Lack of Rookie Development - Again!

[Schaefling]

I really enjoy spending on the farm system and developing rookies. Lately I'm seeing very poor rookie development in many of my leagues. It's not just pitcher or just batters but both.
I thought this was fixed. Has this bug resurfaced? Please look into this and get back to me because this could be very serious. You see it's hard for teams to get better without any rookie development at all.


Also if anyone else is seeing similar problems with rookie development would you please post a reply to this thread. And if you think things are just fine post here too. I mean, heck, I could be wrong although I don't think so.:)

[James Grove]

Is it that you think you are getting bad rookies in the draft, or is it that your rookies aren't developing as much as you think they should, even when you leave them in the minors for several years?

-James

[Schaefling]

It looks like I'm getting bad rookies in the draft. In the past such bad looking rookies never got any better. Are you indicating that there has been a change in BBMO and rookies will now look bad but get markedly better over time? I ask this because that has never been the case before. D and F batters and pitchers used to never get better but if there has been a change I would like to know about it.

I have kept many of my not so promising looking rookies for a year or two and the only ones who seem to get better are the ones who were halfway decent looking to begin with. I will admit though to dumping some of the worst looking rookies right away and particularly when the computer AI told me they weren't any good.

[Schaefling]

When I was Kansas City in the NABL I routinely spent 150 points a year on Farm teams which was number 1 in the league. My rookie players were with one notable exception terrible for four or five years. I kept almost all my rookies for at least one year and sometimes two years and few if any rookies ever improved even though I was number one in farm teams year in and year out.

Finally I dropped Kansas City and quit the NABL in frustration. I had a tier 5 team which was completely unable to develop rookie talent even though numebnr one in farm team spending and even though drafting very high in many years. NOW THIS IS WHAT I CALL A PROBLEM WITH LACK OF ROOKIE TALENT. BOTH AT INCEPTION AND IN DEVELOPMENT.

[Cipster]

I just looked through the NPL Again which just finished its inaugural season.
As far a s batters go there are exactly 2 rookies in the league that have decent ratings. One 1st baseman with A power and one 2nd baseman with B contact. As far as the pitchers go there are a few relievers that might turn into someting decent and a couple of OK strters. I spent about 90 points on the farm which placed me roughly 10th (it varied a bit up and down based on other people's changes to their spending). The rookies I got this year were 2 SS one with terrible D (B-' s and C-'s) and D contact) and a decent defensive SS with F contact. On the pitching side I got 1 starter with D movement which probably means he projects as a spot starter at best.
If I remember correctly the patch was supposed to be self regulating which brings the question: If there is a balance of pitching and hitting already present then will the engine merely produce average rookies? Could this be what we are seeing now?

[Schaefling]

Thanks Cipster for your research in this area. I think this points to a definite bug now present in BBMO with respect to rookies. Perhaps one of the patches brought back the old system or de-activated the current one with respect to rookies.

Not long after the patch for rookies went into effect I got some very good rookie crops in some of my custom leagues at the start of these leagues. In the first year or two. Now we are seeing really terrible rookie crops for all players in new start-up leagues. This definitely points to a problem.

I think if we were seeing average rookie crops we would have B and C rookies but with almost all D and F rookies this does not seem to be the case. In any case being 10th in rookie spending as Cipster was should not result in all terrible rookies. Adding to his data I spent even more than he did in NPL and also got terrible rookies.

Please look into this Sports Mogul. Thanks.

[hamricb]

In Major Baseball League, I was ranked #1 in Farm spending with Chicago A and I was also #2 in scouting. I got 3 batters and 3 pitchers who are absolute trash. C and D ratings almost everywhere.

Also, I'm starting 3 players who are in their second or third year, who were labeled Superstars but have not improved almost at all (from C+ to B- in one category). One guy has an A rating in power but only 3 HR in about 360 AB....

[drew]

The one thing I've learned from my BBM experience is that the only good prospects you get are the ones that are able to play the same season they are drafted. I've never seen a bad or decent player flourish in AAA in BBM online. I've also observed that your spending factors in a little. Having good money in farm doesn't mean you will get 2 Giambis a year.

[Schaefling]

There was a lot more interest from players on this subject than I expected. I guess other people are seeing what I have been seeing.

In light of this interest could you please let us know what's happening with respect to this apparent bug even if it is to say you aren't doing anything right now. Thanks. I mean I do know it's the holidays and all.

[Clay Dreslough]

The engine is designed to have a decent number of C and D rated rookies that flourish. The written part of the scouting report should show that they have promise though.

I've been thinking of changing the ratings to reflect POTENTIAL, not current value. Would folks be in favor of that?

Anyway, this is related to the offense/defense balance we've been working on. So I'll keep working on it.

Clay

[Schaefling]

First, let me say thanks for the update.

You indicate the game is designed to have a number of C and D players that "flourish". Does this mean they should improve over time?

The reason I ask this is because almost all of the managers I know throw out their C and D rated players very quickly (i.e right away or after a year or two if no improvement is seen).

