Off Topic
Minor League Operations - Players
As noted in the first rock of this series:
Trigger warning the second: it was about as bad as the coaches.
Don’t worry. I’m not going to go into infinite detail on all the players in the organization. No one has time or interest in documenting that, least of all me. But I’ll say this: when I first dug into the organization, my eyes nearly teared up.
The release button hummed along so loudly for several sims that I thought it might overheat. And it still does, really. It was literally impossible to release every really bad player on the roster simply because there were slots that needed filling. But still, every level had “extra” players who literally could not add value at any level whatsoever. Those guys were gone instantly. Better, I figured, to field smaller rosters than necessary than to have these guy leech of extra AB.
Some levels had wildly weird collections of players (say 8 catchers), etc.
This tells me that Nathan just let OOTP manage things. The alternative is that he just signed players and left them at whatever level he dropped them into, and I don’t believe that is true. Nathan was too good for that and I know the OOTP AI is literally terrible at this. So that’s my story and I’m sticking to it. Either way, the minors were in something I’ll kindly call disarray – again, not a situation that I would expect a GM like Nathan to have if he were really focused on things.
Results and the Minor Leagues
This got me interested in the historical records of Seattle’s minor league teams. I’ve already done a dive into the majors. What about the minors? Was the team managed at all at these levels? If so, that would suggest I was wrong, and that Nathan was still focusing, but just ran into bad luck at the big-league level.
So I went to history to look at the minor league results.
(Aside, of course, winning minor league teams are not particularly meaningful. That said, my supposition is that if a team is getting any attention, and if it’s staffed with reasonable players, and – if coaches mean anything – coaches, then they will not totally suck all the time.)
Here are the team’s results across the board in 2056.
Ouch.
Looking backward a decade for all the teams in the minors finds:
AAA – Played winning baseball in 2055, but was sub-.500 from 2038-2054.
That’s right, sixteen years.
AA – Has been sub .500 since 2043
A – Has been sub .500 since 2045
SA - Has been sub .500 since 2041
R – Has played winning ball for a long time.
In other words, yikes. This system has been pretty bad on the field from top to bottom for well over a decade. I can take some guesses at why the Rookie League teams have been pretty good. But you tell me what you think. Bottom line, though, it all adds up to say that the truly bad quality of players on the roster I first looked at was endemic to the organization.
Ron’s Efforts So Far
As expected, I have now dedicated quite a bit of time to getting the rosters of all my teams lined up. As most GMs know, it’s not rocket science but it’s a bit of a painstaking process. As I think Alan has said, making a bad team become respectable isn’t that hard in the end. But, it takes a certain amount of diligence to weed through this kind of pile.
I spend time pretty much every sim DFAing and releasing guys as I find replacements in the minor league free agency pool. In that fashion, I’m not signing prospects, I’m signing guys to play A-ball and AA-ball who might be able to win some games. This is especially true for our pitchers, who remain pretty rancid.
Is winning in the minors important? Well. Kind of. Liberty aside, winning is not the final goal, but as Crash LaLoosh’s dad said “Winning is … like … better than losing.” If nothing else, it makes me happy to put better players on the field. That’s the job of a GM, right? Find and field better players? And, though I’m not expecting a thing here, it should be noted that adding players who can actually compete comes with the ephemeral silver lining of possible coming across a unicorn bumper.
I’m still focused on finding playing time for the better prospects, and cutting guys who just should never see the field. Though I’m steadily replacing players, I’m sure a few bad examples still remain. I’ll keep one around here and there for simple injury duty. But mostly I’m still focused on getting minor league FA to simply play a A-ball or Short A or whatever.
It’s been a long slog, but I think things are rounding into shape. We’re halfway through the season, so everything can still change, and we’ll see where things shake out. But here are the current records of our organization, complete with a projection of how many wins we’re projecting to gain over last season:
See? Confirmation that the first jump just isn’t that hard.
If the teams at each level continue winning at their current clips, we’ll see a 59-game increase in wins up and down the levels, or roughly a 10-win per level increase. And, given the size of our cash reserves, this increase is coming without much in the form of resources. I could do better with another couple million bucks (said everyone everywhere).
Summary … Kind of
That’s the overview. Except for the parts I left out, which I’ll probably add in an extra Epilog for the series. You know what I mean about the parts I left out, right? The extra stuff. The meta-game things … the … well … the fun.
As noted in the first rock of this series:
This is part five, wherein I will focus on the grind of managing the minors – basically the situation regarding low-level players when I took the team, and their acquisition since I began managing it.We’re a half-year into this thing, and now that I’ve had a little time to dig into what used to be the Seattle franchise, I figured it’s time to kick the tires and see how things are shaking.
Trigger warning the second: it was about as bad as the coaches.
Don’t worry. I’m not going to go into infinite detail on all the players in the organization. No one has time or interest in documenting that, least of all me. But I’ll say this: when I first dug into the organization, my eyes nearly teared up.
