2045 Farm System Rankings (UMEBA)

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2045 Farm System Rankings (UMEBA)

Post by RonCo » Mon Dec 28, 2020 1:12 pm

As noted in the post made in the BBA Features area, I’ve done a quick run through of all our minor league status. The UMEBA, being a bit smaller place, is perhaps a bit more interesting. Or maybe better put, it’s interesting in a different way.

Let’s take a look.


The Overall Picture

The table below shows what everyone has known: for a couple years, the UMEBA prospect pool has been pretty huge. That jump of 55 prospects from 2043 to 2044 is large enough, after all, but made even more so by the fact that the league contracted at that point. So adding another 210 to the mix … well …

Year807570656055504540Tot
20425021101014223397
204370251117296088219
204402037204780115274
2045213101534100137182484

So the hard fact of the matter right now is that the UMEBA is probably a hard place for a kid baseball player to get a job unless he can convince some scout someplace to rate him at 45 or above.

Regardless, here’s the breakout by division and team.

2045-FARM-SYSTEMS-TABLE-UMEBA.PNG
2045-FARM-SYSTEMS-CHART-UMEBA.PNG

Overall

A look at the scatter plot says you’ve got five teams kind of all the same, then Jerusalem (#3 overall) and Bucharest (#1) flying high, and Beirut in play on average, but down at the top end. With a smaller population, I’d guess this isn’t unusual


A Look Through the Divisions

Bancroft – While it’s probably arguable that Jerusalem’s system is better, Bucharest stands at the top of the Bancroft division. A big part of the gap between the teams, however, is likely Jim Cox’s big dollop of cash he threw at undrafted free agents. Eighty of the team’s 108 prospects are rated 40 and 45. Looking at prospects rated in the upper ranges, things get quite a bit more tight, with the Impalers still likely holding an edge due to their two 80s.

Mumbai takes second on the basis of their slight edge on the others in the 45-50 range, but you could probably squint a little and say all three are in roughly similar shapes.

Burt As noted earlier, this system gives Jerusalem the call when it comes to top end. Of their 65 prospects, 23 are rated 50 or better. Of interest is that, despite its low rating at the top end, Beirut may well have a nearly equal collection of farm hands when it comes down to it. Their 23 players rated 50 or 55 is tied with Bucharest for league best. And, given the prospect bloat the league has seen, even the bottom end of the table in Baghdad and Tripoli seem to be stocked with a plethora of guys.

Add it up, and it could mean some interesting seasons to come.
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Re: 2045 Farm System Rankings (UMEBA)

Post by chicoruiz » Mon Dec 28, 2020 8:02 pm

Wow...Jim's post-draft signing coup really paid off in the number of 40s and 45s. It will be interesting to see if any other GMs follow his lead if we have another strong draft next year...
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Re: 2045 Farm System Rankings (UMEBA)

Post by allenciox » Tue Dec 29, 2020 5:47 pm

This is fantastic stuff! I had not seen your analysis before, but it is very interesting. I do have a few questions/thoughts though:

1. How you compute wTop and wTot: For wTop, there are few enough players that I was able to reverse engineer the equation. You are simply assigning a value of 5 points for each player rated 60, 6 for 65, 7 for 70, 8 for 75, and 9 for 80. But there are too many players (and too few points) for me to reverse engineer the wTot weights (I can't solve for 9 unknowns with only 8 teams). The intuitive thing would be 1 point for 40, etc. since that would also correspond to 5 pts for 60, but that doesn't work --- not even close. Since some wTot end in .25 and others in .5, I found that having a weight of .25 for 40, .5 for 45 take care of all the digits after the decimal place for all eight teams, but does not seem to work well for weights for 50+: it requires them to be too high. On the other hand .75 weight for 40, 1.5 weight for 45 also doesn't appear to work, as all other weights would have to be too small. Can you clairfy what the weights are for the wTot case?

