Amaroq
Posts: 1100
Joined: 8/3/2005
From: San Diego, California
Status: offline
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Sweet - thanks for the detailed update, Shaun.
I must say, I'm very excited by what you've decribed, and though - unsurprisingly - I have a few points of feedback, on the whole it sounds like an excellent step forwards for the game.
quote:
The "Minor League Eligibility Years:" is calculated by starting at 6 and decrementing by 1 in each season where a player appears in at least one minor league game.
This is added complexity, and may actually miss some of your intention. If I draft a 21-year-old, and he plays three years in the minors, and then I call him up to the majors as a 24-year-old, where he plays 13 seasons in the bigs... do we really want him serving out his remaining 3 years of minor-league eligibility at ages 37, 38, and 39?
I'd think that "Decrementing by 1 in each season" period, full stop, would be sufficient.
Options, of course, are more like "Years that a player already on a big-league-contract can be sent to the minor leagues", and in that scenario requiring a game played at the minor-league level makes good sense.. but that's not what you're implementing.
quote:
Teams MUST have 40 players on the 40 man roster at all times.
This is technically not correct. IRL, teams may have no more than 40 players, but may choose to have fewer.
I think both AI and human players will want to be able to carry fewer than 40 in some situations - among other things, imagine the case where I have 39 on the 40-man roster, plus two bright young prospects, one a pitcher, and one a hitter. Both are in AAA, on minor-league contracts, and are ready for some spot appearances in the bigs. I might want to wait until I see a rash of injuries, and promote the one who corresponds to the position the injuries are in. If I'm forced to promote one at the start of the season, then I'm in a position where, if I guessed wrong, I'll have to cut or otherwise move one of my existing 40-man roster to make room for the second. If I'm not forced to act early, I have more flexibility deeper into the season.
More flexibility is always a good thing - and the AI should in some regards play to maintain its flexibility at least up through the trade deadline.
quote:
Disabled List
You don't mention the D.L. in this document. IRL, the big advantage to the 60-day D.L. is that it frees up a space on the 40-man roster. A trip to the 15-day DL simply frees up space on the 25-man roster. Can we see that implemented?
Obviously, that introduces the possibility of a team getting "stuck" with 41 players on the 40-man roster (if they signed/promoted to replace their DL'ed player). That shouldn't be any worse than checks such as 'Am I over 25 big-leaguers', etc.
quote:
September Call-ups
Any player currently on the 40 man roster may be called up to the majors for a total of 40 players available in major league games.
That implies a manual action to call up the minor-leaguers?
It might be easier on the user to do this by having the minor-league season end on August 30th, and auto-promote all the players on 40-man rosters to the bigs. Is there any reason to force UI-input on the player in this case?
I'd expect the AI to bring up all 40 players, and possibly even to promote a few minor-league contracts to major-league contracts in order to get playing time for those players, if its below 40. (In my example from earlier, on September 1st I would pick either my hitter or my pitchers and 'commit', giving him a major-league contract so that I could call him up, if I hadn't had my hand forced earlier in the season.)
quote:
Isn't playing in AAA and at least having the chance to be called up better then being a free agent? Shouldn't some free agents be willing to take the minor league contract and be assigned to the minors. Maybe they would only take one year deals and automatically become free agents at the end of every season, but there might be some sort of workaround here...
I can see Lynchjm's point - and one thing this system doesn't do is allow for 'career minor leaguers'. I'm not sure that's necessary, and I don't think I'd want the AI teams doing it - their preference for older players was part of what made the old 'Veteran?' boolean so complicated, as they'd wind up with too many Veterans.
However, you might consider making veteran players who are eligible for free agency at the end of the free-agent auction rounds THEN become willing to sign minor-league contracts, for one year - and have that action add one to their minor-league eligibility.
AI teams might stockpile older players prior to Spring Training, using that: with a 60-man roster limit, almost every non-scrub might be signed, bringing most teams up to 70+ players. At the end of Spring Training, teams take a second pass to consider how much players have changed due to Spring Training... and most of these "non-roster invitees" will wind up waived again prior to Game 1.. but some might 'stick'.
For the AI teams, after Spring Training they would pick their first 25 by 'current skill', with the remainder of the lineup considered from the perspective of 'assume maximum development/growth', with a hard cap against keeping any player outside of the top 35 who is over the age of 30, perhaps.
Its obviously added complexity, possibly a post-launch patch feature rather than an initial release feature?
quote:
We'll need a report/screen that a team can view to quickly and easily see the status of their players' eligibility years remaining.
Can we re-think the existing Minor-League screen, as well?
