Greetings,

Wondering the current thinking is on setting medical budgets. Seems the thinking used to be to set it to $20mm cuz you could get improvements from players on DL above pre-injury levels. But now it seems from other comments that "feature" has been eliminated. If this is so, is it still recommended to max out the medical budget?

I dont know the feature has been eliminated, but there may be some greater variance in the improvement. It is definitely an "all or nothing" budget time, either $20 or $0. At the moment I am on an acquiring veterans path, so my medical is at $0.

Posted by 2xRedRaider on 12/22/2020 4:26:00 PM (view original):
I dont know the feature has been eliminated, but there may be some greater variance in the improvement. It is definitely an "all or nothing" budget time, either $20 or $0. At the moment I am on an acquiring veterans path, so my medical is at $0.

Agreed. You will still get guys who gain ratings above their pre-injury ratings with 20 million but you will also get guys who don’t get back to their pre-injury ratings. Where as with 0 you have the money to spend elsewhere but If a player gets injured........... actually I have no idea what happens. Never had 0 medical.

$0 Med = no ratings increases from DL stints (maybe an occasional 1 point here or 1 point there, but rare) and very long recovery times on the major injuries (2xx-3xx days as opposed to 1xx days)

just to clarify...I've seen some posts lately that the "feature" where players would gain ratings during their DL time above pre-injury levels seems to have disappeared. A couple comments in this thread indicate it still exists, but less frequently. Does anyone know for sure if the feature still exists?

To brianplath's comment that major injuries have a longer timeline with $0 budget, is it just the time delay? Or is it such that $0 medical budget might mean the player doesn't come fully back regardless of length of time?

Its hard to prove because you will only be able to see the current stats of my players but you'll have to take my word on it.

Yasmani Valvarde is my most recent good example that the ratings bump feature still works. With a wrist strain his arm strength was 79, went down to 78 with the injury now is at 80, also gained a point in durability. Also hoping that if I keep him on for a cycle or two that those ratings will go even higher.

If you have 0 medical budget and a guy goes down with a big injury (Where you lose 5+ points per category) You'll be lucky to get 1 back. Pretty much you are banking on your guys not getting injured. Its also why I don't mind spending 20 million on medical. I can pick up more guys around and lower then 50 health without too much fear.


Edit: Shawn Shumaker for my SD team is a perfect example of what I expect to see with 20 million medical. Went down with a back strain. Gained 2 points in arm strength, durability, health and power.

It still exists, and I haven't noticed any clear change to the frequency of the bonus.

That said, I did see something new within the past week -

Arodys Pena

Recovered from back spams to improve control from 90, to 92, then to 94. In the first "regular season" line after the final "injury recovery" line his control dropped back down to 91.

The only time I've ever seen that sort of artificial drop before was in the off-season, where players with a rating over 100 get cut back to 100 (as I expect will happen to Luigi Peraza's Stamina). I've never had it happen below 100 or mid-season before. As someone committing $20M to Med, I don't like it.

Posted by zbrent716 on 12/23/2020 4:42:00 PM (view original):
It still exists, and I haven't noticed any clear change to the frequency of the bonus.

That said, I did see something new within the past week -

Arodys Pena

Recovered from back spams to improve control from 90, to 92, then to 94. In the first "regular season" line after the final "injury recovery" line his control dropped back down to 91.

The only time I've ever seen that sort of artificial drop before was in the off-season, where players with a rating over 100 get cut back to 100 (as I expect will happen to Luigi Peraza's Stamina). I've never had it happen below 100 or mid-season before. As someone committing $20M to Med, I don't like it.

This actually isn't new. Some of my other posts reference this.

Many veteran owners call this strategy the "20 Million Dollar Medical Trick" or "60-day DL medical glitch". The above example is perfect to illustrate that we need to stop calling this a glitch or a trick and more of a strategy. What is happening above is that the injury recovery strategy was intentionally used to improve the player's ratings. However, once the player got back from his injury and had his next development cycle, he reverted back to his ceiling in that rating. This is what should happen. The injury recovery strategy should not be used to build Greek Gods. It should be used to get a player to fully recover from an injury and sometimes, when everything is just right, it allows the player to improve certain ratings upon activation from the DL (ie Adrian Peterson, Peyton Manning, Tommy John, John Smoltz).

