hurt ... in a league with no imaginary players, you wind up needing to cover that kind of eventuality with a genuine major-leaguer ...). The most-realistic option is to go in to each of your feeder leagues when you are setting up the game and reducing their talent modifier by at least .2 (20 percent or so). So if a AAA league starts batting at, say, .850 (in relation to the bigs), knock it down to .650; AA from .720 to .520 and so on. Do this across the board, at every minor-league level, and the computer will generate players who will occasionally make the bigs (during an injury bug) but never be the best players. At 20 percent, the absolute best imaginary player after four seasons (I happen to have him) is a fourth- or fifth-outfielder type ... he bats seventh when he starts (rarely) and plays good defense, but he won't be an all-star or league the lead in anything (well, strikeouts if you bat him enough). If 20 percent isn't enough, take them all down 30 or 40 percent. At 40 percent, even the "greatest" created players are strictly fill-ins for injuries, left-handed one-out relief pitchers and the like, and they become pretty much indistinguishable from the worst "real" players, as they should be.

12-29-2008, 08:46 PM	#6
thehef Hall Of Famer Join Date: Jun 2006 Posts: 5,345	Just wondering if Rondell Tate and/or SteveP have an updates on how their workarounds for this are coming along... Also, a question for each: Rondell - When you say, "if a AAA league starts batting at, say, .850 (in relation to the bigs), knock it down to .650...," what are you saying is batting at .850? I don't think that would be the relation of the AAA league batting avg compared to the Majors league batting avg. Where would you find this .850 number (or what numbers would you use to calculate it)? SteveP - As I understand your workaround, you're basically ending up with AA players on your AAA teams and A players on your AA teams (or something like that). Over time, though, won't some of the existing fictional players (and new ones created over the years) become the kind of excellent fictional player that you are trying to prevent? Or perhaps I'm missing something. Thanks in advance.

01-01-2009, 08:15 PM	#8
Rondell Tate Minors (Double A) Join Date: Aug 2008 Posts: 169	I am also playing slowly right now ... but I've gotten through four or five seasons and there are no fictional hitters on my leaderboards to speak of (a handful of pitchers, but I expect pitchers to be less predictable. As far as the Hef's question on the number ... I'm not at the computer that has OOTP right now, but when you set up a minor league in the (IIRC league setup screen) there's a set of numbers for a variety of skills (avg, power, etc.) that start at about .850 for AAA leagues and get gradually lower for lower-level leagues. I think they represent the talent level for created players, although I haven't researched it beyond playing w/ the numbers, and it works ... reduce those numbers and the created players get worse. I would suggest for anybody who is interested in historical leagues that play like historical leagues, you should drop all the numbers by at least .200 or .300 in the original setup from the default, then speed-sim a couple of years and scan the leaderboards. If you are still seeing more "fake" leaders than you want, drop it another .200. You'll quickly find a comfort zone (unless your comfort zone is zero, in which case, just use ghost players). I find it provides me w/ a handy pool of scrubs, when I want a backup catcher to fill in while my hotshot prospect gets a year of AB in the minors, or when I have a run of injuries at one position, etc. I've set every skill at every level down about .300 from the default (power I set farther down because 40 HR would make up for a lot of other failings) and the very, very best created hitter has made one all-star team in a fluke season he couldn't re-create. Maybe 20 percent of my pitchers are created, mostly in the pen. And as SteveP noted, there are no easy adjustments for speed and defense, so there tend to be a few too many pinch-runner/glove men on the end of the bench. For me, this is a better trade-off than turning my third-string real-life catcher into a valuable commodity just because there's a shortage of catchers. I'll post a few details when I get home tonight, from the other computer.

01-08-2009, 12:56 PM	#11
thehef Hall Of Famer Join Date: Jun 2006 Posts: 5,345	Hey SteveP & Rondell: Thanks for the info. As you progress through your historical sims, please post updates on how your processes are working. I, for one, am very interested. Thanks!

01-17-2009, 03:47 PM	#12
SteveP Moderator Join Date: Aug 2008 Posts: 3,109	A minor update on my own experimenting. In the end, I decided that I had to do some editing on the fictional players. My objective was to have the fictional players act in the role of useful backups and replacements for teams depleted by injuries and the like, but not have them be impact players or have ratings/stats higher than the average historical player. In that respect, I found that it was important that these players not be outstanding in any dimension of the game. So that led me to editing fielding, SB/baserunning, and bunting ratings on these players when they showed up on the active rosters of any of the teams. I assume these ratings are created at random without regard to the type of league (ML vs MiL, for example), or the era. A little extra hassle, but I was getting rosters that were too slanted toward the fictional players (especially on expansion teams). FWIW

01-18-2009, 02:06 AM	#13
Rondell Tate Minors (Double A) Join Date: Aug 2008 Posts: 169	I played five years and got no fictional players on the leader boards to speak of, with the settings above. SteveP is right about speed/defense ... I'm giving up the game for a while though. I think the WS is rigged and it's taking all the fun out of it. I made the WS four times in five years and lost every one ... Bob Gibson and Sandy Koufax combining to go 1-5 with ERAs in the low 8.00s over the past two WS (1964/65) despite winning almost 90 games in the regular seasons. Dick Radatz, my closer, had an 0.96 ERA in the regular season and blew three saves in the WS (ERA over 10) ... final game (as it turned out) ... ninth inning bloop singles to the 8 hitter and a PH w/ a Mendoza-line average, then a three run homer and I lose by one? I just can't bring myself to play through another year, put in all the hours, just to see the game decide I have to lose. Not worth the frustration. I'll go play Civ IV for a couple months ...

