Uh oh!

[Particleman]

In the one public league I am in, I just saw the latest crop of rookies. This may be a freak occurance or something, but from the looks of these rookies the pendulumn may have swung too far once again. About 75% of the rookies I saw have As and Bs for contact or power. I can't tell for sure how this is going to play out. But from the looks of it, it doesn't look good. We all wanted more offense, but should every position player be a star? I can't even count the number of A- or better contact hitters there are because there are just so many of them. Even teams that spend 0 and on farm spending get all B and B+ hitters. If this were real life this would have to be one of the greatest hitting drafts of all time. And this is just after one draft, if this keeps up, the scoring is going to be ubelievable.

All that was needed was about 3 or 4 star batters per season, and a reduction in the number of D and F hitters. I got a feeling we are going to see scoring sky rocket in all the leagues.

Maybe it's just been too long since I've seen a good crop of rookie batters that the contrast just seems so great. But if these position players produce as well as their ratings say they will...

[Particleman]

Ok I did a preliminary count of Vlad Guerrero type players (A- or better in both power and contact at the same time) and there are 6 in this draft alone. Multiply that by 15 (the average span of a career) and in 15 seasons I should see 90 Vlad type players in my league. And I'm not even including all the players that just have As in power or contact but don't have both and the load of B+ players.

[James Grove]

Particleman -

The new patch is supposed to be self-regulating.

When batting is really low, it introduces a crop of stars to bring it up. As the league averages return to normal, there should be fewer stars in the new rookies.

If for some reason the average continues to climb above a "normal" level, then there should be even fewer offensive stars in the following years.

Let's see what happens in the next year or two. Hopefully things will level off as the league batting averages improve.

Let me know how it goes.

Cheers,
James

[Particleman]

Whew, if that's the case then it shouldn't be a problem, the ERA of most teams last season was between 2.00-3.00. What had me scared was if that pace of new good hitters kept up :)

[Schaefling]

I really like the idea of self-regulating rookie development. It should in theory make it possible for leagues to last a long, long time. It also means players can influence rookie development. If players put too much emphasis on pitching then the computer A.I. will compensate with better hitters and vice versa. It also allows in situations where there is a great imbalance like now towards pitching for matters to be corrected quickly which should pose very interesting challenges for managers.

Anyway, I sure hope this innovation works because I think done right it could add a lot to the game.

[Cipster]

I think that the self regulation is great. I think the premise is that there should be a finite amount of talent and it should be evenly distributed between pitchers and hitters.
I real life it hapens all the time where the teams will emphasize certain needs. Right now in the majors pitchers are at a premium and guys like Felix Rodriguez (ex-catcher) get turned into a pitcher in the minors.
Also guys who could have become good hitters if changed in the minors (Darren Dreifort, Rick Ankiel) were kept as pitchers.
The self regulating should add a great wrinkle to the game. Awesome idea.