1987 roster for MLB 16 (PS3)

[jrg2222]

Here's a 1987 roster update I've been working on for a while. Documentation will be in the next post so the attachment doesn't get buried.

[jrg2222]

1987 Roster Update for MLB 16 (PS3)
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Welcome to baseball's grand parity era. A different team winning the World Series every year - none of which were located in the Bronx. Back before all of that analytics nonsense and before every part of the sports world was covered with those insipid swooshes. It's like (the original) RBI baseball, but with oversized rosters and realistic body shapes...

A few years back i found a great 1987 roster for MLB 16 on the now-defunct roster exchange (from what I've seen on this board it may be have been made for several versions prior, with the roster being converted/imported for several editions of the game). My upload is here is not meant to be a half-assed ripoff of other person(s) work, and any changes I made shall be considered constructive criticism. The maker(s) of the original file did a great job making the MLB players and their stances/pitching motions look as real as possible. When i used the roster a few years ago I made some minor updates for my own benefit - correcting uniform numbers, a few player appearances, players who should have glasses or not have batting gloves, etc. Late last year I loaded up the roster file, and once I got my current season file updated through the major parts of the off-season, I went to work on the 1987 season file.

I noticed a lot of small errors or omissions (constructive criticism, remember...). There were a fair number of duplicated players in the minors, a few players missing or in wrong organizations (for 1987), some top prospects missing, etc - stuff that didn't make the roster unplayable, but stuff I wanted to fix. Below is a list of fixes/changes/upgrades I made:


-New players. I don't have an exact count, but I'd guess I added well over a hundred, possibly close to 200 new players. Below is a rough breakdown of the types of new players I added:

--After going through the final 1987 stats i found about 10-12 players missing, so I added them (role players such as John Cangelosi and Juan Agosto). Also a couple of players on the outskirts of MLB - injured closer Bruce Sutter and slugger Bob Horner, who spent the season in japan before returning in 1988.

--Any player who debuted in 1988 or 1989. Most of the were already included, but maybe about 10 were missing.

--Any player on a 40-man roster before the 1987 or 1988 season. My sources were a 1987 Baseball Digest with rosters from February 1987, and the 1988 AL & NL Red and Green Books.

--Other prospects and notable minor leaguers. Albert "Joey" Belle and Rod Beck were the most notable guys I created. Most 1987 minor leaguers who eventually reached the majors are now included. Oddly several future managers were added (Wakamatsu, Miley, Acta, Montoyo).

--All 1987 1st round draft picks are now included. The original roster did include some picks from 1988 and 1989, so I added a few more high picks from those years. I also added 1990 #1 overall Chipper Jones, who would have been a high school freshman in 1987.


--I gave the 4 expansion teams rosters full of fake players with rating below 70 and minimum salaries. I didn't want to make them too bad, otherwise their division rivals would have inflated win totals. The original roster had some real players from 1986 or earlier on the expansion teams; I moved them to the free agent pool.

--I flushed out virtually all of the duplicate players (I may have missed one or two; if only there were a way to export MLB rosters to spreadsheet like in the old DangerZ High heat editors). Some obscure minor leaguers were in two organizations. Also several future major leaguers were on two teams. It looked like someone imported most of the players who debuted in 1989 and put them on their 1989 teams, leading to some players being on incorrect teams (for the 1987 time frame).

--I fixed many of the uniform numbers. I also tried to give notable future major leaguers their eventual numbers. The bad thing is I couldn't give everyone their correct number due to the way the game enforces SOME retired numbers. for instance, I can give Ryne Sandberg 23, but I can't give Greg Maddux 31. Other notable players I couldn't give correct numbers to include Tom Glavine, Dave Stewart, Devon White, Ernie Whitt, Juan Agosto, and Earnie Riles (the Brewers retired his number one for their corrupt owner/pseudo-commisioner). In my testing of the roster, I started a season and played out spring training games for all teams, making note of minor leaguers whose numbers got stolen and did some editing to try to reduce the number stealing as much as possible. For instance, I switched Mike Brumley from his real to 17 to 18 so 1988 rookie Mark Grace can have his longtime number.

--I fixed birth states/countries for all major 1987 leaguers and future debuts, plus other players who I created or edited along the way. Minor leaguers and free agents may not have their exact birth state or country. This doesn't affect the game too much, although there won't be American players representing Jamaica or Netherlands in the futures game.