02-06-2009, 09:58 PM	#17
Rondell Tate Minors (Double A) Join Date: Aug 2008 Posts: 169	I decided to try an extreme ... I dropped the player creation modifiers to the .200 to .250 range to see what happened. The result was a free agent list full of absolutely useless players (topping out at 5 on a 20-point scale, lots of 2s and 3s) with a bunch of 18- to 20-rated glove guys and a bunch of 18- to 20-rated speed guys, who were useless at everything else. So every team had two rank amateurs who ran like Willie Mays Hayes sitting at the end of the bench, which ruined a close game (leadoff walk, 20/20 pinch runner, steal, steal, sac fly, game over). The computer also doesn't seem to recognize them as useless, so it will still insist you throw in two or three garbage players in a trade to "even it up" even though you know they'll never amount to squat. But the early 1930s was dominated by a few great hitters and a lot of banjo hitters who had grown up in the dead ball era, so when I set the modifiers to .350 and .400, the best created players merged nicely with a lot of the weak hitters who were still clogging rosters in 1933. And that was my goal with this league ... to simulate an environment where for every marginal real-life big-leaguer, there are at least a couple of imaginary players at the same level who "might have been" big leaguers if they hadn't been injured, or had an off day when the scout was in the park, or playing in East Pitchfork, N.D., so nobody knew they were any good. I also didn't want to create anybody with more than, say, a part-time role for a couple of years. And although I'm in my first season, I pretty much guarantee that no created players will even make an all-star team with mods set at .400. And there's no significance to the spread between, say, .350 and .400 ... I find adjusting the numbers before I start playing tedious, so I only change the first number. If a number starts as .x50, it winds up as .(x-z)50, just so as to save keystrokes. I suspect that in a better hitters' era, like the mid-50s or the Steroid Era, that you will get marginal-at-best results with the player creation modifiers in the .500 to .600 range. Higher than that and you'll start seeing the best created players turning into useful journeymen, although not stars. Having played with a few leagues (in the 1920s, 30s, 60s and 70s) as a rule of thumb, I would suggest to anyone looking for "no replacements better than a journeyman" to SUBTRACT .250 to .300 points from the starting AAA level for each skill, and .350 to .500 from starting AA level for each skill (AA players are usually younger therefore show more development so you want them to be worse to start). For eras when offenses are down, subtract another .100 to .200 in each category. Keep power at the low end of your scale or will get the occasional Dave Kingman ... a .200 hitter who never walks and strikes out 120 times a year but who can hit 40 HR ... and nobody wants an imaginary HR champion. If you absolutely, positively want your replacements to be Mendoza-line hitters, make all the settings in the .350 to .400 range, even in a pitchers' era. Anything lower and you might as well have ghost players. For further realism, stay in commissioner mode long enough to edit your FA list ... sort for speed and dock most of the track stars' ratings, then repeat the process with glove men (although I find it's rarer to see the game making five defensive replacements than to see them bring in pinch runner after pinch runner ... particularly in an era like the 30s when a full pitching staff might be eight guys, so there's plenty of room to swap players ... it's like they have the US 4x100 relay squad on the bench). Finally, as to the minors ... I haven't noticed that the real-life players dominate even in a minors filled at the .200 to.250 level (they don't typically tank, either), but when you bring up one of the total scrubs to the bigs, they get SHELLED ... ERAs in the mid-teens and 0-for-15 streaks. It's like calling me up ... If there's interest, I'll build and share a quick start file for the 30s. There's a couple of tweaks I want to make with my current league anyway (I didn't slow down the speed guys).

02-07-2009, 10:33 PM	#20
Rondell Tate Minors (Double A) Join Date: Aug 2008 Posts: 169	What I said was NO replacements better than a journeyman. I have two "tests" whether the replacements are about right for a given league: 1) Are there a lot of them playing regularly? If so, I will reduce the starting modifiers further, as I want them available if needed, but not bumping decent real life players to the minors. 2) Are any of them stars, and if so, how many? Usually, they show up in pitching, which like real life seems to have more variance. Reducing all the AAA numbers by .200 to .250 points, I have never seen a real star hitter ... one player who made an all-star team in one year, but he wasn't going to get any votes for the Hall of Fame. In that league (I played 1960-1965 or 66), there were typically 2-3 replacements per team, mostly middle relievers. If that's still too many for your taste, then set the numbers down .300 across the board. I would save the game as a quickstart, then add the minors with adjusted numbers and let it run off 3-4-5 years, then check the records for names you don't know. If it's not to your liking, you can either adjust your quicksave as needed or simply start for real. Subtracting .300 from AAA (you'll pretty much start at .500 to .550 in AAA) is for guys who want the best replacement player to hit .225 in the bigs ... possibly unless you're in the dead ball era. That game doesn't interest me and I haven't played with it to see. I suggest starting your AAA at about .600 (.500 for power) and your AA at .500 (.400 for power). I don't bother with A ball, because I neither want nor expect these guys to develop into big leaguers. The only reason I bother with AA is I can set them to unlimited rosters and use it as a giant slush fund of replacements (my most recent game, my AAA team have four pitchers hurt and w/out AA to fill the roster, I would have had real prospects pitching 350 innings to make up the slack. Instead, I signed five useless FA starters, assigned them to AA and made sure there were bodies in the AAA rotation so my real players didn't get ruined in the minors. But I have never seen any player starting at .200 or .250 for player creation modifiers develop into a useful ML replacement, so if you want A ball, that's probably a safe modifier. As far as adjusting for speed/glove, I haven't tried exporting and batch-adjusting the Excel files (although I'm going to now). Usually, I go into the AAA and AA rosters and the FA list before starting play, as those are all fictional players, and take down most of the speed guys. As SteveP said, you can always check later by seeing if they had real life stats. If I get the levels right for a given era, I can't tell the difference without checking there, which makes for more "realistic" management decisions.