2019 Edited Rosters

[Funkycorm]

Final roster is live.

A ton more potential edits to really help keep overalls in line. New formula used based on average player progression on average in a single year.

This is the roster I am starting my new Padres dynasty with.

File name: FMfunkyFINAL
PSN: Doctordoof36

Enjoy everyone!

My prospect edits will be posted soon to share with everyone.

[Funkycorm]

Draft Prospect Edits


This is where it gets inherently harder to keep the inflated roster ratings under control. The draft classes appear to be on about 5-year cycles where they start off loaded with talent then slowly decrease over about 5 years then reset again. Getting the draft class edits correct, which can’t be done until the offseason, is a key to longevity of this game. As I said before, the talent pools tend to return to normal 15 years down the road. But if someone doesn’t sim to that point, they will never get there. We have to take that into consideration.


Before I go into the edits, let’s review the scouting grades quickly. Remember, a score of 50 is your average player and number 4 starter, and a score of 45 is your average reliever. This means that a prospect grade of 80 would equal potential of 97 to 99 and a prospect grade of 65 or more would be an all star and we would define that as 86 or more potential.


Also remember our goal is to have an average player rating of 76-78 for your typical major league player. We need these edits to bring our draft classes to that same criteria.



Here are the edits.


It is important to do these in order but not required. Note that I only make 2 kinds of edits, age and potential. I do not mess with the other attributes themselves. It is more writing of information then it actually is editing the prospects themselves. These edits apply to all players drafted and signed by any team, including me as the user.


1. All relief and closing pitchers with a potential over 85 have their potential lowered by 8 and have to have a potential of 85 or less so they may drop a few more than 8 points in potential. But they cannot go below 79. I do this because the draft class engine is obsessed with making a lot of closers rated 73-75 overall out of the draft with a potential of 97-99. That rating we have established isn’t for closers. It is for the best of the best. Closers should not have a prospect grade over 65, which would equal an 87-89 rating, but I am being nice to give them a bottom of 79 if they sit above it already.

2. All players rated out of the draft with a current overall that is 49 or less will have their age changed to 18 and their potential lowered to only 25 above their current overall. Meaning a player with an overall of 49 will have a potential of 74. If a player is not good at this point and his overall is 49 and potential is 90, it will take him on average of 6-7 years just to get to a 70 overall. We don’t want years with loads of 28-year-old rookies and we don’t want to over inflate ratings 10 years down the road, which this will do if we don’t change this now. It does not matter here if they were a top draft pick or their potential is 95. This is a blanket rule.

3. So, here is where it gets harder and where I will start to have looks of confusion being tossed my way. Let’s talk about prospects with potentials of 86 to 89. This would correlate to a scout grade of 65 and these players would be considered all stars. For prospects with potential of 90 to 96, these players would have scout grades of 70 to 75. Lastly, players with potentials of 97 to 99 would have scout grades of 80. That being established, let’s go into the number of players we should have in this area. This is also where note writing or putting on the computer to keep track will be exceedingly handy. I am old school so I use notebooks to keep track of all my gaming records with.

4. First, players with potential of 97-99. These are the elite of the elite. There should be no more than 1 position player and 1 pitcher in this grouping per draft. If there is more than one of each in this grouping, all will be assigned a random number and a random number generator (or you know dice or little kid) will determine which one stays at that and who lowers. If there is less, I do not increase the potentials of another player. I then lower the remaining players not chosen to stay at that level to 96. So, the next step then will be…

5. Players with potential of 94-96. There should be no more than 2 total players in this group. Again, the same determination as above is used. Those who don’t make the cut, get lowered to 93. This means the next step is…

6. Players with potential of 90 to 93. Remember this still correlates to a prospect grade of 70 which correlates to elite talent and it is something no current prospect has in real life. There should be no more than 3 total players here as well. Same rules as the last two steps. Everyone who doesn’t meet the cut gets lowered to 89 potential.

7. This in the end means, that a max of 7 players should have potentials over 90. This seems like a small number, but I am actually being quite generous with it. Let’s continue on our journey to average players. Remember, this includes my team as well and is done by RNG so it is fair to everyone. Now, just imagine how important that A prospect is now to your organization. They can change the future of your franchise if you get lucky and get one. It also makes them much harder to trade for and that much more valuable as a trade asset.

8. Next, we need to look at the 86 to 89 grouping, which by this point has grown to be quite large at this point. But remember, we are still sitting at a prospect grade of 65 at this point which means all-star. I am a little more generous here though as I allow 6 players to be in this range with at least 1 being a starting pitcher. Same lowering rules apply. There are now 13 players only with potential of 86, which is a good number. It is almost 1 per team and that is not bad. Everyone left will go to 85 potential.

9. Now the 83-85 group. The rule here is no more than 1 per team can be in this range. If there is more than one in this grouping, one player gets his potential lowered to 82. This will allow most teams to have one in the group and you will get 20-30 players in this range.

10. Lastly, any team that has 4 players or more with a potential over 80, the lowest of those 4 get their potential lowered to 78 automatically. Which seems like a bad thing but remember, this is still at the top of the average player rating of 76 to 78 that we want.

