2nd ThoughtThe other idea that I've been doing the most testing with over the past week or so is the newer feature of College and High School feeder leagues which would be where our draft pool would come from instead of the random and current situation of the game generating a draft pool when specified (75 days before in our case).
Here is the excerpt from the OOTP Manual about Feeder leagues...
A feeder league feeds players into its parent league. Feeder leagues have minimum and maximum age limits for players, and once players exceed their age maximum, the players go into the draft pool for their parent league. When a new season starts in a feeder league, the rosters are filled up again with players of the minimum age. As older players get drafted (or become free agents if undrafted), younger players get added automatically for the following season. Each feeder league can feed players into only one league, and you cannot have a 'daisy chain' of feeder leagues. That is, you can't have a high school league that feeds into a college league that feeds into a professional league.
There are two types of feeder leagues: college and high school. These two types behave identically. The names, like league levels, are mainly just for categorization.
Important: Feeder leagues are not meant to simulate real-world college and high school baseball. There is no early entry into the draft, recruiting, redshirting, or similar staples of college and high school baseball.
Feeder leagues add immersion, providing a draft pool full of players with several years of statistical history leading up to the draft, in addition to scouting reports. This gives general managers much more information on which to base draft decisions. This is particularly helpful in leagues that allow the trading of draft picks, because GMs can make intelligent decisions about how strong a particular draft class looks by scouting and researching the draft class in advance.
Feeder leagues behave very similarly to minor leagues. Players in feeder leagues have minor league contracts and share all the rules of the parent league.
Players in a feeder league will appear in the first-year player draft pool of the major league once they are no longer eligible for their feeder league. Your first-year player draft will also be supplemented with enough fictional players to fill out the draft, if necessary. High school players who are not drafted may continue on to college, or may become free agents. College players who are not drafted may become free agents.
In my test league I had the following settings for the High School Feeder League...Rules
Age max 18
Age min 15
Players will mostly be 19 when they enter the draft.
Options
created age min 15
created age max 15
All new players enter as freshman and will play until they reach 18. By default new players can enter at any age that is allowable in your league so some guys get 4 years playing time some get 1. My preference is all get 4 years but it is realistic some guys just do not take up HS baseball until their junior or senior year.
Two leagues of 10-teams make up the 20-team AFBL High School League
50-game Balanced Schedule with no Interleague Play includes ASG
In my test league I had the following settings for the College Feeder League...Rules
Age max 18
Age min 21
Players will mostly be 19 when they enter the draft.
Options
created age min 18
created age max 18
All new players enter as freshman and will play until they reach 21. Same as HS feeder league that there will be players that enter late and not have a full 4 years in the college feeder league
Two leagues of 10-teams make up the 20-team AFBL College League
100-game Balanced Schedule with no Interleague Play includes ASG
Both HS and College leagues have Default Player Origin of USA and CANADA with 10% random origin.
~~
I've tested into the 202x's and have found that the draft pools are a good mix of HS and College players with the expected amount of elite talent/potential-talent at the top of the draft pools.
I'm fairly certain that we'll enable this feature for this season in 2016 so we can begin to utilize this feeder to have more useful info come draft days.
Any thoughts or opinions?
