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Post by Commish_Ron on Aug 20, 2019 20:23:53 GMT -5
This vote requires the purging of free agents vote to pass. If that does not pass, this will be obsolete and not implemented.
To be clear, this is not how many rounds do we draft (that is another poll). This is how many rounds do we draft for. Several seasons ago we reduced the draft from 30 rounds to 25. In tandem with that change we reduced the number of players created from 33 rounds worth to 28. This has resulted in less potential stars in the draft. However testing showed that it may not reduce the number of potential stars across the league. A positive vote will result in a more sexy draft and possibly more talent in the league overall, but it will also require more players to be purged.
Since this is a possible rollback of a unintended consequence, only 50% positive is necessary to implement.
Proxy votes will be cast to return to 33 rounds.
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Post by David_ExposGM on Aug 21, 2019 6:38:09 GMT -5
With respect, maintaining the generation of 28 rounds, with fewer minor levels, simply skews the talent level in the league. Slowly, but certainly the level will rise. That, in turn, means far more scrubs pollute the free agency poll, pretty much mandating as on-going purge. I wish there was a corresponding lower number than 28...say 25?
The suggestion of 33 (and votes cast for it) would skew the draft far more than 28 rounds does now. This league would suffer for it.
But vote cast from the options presented.
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Post by MetDaMeats on Aug 21, 2019 8:23:19 GMT -5
Heavily for returning to 33. David makes my point for me. Yes it skews the talent in the league. That's exactly what this change should do. Generate more star players, thereby raising the quality of player in the league.
Basically, what you should ask yourself when considering this poll is the following question: Is it more fun to play in a league with more star players, or fewer?
Consider this: We are currently a league where 17 of the 32 teams are not meaningfully competitive for the playoffs. Of those, many (though not all) are lower budget teams hoping to rebuild through the draft. However, a smaller number of players generated means a smaller number of quality players generated. Just take a look at the top five draft picks since we reduced the rounds to 25. What has happened is that the quality of the first round has become a crap shoot. This most recent draft contained, in my estimation, the smallest number of skilled players since we entered the league. If I had had a top 5 draft pick this year, I almost certainly would have chosen not to sign my player and let it roll over to next year in hopes of having a better pool to pick from. Top picks in the draft have become deeply devalued. And, guess what? Those are the only tools poor rebuilding teams have to work with.
The argument that such changes will balance out in the long term strikes me as hollow. Firstly, I'm not entirely sure what mechanic the game would use to level out the talent. I mean, maybe spontaneous generation of players in free agency? Well, unless you were a team capable of offering a 10 year, $288 Million contract to Dan Turner this off season, your team isn't going to effected by that. Those low budget rebuilding teams are out in the cold in that scenario.
My theory is, over time the average quality level of players will decrease to the point that there is some equilibrium. The best contact or power you'll see in the league will be a 7 instead of a 9. Players who throw 7/6/6 will be our aces instead out our 4th/5th guys. The league adjusts, but is that any fun? Personally, I like the competition being as high level as possible, and I like that competition being spread to the GMs who can most shrewdly make use of the draft, instead of to those with overwhelming budgets. Increasing the draft rounds does both of those things. Skewing the talent is exactly what I think should happen, but it should happen in the direction of interesting players that smaller teams can afford.
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Post by Commish_Ron on Aug 21, 2019 8:37:39 GMT -5
My theory is, over time the average quality level of players will decrease to the point that there is some equilibrium. The best contact or power you'll see in the league will be a 7 instead of a 9. Players who throw 7/6/6 will be our aces instead out our 4th/5th guys. The league adjusts, but is that any fun? Personally, I like the competition being as high level as possible, and I like that competition being spread to the GMs who can most shrewdly make use of the draft, instead of to those with overwhelming budgets. Increasing the draft rounds does both of those things. Skewing the talent is exactly what I think should happen, but it should happen in the direction of interesting players that smaller teams can afford. This is a very good point. I was actually thinking about this in the shower this morning. I realized the flaw in my testing and the results. I compared potential stars before and after the simulation. Well stars are based on comparative talent. So of course they would stay consistent. What would happen if you purged out every player in the league with over 1/2 star potential? Well you would have a bunch of crappy hitters. But those hitters would face crappy pitchers so they would get hits. Conversely, crappy pitchers would be able to strike out the crappy hitters. So you would still get hits, runs scored and outs. Some 1/2 star hitters would bat .300, etc. Then, the next time scouting fired, players would be rated relative to talent in the league, and a 1/2 hitter with 6 contact and 5 power might be a 4 star player. So, the before/after comparison really should have been calculating ratings, not star potential. So, exactly like Rockies state. The vote here really comes down to do we want our Cy Young winners to have 7/9/8 ratings or 6/8/7? For me, purging less FA carries more weight in this vote than the ratings impact though.
