AFBL Forum
Winter Meetings => Topics and Ideas Discussion => Topic started by: Chappy on June 03, 2015, 08:52:38 am
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I know there was a brief discussion about this last year, and I agree with a lot of the opposing commentary (wait and see, game handles talent well, blah blah blah) but after running a few solo leagues with feeder leagues over the past few months I've come to the conclusion that our feeder system is too small.
Personally, I've liked the results I've had when I have 2 college teams and 4 high school teams for each major league team.... for a 20-team league that would be 40 colleges and 80 high schools. We have just 20 colleges and 20 high schools.
Now, I don't expect you all to want the AFBL made to Chappy's preferences (although you should!!!! :P) so I was wondering what OOTP would recommend the feeder league size should be for a 20-team league.
So how many teams does OOTP think you should have in your feeder system to support a league of this size?
If you take a 20-team fictional league with AAA, AA, A and R leagues and an 8-round draft (the game recommends 16 rounds, btw) and go to the 'league functions' page and choose 'add complete feeder league system', the game tells you it will add a system that "properly matches the currently selected league in terms of size".
This creates:
A college league consisting of 12 teams (8 less than we currently have)
A high school league consisting of 40 teams (20 more than we currently have)
It seems to me in the very least our high school league is too small.... thoughts?
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I'd vote to double the size of the high school pool like you recommend. It would not give one team a competitive advantage it would add more talent all around. For team's trying to build up, it will give them a quicker path. Getting picks for players will be even more valuable. I think you are right.
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I also would agree. I think a bigger talent pool would help everyone out and give you some greater options by the time you get to the third round.
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I think any change should be gradual.... like add 2 teams each year for x seasons until we reach the desired # of schools.
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Sounds good. I mean you could do 3 a year if we're going up 20 until the last year and do 2 that year because it would cut down a couple of years. Or 4 a year so its done in 5 years.
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This has always been something on my mind as well. My biggest concern would be oversaturating the league but I'm not sure that increasing the number of high schools for our feeder league would do that actually. If we do this, I would do this in waves probably 4 schools for the next 5 years or something like that.
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I think if the talent pool was deeper, it would also probably help warm people to expansion down the road. As is, teams are trying to field the big league rosters.
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I could live with adding potential talent like high school leagues. Colleges could add ready to play or near ready to play talent and I think that's playing with fire.
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makes sense to expand the HS feeders for sure. There should always be a lot more HS than College. Seems we are way too low. Surprised that the college recommendation was actually smaller than league size.
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It is very likely that we will add HS feeder teams in phases. I will work on a detailed outline after some testing in a test league with our rules/setup.
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makes sense to expand the HS feeders for sure. There should always be a lot more HS than College. Seems we are way too low. Surprised that the college recommendation was actually smaller than league size.
Yeah, it seems to base how many teams you need based on rounds of the draft, because I originally tried it with the default 25 round draft and it wanted 80 High School teams (two 40 HS leagues) and 24 colleges.
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Are we locked into our current number of rounds for the draft? Should that be discussed first/as well?
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Good question. If we beef up the feeders with HS or HS and college levels, could add some rounds.
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Are we locked into our current number of rounds for the draft? Should that be discussed first/as well?
Well we could add rounds but the draft already drags on as it is in my opinion. After the 8th round, most the undrafted players are 0.5-1* players and our FA claims are limited to 1 per real-life calendar day which is basically additional rounds of the draft unofficially.
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I'm not saying we should or shouldn't, just bringing up the point to explore. Matt and others who have run leagues are much more knowledgeable in that area than I am.
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I wouldn't want a draft that's much longer. Of course, growing the feeder leagues would give you more "leftovers" so teams that wanted more players could scoop them up post draft.
But remember, we're already seriously under what we need for an 8-round draft, so it would be several seasons of adding 2-4 high schools before we could think of adding rounds IMO.
I've been reading up on this topic more in the forums and come across a couple of interesting statistics:
1. You want to have 5 rounds' worth of players for each level of minor leagues you have (4 levels = 20 rounds). Most online leagues seem to operate below this level without any problems.
2. Each feeder league team produces between 6 and 9 draftable players each season. You want more high schools than colleges because many leftover high school players go to college.
Just food for thought.
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I wouldn't want a draft that's much longer. Of course, growing the feeder leagues would give you more "leftovers" so teams that wanted more players could scoop them up post draft.
But remember, we're already seriously under what we need for an 8-round draft, so it would be several seasons of adding 2-4 high schools before we could think of adding rounds IMO.
I've been reading up on this topic more in the forums and come across a couple of interesting statistics:
1. You want to have 5 rounds' worth of players for each level of minor leagues you have (4 levels = 20 rounds). Most online leagues seem to operate below this level without any problems.