As my other posts referenced, I never had a problem with the medical recover strategy because in order for it to work, everything has to set up perfectly.
1. The injury typically needs to be between 5 days and 27 days; or needs to be a season-over-season injury of 200+ days
2. During the season in which the injury occurs, the team's medical budget needs to near $20million;
3. The player cannot already be at his peak rating because if he is, he will immediately revert back to his ceiling rating on the next development cycle if it is a coachable rating and if it's a training rating like arm, power, velocity stamina, etc. it will revert back to the player's ceiling after roll.
4. If the injury is a short term injury as mentioned above (5 to 27 days), it needs to occur at least 60 days before the end of the season otherwise there is only one bump;
5. If the injury is a long-term injury it needs to happen near the end of the season so a DL stint the following season allows more than a couple injury recovery bumps;
6. The injury needs to to a body part that is going to improve the type of player significantly (i.e. no sense in putting a power hitting 1b on the DL for 60 days with a seventeen day injury to his calf because he will only improve his health, durability, range, speed and baserunning);
7. In addition to a high medical budget, it is also more effective if the player has a high makeup rating.

I never understood why people complained about the injury recovery strategy. It does not build Greek Gods. It may, from time to time, give a player an opportunity to get closer to his peak/ceiling in certain ratings.

In my opinion, the injury frequency isn't broken. There are two things that are broken --
1. Rarely does a player with a long term injury fully recover from an injury and when he does it is almost always because the long-term injury took place near the end of the season and it was a significant enough injury that the player was still injured at the beginning of the next season that allowed the owner to place the player on the DL again. This is broken. The full recovery of a player from a long term injury should depend on medical budget, age and the player's health and/or makeup rating not on the timing of the injury;
2. In real life, if a player sprains his ankle and has to sit for 7-12 days, he doesn't lose speed long term. Minor injuries like this should not have a ratings loss and if they do, they should always fully recover if placed on the 7 day DL. In hbd, the 7 day DL does not always lead to injury recovery of these types of minor injuries. This is broken and should be fixed.

To answer the question of the original post, I still ride with $20MM in medical for various reasons
1. the extra $20MM is typically used to transfer to prospect budget so it is an extra $10MM in prospect money and in about half of my Worlds that would make a significant difference in getting a big intl signing. However, the intl market is so random every season that I assume there will still be seasons where I miss out and instead of sitting with an $18MM bag of cash at the end of the season, I may be sitting with a $28MM bag of cash and three guys that had career ending injuries.
2. Although the $20 million medical budget doesn't help players fully recover from long-term injuries, it certainly softens the blow. If you run zero in med budget and a player gets a long term injury, at the very least, he might have to switch positions, at worst, it ends his career and your stuck with his salary unless you can find someone that likes buying bridges and snake oil;
3. I agree that you do all or nothing (20 or 0). I think if I did 0, i would waiting around nervously for the inevitable career ending injury. No thanks.

Posted by Scotb50 on 12/22/2020 5:50:00 PM (view original):
just to clarify...I've seen some posts lately that the "feature" where players would gain ratings during their DL time above pre-injury levels seems to have disappeared. A couple comments in this thread indicate it still exists, but less frequently. Does anyone know for sure if the feature still exists?

To brianplath's comment that major injuries have a longer timeline with $0 budget, is it just the time delay? Or is it such that $0 medical budget might mean the player doesn't come fully back regardless of length of time?

Still works, but everything has to line up, see above post.

The last point tlowster makes is what switched me to 20 million medical and why I’ll never look back.

I had a guy, Jarrod West;

https://www.whatifsports.com/hbd/Pages/Popups/PlayerRatings.aspx?pid=5249131

such a cool concept for a SS. Contact and power, nothing else. I couldn’t wait to see this guys career and what he could do (I’m also ok with SS that can’t hit so no way he was a bust)

season 32 a setback injury, damages his arm and he never recovers. Season 34 was the nail in the coffin. He turns from a SS to a corner outfielder and his bat isn’t good enough. A year later he retires. Never again.

Posted by tlowster on 12/23/2020 5:47:00 PM (view original):

Posted by zbrent716 on 12/23/2020 4:42:00 PM (view original):
It still exists, and I haven't noticed any clear change to the frequency of the bonus.

That said, I did see something new within the past week -

Arodys Pena

Recovered from back spams to improve control from 90, to 92, then to 94. In the first "regular season" line after the final "injury recovery" line his control dropped back down to 91.

