How to stop my minor league teams from constantly losing ? How does it affect player development ?

[LuScorpio68]

Hey people,

Playing with the Detroit Tigers going into my 2041 season (and still no WS lol), I've noticed a pattern in my minor league system I've been struggling to fix. Basically the title. Except for my AAA team, every minor league team has been losing hard for years now. AA Erie for example has started the 2041 season 8-38, and it's a similar season for every team. I've tried adding veteran leaders and captains for a better locker-room atmosphere locked to each team but it hasn't worked so far. I wonder what I can do to stop the bleeding, because it is affecting my prospects's production, especially the hitters, and especially the international amateurs who tend to flame out because of that. Once those prospects reach AAA, many of them who were struggling heavily most of the time before suddenly become very productive, and their potential ratings even go back up (in the cases they went down before).

Two notes : It's the AI who manages promotions and demotions for me, as well as recruiting coaches. Also, I tend to do some trades that can slightly affect the overall depth of the minor league system (either trading for Major League players or top prospects by adding one or two minor leaguers to the mix).

It doesn't affect my team that much in the Majors because I tend to heavily target college players in the draft and rush them to AAA as soon as I can, or I buy high level prospects or younger major leaguers through trades, but again that method can affect my depth.

What should I do ? Should I try to recruit more minor league depth in free agency ? Should I recruit minor league coaches myself (I can, I mostly don't to save time) ? Should I try to limit sacrificing depth to try to get better top end prospects ?
Also, have some of you seen a similar situation and how did it affect your player development overall ?

[snepp]

The bulk of the problem is likely the AI's minor league teams are older than yours, and playing at levels below where they probably should be.

Age and service time limits in the minors can help with this considerably.

If not wanting to go that route, you'll have to consider keeping more "organizational filler" players around in your minors (Crash Davis!). Guys that you know will never amount to anything (or even make the majors), but are good enough to be plus contributors for their teams.

[itsmb8]

Originally Posted by snepp

The bulk of the problem is likely the AI's minor league teams are older than yours, and playing at levels below where they probably should be.

Age and service time limits in the minors can help with this considerably.

If not wanting to go that route, you'll have to consider keeping more "organizational filler" players around in your minors (Crash Davis!). Guys that you know will never amount to anything (or even make the majors), but are good enough to be plus contributors for their teams.

This is always what seems to be the main issue. These posts pop up about once a month and never get any follow up after this is suggested. At this point, it feels like the mlb quickstart that ships with the game should have these in place.

[billyray1984]

Originally Posted by snepp

The bulk of the problem is likely the AI's minor league teams are older than yours, and playing at levels below where they probably should be.

Age and service time limits in the minors can help with this considerably.

If not wanting to go that route, you'll have to consider keeping more "organizational filler" players around in your minors (Crash Davis!). Guys that you know will never amount to anything (or even make the majors), but are good enough to be plus contributors for their teams.

This is basically the answer. Guys start to really develop at 20-21 with the base game, so the AI will leave guys in rookie ball until they DOMINATE the level, which can mean guys repeating until they are often times 23 and then promoting the same player though all the levels in a single year the next year. Stupid.

For rookie ball teams, nobody older than 21 and no more than 3 years of pro service time. The AI will still pad their team with a bunch of 21 year olds, but at least it'll give your HS draftees a fighting chance.

I usually do not put age/service time limits on A ball and higher, but you could.

What you don't want to do is put a hard cap on the number of players like IRL. Something like 35-38 players a level, the AI can manage, but 26-28 players a level will lead to the AI cutting top prospects in favour of jobbers or not having backups to play certain positions.

[LuScorpio68]

Originally Posted by billyray1984

This is basically the answer. Guys start to really develop at 20-21 with the base game, so the AI will leave guys in rookie ball until they DOMINATE the level, which can mean guys repeating until they are often times 23 and then promoting the same player though all the levels in a single year the next year. Stupid.

For rookie ball teams, nobody older than 21 and no more than 3 years of pro service time. The AI will still pad their team with a bunch of 21 year olds, but at least it'll give your HS draftees a fighting chance.

I usually do not put age/service time limits on A ball and higher, but you could.

What you don't want to do is put a hard cap on the number of players like IRL. Something like 35-38 players a level, the AI can manage, but 26-28 players a level will lead to the AI cutting top prospects in favour of jobbers or not having backups to play certain positions.

Thank you all for answering, I will put an age limit in rookie ball (perhaps in A as well). After checking the rosters, I've noticed players on the other teams tend to be a bit older than mine even if they are not that much better on paper so this is definitely a thing. I will do it at the end of my current season just so I don't put the AI roster management in disarray, and share the results after the first year or two.

I thought this would be a question often asked but I probably misused the search engine, because I couldn't find a thread where the question was already answered. I didn't have the problem when playing OOTP 21 either (the last one I bought before the current game).

[snepp]

It does seem like the topic gets rehashed once a month or so here, and once every couple of weeks or so on reddit.

Here's one from last month...

https://forums.ootpdevelopments.com/....php?p=5039227

[rudel.dietrich]

The AI in this series is ****
And like most things, it is up to the user to tweak, modify settings and use house rules to get around it


But every year we get 'best AI ever' as a new feature

[Humboldt KA]

Originally Posted by snepp

The bulk of the problem is likely the AI's minor league teams are older than yours, and playing at levels below where they probably should be.

Age and service time limits in the minors can help with this considerably.

If not wanting to go that route, you'll have to consider keeping more "organizational filler" players around in your minors (Crash Davis!). Guys that you know will never amount to anything (or even make the majors), but are good enough to be plus contributors for their teams.

My AA team is losing, but this cannot be why. It has above average "team position rankings" at 8 out of 10 positions ranked--1st or 2nd at 5 of them--good team chemistry, and good relationships among coaches. What could cause this?

[Brad K]

What's their record?

[Humboldt KA]

Originally Posted by Brad K

What's their record?

It was 23-28 at the time, which is not awful in an absolute sense, but very bad considering they had far the strongest team either either division of AA--I didn't set out to do that, but when I checked they were as described above..

At that point I forced almost all the starters. They are now 43-36, so 20-8 since then. Whether that is above expectation considering the talent advantage is hard to say.

Still pissed off that at 4 positions the manager was playing much worse rated players than his best, without more unrealized potential either. (And that when I set more sensible lineups he just changed them back.) There are still two positions where we should be platooning--one is only a small difference, the other is a no-brainer--but I can't make it happen.