lack of batting talent among rookies

[Schaefling]

Although I just registered I have been playing for several weeks now in three leagues. All my leagues are fastsim and they have either reached their tenth year of play or are preety close. I have noticed a marked drop-off in batting talent the last few years while the stats of my older batting talent has worsened and not from aging.

At the same time pitching talent has gotten consistently better and the odds of getting a good pitcher are much better than the odds of getting a good batter.

Have other players noticed this? Is this just a coincidence on my part or am I on to something? I would love some feed back both from the powers that be and from fellow gamers.

I have all the baseball mogul games and I remember this as being a problem before in earlier versions. I just wonder if it has cropped up again. If it has I certainly hope that such a potential play imbalance will be corrected by Clay and his cohorts! Im really enjoying the game but there's always room for improvement.

[ogallala]

I think what you are seeing is the result of some changes that Clay made earlier. He made some changes to tip the scales back toward pitching. Before he did it the hitting was getting out of hand. There were teams with batting averages around 350 and three or four guys that had 50+ homers on the same team. I'm sure they are keeping a close eye on this to make sure they didnt overtip the scales.

[Schaefling]

I have no problem with better rookie pitchers on the whole but there are now way too few decent batters. I think any compensating has gone too far toward pitching. Look at all the batters with contact ratings of D and F whose ratings never improve over time no matter how much you spend on your farming and scouting.

The game would benefit if almost all rookie batters improved to varying degrees over time. As it stands now many rookies never get better. This is a simulation and managers should have decisions to make that make a difference in the game. A manager who spends 100 points on farming should see more of an improvement than some one who spends 10 points and the improvement should be marked.

At the same time I think small markets should get some sort of talent bonus in general in order to balance play but if rookies improve dramatically based on farming and scouting
it makes the game so much better. In this way players can develop talent through their farm system or opt to go to free agency or combine the two methods. As it stands now there is way too much emphasis on free agency and small market teams hardly have a chance at all.

[takaplan]

Now it's tilted too much at the pitching end. Teams are consistently having team ERAs around 2.30. Nearly every rookie pitcher I get (with farm system set to about 15th in the league) is a B+/A-/B+ pitcher. It should be tilted a little back to hitting, but not much. Just so teams won't have their 5 starter go 18-1 with a 1.23 ERA.

Tom

[Particleman]

It needs to be tilted back towards hitting, but only very little, in the MLBA there are very few hitters that are career 300 hitters, and other than the last couple of years, few that hit 30+ homers a season.

[Schaefling]

I think pitching is fine now. As for rookie batters my main complaint is the worst rookie batters never improve. Simply speaking as a gamer and not a sports fan on this issue, I just dont think this makes for good game play. Since we get so few new players each year the batters should evolve over time. Scouts for teams should not be giving us lots of D and F contact hitters at least not if they never get any better. This is especialy true when you spend lots of money on scouting and farm system as I do. There should be some reward for this and it should not just be better pitchers and a whole bunch of crummy batters who are so worthless all you can do is release them.


Other earlier versions of Baseball Mogul showed more evolution of players and Im all for it. Tony La Russa Baseball did this and it was a great game. If most rookie batters evolve to some degree it will give managers more to do and give them more options and will increase interaction with players through more trades. This has to be good for the game.

[Particleman]

Yeah, teams would be more willing to take on young talent in trades if there was a chance they'd actually turn into something, but neither team can tell they will. At this point if a team has a good rookie there is no way they are going to trade them because scouting is pinpoint accurate. In this game it seems they are either good from the get go as a rookie or they are mediocre for life. No sudden break out seasons out of no where, nothing, I am one who believes that dealing with young players needs to be more of a game of roulette, like in real life.

[takaplan]

In kohuts' North American Baseball League, nearly every team has a team batting average below .250. Most teams are hitting about .240 and have an ERA of about 3.75

Hopefully the batting slump will end soon...

Tom

[Schaefling]

I would love to get some feedback from the poers that be on this subject and on how rookie development in general is handled and if it is currently being tweaked at all.

[Schaefling]

I would love to hear from Clay on this issue. Sorry for my poor English on that last post!

[Clay Dreslough]

I have been tweaking this and created a poll to get your opinions on the current patch (for the CD-ROM, which is the same code used for Baseball Mogul Online).

http://forum.sportsmogul.com/showthread.php3?s=&threadid=2143

Clay

[Schaefling]

Thanks Clay for the extremely swift response!

[takaplan]

good job clay...keep at it!

tom

[Schaefling]

I saw the poll Clay mentioned which relates to Baseball Mogul 2002 which he indicated is basically the same as Baseball Mogul Online.

Perhaps the online gamers could be polled directly on this issue as I think many like myself missed this poll on the Baseball Mogul 2002 site.

[nevets72]

Clay,

If it helps, even given the "surge in offense" in the real leagues, the BA has not moved significantly over time. The league average from any given year is between 268 and 280. This is going off the top of my head, but somewhere on my machine I do have an excel file to prove this. I guess what I am trying to say is, we should be good when we get to that range.

As for pitching, ERA have significantly changed over time. This can, hypothetically, be charged to the dimensions of the parks and the increased strength of players. the reason why an increased ERA does not directly correlate to high averages is mainly because the number of playes has not changes, where the players play on the field, or the foul lines.

Steve

[Slugger222]

It seems as though we are getting fewer studs right off the bat, which is great.

It looks like they have more room to grow, or are they just not as good?

Also, does the rank in Farm System effect how quickly, and / or how good your AAA players become?