I posted a few weeks ago looking for community feedback regarding an issue we were having with users maintaining and building their minors. You may review original post and responses HERE. This is only a problem with less than 5% of teams, but when minors are neglected both from personnel and financial perspective, it becomes a real time-consuming headache to fix manually by customer support, and sets that franchise back years. The teams we have to fix on a weekly basis usually have 99% of payroll allocated to ML, and then typically have only a handful of players in their minor league teams. I understand this is a new user problem, or people that are just interested in majors and winning WS and prizes, but the game was built on the premise of building a "Franchise" and true dynasty. Its particularly harmful when users sell out for a few short years and leave another user to pick up the pieces of a shattered franchise.

I would again love feedback, my solution is based off community feedback, is multi-tiered, and it is as follows:

1.) A min budget will be maintained for all levels. This means min contract x 20 players. -Yes, I know this a band-aid solution that will not fix every issue as players signed above level min could take money away from the budget and rosters may still be depleted. But its a good start and I think good practice.

2.) Increase health and stamina for prospects and particularly tryout players. If the AI needs to sign players for a team we know there stats will not be fantastic, but I think they should still be serviceable to eat innings, not drop to 0%, or get injured. I think overall, prospects generally need a little boost so I may consider changing some of the distrubutions of generated players in general SLIGHTLY.

3.) If Rosters are incomplete at start time of ML,MIL,RL schedules AI will auto-sign players. Self explanatory, but we will now auto-sign FA/TryOut prospects to depleted teams how we see fit in an algorithm.

4.) AI Signing Penalties. The AI will never be as good as a true human coach, so any moves it makes comes with a penalty. If you HAVE BUDGET, in addition to signing player you will receive 50% of contract penalty that counts against payroll next season. If you DO NOT have budget, the players salary+100% of contract penalty that counts against payroll next season. EX. (Have Budget) You have 100k budget remaining we sign 35k player. You will have 65k remaining this year and next year a penalty of 17.5k counted against payroll. EX (No Budget) we sign 35k player, next year you have a 70k penalty counted against budget. **If owner leaves team the penalties are reset, so new owner is not penalized.

Again for 95% of users this change would not effect you, especially those in strong worlds with commissioners that stay on top of team affairs. The change will only makes leagues more competitive and fun, and penalize users that are not playing the game as intended. The ultimate bonus is will save 10+ man hours a week CS has typically needed to manually fix these teams daily.

I appreciate everyone's feedback.

Regards,
-Chris
WIS

Big fan of this.

Many thanks. Things like this are great additions. Keep up the good work.

Yes, long overdue. Bumping up DURs and STAMs (and aligning them properly) for career minor league SPs and RPs is an absolute must to both address the problems in the minors and just to make the game more enjoyable. Also creating an adequate number of defense-worthy SSs and CFers should be a must as well. There should be plenty of good-glove, no-hit guys to fill, at least, the lower levels (rookie thru HiA)....just as there are in real life.

Please keep at this stuff...the game is LONG overdue for this type of attention and tweaking.

Thanks.

This sounds like a set of sensible changes. Good stuff.

I think bigger rewards at the lower levels & maybe a loss of a draft pick at the ML level for not maintaining a minimum roster or salary standard may be a good incentive for each franchise to invest in more quality signees.

I don't think the penalty for next year's payroll will have much impact. The guy neglecting his Minors isn't worried about $17k in budget penalties. And I'd be careful not to stray too far away from real baseball - like the recommendation of losing a draft pick. One of the best things about HBD is how closely it matches real baseball, relatively.

Love the suggestions for making the scrubs just a bit better, more serviceable, and an extra boost to prospects making the minor league playoffs.

An easy addition could be adding something to the Headline section showing which teams are missing players at which levels...a little public awareness of team issues. If I saw a team missing 3 minor league catchers and I had extra, I would propose a trade to help solve it.

Lastly, maybe the scrubs could be created to have more positional flexibility - not good at anything, but ok at a lot of things, so it's easier to field a lineup from your existing roster when guys get hurt

"2.) Increase health and stamina for prospects and particularly tryout players. If the AI needs to sign players for a team we know there stats will not be fantastic, but I think they should still be serviceable to eat innings, not drop to 0%, or get injured. I think overall, prospects generally need a little boost so I may consider changing some of the distributions of generated players in general SLIGHTLY."

This is terrific; all tryout camp players could have 50 ST, 100 DUR and 100 HE, for all I care. You might consider creating some sort of way to mark these players in the code so they don't get a Diamond in the Rough boost, though; it would be a perverse incentive if people neglecting their minors got a superstar player after a DitR.

I play in a league with a MWR of 25% for minor leagues. Because of this training camp players are usually all taken, with maybe the exception of 1B or DH, which does not help when your only SS is hurt.
I have to agree with the above comment, having an extra boost for minor league playoffs would make people care more about minors. Since max potential would not improve you would have more players reaching their full potential if they are hitting the playoffs every year. Most players who ignore their minors are trying to gain extra $$ for international players, if the international player is more likely to hit their maximum sooner then it would be worth the 2 million investment in ones minor system.
One other comment to add, it seems like strikeouts are rare compared to MLB. In most leagues there are career records of over 800 HR, 1000 stolen bases but not much to I see over 3200 strikeouts. The MLB record is over 25% higher than that.

I think the biggest plus about the above post from Admin is that these updates could free up ten hours a week. The more time Admin has,,the closer we get to the ideal HBD.

I love addressing this issue. The optimist in me hopes every owner sets their rosters at each level, but some might not do it until the cycle before the first game (that happened to me recently but I am usually more diligent about it). Maybe any signings don't happen until after the AM cycle on minors Opening Day? And just as minimum pitch count was reduced to 20 for starters, maybe minimum stamina for all new players (draftees, IFAs, tryout camp) is raised to 20, especially considering real-life MLB's 3-batter minimum rule.