11. I know this seems like a lot of editing. If you do it all on paper or a computer then change it at the end, it goes quite quickly. We have successfully minimized the crazy amount of all star or more potential players by doing this. I have toyed with going one more branch lower

12. Players who are rated overall at 70 and above cannot be less than 21 years old unless they were a top 5 pick.

13. All players aged 24 or 25 years old have their age changed to 23. This is meant to reflect those who go to a 4-year college and then are drafted out of college. This is not a problem in the first draft or two but as all players do not enter the draft after being scouted to minimize the number of players added, these becomes more important. Again, we don’t want 30-year-old rookies.



I know this seems like a lot of work, but it is how I have truly found balance in the rating system in the game. It is not perfect by any means but it is what has worked for me. I have changed how I have done this over the last couple of years. I started out with just a simple age edit back in MLB 17 and it has slowly grown in the edits you see above.


This is purely informational and nothing that you have to do to use this roster but for me the effort is worth it. And like I said, with only 7 prospects with A potential, just imagine how valuable they are to your team’s future.


Thanks for reading!

[Ducks on the Pond]

Wow, I really appreciate the in-depth instructions & rationale you provided! Sounds like a lot of work, but since it only has to be done in the offseason, I'll probably adopt your ideas for a more realistic franchise experience.

It also adds some mystery to drafting. Unless I'm misunderstanding your process, you could draft the next Mike Trout with 99 potential, but if you're unlucky in the RNG process, his potential could tumble all the way down to 85. Is that correct? He'd probably still end up being a good player, but not necessarily the future HoFer you were expecting.

Some questions...

1) For #12, do you adjust ratings until OVR drops below 70, or just age them to 21?

2) Do you plan to manually scout draft prospects for your team? The CPU does a terrible job of selecting draft picks, so last year to make it tougher on myself, I did auto scouting for my team, until 10 days before the draft. Then I could scout whoever I wanted to in that 10-day window. It was still too easy for me to put together a really good draft class, because the CPU doesn't appear to value current ratings as much as it should. I know some people do no scouting at all, but I haven't been able to convince myself to do that yet.

3) Some draft picks come in with crazy low durability ratings. Do you make any edits to those?

4) I know you've been more focused on prospect potentials, but I remember reading in Cycloniac's TrueSim roster thread, that he found that he could prevent players over 30 from regressing & retiring too soon by giving them higher potential ratings. Was wondering if you've noticed any issues with older players, or think the roster will be fine as-is.

Thanks for your efforts to improve franchise mode!

[Funkycorm]

Quote: Originally Posted by Ducks on the Pond

Wow, I really appreciate the in-depth instructions & rationale you provided! Sounds like a lot of work, but since it only has to be done in the offseason, I'll probably adopt your ideas for a more realistic franchise experience. It also adds some mystery to drafting. Unless I'm misunderstanding your process, you could draft the next Mike Trout with 99 potential, but if you're unlucky in the RNG process, his potential could tumble all the way down to 85. Is that correct? He'd probably still end up being a good player, but not necessarily the future HoFer you were expecting. Also, for #12, do you adjust ratings until OVR drops below 70, or just age them to 21? One other question -- I know you've been more focused on prospect potentials, but I remember reading in Cycloniac's TrueSim roster thread, that he found that he could prevent players over 30 from regressing & retiring too soon by giving them higher potential ratings. Was wondering if you've noticed any issues with older players, or think the roster will be fine as-is.

Correct, they could drop. Usually there is only 1 player that high but they could drop if there are a couple players there if you have luck like mine.

I just age them to 21.

I haven't seen any issues with regression. Everything I have seen it stays the same rate irregardless of potential. I simmed seasons with the same players at different potentials and there was no difference.

[Ducks on the Pond]

Sorry, looks like I edited my post to add more questions just after you replied. I was curious about a couple more things:

Quote: Originally Posted by Ducks on the Pond

2) Do you plan to manually scout draft prospects for your team? The CPU does a terrible job of selecting draft picks, so last year to make it tougher on myself, I did auto scouting for my team, until 10 days before the draft. Then I could scout whoever I wanted to in that 10-day window. It was still too easy for me to put together a really good draft class, because the CPU doesn't appear to value current ratings as much as it should. I know some people do no scouting at all, but I haven't been able to convince myself to do that yet. 3) Some draft picks come in with crazy low durability ratings. Do you make any edits to those?

[Funkycorm]

Quote: Originally Posted by Ducks on the Pond

Sorry, looks like I edited my post to add more questions just after you replied. I was curious about a couple more things:

I manually scout only. CPU does a poor job of it. How I scout is another crazy thing all together like most of what I do on the Show. Maybe I will share that soon.

I hadn't considered durability rating, but I would probably bump them up a bit. I may consider that. I am about to finish a regular season. I will check it out and get back to you on it.

[Funkycorm]

Short story for scouting is I spend 3 to 4 weeks discovering then scout no player for more than 1 day. It provides some Intel on a lot of players but not a lot of Intel on a few players.

[Funkycorm]

I decided I am going to get one final version of the show in MLB 20.

This means that I have decided to do my edits and some more that I have been researching right after the roster from Ridin and his team comes out in the spring.

I have learned a lot from further simming and studying from my roster this past fall.

At this point, I would anticipate the roster being released within 10 days of the first released roster from Ridin and company.

I decided this a few weeks ago and thought it would be fun to announce the day the trailer released.

Thanks for the support for the roster this past fall. I look forward to seeing you all enjoy the new game come spring. Maybe we will get lucky and get 25 man A rosters. That would be awesome!

When the time comes, I will make a new thread for the 2020 roster.