This stems from what Drew said. Most managers believe rightly or wrongly that if rookies aren't good right away they won't ever be good in BBMO.

I have been more patient with my pitcher rookies than my player rookies and have seen some get better over several years so I suspect you are saying we should hold rookies longer and let them develop.

Anyway, please try to clarify your remarks, Clay, because this could help a lot of managers who may have the wrong idea about how to develop rookies.

[takaplan]

To clarify, rookies will gradually improve and their ability will increase over time in the minor leagues. Your farm spending has a small effect on this.

So, if you get a 21 year old rookie with C+ contact, and you leave him in the minors for 4 years, he could improve to B+ contact or something like that.

Tom

[dturkenk]

But it shouldn't take 4 years. These players are already in AAA right? How many players who make an impact in the majors spend that long in AAA? I know there are a few, but as a whole it seems a little unrealistic

[Schaefling]

My experience has been that points spent on farm teams play a big part in initial rookie quality and also in rookie development.

This is okay when you have a tier 1 or tier 2 team but it usually hurts big time for small market teams.

The reason I started this thread in the first place was because of my experiences in a couple of equalized leagues. In equalized leagues spending is by necessity limited for all expenses including farm teams.

Many players I talked to in equalized leagues were complaining about the lack of decent rookies so I wanted to see if I could get some answers on how rookies are created and how they develop.

At the same time I started wondering if a bug or glitch had developed in the game. Right now I can't tell for sure what's up only that good rookies all of a sudden are pretty scarce in many leagues. Clay seems to be checking this out thoroughly though and if he finds something I'm sure he will tell us.

Anyway, I think it would be great if more good rookies were created and if they developed faster. Especially in equalized leagues where there just isn't enough money for most teams to put large amounts into farm teams.

I also think managers need to understand better how rookies develop. Like I said before right now lots of managers just throw out any rookie who isn't an A or B caliber player. For this reason I think some sort of POTENTIAL rating shown next to a rookie's current ratings would probably really help. I thought Clay had a very good idea when he proposed this.

[Troko]

I've only played the CD-ROM game (BB2K2 4.28) but I'm assuming that player development is similar to the online version. With #1 scouting I rely heavilly on player scouting descriptions when deciding which rookies to keep in the farm system. A table describing what the scout descriptions mean is at

http://forum.sportsmogul.com/showthread.php3?s=&threadid=4607

For the most part, level 4 (and better) rookie position players will develop into decent major leaguers. However, scouts tend to overrate rookies with D/F contact ratings. Those rookies almost never improve enough and will drop to level 5-6 bench players with low batting averages.

For pitchers, looking for strong grades in all areas may be misleading as movement seems to be inversely related to power (for all pitchers, not just rookies). For example, consider the following young starter:

Leo Moudry SP/4th season/26 years old
Level 2 (Leo Moudry is a franchise player on almost any ballclub)
Endurance: A-
Control: A-
Power: A+
Movement: D+
Predicted stats: 30G/29GS/216IP/184H/18HR/49BB/295K

If Moudry's strikeout total is changed to 150K's without modifying any other predicted stats, the new grades are
Endurance: A-
Control: A-
Power: B
Movement: A-

Finally, if Moudry's strikeout total is changed to 100K's without modifying any other predicted stats, the new grades are
Endurance: A-
Control: A-
Power: C
Movement: A+

My guess is that power pitchers are assumed to rely on their power instead of movement to get batters out, so they receive lower movement grades. This doesn't make them any less effective. There may be other relationships between control, power, and movement that make these grades less relevant. I usually look for level 4 (or better) starters with A- or better endurance and have rarely been disappointed with their development.

[takaplan]

DTurk,
I only gave 4 years as an example. I don't know what the real time should be to keep a prospect in the farm...probably 2 years.

Tom

[Troko]

Should rookies stay in AAA until they've reached their "peak start", or is there some fixed length of time (i.e. 2 years)? Does the type of scout description (young player vs. veteran description) indicate when rookies are ready for the major leagues?

[willat]

I am in the 2nd season of The Banana League. I must say that from the begining to now, I haven't seen any minor leaguers stats increase at all, no change. I have Atlanta and I was number 1 in spending on the farm and either 1 or 2 on scouting last year.

[Schaefling]

My thanks to Troko for all his hard work on this subject. I can see you put some serious time into this. It would be great to get some feedback from Sports Mogul on just how accurate your research is.

What Willat is saying concerns me greatly. I have seen similar results in some of my leagues. It's really weird when none of your rookies develop at all. It's also really frustrating. Is this a possible glitch or is it factored into the game that sometimes a whole group of rookies will develop really slow or not at all?

Personally, like I have said before I would love to see more good rookies created and to see rookies develop faster. Of course, I do realize any such change has to take play balance into consideration making such a change potentially time consuming to implement.

[takaplan]

We can't just crank a lever and make lots more stud rookies. The balance between pitching and hitting, and to keep stats realistic prohibits us from doing this. I think you really should look at the overall balance of the league, not individual players on each team.

We are running some tests to determine what is the best length to keep prospects in the minors for. I'll let you know when we get the results.