I care little about my minors other than to give prospects with ML projections playing time so they can develop into true ML players. Having said that I try to have 35 players at the top 4 levels and 30 players in RL. I've played for a while and believe that an increase in DUR & STA for MiL players would be very valuable. Because of the current levels of both I carry 18 position players 3 being C's and 17 pitchers, 10 being capable of being starters to eleviate the majority of the fatigue issues that arise. In RL, 13 position players with 2 C's and 17 pitchers with 8 starters works pretty well but not always. In my opinion with injury concerns this will always be the best way to go even if things are done to increase the DUR & STA.

In my opinion, it would be beneficial to a World if a ML team could go no more than the 1st 25 games with less than 25 players. That MiL teams could go no more than the 1st 5 games with less than 35 players per level except RL. RL should have a full compliment of 30 by the start of RL. What about draft picks that don't sign immediately, realistically you only have 1-2 each season and a tryout camp player can be signed then released if these draft picks do sign. I know that some players have played with less players and think this is acceptable but until I see the Yankees, Red Sox or Rays carrying less than 25 players on their rosters I don't care what these people think.

At that point, if you'd like to impose a penalty for the AI fixing the system you can take it out of the Prospect or Player payroll. If the prospect payroll is already at $6M it would come out of the player payroll. If player payroll is max'd then players making more than the ML min would be designated with waivers until the budget can accomodate the amount of players needed to fill out the rosters. I would also restrict people from transferring money to either payroll if the AI is forced to get involved.

Some people believe since they pay money to play that they should be allowed to do as they please. However each world is it's own society and dependant on each team to follow rules and try to build their team and not bail when they no longer have any talent to speak of. Sorry people, this game is trying to mirror ML baseball and those owners pay an astronomical amount of money for their franchises, they have rules to follow and the commish can step in to do what is in the best interest of baseball and while we pay to play, we do not own this game so check your egos and think about more than your own desire to find shortcuts to win.

I generally support this, but would like some clarification on what is meant by "If rosters are incomplete by start time".

Often, if I have a few prospects to call up but don't want to get start their service time, I'll go into the ML season with 22 players on the 25 man roster, knowing that this number is sufficient for a few weeks and that reinforcements are on the way. Would this situation result in 3 players being signed and a penalty?

MiL teams could go no more than the 1st 5 games with less than 35 players per level

Definitely would value insight on what consists of "incomplete". Is it the 20 min that roster moves enforce? Is it the 25-man limit on active roster spots. I know and respect griss, but there's a huge difference between a minimum of 20 and a minimum of 35 players.

I'd like a little leeway given the issues with service time at ML and injuries. In an ideal world where this is my full-time job, I'd manage every move, but if my AA roster has a player coming off the DL three days after start of the season, sometimes it's just not worth it to get another player for those three days before activation so I'll run a few days with a 24 man roster. My understanding isthat this isn't what this is designed to combat, and I'm appreciative of the efforts you're putting in, just looking for clarification, especially now that I assumed 20 and anothet good owner assumed 35, which is quite a gap.

Posted by Ccobb12 on 7/7/2021 8:59:00 AM (view original):
I posted a few weeks ago looking for community feedback regarding an issue we were having with users maintaining and building their minors. You may review original post and responses HERE. This is only a problem with less than 5% of teams, but when minors are neglected both from personnel and financial perspective, it becomes a real time-consuming headache to fix manually by customer support, and sets that franchise back years. The teams we have to fix on a weekly basis usually have 99% of payroll allocated to ML, and then typically have only a handful of players in their minor league teams. I understand this is a new user problem, or people that are just interested in majors and winning WS and prizes, but the game was built on the premise of building a "Franchise" and true dynasty. Its particularly harmful when users sell out for a few short years and leave another user to pick up the pieces of a shattered franchise.

I would again love feedback, my solution is based off community feedback, is multi-tiered, and it is as follows:

1.) A min budget will be maintained for all levels. This means min contract x 20 players. -Yes, I know this a band-aid solution that will not fix every issue as players signed above level min could take money away from the budget and rosters may still be depleted. But its a good start and I think good practice.

2.) Increase health and stamina for prospects and particularly tryout players. If the AI needs to sign players for a team we know there stats will not be fantastic, but I think they should still be serviceable to eat innings, not drop to 0%, or get injured. I think overall, prospects generally need a little boost so I may consider changing some of the distrubutions of generated players in general SLIGHTLY.

3.) If Rosters are incomplete at start time of ML,MIL,RL schedules AI will auto-sign players. Self explanatory, but we will now auto-sign FA/TryOut prospects to depleted teams how we see fit in an algorithm.

4.) AI Signing Penalties. The AI will never be as good as a true human coach, so any moves it makes comes with a penalty. If you HAVE BUDGET, in addition to signing player you will receive 50% of contract penalty that counts against payroll next season. If you DO NOT have budget, the players salary+100% of contract penalty that counts against payroll next season. EX. (Have Budget) You have 100k budget remaining we sign 35k player. You will have 65k remaining this year and next year a penalty of 17.5k counted against payroll. EX (No Budget) we sign 35k player, next year you have a 70k penalty counted against budget. **If owner leaves team the penalties are reset, so new owner is not penalized.

Again for 95% of users this change would not effect you, especially those in strong worlds with commissioners that stay on top of team affairs. The change will only makes leagues more competitive and fun, and penalize users that are not playing the game as intended. The ultimate bonus is will save 10+ man hours a week CS has typically needed to manually fix these teams daily.

I appreciate everyone's feedback.

Regards,
-Chris
WIS

It would help if there was actually some quality in try out players.