2. Each feeder league team produces between 6 and 9 draftable players each season. You want more high schools than colleges because many leftover high school players go to college.
Just food for thought.
Thanks for posting that. I remember reading that back when I was beginning my research for the feeder leagues.
I think we'll stay at 8 rounds unless we really want to go to say 10 rounds but my preference would be to stay at 8 so we don't drag out the offseason even more than it does. We could always move the draft date to the middle of the season like I wanted to do last offseason :D.
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I would be for moving it. Another league I used to be in did that, so we could draft all off season and the first quarter or so of regular season.
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im for anything that allows talent to enter the league
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im for anything that allows talent to enter the league
Lets say batters ... we need a lot of them
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Yes to more feeder leagues.
Yes to (eventually) going from 8 to 10 rounds for the draft... Mostly because I like round numbers.
Yes to turning off ghost players?
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I'll be posting more details about the expansion of our HS feeder league today. Likely 4 schools added over the next 5 seasons or similar.
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We will be adding 16 High Schools over the next 4 seasons in groups of 4.
This will get us to 36 High Schools and keep us at 20 Colleges for the AFBL Feeder Leagues by the 2028 draft.
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I forgot to add 4 more HS feeder teams for the 2026 season. Should we add 8 for the 2027 season or just 4? Thoughts?
We added the following 4 HS teams for the 2025 season...
-Houston Hornets
-Ft. Worth Falcons
-Austin Anteaters
-Manhattan Monarchs
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We do need to increase the number of draft rounds if we expand the the number of feeders just to make sure the talent gets distributed, as opposed to the free agent free for all after the draft.
However, remember HS guys whoa re not drafted will go back to HS or maybe even to College, if they're of the right age so this 'should' stop the issue of decent talent being available as FAs and then it being a free for all for the most active GMs.
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We do need to increase the number of draft rounds if we expand the the number of feeders just to make sure the talent gets distributed, as opposed to the free agent free for all after the draft.
However, remember HS guys whoa re not drafted will go back to HS or maybe even to College, if they're of the right age so this 'should' stop the issue of decent talent being available as FAs and then it being a free for all for the most active GMs.
That is a good point. We probably should get to 10 rounds for the draft at the minimum.
I just worry about the draft dragging on longer than the normal 7-10 days to finish 8 rounds.
I think we really should find the best solution to move the draft date to around late June or early July from November.
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Not sure on expanding the draft to 10 rounds - the last 4 round or more of these drafts is loaded with poor work ethic 1 star or less guys. I did some quick research on draft history since 2017 (expansion year, and I do not count the 2020 draft since it was manually created) almost no players from round 5 and beyond have made it and, of those, almost none have done anything significant.
I know I have picked up one FA (post draft) who has turned into a very good player (David Pegas), but I have been pretty active (and perhaps I have a bad eye for FA talent), but very few ever really improved. They just became farm system fodder and eventually released into the FA pile a few seasons after I signed them.
2017
10 players round 4 and on made it to AFBL - none has a VORP over 3.6 and he played only 130 games.
2018
12 players round 4+. One 36.4 VORP, a relief pitcher and one guy at 11.7, the other 10 were insignificant.
2019
15 hitters and no pitchers from round 4+. Two 4th round solid players, 40.3 VORP and 25.4.
2021
9 total players round 4+. No one of significance.
2022
14 players, only 1 has played in 100 games.
2023+
I realize this will change but only 12 players from 2023 and on have sniffed the AFBL.
Overall
I think only 1 player before round 5 has made a real impact, and it is as a reliever. The numbers do not really justify adding more rounds to the draft. I don't care one way or the other, but I am not worried that the extra 'talent' is going to really help the more active owners...
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Note that in OOTP16, I've found that almost all undrafted players return to school and do not enter the FA pool. I know this league is still on OOTP15, but something to consider if (when?) it eventually moves to a newer version.
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I forgot to add 4 more HS feeder teams for the 2026 season. Should we add 8 for the 2027 season or just 4? Thoughts?
We added the following 4 HS teams for the 2025 season...
-Houston Hornets
-Ft. Worth Falcons
-Austin Anteaters
-Manhattan Monarchs
I forgot to add more HS feeder teams for the 2026 and 2027 seasons so we'll add 6 HS feeder teams for the upcoming 2028 season, 6 HS feeder teams in 2029, then 4 HS feeder teams in 2030 to complete our original plan to add 16 more HS feeder teams. This will get us to 36 HS feeder teams and keep us at 20 COL feeder teams.
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Also should expand the draft from 8 rounds to 10 rounds? I would say yes pending the implementation of moving the draft date from the offseason to midseason.
