[Funkycorm]

Hello everyone. I decided to share the roster I have been editing for my personal use with everyone. The current version is already on the vault but I figured why not spread the word a bit. Maybe there are others who will agree with my philosophy.

I am not moving on to MLB 20, more than likely. It will have to take a lot to sway me. I am having loads of fun with this game and that is why I wanted to share this. Honestly, I am not moving on to any sports game next year or even the playstation 5.

We have a great set of rosters here as a community, second to none. But there is always one thing that nags at me. I feel like as a whole, we over value prospects. So how I like to play, this becomes apparent rather quickly. I like to build teams into my vision over 6 to 8 years of simming then I play them. That is what my Indians future franchise is. Don’t get me wrong, I love it, but what happens is that the league is packed full of rosters that have 20 or more players at 85 overall where even the bottom dwellers are star studded teams. I combated this by spending hours editing my Indians save file rosters to make it better. Why do this to one file when I can do it at roster level. I also discovered if you simulate 15 to 20 years into the future, the roster ratings explosion tends to return to where it sits at the beginning. I took some time and thought about why and came to a few conclusions. But I won’t share those specifics.

Enough about that though, let’s talk about the roster.


Roster:

I started with the FM trade deadline version as the base for this roster. So credit to the creators of that roster.

I will get the elephant out of the room now. These are not 40 man accurate. I do not intend them to be. That is not something high in my priority list. What it does have is MLB players and A and B potential prospects out of A ball so they don’t disappear when you start a RTTS. This was higher priority for me versus having completely accurate 40 man and 100 percent minor league accuracy.


What the roster has:


At this point, all A and B prospects and MLB players out of A ball.
A few contracts changed for players deciding to opt out of contracts.
At this point, over 100 MLB players with edited ratings (SDS end of year or very close to it) to reflect good or bad years. E.g. Alvarez, Alonso, Castillo, Giolito, etc. I am still working on more at this point.
A lot of edited potentials to minimize the over inflation of ratings a few years down the road.


Let’s talk about potentials.

First we have to cover a few topics to truly understand potential.

1. In the game, a player can have his overall impacted by 4 to 5 points either direction from their base overall by morale alone. Meaning if a player rated 80 is very happy could he have an 85 overall rating. Yes, we know this is cosmetic only, but the adjusted rating can have a huge impact on depth charts, starter slot, lineup slot, etc.

2. Next, we know that potential has no true bearing on regression, so there is no need to inflate it for that. I have a lot of simulated seasons with different rosters to confirm that. Probably over 40 seasons of simulation here studying a lot of different things.

3. Next, we need to look at how prospect grades work and what the numbers mean. The scale rates from 20 to 80. There are some great reads on this, but I will give a quick breakdown. For hitters, a 50 grade is an average or regular player. A score of 65 would be considered all star caliber, and going 70 and above is considered elite and the best of the best. For starting pitchers, a 50 grade would be a number 4 starter and a grade of 70 would be considered a true number 1 or 2 starter on some rosters. Above a 70, would be considered an ace. This means that most players should be near the middle of about a prospect grade of 50. There are fewer aces in the league than teams on average and not every team has an ace or true number 1 starter so we need to accept that.

4. That being said, we now have to figure out where the average major leaguer should be at during their peak overall and prime age. They should sit somewhere around 76 to 78. That would make the average player less than allstar caliber, and more than bench and utility players. This is going to be a slightly different number for your average reliever as their average prospect grade is around 45.

5. With the average player being established as a 76 to 78, we can move forward. But players in this rating range can’t be good, can they? Yes they can and this is where you can get some really good players that are good at a few things but not everything. They are not bad players, but they are not great players. They are what make up a chunk of MLB rosters as average every day players that do their job. This also means that if you elevate these players morale by 4 if they are very happy, they now go to an average of 80 to 82 at most which is a much more presentable and reasonable number and less likely to mess up lineups, rotations, and bullpens.

6. So the question now becomes, how do we translate that into potential ratings? With the above being said, this means that a prospect grade of 50 should be average and should equate to a potential of 76 to 78. This means that your average prospect would show C potential in the game, not a B potential.

7. What I did was use a scale and converted prospect grades to potentials. With all the above being said, I converted a prospect grade of 50 to a potential of 76 to 77. So a prospect grade of 55 would be a 78 to 81 window. The FM rosters use an average of 80 to 81 for the average player grade, so this creates more high potential players, more A potential players, and more inflated roster ratings down the road.

8. There are only a few prospects who have grades above 60 and none above 70. If you classify 70 as elite, there are no elite prospects and should be no prospect with a potential of 97 to 99. I did keep some prospects near where they were and some top prospects that I did not change. As an example, Indians prospect Nolan Jones had a potential of 90 in the FM roster and this would translate back into a prospect grade of 65 and make him an elite prospect, which he is not. Instead his grade is a 55, which puts him in the 78 to 81 potential and since I do not drop more than 1 grade, it will make it an 80 to 81. This means he will be above average player and may make some all star games with good years, but won’t be a perennial all star or elite player. In the original potential grade system, he would grow into a 90 overall and be a premier player in the league, again something he is not projected to be.

9. This means that a lot of prospects that had potentials of 90 or more, had their potentials lowered to the 83 to 86 range. Some even more than that down to 80 or 81. I did not drop any prospect more than one letter grade.

I know that everyone wants that prospect to turn into a 99 overall superstar, but it just doesn’t happen that often. Average players have great years then regress back to the mean. Also in order to make building a team harder you have to truly make roster decisions about current players and up and comers. It also makes those A potential prospects much more valuable. The trend is that more prospects tend to become superstars in the game more than actually do in real life. Lowering potential to a more reasonable number helps that.

I should also note that in my personal franchises, I do prospect edits to keep the trend of player be maintained in a consistent manner. But this post is lengthy enough so I won't go into it now. Maybe another day.



This roster may not be what everyone wants but it is what I want from a roster. If you like it, feel free to use it. The next post will have the file information in it.


Note that this is still potentially a work in progress. I may or may not make more changes. Please keep this in mind when asking questions or making comments. There are still some prospect potentials and ratings changes I am making.


I am posting this to share with others.

Thanks for checking it out!