The release button hummed along so loudly for several sims that I thought it might overheat. And it still does, really. It was literally impossible to release every really bad player on the roster simply because there were slots that needed filling. But still, every level had “extra” players who literally could not add value at any level whatsoever. Those guys were gone instantly. Better, I figured, to field smaller rosters than necessary than to have these guy leech of extra AB.
Some levels had wildly weird collections of players (say 8 catchers), etc.
This tells me that Nathan just let OOTP manage things. The alternative is that he just signed players and left them at whatever level he dropped them into, and I don’t believe that is true. Nathan was too good for that and I know the OOTP AI is literally terrible at this. So that’s my story and I’m sticking to it. Either way, the minors were in something I’ll kindly call disarray – again, not a situation that I would expect a GM like Nathan to have if he were really focused on things.
Results and the Minor Leagues
This got me interested in the historical records of Seattle’s minor league teams. I’ve already done a dive into the majors. What about the minors? Was the team managed at all at these levels? If so, that would suggest I was wrong, and that Nathan was still focusing, but just ran into bad luck at the big-league level.
So I went to history to look at the minor league results.
(Aside, of course, winning minor league teams are not particularly meaningful. That said, my supposition is that if a team is getting any attention, and if it’s staffed with reasonable players, and – if coaches mean anything – coaches, then they will not totally suck all the time.)
Here are the team’s results across the board in 2056.
| Team | 2056 | W | L | PCT |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Seattle | BBA | 55 | 107 | 0.340 |
| Pasco | AAA | 57 | 87 | 0.396 |
| Kamloops | AA | 60 | 80 | 0.429 |
| Lake City | A | 41 | 99 | 0.293 |
| Port au Prince | SSA | 26 | 50 | 0.342 |
| Ogden | R | 26 | 42 | 0.382 |
Looking backward a decade for all the teams in the minors finds:
AAA – Played winning baseball in 2055, but was sub-.500 from 2038-2054.
That’s right, sixteen years.
AA – Has been sub .500 since 2043
A – Has been sub .500 since 2045
SA - Has been sub .500 since 2041
R – Has played winning ball for a long time.
In other words, yikes. This system has been pretty bad on the field from top to bottom for well over a decade. I can take some guesses at why the Rookie League teams have been pretty good. But you tell me what you think. Bottom line, though, it all adds up to say that the truly bad quality of players on the roster I first looked at was endemic to the organization.
Ron’s Efforts So Far
As expected, I have now dedicated quite a bit of time to getting the rosters of all my teams lined up. As most GMs know, it’s not rocket science but it’s a bit of a painstaking process. As I think Alan has said, making a bad team become respectable isn’t that hard in the end. But, it takes a certain amount of diligence to weed through this kind of pile.
I spend time pretty much every sim DFAing and releasing guys as I find replacements in the minor league free agency pool. In that fashion, I’m not signing prospects, I’m signing guys to play A-ball and AA-ball who might be able to win some games. This is especially true for our pitchers, who remain pretty rancid.
Is winning in the minors important? Well. Kind of. Liberty aside, winning is not the final goal, but as Crash LaLoosh’s dad said “Winning is … like … better than losing.” If nothing else, it makes me happy to put better players on the field. That’s the job of a GM, right? Find and field better players? And, though I’m not expecting a thing here, it should be noted that adding players who can actually compete comes with the ephemeral silver lining of possible coming across a unicorn bumper.
I’m still focused on finding playing time for the better prospects, and cutting guys who just should never see the field. Though I’m steadily replacing players, I’m sure a few bad examples still remain. I’ll keep one around here and there for simple injury duty. But mostly I’m still focused on getting minor league FA to simply play a A-ball or Short A or whatever.
It’s been a long slog, but I think things are rounding into shape. We’re halfway through the season, so everything can still change, and we’ll see where things shake out. But here are the current records of our organization, complete with a projection of how many wins we’re projecting to gain over last season:
| 2057 | W | L | PCT | Proj W | IMP |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BIK | 32 | 50 | 0.390 | 63 | 8 |
| PAS | 42 | 40 | 0.512 | 74 | 17 |
| KAM | 42 | 40 | 0.512 | 72 | 12 |
| LCL | 33 | 49 | 0.402 | 56 | 15 |
| PAP | 13 | 14 | 0.481 | 37 | 11 |
| OGD | 9 | 18 | 0.333 | 23 | -3 |
| 59 |
If the teams at each level continue winning at their current clips, we’ll see a 59-game increase in wins up and down the levels, or roughly a 10-win per level increase. And, given the size of our cash reserves, this increase is coming without much in the form of resources. I could do better with another couple million bucks (said everyone everywhere).
Summary … Kind of
That’s the overview. Except for the parts I left out, which I’ll probably add in an extra Epilog for the series. You know what I mean about the parts I left out, right? The extra stuff. The meta-game things … the … well … the fun.