Tom

[Troko]

I don't know very much about how rookie contracts or farm systems work in real life (and would appreciate an explanation by someone who does), but here are some comments about rookie development and some ideas about how to improve realism in BB2K2.

First, not too many real-life baseball players bypass AAA and go straight to the majors (does anyone have actual statistics?) so the starting quality of rookies doesn't have to be improved. If anything, rookie pitchers in BB2K2 seem too often to jump straight to the top of a major league rotation. Shouldn't most rookies (allowing for scouting errors) be players who are ready for AAA but not yet for the major leagues?

Next, having rookie contracts fixed at 5 years (formerly 3 years) encourages GMs to act in unrealistic ways. Suppose the Padres have the following three rookies on the roster (grades are contact, power, speed, eye, defense):

C Ivan Dixon, 22 years old, 5 year contract @ 1 point
Level 2 "Dixon's got Superstar written all over him."
Grades: B-/C+/B-/C-/B+

SS Mike Leong, 18 years old, 5 year contract @ 1 point
Level 4: "This kid has a strong future, but it's not here yet."
Grades: D+/C-/C-/C/C-

LF Rico Calhoun, 27 years old, 2 year contract @ 1 point
Level 5: "Calhoun is a solid player. Don't lose faith."
Grades: B-/B-/C/C-/C+

By rushing Dixon to the majors the Padres could have a solid catcher with upside at the minimum salary for five years (vs. three years IRL whether or not he went to AAA first). Leong looks like a long-term prospect who belongs in A or AA, but in BB2K2 he's likely to become trade bait or be simply released since there's no point in giving him a AAA spot for five years just to watch him walk away as a free agent when he's ready for the majors. Finally, while Calhoun might be ready for a starter or bench role it's tempting to hold him in AAA for one extra season, then sign him to an inexpensive seven-year contract extension, possibly even at the league minimum. Playing him now will tremendously increase his contract extension demands next year.

It seems clear that realistic rookie development and realistic rookie contracts go hand in hand. Some suggestions are:

1) Most newly generated rookies should be at the AAA level (with errors due to scouting). Creating lots of major-league ready rookies won't improve the realism of player development, and as takaplan points out could unbalance the league.

2) The lack of a reserve clause makes it impractical to keep rookies who will require more than four years of development to become ready for the majors. My understanding (please correct me if I'm wrong) is that real-life players effectively play for the minimum salary for three major-league years before becoming eligible for salary arbitration. One easy-to-program way of modeling this is to set all rookie contracts to three years. Players who remain rookies at the start of the next season have their contracts automatically reset to three years (up to some age limit for realism). In other words,

//Player generation
contract_length = 3; //currently 5
salary = 1; //1 point

//Start of next season code
If(age <= 27 && salary == 1 && status == ROOKIE)
contract_length = 3;

Note that the suggested age limit of 27 years is arbitrary. It would be there only to prevent GMs from keeping rookies in AAA for their entire careers at the minimum salary. A discussion of this idea appears in:

http://forum.sportsmogul.com/showthread.php3?s=&postid=14341#post14341

3) Further real-life elements such as the amateur draft, Rule V draft, complete minor league system (including A and AA teams), and salary arbitration would probably take much longer for Clay to implement and can be added (if desired) in a later version.

4) One final suggestion; for the CD-ROM version of BB2K2, I would greatly appreciate a "lever that could be cranked to make lots of stud rookies". Maybe the advanced tools could contain a slider bar to adjust the quality of rookie pitchers vs. rookie position players. Alternatively, there could be a slider bar to adjust between "live-ball" and "dead-ball" eras. I don't think this would be too hard to program, and it would completely solve the debate on whether there is too much or too little offense in BB2K2 by allowing the user to adjust how much offense is desired.

[ptungptung]

i would like to see a way that a manager can choose what kind of rookies a farm system produces.
In effect it would like drafting a certain type of player.
just a thought.
gd

[Schaefling]

Baseball Mogul Online definitely needs to give teams better rookies and more of them. I understand the play balance issues involved but whatever work needs to be done I strongly suggest Sports Mogul do it.

In leagues where lots of human managers play for long periods of time what I am now seeing is that very few decent players and pitchers are available during the offseason. Good managers are finding ways to keep their best players.

In the NPL for example where we are starting our sixteenth year we still have over 20 human players (this is in many ways due to our excellent commissioner Jokerswild). This year there are just a few decent starters available in free agency.

This problem is only going to get worse as equalized leagues get older. I predict many human managers will stick with equalized leagues a lot longer than regular leagues and that decent free agents will become even more scarce than in regular leagues over time.

I'm not sure that Sports Mogul foresaw this problem or not. I know I did not see it coming. But if it becomes the norm the only way some human managers are going to be able to get decent starters and fill gaps in their lineups with decent players is through their farm systems or through trades.

Since human trading still seems a tough proposition for many gamers I think it would be wise for Sports Mogul to adjust the game to produce more rookies who will develop into good to decent players within a few years. And rather than cause play balance problems I think it is essential in order to maintain play balance as leagues get older.