I ran the first test sim with player development off. I created a new test sim file to do multiple seasons and turned player development back on. Here are some observations about the 2017 season, all computer GMs running the show, 1-10 talent scales:
(1) Sharks hit .248 as a team (7th in the AL) and had an ERA of 3.30 (6th in the AL). The batting average continues to be a very low, but the ERA is about right based on past team performances in OOTP 6.5.
(2) A couple of players were placed on waivers in January 2017. One player (a 2b) had ratings for contact and avoid Ks, but no ratings for anything else. Don’t know if that was an import glitch or not.
(3) AI is actively claiming players off of the waiver wire. Nine players were waived by Jacksonville and all nine were claimed.
(4) Sharks traded 1b Mitch Gray ( a 27 year-old 10/8/5/7/9 hitter) to Houston for 26 year-old Richard Campuzano (6/6/9 talent, 5/6/8 ratings). Don’t see the logic in that trade. However, he did finish the season 13-12 with a 3.86 ERA, 226 IP, 41% QS, and 1.27 WHIP. Gray hit .292, .341 OB, .402 SLG for Houston. So maybe the AI knew what it was doing.
(5) All sorts of releasing and moving players activity by the AI. Much promotoing and demoting in April 2017.
(6) AI signed a number of free agents for the Sharks.
(7) AI signed a .247/.349/.342 1b to a three-year $28 million deal. His rating are 5/5/6/8/3. This makes no sense, unless he had a steep talent decline during the season.
(8) Sharks drafted a pretty good second baseman with the 23rd pick in the draft. Nice collection of different position players and pitchers drafted.
(9) Realizing its mistake earlier with Gray, the AI traded a 3b, prospect, and $3 million to Mississippi for a power hitting 1b at the trade deadline. This trade I like.
(10) Batting averages are too low in the AL. The top hitting team hit .262 and the lowest team hit .232. There were too many teams in the .240 range.
(11) Fielidng % looks ok across the league.
(12) I am not sure about this yet, but there doesn’t seem to be any way to track player development in the game. I turned off scouts and coaches for this sim (since the IOSBL will probably not use them). There’s one SISA scouting report for the player during the season and that’s it as far as player development forcasting goes.
(13) Moving from player profiles back to the roster screen is painful. Again, not sure if I am missing something, but there doesn’t seem to be an easy way to get out of the very comprehensive player profiles back to the roster screen so that you can look at another player (quickly).
That’s it for now. I do not see scores for spring training games on the schedule, so not sure how that is handled. My general reaction is that we are losing some of the tools necessary to track player development. Many online leagues used BOSI to assist with this, but at a minimum we had development reports. OOTPB 2006 has development reports, but they only reflect major talent changes (and my highly paid 1b did have a huge talent drop). Actual ratings changes that we could track with BOSI are gone. This is made even more painful by the absence of a star system. You will have to comb through 100s of players to find ratings changes in some non-intuitive fashion.
