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Amaroq -> RE: Player development question (10/15/2005 1:08:58 AM)
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Hey, good questions proxybot. My understanding of it is as follows.
There are four factors that affect a player's development - Current Ability, Age, Potential, Playing Time, and Level.
Potential basically affects the odds THAT a player will improve from year to year, more than the actual number by which he will improve.
Current Ability, Age, and Level all interplay with each other, and affect both the odds of improvement and the amount of improvement. A 19-year-old player with low current ability is much more likely to improve if he is in the minors than if he is in the majors. A 27-year-old with decent current ability is much more likely to improve if he is in the majors than if he is in the minors. A 36-year-old is unlikely to improve no matter what you do.
Playing Time is an independent variable, but also affects both odds of improvement and amount of improvement. Obviously, the more playing time a player is getting, the more likely he is to improve.
When you put those two together, I would rather start a youngster in the minors than have him sit on the major-league bench.
I've never had a minor-league player improve much beyond the 60's - eg., with the three key attribues something like 68/63/66. By that point, he would start for most of the other sides in the association, and it doesn't matter how much playing time I give him in the minors, he needs to move up or he'll stop improving.
To answer your last question, I don't think 'win-loss' plays into things: my minor league side routinely starts out losing tons, but the players develop, and by the time I'm winning World Series regularly, my minor-league side usually racks up 100-plus point seasons as well.
So, for example, I always train my young players in a secondary position (its worth a few errors, etc, at the minor-league level to buy the flexibility when he reaches the majors).
That gives you a 'framework' to think about your players in, but I'm intentionally leaving alone the question of 'where is the sweet spot', e.g., 'what is the optimal time to promote a player?' partly because I'm not sure I have it right, and partly 'cause I think figuring that out is part of the fun for games of this genre. [:)]
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