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Post by sansterre - Milwaukee Brewers on Aug 21, 2019 9:33:11 GMT -5
I agree with David and Ben and come down between them, predictably.
1) David is right; making any change skews the league's talent level.
2) That said, when we dropped the draft to 28 rounds generated we skewed the talent level by dropping the quality of talent entering the league through the draft by 15%.
3) So moving back to 33 is really just re-skewing back to the way it was before the original change.
4) Long run, as long as we keep settings the same it will even out. Whatever those settings are. If we stay at 28 the draft will generate fewer Duane Hansens and Pierre Bouchers and the average level of talent (as far as ratings go) will drop over time. Which means that in ten seasons of 28 rounds generated, a player with moderately worse ratings than Hansen but the same makeup will be equally good, because the level of talent overall has dropped.
5) If we go back to 33 rounds than we can expect that the talent coming in through the draft will be more consistent with what we consider normal for our league (as most of our current stars (Boucher, Holmes, Hansen, Allen, Barton) were generated with the 33-round pool). If we stay at 28 rounds then we should expect the ratings of our top players to be lower in the future, though their value should remain as value is always relative to league average. If we were to drop to 25 rounds that would drop our talent by another 11%, which would depress average ratings further. Which again, would normalize in time.
6) My loose evaluation of where good players come from is as follows: 40% Draft, 35% Scouting Discoveries, 25% IAFA (you may disagree with my numbers, but I think it's clear that the draft, while the biggest source of talent is hardly cornering the market).
7) Scouting Discoveries and IAFA players are unchanged as far as how they're generated. So their talent coming into the league remains the same. Drafted players, however, have been nerfed in quality by the aforementioned 15%.
8) Scouting Discoveries, while largely random, are skewed by how much money the franchise is spending on their scouting. IAFA is also largely a function of money, as the top players take between 8 and 30 million to sign.
9) The Draft is the only place where weak teams have an advantage in acquiring talent (as implicitly weaker, poorer, teams will compete less in IAFA and Scouting, though this is clearly not always true). The Draft is *the* mechanism by which the Have-Nots gain an advantage over the Haves.
10) By nerfing the draft several seasons ago we accidentally made this league more top-heavy. The top teams have the same access to talent they have always had (minus a bit because the late 1st round is worse), while the worst teams have found their access to top young players diminished disproportionately relative to how the league had been before the change.
11) As a result of the above, bad and poor teams have a weaker hand to play than they did when we had 33 rounds. This is for two reasons: a) because their top players coming in through the draft are weaker on average than the players already in the league and b) because the talent pool in the draft has been dropped while the talent pools of Scouting Discoveries and IAFAs have not.
12) Assuming we stay at 28 rounds, the penalty to bad/poor teams illustrated in 11-a will pass with time. Over the next 5-10 years the average talent will drop and so the best draft picks will be more comparable to the top players in the league.
13) Assuming we stay at 28 rounds, the penalty to bad/poor teams illustrated in 11-b will *not* pass with time. The draft will always be weaker relative to Scouting Discoveries / IAFA than it was in the past. And this difference favors the wealthier teams.
Conclusion: When we made the change to the number of rounds generated we made it harder for weak/poor teams to compete. This is not bad or good; a league with 40 generated rounds would work (though it would definitely give a big advantage (relative to the past) to weak/poor teams) and a league with 25 generated rounds would work (though penalize weak/poor teams even farther). Any of these settings is viable for the league long-term (as long as we're fine purging the extra players that extra rounds creates). It's just a question of exactly how we want the competitive balance as far as weak/poor teams vs strong/rich teams to be.
