So I’m familiar with the idea that you need to promote your prospects during the playoffs to get that extra bump that you otherwise would miss out on.

But what do you do with a guy who’s in ML or AAA but not on the 40 yet? Can you demote then promote back to the initial level without worrying about the dreaded demotion bump?

Not sure about players in mlb, but the AAA player can be promoted to mlb assuming there is an open 40 man spot. Then, if he still has options, he can be immediately demoted back to a minor league roster. He will potentially get a promotion bump and, as long as the demotion is immediate, he will avoid the demotion penalty. Also, the player can be demoted to a minor league squad that still has playoff games to play. This way, the player has the potential for an additional bump if promoted again.

Just to clarify, as far as I understand it, the promotion "bumps" aren't providing extra ratings boosts. Those increases in ratings are already happening behind the scenes, the promotion just triggers an additional ratings record or time stamp. If you don't promote, the increases will show up the time a new ratings is recorded in the player card (i.e. the following season).

Brianplath - That's not what I've read pertaining to end of season. Everything you're saying is accurate for in-season bumps but common hypothesis is if you don't promote at the end of the season any bumps that your player earned but hasn't been captured on his card wipe away in the offseason.

Huh, first I can recall hearing of that theory. But I am seeing mention of it now that I go back and look at old threads. tlowster - you got any current insight on this? I found this thread but it didn't seem to have any consensus one way or the other.

I figured the engine rolled over the players' behind the scenes up-to-date rating. Not sure why it would use the player card ratings (I assume the player card is just cosmetic from a game functionality perspective) unless it's an easier shortcut somehow from a programming perspective. I guess this is pretty easily provable by finding a prospect that didn't get the last bump, and comparing their end of season ratings to beginning of season ratings for changes (I haven't tracked this but my assumption is the numbers are always the same or I would have heard about it). Unless the system copies and pastes the prior seasons ratings for player cards and doesn't update player card ratings until games start getting played again in ST. Rolling the last bit of the prior season's development into the ST development cycle might explain the big 2 and 3 point bumps we see in ST.

I'm fairly skeptical of this but it would help explain the ~3ish coachable development ratings deficits that almost all players seem to be unable to recover in relation to their true ceiling (back when the bug made true ceilings accessible)

Either way, going forward I guess it can't hurt to keep all studs at the same AA level to ensure a deep MiLB playoff run to get final bump (or maybe even keep them in a lower level to make the odds better of a deep playoff run), and then promote them to the next level if they don't make it far enough into the playoffs. Then just demote them back after the playoffs.

Posted by brianplath on 7/26/2021 10:22:00 AM (view original):
Huh, first I can recall hearing of that theory. But I am seeing mention of it now that I go back and look at old threads. tlowster - you got any current insight on this? I found this thread but it didn't seem to have any consensus one way or the other.

I figured the engine rolled over the players' behind the scenes up-to-date rating. Not sure why it would use the player card ratings (I assume the player card is just cosmetic from a game functionality perspective) unless it's an easier shortcut somehow from a programming perspective. I guess this is pretty easily provable by finding a prospect that didn't get the last bump, and comparing their end of season ratings to beginning of season ratings for changes (I haven't tracked this but my assumption is the numbers are always the same or I would have heard about it). Unless the system copies and pastes the prior seasons ratings for player cards and doesn't update player card ratings until games start getting played again in ST. Rolling the last bit of the prior season's development into the ST development cycle might explain the big 2 and 3 point bumps we see in ST.

I'm fairly skeptical of this but it would help explain the ~3ish coachable development ratings deficits that almost all players seem to be unable to recover in relation to their true ceiling (back when the bug made true ceilings accessible)

Either way, going forward I guess it can't hurt to keep all studs at the same AA level to ensure a deep MiLB playoff run to get final bump (or maybe even keep them in a lower level to make the odds better of a deep playoff run), and then promote them to the next level if they don't make it far enough into the playoffs. Then just demote them back after the playoffs.

It's a tough test to commit to. If you decide to test it with a true prospect and not promote him after a long playoff run in order to make sure your test is an accurate test, then if the test turns out that the player does not get those same bumps during roll that he would have got with the promotion bump, than you may have just lost development on a player for the sake of a test.

However, if you test it with some scrub and he doesn't get a bump during roll, it doesn't prove anything at all because you don't know if the scrub would have gotten the bump with the year end promotion.

The questions from the above linked thread are still open in my opinion -- 1. If you don't make use of year end promotions, do the players still get coachable ratings bumps during roll? I'm not sure and I'm not willing to test with a true prospect; 2. If a player does not get promoted at the end of the season, is that missed opportunity just a delay to his development or can it turn into a situation where the player does not reach his ceiling in certain ratings? I don't know the answer to this either. All I know is that I try to make the playoffs in the minor league and I always promote my minor league players after game 1 of the MLB World Series because this is the only thing to do where I know im taking full advantage of all development opportunities.

I have a World that is about to start the World Series. In this World, I have a couple of midling prospects that I can try this on.

Both received at least 1 point in L split and R split during the season. They also both played some games in the playoffs without receiving a promotion yet. One of them already had his five regular season development cycles (as noted above, each bump he gained at least one point in both splits). The other has only had 4 development cycles so far in the season (as noted above, he too has also gained at least one point in both splits during each cycle). I will purposely not promote these guys and see if they gain anything in splits during the roll.

Just did promotions for my true prospects and some of them had 2 or 3 point bumps in certain ratings. Since my true prospects got nice bumps, I assume the two middling prospects would have at least gotten something with a year end promotion bump.