2. This brings up a really good question: What is the best way to evaluate a farm system? I don't have a firm answer to this, but I think we can break it up into two separate questions: On an individual player level, and on the team level.

a. For an individual player level, there are the following questions to be asked:
i. What is the potential of the player at their "best" position?
ii. How important is that position in an "abstract" league ? An SP might be most important, and an RP least important. C might be second.
iii. How do they compare with other prospects at that position? One league might have a ton of C prospects, another might only have a few. It would be more important in the second case to have a good catcher prospect.
iv. How accurate are the projections? What is the variance, i.e. likelihood that a player will progress as espected, vs. possibly much better or much worse?
iv. How "raw" is the player? A 50 OVR/60 POT would be much more useful than a 20 OVR/60 POT player... less variance and also a spot in the minors is being reserved for far less time. ?
b. How does the player fit in with the projected "team" needs in the future? Are they, for example, one of only 10 C prospects in the minors, or one of 50?


I could say much more about this but this post is already too long.

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Re: 2045 Farm System Rankings (UMEBA)

Post by RichY » Tue Dec 29, 2020 6:14 pm

Good stuff Ron, thanks as always for sharing.
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Re: 2045 Farm System Rankings (UMEBA)

Post by jtannehill » Tue Dec 29, 2020 6:47 pm

Very Interesting Ron, thank you as always for looking out for the UMEBA

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Re: 2045 Farm System Rankings (UMEBA)

Post by RonCo » Fri Jan 01, 2021 5:33 pm

For both, the weighting is as you surmised...

80 = 9
75 = 8
70 = 7
65 = 6
60 = 5
55 = 4
50 = 3
45 = .5
40 = .25

The scoring is obviously pretty coarse. In the past I've juggled these weightings, then used the eye test to decide if I liked them or not. You could probably do better.

More thoughts on the rest in a sec.
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Re: 2045 Farm System Rankings (UMEBA)

Post by RonCo » Fri Jan 01, 2021 5:43 pm

One of the reasons I did the split of wTot and wTop (in tandem with the OOTP rankings) is that it gives you a few different cuts on the question. One of the deeper questions for me is whether one could try to weight players by more important positions, or in offense/defense splits. It could be done, but would require more work (or some automation...which I could do, too, but there are only 24 hours in a day).

AT the end of the day, a Farm system's value is in how it's leveraged ... so ... I dunno.

I think assessing individual players is a process kind of fun to think about because you can go so many ways with it.

In addition to all your thoughts, I think there's some sense of trying to project what can happen if a player bumps, and what the liklihood of that happening are. TO a degree, that's the purpose of adding 40s and 45s onto the system. Most of those guys are not goig to add much value if they don't bump, but system-wide, if you have 20 of them you stand a considerably better chance of having one become a real major league than if you have only 10.
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Re: 2045 Farm System Rankings (UMEBA)

Post by RonCo » Fri Jan 01, 2021 5:47 pm

Personally, I prefer a "Wide" organization (many players of "good" or moderate projection) to a "Tall" organization (a couple 75s or 80s and not much else). I see arguments to the counter, of course. I mean, Tall and Wide is best of all, but if I can have only one, I'd prefer wide because then (1) I stand a chance of being able to plug holes and win by grabbing one or two guys elsewhere, and because (2) so much of winning a division is about organizational depth and being able to fill an injured All-Star's position with someone who can contribute in some fashion.

Again, others viewpoints may be a lot better than mine. But this fits my personality.
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Re: 2045 Farm System Rankings (UMEBA)

Post by allenciox » Sun Jan 03, 2021 10:25 am

Yeah, I agree with you... I would rather have a bunch of 45s and 50s POT (and even 40s) in minors than a few 70s and 80s as well. The reason is because of the variability of development. I worry that the current weights don't reflect that. For example, you have a 50 POT as six times more valuable than a 45 POT which strikes me as way overrating the comparison. In fact, even if they turn out exactly as projected (i.e. 0 variance), some of the 45 POT would be better than some of the 50 POT, and we know that there is significantly more variance in that.

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