The only time I've ever seen that sort of artificial drop before was in the off-season, where players with a rating over 100 get cut back to 100 (as I expect will happen to Luigi Peraza's Stamina). I've never had it happen below 100 or mid-season before. As someone committing $20M to Med, I don't like it.

This actually isn't new. Some of my other posts reference this.

Many veteran owners call this strategy the "20 Million Dollar Medical Trick" or "60-day DL medical glitch". The above example is perfect to illustrate that we need to stop calling this a glitch or a trick and more of a strategy. What is happening above is that the injury recovery strategy was intentionally used to improve the player's ratings. However, once the player got back from his injury and had his next development cycle, he reverted back to his ceiling in that rating. This is what should happen. The injury recovery strategy should not be used to build Greek Gods. It should be used to get a player to fully recover from an injury and sometimes, when everything is just right, it allows the player to improve certain ratings upon activation from the DL (ie Adrian Peterson, Peyton Manning, Tommy John, John Smoltz).

As my other posts referenced, I never had a problem with the medical recover strategy because in order for it to work, everything has to set up perfectly.
1. The injury typically needs to be between 5 days and 27 days; or needs to be a season-over-season injury of 200+ days
2. During the season in which the injury occurs, the team's medical budget needs to near $20million;
3. The player cannot already be at his peak rating because if he is, he will immediately revert back to his ceiling rating on the next development cycle if it is a coachable rating and if it's a training rating like arm, power, velocity stamina, etc. it will revert back to the player's ceiling after roll.
4. If the injury is a short term injury as mentioned above (5 to 27 days), it needs to occur at least 60 days before the end of the season otherwise there is only one bump;
5. If the injury is a long-term injury it needs to happen near the end of the season so a DL stint the following season allows more than a couple injury recovery bumps;
6. The injury needs to to a body part that is going to improve the type of player significantly (i.e. no sense in putting a power hitting 1b on the DL for 60 days with a seventeen day injury to his calf because he will only improve his health, durability, range, speed and baserunning);
7. In addition to a high medical budget, it is also more effective if the player has a high makeup rating.

I never understood why people complained about the injury recovery strategy. It does not build Greek Gods. It may, from time to time, give a player an opportunity to get closer to his peak/ceiling in certain ratings.

In my opinion, the injury frequency isn't broken. There are two things that are broken --
1. Rarely does a player with a long term injury fully recover from an injury and when he does it is almost always because the long-term injury took place near the end of the season and it was a significant enough injury that the player was still injured at the beginning of the next season that allowed the owner to place the player on the DL again. This is broken. The full recovery of a player from a long term injury should depend on medical budget, age and the player's health and/or makeup rating not on the timing of the injury;
2. In real life, if a player sprains his ankle and has to sit for 7-12 days, he doesn't lose speed long term. Minor injuries like this should not have a ratings loss and if they do, they should always fully recover if placed on the 7 day DL. In hbd, the 7 day DL does not always lead to injury recovery of these types of minor injuries. This is broken and should be fixed.

To answer the question of the original post, I still ride with $20MM in medical for various reasons
1. the extra $20MM is typically used to transfer to prospect budget so it is an extra $10MM in prospect money and in about half of my Worlds that would make a significant difference in getting a big intl signing. However, the intl market is so random every season that I assume there will still be seasons where I miss out and instead of sitting with an $18MM bag of cash at the end of the season, I may be sitting with a $28MM bag of cash and three guys that had career ending injuries.
2. Although the $20 million medical budget doesn't help players fully recover from long-term injuries, it certainly softens the blow. If you run zero in med budget and a player gets a long term injury, at the very least, he might have to switch positions, at worst, it ends his career and your stuck with his salary unless you can find someone that likes buying bridges and snake oil;
3. I agree that you do all or nothing (20 or 0). I think if I did 0, i would waiting around nervously for the inevitable career ending injury. No thanks.

You don't have any posts about the medical recovery that use the word "ceiling" - can you please point me to one specifically?

I've had many many players injured over the years, 95% of them with $20M med, and it's something I pay pretty close attention to. I'm nearly certain that I've never before had someone lose injury-gained ratings in-season as I've just described. I'd be most interested if you have an example that is memorialized in a post from before the new dev starting looking into the code.

No trouble-- I have posted them below.

