Feeder System Expansion

[Chappy]

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!!!!   ) 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?

[BaseballAddict32]

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.

[Cannon Fodder06]

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.

[Chappy]

I think any change should be gradual.... like add 2 teams each year for x seasons until we reach the desired # of schools.

[BaseballAddict32]

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.

[mstreeter06]

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.

[BaseballAddict32]

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.

[Qdog915]

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.

[tjsmith7 GA]

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.

[mstreeter06]

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.

[Chappy]

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.

[Qdog915]

Are we locked into our current number of rounds for the draft? Should that be discussed first/as well?

[BaseballAddict32]

Good question. If we beef up the feeders with HS or HS and college levels, could add some rounds.

[mstreeter06]

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.

[Qdog915]

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.