Will there ever by an instructional winter ball league to develop players?

It's been mentioned as something the the HBD community would like, and I believe WIS said they would be interested in doing it, but there are no plans or timeframe that I know of for it happening.

A lot of ratings already go up during the winter (like power, durability, and pitching stamina) so in my mind there's really not much need to add a winter league into the game since it's basically as if it's already there.

it's actually the afl (arizona fall league) that is (will be) being developed...it has been in some dev chats...i believe they want to run it during the playoffs to give owners that are eliminated or not in the playoffs something to do rather than get bored...and you can develop certain stats...

It would be nice if during that "winter ball" you can tell certain players to focus on a certain category. Maybe they can improve beyond their projection? There are only x number of categories you can add extra work to though. I do not know if this is feasible but I think it would be a nice addition.

It would also be nice to be able to turn starters into relievers, or long relievers into starters, etc.

Such as turn the 25/70 DUR/STA guys into 70/25 guys, or something in between. Or turn the 30/60 guys into 25/75 guys. Stretch them out a bit.

Agreed. In that case I would choose to work on the players stamina and durability...

I'd like to see it, but I hope they'd test it out extensively before they actually used it. I'd much rather it be something that hardly affects player ratings than it have too much of an effect on them.

Quote: Originally Posted By tecwrg on 4/14/2010
It would also be nice to be able to turn starters into relievers, or long relievers into starters, etc.

Such as turn the 25/70 DUR/STA guys into 70/25 guys, or something in between. Or turn the 30/60 guys into 25/75 guys. Stretch them out a bit.

A nice added feature, would be if their pitches improved or they developed new ones depending on if you turned a kid into a starter or into a reliever.. ie you have a decent starter a projected 80 fastball, 60 slider, 40 change up and 40 curve (or whatever) and you turn him into a short reliever meaning he can throw his fastball a with a little more 'oomph' and not worry about tiring out, so his 80 projection becomes a 90 projection, and in the meantime he dumps his changeup and curve and concentrates more on his slider and his projection goes up to 75 or whatever. Conversely, a reliever w/ average stuff could be stretched out and taught a new pitch or 2. Obviously they wouldn't dominate w/ that new pitch, but a good pitching coach could turn that new pitch into a 50 or 60 projection.

Quote: Originally Posted By taz21 on 4/15/2010

Quote: Originally Posted By tecwrg on 4/14/2010

It would also be nice to be able to turn starters into relievers, or long relievers into starters, etc.

Such as turn the 25/70 DUR/STA guys into 70/25 guys, or something in between. Or turn the 30/60 guys into 25/75 guys. Stretch them out a bit.

A nice added feature, would be if their pitches improved or they developed new ones depending on if you turned a kid into a starter or into a reliever.. ie you have a decent starter a projected 80 fastball, 60 slider, 40 change up and 40 curve (or whatever) and you turn him into a short reliever meaning he can throw his fastball a with a little more 'oomph' and not worry about tiring out, so his 80 projection becomes a 90 projection, and in the meantime he dumps his changeup and curve and concentrates more on his slider and his projection goes up to 75 or whatever. Conversely, a reliever w/ average stuff could be stretched out and taught a new pitch or 2. Obviously they wouldn't dominate w/ that new pitch, but a good pitching coach could turn that new pitch into a 50 or 60 projection.

They would need to be really, really careful about this.

One thing that should not happen with this would be to allow a marginal player become a great player because of manipulation of his ratings. Ideally, you should just be able to tweak the ratings such that the player has the same relative value to the team. He would just be able to be used a little differently and more efficiently.

Turning starters into relievers and vice versa is a good example. An ace starter can become a stud closer. A mid-to-end of the-rotation inning-eater starter can become an average but very durable short reliever. The only real change should be a relative shifting of their durability and stamina ratings to be less SP-like and more RP-like, or vice versa.

But you should not be able to turn an average starter into a stud closer. If that were the case, this would just become a glorified do-it-yourself DITR program.

Here's how I'd like to see it set up. You get to send up to 5 players. No more than 3 pitchers, and no more than 3 position players. They will play in AFL games, and may or may not receive a small ratings boost in one or a couple of categories. The big bonus is that any improvements during AFL will be seperate from the normal player development engine. In other words, if your prospect picks up 1 point in the current value of each split, he will also get a 1-point bump in the projected value. AFL improvement should be in addition to not an acceleration of regular improvement.

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Yes, actually, the one thing I could see would be being able to increase pitch ratings at the sake of stamina. Or something like that. Mo Rivera is another example of a failed starter who turned into somebody completely different out of the pen.

Although, I think this whole thing is a little silly and pointless. I don't really see a huge need for it.

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