I have multiple examples of players that it happened to, but as of right now you can't see it because you can only see in the season that it happens. Here is a guy it happened to last season in Moneyball. The owner put him on the 60 Day DL, and his R split rating got up to 93 after his last injury recovery, but then on the first development cycle after the injury, it reverted back to 90. I will see if I can find another one, but like you said it doesn't happen often because often times most players are not at their peak in a rating. I can't say that this has always happened because I am still a new player (only been playing since late 2017). However, I can say for at least the last nine months, this has been the case.

https://www.whatifsports.com/forums/Posts.aspx?topicID=524145

I think an overhaul needs to be done with injuries. However, not on the injury frequency side, but on the injury recovery side. The "medical bug" isn't a bug (see Drew Brees; Adrian Peterson; Tommy John; John Smotlz; David Wells; etc.). We need to rename this something else. People that complain about it act as if it builds Greek Gods out of tryout camp players. All it does, if you're lucky, the player has a high makeup rating and your team has a maxed out medical budget, is help players reach their full potential. Any time this "Medical bug" gives a player a rating that is over his peak potential, it reverts back to the player's peak potential in that rating during the cycle that is immediately after the recovery cycle [for coachable rating; for training rating like power and arm, it will revert back after season rolls].

In my opinion, the recoveries need to be more like development cycles. In real life, the player gets injured, the doctors assess the injury and if surgery is needed, it is usually done quite quickly. There is a short recovery time before the player can start rehab. They need to implement some type of system where on these major injuries, the player has 60 days before his first injury recovery cycle, then every 30 days (regular development cycle), he gets more injury recovery bumps.

These early season injuries where the player goes down for 180+ days and only gets one injury recovery cycle are ridiculous. The way the system is setup now, an owner hopes that if a player gets one of those serious injuries, it is near the end of the season so he can get the recovery bumps the next season. As an owner, I shouldn't hope for a late season injury as opposed to an early season injury. Nor should I be glad that the player is going to miss time over multiple seasons, but because of the timing of major injuries and the way the system handles recovery, I am glad when a controllable player gets hurt at the end of the season as opposed to the beginning.

https://www.whatifsports.com/forums/Posts.aspx?topicID=524511&page=5&TopicsPage=0

Posted by siberiansoul on 12/17/2020 9:34:00 PM (view original):
I would really like to see more filters avail in the ameteur draft and FA market. injury recovery seems to have been tweaked in the past year - that needs to go back to what it was. My guess is that it was tweaked to eliminate the "steroid" affect when players were able to recover more than what they lost. However - whatever was done - has seriously hurt the ability of players to return to normal levels of skill. I run with 20 mil medical and there seems to be no benefit to doing so anymore.

Even when the players recovered and were a bit better than they were before the injury, they were never over their peak development because if they did, the system immediately correct it on the first cycle after the DL.

Posted by hockey1984 on 12/23/2020 6:54:00 PM (view original):
The last point tlowster makes is what switched me to 20 million medical and why I’ll never look back.

I had a guy, Jarrod West;

https://www.whatifsports.com/hbd/Pages/Popups/PlayerRatings.aspx?pid=5249131

such a cool concept for a SS. Contact and power, nothing else. I couldn’t wait to see this guys career and what he could do (I’m also ok with SS that can’t hit so no way he was a bust)

season 32 a setback injury, damages his arm and he never recovers. Season 34 was the nail in the coffin. He turns from a SS to a corner outfielder and his bat isn’t good enough. A year later he retires. Never again.

Big fan of power hitting infielders.

Here is my guy that can't hit very well, but hits bombs and has above average speed. He hit the DL twice this year. If I had a Medical budget of 0, say bye bye!. Especially with his low makeup rating.

tlowster,

Great post! very informative, I appreciate you taking the time to organize your thoughts on the subject and layout in the way you did.

I would argue a bit in regards to this:
"2. In real life, if a player sprains his ankle and has to sit for 7-12 days, he doesn't lose speed long term. Minor injuries like this should not have a ratings loss and if they do, they should always fully recover if placed on the 7 day DL. In hbd, the 7 day DL does not always lead to injury recovery of these types of minor injuries. This is broken and should be fixed."

I think in real life we see a ton of lingering wrist, hamstring, ankle, and shoulder injuries that don't ever truly heal for that season. Obviously not enough to keep players on the DL for the whole season, but its not unreasonable to say that a players performance does sometimes get affected by minor injury accumulation. Now HBD is a great sim, but I think there are just things that it can't truly emulate and this could be one of them. That is why I think we see rating reductions on minor injuries.