I think what I want most is a full-size screen that looks something like this:
Drop-down (Catchers, Infielders, Outfielders, Starting Pitchers, Relief Pitchers, Hitters, Pitchers)
Then, sortable column headers:
Player name | Pos-1 | Pos-2 | Age | Arrow | 40? | Level | Contract | Yrs Left | MLE | Bats | Con | Pow | Eye | Spd | Hnd | Arm | Rng | AB | Avg | OBP | HR | RBI
(MLE = Minor League eligibilty years)
or
Player name | PitcherType | Throws | Age | Arrow | 40? | Level | Contract | Yrs Left | MLE | Stf | Vel | Con | End | Hnd | IP | K | W | L | SV | ERA
for pitchers.
One key concept there is its a place to make a very detailed comparison between a player on the major-league roster with a player on the minor-league roster, or two compare two candidates for the 40-man roster.
The default sort order would be primary by Level, secondary by (40?) and tertiary by age, perhaps, and pressing another button would shift the secondary sort to tertiary, and the primary to secondary.
It would remember the three sort orders even when a change is made (e.g., a player promoted or demoted).
It would reload when other dialogs are closed (so that, if I make a roster move while looking at a player card, when I close the player card I will see this screen refreshed to the correct/current state).
The screen would have "Assign to" buttons for each of the "Levels" - MLB, AAA, AA, A, DL.
It should also include a "Sign to big-league-contract" button for players not currently on the 40-man roster,
"Offer contract" button for players currently on a big-league contract,
Place on DL button for injured players,
Restore from DL button for players on the DL.
Ideally, if it also included some of the current information about roster makeup, e.g.,
Players at position - MLB, 40, AAA, AA, A, DL
Players on this screen - MLB, 40, AAA, AA, A, DL
Total hitters - MLB, 40, AAA, AA, A, DL
Total pitchers - MLB, 40, AAA, AA, A, DL
Salary total + salary cap
That feature-set would make it THE place to consider most roster moves: from promoting or demoting throughout the season, managing the 40-man roster, placing players on/off the DL, all the way to other major decisions such as re-signing players for future seasons.
quote:
Initial Draft
In the initial draft, the first 40 rounds will be "Normal" meaning they will be run just like PS 2007. As of round 41 the game will announce that the next X rounds will constitute the Minor League draft.
I'm not sure that 'works' - I know when I'm drafting in the current game, I'll take flyers on high-potential youngsters earlier than round 40, and in fact will 'flush out' my major-league roster with a few picks in late rounds. I'd like to maintain that sort of flexibility, which might look more like adding a contract option
"Minor league contract: N years elgibility"
as one of the rows. You could do something like this for determining N:
- players 19 and under get 6 years eligibility
- players age 20 to 24 have (25-age) years eligibility
- players 25 and over have no minor-league eligilibity.
If you wanted to get fancy, you could have no players willing to accept minor-league contracts in the first 20 rounds, with young players willing to accept minor-league contracts for N years from round 21 onwards, and veterans (25 and over) willing to accept a 1-year minor-league contract after round 40.
You could also do the same thing for subsequent amateur drafts. Maybe 1st-round picks always want major-league contracts, 2nd-4th are willing to accept either, and by the 5th round players are only asking for minor-league contracts?
Let AI teams always sign young players to minor-league contracts
if possible, and deal with promoting them to the bigs at Spring
Training, or if needed.
quote:
It will be even more challenging to support two different models with the same AI.
Bob makes some very salient points in his response - I agree with the difficulty of supporting both modes of play; not easy from a technical perspective. You might well be best suited to tackle the upgrade path.
If you work the roster limits and drafts as I have described, you'll be supporting less-than 40 players, and you'll have AI code which 'promotes' players to major-league contracts as needed.
That lets you upgrade associations by putting all players currently in the majors on a big-league contract, and all players currently in the minors on a minor-league contract.
Use the '25-age' minor-league eligibility formula for all players at all levels, but ensure any player currently in the minors or with a minor-league game played thus far this season, gets 1 year of minor-league eligibility.
Let both the AI teams and human players 'manually' promote the players they need/want to, when they need/want to.
It sounds workable.
quote:
It probably goes without saying, but how teams use these call-ups would depend on several factors: (list of 3)
There's a fourth factor I'd like to see, taking 'young callups' into account for in-game management.
Blowout leads should result in both teams making wholesale changes to their rosters, essentially abandoning today's game to get the youngsters some big-league experience. Obviously, if the trailing team is facing elimination, they might not go that route, but I was at a Giants-D'backs game a few years ago, and after the D'backs opened up an 8-1 lead in the top of the 8th, Alou sent in all of his September call-ups. When the Giants got a bit of a rally started in the 9th, we gave them a resounding chant of "Let's go, Fres-no" to make 'em feel at home. 
With a mid-size lead, teams will use the call-ups as pinch-hitters when PH for the pitcher.
Similarly, some slight preference should be given to the call-ups for certain decisions - I'm thinking specifically of "pinch runner", but I'm sure there are others, where its very common to see one of the younger players chosen even in a close game as a way to get him involved with little risk to the overall result.
. . .
Hope that's a help!
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