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Yes to more rounds.
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Also should expand the draft from 8 rounds to 10 rounds? I would say yes pending the implementation of moving the draft date from the offseason to midseason.
I pretty much auto draft after round four now because it's mostly just half star, garbage players who will never see AA ball. I see no reason to increase rounds unless there is going to be a larger distribution of quality players.
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if you had more quality players, you'd have more of a logjam in the upper minors. I've found some useful guys in the later rounds. They are lottery tickets though, need a lot of things to go right to make it - just like real life!
I'd rather have the extra rounds now and cut back later. And if we auto-draft anyway, there's no harm.
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Also should expand the draft from 8 rounds to 10 rounds? I would say yes pending the implementation of moving the draft date from the offseason to midseason.
I pretty much auto draft after round four now because it's mostly just half star, garbage players who will never see AA ball. I see no reason to increase rounds unless there is going to be a larger distribution of quality players.
when you expeand the drafts you get more talent! Im all for it.
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not sure what the timer is set for at the back end of the draft. Could we set another tier to say 1-hour for rounds 8 and beyond? Shouldn't be too much objection.
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not sure what the timer is set for at the back end of the draft. Could we set another tier to say 1-hour for rounds 8 and beyond? Shouldn't be too much objection.
Yeah I typically get down to 1-2 hours for the final two rounds of the draft. Usually everyone is on 'Auto' by then with a few 'List' teams and 2 or 3 teams making their own picks (I'm always one of these :D).
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Quick overview of the game plan for the AFBL HS feeder league...
-added 4 HS feeder teams for the 2025 season
-none for the 2026 season (oops)
-none for the 2027 season (oops)
-adding 6 HS feeder teams for the 2028 season
-adding 6 HS feeder teams for the 2029 season
-adding 4 HS feeder teams for the 2030 season
This will add 20 additional HS feeder teams to bring our total to 40 HS feeder teams. I originally decided to add 16 but doubling our original total of HS feeder teams seems like a better option.
I'm not planning on adding any COL feeder teams unless there are enough who think we should and that it won't saturate the league with too much talent.
I'm also planning on keeping our total number of draft rounds at 8 instead of adding two more to get us to 10 total rounds. This could change if we move our draft to mid-season however.
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We will be adding the final phase (4 teams) of additional HS feeder league teams for the 2030 season.
This will get us to 40 HS feeder teams and 20 COL feeder teams.
Are we now at a good number and balance of feeder league talents coming into our draft pool (plus the international amateur free agents)?
I know it was suggested we add 2 rounds to get to a 10 round draft which we could just auto the final few rounds? I'm fine with keeping 8 rounds or adding 2 more if there is enough interest.
Does anyone have any thoughts/opinions about this?
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I don't think we need to add rounds to the draft - I keep looking back at draft history and we have so few picks from after round 4 that ever play in when they do their impact is minimal at best.
I don't care if we add rounds but I don't think it matters if those guys are picked in rounds 9 or 10 or are added via free agency...
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I don't think we need to add rounds to the draft - I keep looking back at draft history and we have so few picks from after round 4 that ever play in when they do their impact is minimal at best.
I don't care if we add rounds but I don't think it matters if those guys are picked in rounds 9 or 10 or are added via free agency...
i very strongly disagree with this. if it was up to me ALL players would be drafted, I hate the minor league FA with a fiery passion!
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balance seems good right now. And believe I have had some good prospects in round 4 and after.
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Revisiting this...
Any thoughts about expanding the number of rounds in the draft from 8 to 10?
I'm also continuing to work on getting the balance correct in the HS and COL feeder leagues so we can get more COL players in our drafts since currently it is mostly HS players at the top end.
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Should we increase the number of rounds from 8 to 10-15? rounds?
If we did increase the number of rounds, we would only draft as normal for a limited number of days then would auto the remaining with S+ list or auto.
I'm also looking into getting the balance of high school and college feeder league draft eligible players. It's currently heavy on the high school players.
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I'd be fine with moving to 10 or more as long as I can still submit a list. 8)
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I am fine with 8, but if we increase, not more than 10 rounds. We already increased the AAA and AA to 35 players, so adding more draft picks would need just put more pressure on the number in AAA and AA.
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I think my target would be going to 10 rounds too
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Auto draft after 8 only,
continue to use the pick list when pre-loaded.
Would expansion teams - which are undesignated - be picking in the top 4 rounds? I would not be in favor bleeding talent out of the draft to a theoretical team. I understand the need to give an expansion team real prospects, but that is still a ways away.
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Until feeders get worked out so that talent (real talent) comes through at college age and not just at HS age I think we should wait.