Two other points that I would like to add on to the discussion,

1) I think some posters might see a 20M budget as a sort of a "get out of Jail" card when that will erase whatever negative ratings come with an injury. In real life there are so many different variables that come into play when a player is recovering. Age for example is a huge factor. IRL a pitcher in his mid 30's that goes down for TJ surgery is not as likely to make it back to their previous self, but HBD owners might feel that a 20M budget should bring player back to pre-injury ratings.

2) Granted I have far less seasons under my belt, but my experience with injuries is that they typically do not fundamentally change the type of player. My example would be this guy Player Profile: Rolando Sanchez - Hardball Dynasty Baseball | WhatIfSports . This lighting rod has seen 3 separate 60 day DL stints (2 with my team) and my 15 Med. Throughout it all he has always been a pitcher with good control, average splits, an above average p1 and okay pitching arsenal.

Posted by tlowster on 12/23/2020 10:40:00 PM (view original):
No trouble-- I have posted them below.

I have multiple examples of players that it happened to, but as of right now you can't see it because you can only see in the season that it happens. Here is a guy it happened to last season in Moneyball. The owner put him on the 60 Day DL, and his R split rating got up to 93 after his last injury recovery, but then on the first development cycle after the injury, it reverted back to 90. I will see if I can find another one, but like you said it doesn't happen often because often times most players are not at their peak in a rating. I can't say that this has always happened because I am still a new player (only been playing since late 2017). However, I can say for at least the last nine months, this has been the case.

https://www.whatifsports.com/forums/Posts.aspx?topicID=524145

I think an overhaul needs to be done with injuries. However, not on the injury frequency side, but on the injury recovery side. The "medical bug" isn't a bug (see Drew Brees; Adrian Peterson; Tommy John; John Smotlz; David Wells; etc.). We need to rename this something else. People that complain about it act as if it builds Greek Gods out of tryout camp players. All it does, if you're lucky, the player has a high makeup rating and your team has a maxed out medical budget, is help players reach their full potential. Any time this "Medical bug" gives a player a rating that is over his peak potential, it reverts back to the player's peak potential in that rating during the cycle that is immediately after the recovery cycle [for coachable rating; for training rating like power and arm, it will revert back after season rolls].

In my opinion, the recoveries need to be more like development cycles. In real life, the player gets injured, the doctors assess the injury and if surgery is needed, it is usually done quite quickly. There is a short recovery time before the player can start rehab. They need to implement some type of system where on these major injuries, the player has 60 days before his first injury recovery cycle, then every 30 days (regular development cycle), he gets more injury recovery bumps.

These early season injuries where the player goes down for 180+ days and only gets one injury recovery cycle are ridiculous. The way the system is setup now, an owner hopes that if a player gets one of those serious injuries, it is near the end of the season so he can get the recovery bumps the next season. As an owner, I shouldn't hope for a late season injury as opposed to an early season injury. Nor should I be glad that the player is going to miss time over multiple seasons, but because of the timing of major injuries and the way the system handles recovery, I am glad when a controllable player gets hurt at the end of the season as opposed to the beginning.

https://www.whatifsports.com/forums/Posts.aspx?topicID=524511&page=5&TopicsPage=0

Posted by siberiansoul on 12/17/2020 9:34:00 PM (view original):
I would really like to see more filters avail in the ameteur draft and FA market. injury recovery seems to have been tweaked in the past year - that needs to go back to what it was. My guess is that it was tweaked to eliminate the "steroid" affect when players were able to recover more than what they lost. However - whatever was done - has seriously hurt the ability of players to return to normal levels of skill. I run with 20 mil medical and there seems to be no benefit to doing so anymore.

Even when the players recovered and were a bit better than they were before the injury, they were never over their peak development because if they did, the system immediately correct it on the first cycle after the DL.

So, assuming this "ceiling" exists, it must be greater than 100 for some players for some categories. Rico Macias played most of a season with a power rating of 102. Luigi Peraza has already had his "regular season" line after injury recover, and has stayed at 102 stamina.

That seems like a strange thing to me and, at least in my experience, no rating stays at 100 over an off-season (even when a player is too young to be in "natural" decline).