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hcboomer
Since the Steamroller was at best mediocre in the 1950 season, I figured I'd experiment, get younger make some trades and build for a couple of seasons down the road. It was pretty fun, and I found that a number of teams in the league are more than willing to talk trade fairly. One of the positives it seemed like I had was about three good young pitching prospects, C+ overall, 18-20 years old. There weren't a lot of them around the league, and at least a couple of teams asked about them repeatedly in trade talks. I made a lot of trades and trade offers, and certainly young pitching prospects in general were something teams very much wanted or wanted to hold onto.
After the amateur draft, though, it appears most every team in the league has a few similar level pitchers. I got three more myself, including one A- stud, and an 18-year-old B- guy. Even the Bums, the best team in the league, landed three -- I believe -- pitchers of at least similar quality to those "coveted" prospects I had a year ago. Now most everyone has what I thought would be a bit of a long-term "advantage" for me potentially.
I'm not complaining about my team in particular -- this is a beta league, after all, and that's one of the reasons I played around with the whole building-for-the-future approach. What I found is that if you work at it and make enough trade offers, a bad team can certainly get some things done and gear up for a couple of seasons down the road. But if everyone is collecting a lot of useful new talent in every amateur draft, the bad teams will never catch up. Even the best teams will be able to keep winning over a period of seasons and pile up plenty of developmental talent at the same time.
I'm glad I played around with this because I'm not sure I would have particularly noticed the flaws otherwise. But throwing a lot of talent in the amateur draft is definitely NOT the way to help bad teams get better. The trick, I think, is to find a way to reward the teams that work at building through trades and roster management etc. The ones that don't work at it probably don't have much interest in the first place and won't get much better anyway, so they'll eventually drop the game, I imagine. But those that do work at it need to know there's a potential payoff, that the younger prospects they might have will have reasonable value. With this much new young talent entering the league every year, why should any team try to build? You'd always be able to replace your prospects.
For my own amateur draft, it would have made sense to get the young A- starter in the first round, since I had one of the worst records. There should be 6-8 guys on that level in each draft. Maybe the 21-year-old C+ pitcher I got in the fifth round would have been more appropriate in the second. Otherwise, I should have only gotten marginal prospects or at least long-term developmental ones (18-year-old C or C- players instead of B- and C+ types)
Sorry for the length of this note (and the one on the other board), but this entire issue of how teams and leagues will evolve seems pretty crucial to keeping people's interest and the future of the game overall. And I'd suggest that the amateur draft talent be dramatically lowered (and perhaps even the numbers of rounds reduced). Part of letting bad teams grow is making sure good teams have to work to stay good over a long period and not just collect lots of talent in amateur drafts for a few years.
Amateur draft talent
July 03, 2002 at 03:06PM View BBCode
There's a discussion going on about this on another board, but figured I'd also drop it in here. After the recent amateur draft in the beta league, I'm definitely of the opinion that the talent level is way too high, at least for pitchers, and that it detracts from a team's ability to build.Since the Steamroller was at best mediocre in the 1950 season, I figured I'd experiment, get younger make some trades and build for a couple of seasons down the road. It was pretty fun, and I found that a number of teams in the league are more than willing to talk trade fairly. One of the positives it seemed like I had was about three good young pitching prospects, C+ overall, 18-20 years old. There weren't a lot of them around the league, and at least a couple of teams asked about them repeatedly in trade talks. I made a lot of trades and trade offers, and certainly young pitching prospects in general were something teams very much wanted or wanted to hold onto.
After the amateur draft, though, it appears most every team in the league has a few similar level pitchers. I got three more myself, including one A- stud, and an 18-year-old B- guy. Even the Bums, the best team in the league, landed three -- I believe -- pitchers of at least similar quality to those "coveted" prospects I had a year ago. Now most everyone has what I thought would be a bit of a long-term "advantage" for me potentially.
I'm not complaining about my team in particular -- this is a beta league, after all, and that's one of the reasons I played around with the whole building-for-the-future approach. What I found is that if you work at it and make enough trade offers, a bad team can certainly get some things done and gear up for a couple of seasons down the road. But if everyone is collecting a lot of useful new talent in every amateur draft, the bad teams will never catch up. Even the best teams will be able to keep winning over a period of seasons and pile up plenty of developmental talent at the same time.
I'm glad I played around with this because I'm not sure I would have particularly noticed the flaws otherwise. But throwing a lot of talent in the amateur draft is definitely NOT the way to help bad teams get better. The trick, I think, is to find a way to reward the teams that work at building through trades and roster management etc. The ones that don't work at it probably don't have much interest in the first place and won't get much better anyway, so they'll eventually drop the game, I imagine. But those that do work at it need to know there's a potential payoff, that the younger prospects they might have will have reasonable value. With this much new young talent entering the league every year, why should any team try to build? You'd always be able to replace your prospects.
For my own amateur draft, it would have made sense to get the young A- starter in the first round, since I had one of the worst records. There should be 6-8 guys on that level in each draft. Maybe the 21-year-old C+ pitcher I got in the fifth round would have been more appropriate in the second. Otherwise, I should have only gotten marginal prospects or at least long-term developmental ones (18-year-old C or C- players instead of B- and C+ types)
Sorry for the length of this note (and the one on the other board), but this entire issue of how teams and leagues will evolve seems pretty crucial to keeping people's interest and the future of the game overall. And I'd suggest that the amateur draft talent be dramatically lowered (and perhaps even the numbers of rounds reduced). Part of letting bad teams grow is making sure good teams have to work to stay good over a long period and not just collect lots of talent in amateur drafts for a few years.
hcboomer
A down-the-road suggestion -- might be interesting to have the capacity for not only career-ending injuries but career-hurting ones. Maybe a young pitcher would lose an entire letter grade, for instance, or lose the ability to improve for two years, something llike that. Maybe teams also could choose a few prospects to "protect", meaning they would be immune from such major injuries.
July 03, 2002 at 04:12PM View BBCode
Follow up to that last meandering note -- seems like one of the issues affecting development and player evolution is the lack of any career-altering injuries. Players can get hurt for chunks of seasons, but from what I understand that's about it. In real life, even if a team is loaded with young pitching prospects, precious few will materialize as legit major leaguers because of injuries etc. But in this game, if you've got, say, 6 good young pitchers tucked away in your minors, you pretty much know what they'll be and when, more or less, they'll get there.A down-the-road suggestion -- might be interesting to have the capacity for not only career-ending injuries but career-hurting ones. Maybe a young pitcher would lose an entire letter grade, for instance, or lose the ability to improve for two years, something llike that. Maybe teams also could choose a few prospects to "protect", meaning they would be immune from such major injuries.
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