I did not promote the two middling players and I will check them again right before roll to be sure they did not get a bump. Once we roll, I'll check them again and report any findings.

I'll be very interested to see how this goes. Thanks for trying to test it tlowster!

Appreciate the experiment tlowster. I'm almost positive the ratings will show up the same year to year. But I do wonder if the gains still aren't just lumped into ST gains. No way to test that theory unfortunately.

Maybe the new WiS guy will give away some of the secret sauce if we ask real nice, lol. I realize they want to keep some mystique to the game but it would be nice to get some clarity on rinky dink technicality stuff like this. This feels like a "it's not a bug, it's a feature" kind of thing.

Posted by brianplath on 7/28/2021 1:19:00 AM (view original):
Appreciate the experiment tlowster. I'm almost positive the ratings will show up the same year to year. But I do wonder if the gains still aren't just lumped into ST gains. No way to test that theory unfortunately.

Maybe the new WiS guy will give away some of the secret sauce if we ask real nice, lol. I realize they want to keep some mystique to the game but it would be nice to get some clarity on rinky dink technicality stuff like this. This feels like a "it's not a bug, it's a feature" kind of thing.

This is kind of my gut feel. If you don't do the end of season promotions, you'll get more development on average on next seasons cycle. But since there might be a chance it does have permanent effects, I still do the promotions (plus its a good way to keep your minors on track for the next season).

Posted by brianplath on 7/28/2021 1:19:00 AM (view original):
Appreciate the experiment tlowster. I'm almost positive the ratings will show up the same year to year. But I do wonder if the gains still aren't just lumped into ST gains. No way to test that theory unfortunately.

Maybe the new WiS guy will give away some of the secret sauce if we ask real nice, lol. I realize they want to keep some mystique to the game but it would be nice to get some clarity on rinky dink technicality stuff like this. This feels like a "it's not a bug, it's a feature" kind of thing.

Agreed on the feature vs. bug thing. Gotta give rewards to the folks that tinker and learn.

Btw,
World Series is over now. Neither player received an additional natural cycle. The screenshot I took a few days back is still an accurate snapshot.

Posted by pray4pro on 7/28/2021 2:54:00 PM (view original):

Posted by brianplath on 7/28/2021 1:19:00 AM (view original):
Appreciate the experiment tlowster. I'm almost positive the ratings will show up the same year to year. But I do wonder if the gains still aren't just lumped into ST gains. No way to test that theory unfortunately.

Maybe the new WiS guy will give away some of the secret sauce if we ask real nice, lol. I realize they want to keep some mystique to the game but it would be nice to get some clarity on rinky dink technicality stuff like this. This feels like a "it's not a bug, it's a feature" kind of thing.

This is kind of my gut feel. If you don't do the end of season promotions, you'll get more development on average on next seasons cycle. But since there might be a chance it does have permanent effects, I still do the promotions (plus its a good way to keep your minors on track for the next season).

Just a theory, but I think there is likely some type of diminishing returns with age aspect coded into the algorithm. If not, then those 5 to 6 year pro minor league players with elite makeup ratings that get DITR would eventually become mlb players. However, I've had a few of those high make up players that are 23 or 24 years old, but were drafted as high Scholl players. They get a huge initial ditr bump, but very little after that. Some of the pitchers make it, but usually it's one of those low stamina guys where the initial ditr bump gets him over the hump.

if there is some type of diminishing return, which I think there is, I am just going to take every opportunity to get as much early development as possible. I've seen year end promotion bumps of 5 points in certain categories for first year ditr players. Then the very next season, that same player will get a three or a two point bump in that same category. My best guess is that if I didn't promote him the previous season, his spring training bump may have been larger than three or two but I bet it would not have been 8 or 7. So, I'll take the earlier year end promotion bump.

Also, as we all have seen, a major injury to a prospect in his first few seasons causes him to miss all of his projections. There are just too many signs that point to how important it is to prioritize early development.

Just a piggyback off of the above post in regards to injuries of prospects.

When a prospect has a major injury in year 1 through 3, the development time for the length of the injury is obviously lost. However, I would argue that the most significant loss is the proportion of the bumps. As we've seen, if a player is projected to have a 90+ R split rating, once he is signed, he usually has a R split rating of somewhere between 55 and 70. During that first season, we usually see bumps of 2 each regular (non-ST, non-year-end-promotion) development cycle. Then the year after, we see bumps of 1 or 2 in each development cycle. By year three, almost all regular bumps are just one point. Anything more than 1 point is usually a spring training bump or a year end bump.

If the player has a major injury in year 1 through 3, he misses time during the best possible incremental bumps, but once he returns, I have seen a player receive an accelerated development compared to a player in the same year. So, if you compared a player that was in year 3 and had no Injuries to a player in year 3, but had 1 major injury during year 2, the player with no injuries is going to be closer to his true peak projections than the player that had the injury. Because of this, during year 3, the player that had the injury in year 2 will receive larger incremental bumps in year 3 than the player that did not have an injury. However, as each player gets closer and closer to age X, each player has less and less of an opportunity to get better. I have seen this with my own eyes. Once the player reaches a certain age, there is very little chance to get to his peak rating.

I bet it works in some sort of similar fashion to the below for regular (non-ST and non-year end promotions):

1. If year 1, 7% of (projection - current rating) per development cycle
2. If year 2, 6% of (projection - current rating) per development cycle
3. If year 3, 5% of (projection - current rating) per development cycle
and so on.

Assuming the above is true in some capacity, you need to still add in coaching and playing time to these incremental bumps. If an owner never uses year end promotions, he'll still get development, but over time, it will be less.