--I fixed some small player errors I noticed along the way. Flesh tones, facial hair, glasses, batting gloves, etc. I also fixed stances or windups for a few players I noticed. For instance, i gave Phil Plantier a stance close to his sitting-down style stance, and Mitch Williams the all-star stretch that looks like his were he nearly falls down. Also, some players were given the pitching windups named after them (replacing generic ones similar to theirs) - those players include Blyleven, Hershiser, Niekro, Scott, and a few others.

--I deleted incorrect name audio for some players. Some players had names for mildly similar, but very incorrect last names. It really annoyed me to hear Butch Wynegar called "Weingarden" or Aurelio Lopez called "Armando Lopez".

--I tweaked the ratings for a decent amount of players. The original creator(s) appear to have made the ratings to replicate 1987 as closely as possible, but I did change some small things, mostly to enhance playability in future seasons:

--Players who briefly in the majors in 1987 with bad stats had extremely low ratings; I boosted them a little to make them a little more serviceable.

--The durability ratings for many players were extremely low (under 20). All 1987 major leaguers and future major leaguers were edited to a minimum of 60 and minor leaguers to a minimum of 50.

--Some non-star players, including obscure minor leaguers had ridiculously high (90+) or ridiculously low (under 10) rating in certain categories, so I modified them to more reasonable levels.

--Pitcher staminas were boosted to certain minimums (starting pitchers were still throwing deep in games
into the early 1990's). Starting pitchers now have a minimum stamina of 60 and relievers of 25, which are the guideline I use in my 2021 roster.

--Overall ratings were increased a bit for future major leaguers who had really low ratings, and decreased a little for non-major leaguers with very high ratings.


--In the original roster, most players who were traded mid season are with their first team. I kept it this way for the most part. The only exception was that I moved a few players to the eventual World Series champion Minnesota Twins (Baylor, Niekro, Carlton, Schatzeder, Butera), in case someone wanted to try to replay the real 1987 World Series with more accurate playoff rosters. I also did it for selfish reasons, since the Twins are my favorite team (that's part of the reason I have so much interest in a roster from 1987).

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Other roster notes:

-I tried to set 25-man rosters to most accurately reflect who spent the most time in the majors in 1987. Teams generally used a 10-man staff back then (instead of the 2016 12-man default), so i met them halfway with 11 man staffs. The bad news is when you start a season and advance to the regular season, the computer will f--- up the rosters I tried to set. I always assumed that when you start a season, at the end of spring training the computer would cut players to match the default 25-man roster. This is not the case (it may have been in the old ps2 versions I had). First of all it will set teams to 12-man staffs. Plus it will send down lower rated veterans and call up higher rated prospects from the 40-man pool. I took note of some of the 1987 everyday players who were playing in the AAA All Star game in simulated seasons, and beefed up their ratings a little to reduce the number of players being sent down who shouldn't.

If you want the rosters to be more accurate in season/franchise mode, I suggest controlling all 30 teams (or have computer roster control on), and manually option down the excess players more than 3 days before spring training ends. If a player is out of options, it takes three days to clear waivers, and if they haven't cleared waivers before you advance to the regular season, they won't appear in the auto-generated minor league lineups and rotations at the start of the season.

A couple of other tips - if you want to get full use of all the real minor leaguers in the future, in a 30-team controlled franchise, don't sign any of the (fake) draft picks. That way a minimum number of players will retire every off-season. Since all players are user-created, they can be fully edited, meaning you can age down any player along the way to increase their career length (or age them up if you hate them and want them to retire faster).

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I played out spring training games (with 40-man rosters), controlling both teams and using every single player for both teams, plus a fair number of minor league exhibition games looking for small errors and testing things out. I also simmed a few seasons, seeing who got sent down (who shouldn't have), seeing who made major, minor, and future all-star games, and made some edits to try to fix things. After a couple months of extra editing and simming I feel ready to post this roster.

So there it is - my comprehensive update of a classic roster that was pretty damn good to begin with. My goal is not not to overshadow or steal credit from the original roster makers, I just wanted to fix some small things they missed and tweak the ratings to increase playabilty in future seasons. Too bad I can't do anything about the Montreal Expos being stuck under that Washington Nationals BS or the California Angels being listed under a city they don't play in.