For me, I advocate the 33 merely because that's how it was historically and inasmuch as we changed that by accident, I'd advocate for changing it back unless there's a persuasive policy argument for why we want to make the league more regressive (or if the necessary purge to clean the league roster is too cumbersome).
Thank you for reading.
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Post by Commish_Ron on Aug 21, 2019 9:47:00 GMT -5
Great post. I had not considered the impact of IFA and how this change does in fact nerf the draft. Within the confines of the draft, a top pick is a top pick and it is all relative anyway. But because the draft is not the only way players are entering the league, nerfing the draft talent does have the impact of making the league more top heavy.
This convinced me. I am changing my vote to return to 33 rounds. Also changed what the proxy will got to.
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Post by David_ExposGM on Aug 21, 2019 18:51:21 GMT -5
I give up...
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Post by BlueJaysGM_Fin on Aug 22, 2019 10:32:58 GMT -5
The post by Ben and John helped me better understand the impact this decision will have for the league. Thank you, gentlemen.
I have selected 33 rounds for our drafts moving forward. Although no one likes losing, having the ability to select an impact player at the top of the draft is something that should very well occur in this league. And if the team chooses to trade the pick? Well, the value of the pick goes up and the return should be a good one for a team rebuilding.
David, why do you give up? Is there something missing you can better explain to help shed clarity on the subject? Please share so we can all make an informed decision. If you presented information that changes my decision, we all benefit.
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Post by David_ExposGM on Aug 23, 2019 16:00:50 GMT -5
OK Fin, as an additional exercise: NOT picking on the poster by any means, but answering the points raised as this post seemed to be referenced in the thread as swaying votes. And yes, I am cherry picking so it's not a mile long. Heavily for returning to 33. David makes my point for me. Yes it skews the talent in the league. That's exactly what this change should do. Generate more star players, thereby raising the quality of player in the league. I am not arguing about whether the talent floor will be raised, it definitely will with 33. Yes, happy to prove that point. I would even go so far as to say the purge (which is a landslide vote) would raise the talent floor yet again by annually reducing the scrubs in free agency. That's why I am against any number of rounds over what is required by the game to maintain equillirium (I would contend 25, if 5 levels of minors, but it's certainly not 33) and let the game manage the talent level. Both the extra rounds and purge artificially affect the game. Consider this: We are currently a league where 17 of the 32 teams are not meaningfully competitive for the playoffs. So like MLB (except 30)? However, a smaller number of players generated means a smaller number of quality players generated. Agreed. And, in my case, preferred. My reason later. Top picks in the draft have become deeply devalued. And, guess what? Those are the only tools poor rebuilding teams have to work with. Value is relative. The first several picks will always be better than the bulk of the draft and, I contend, the scrub curve is far flatter on the lower end with any number of rounds. If by poor you mean budget, then I'll leave that until the end? The worst record teams (meaning top picks - provided of course they keep them) would get a player that is relatively better, with which to rebuild. The more you extend the top end talent in a draft - the idea behind generating more rounds (as all the scrubs will be purdged anyway), the better the first round becomes, meaning even better teams (drafting lower in the round) will also get better players. I will admittedly cherry pick to the end... Personally, I like the competition being as high level as possible, and I like that competition being spread to the GMs who can most shrewdly make use of the draft, instead of to those with overwhelming budgets. Increasing the draft rounds does both of those things. Skewing the talent is exactly what I think should happen, but it should happen in the direction of interesting players that smaller teams can afford. With respect to the draft, my point is that the more quality you generate on the high end (again the intention of more generated rounds), the less talent separation between higher picks with which a poor record team can get relatively better. And as far as budget size, market size and IAFA's, things other than the draft, I stayed away from that in my initial arguments... - Larger budget teams will ALWAYS beat the field with established free agents with their ability to offer bigger contracts. - Larger budget teams will, if THEY happen to struggle and "tank" for a season, always rebuild much, much faster than smaller budget teams because they can surround their picks with quality contracts. - Larger budget teams will also be first in line when younger talent prices themselves out of smaller markets (whether by trade or younger free agents). I am arguing that artificially raising the talent level (on both the top end by generating more rounds - and purging the bottom end) will not help the little guy at all and will just make the bigger guys bigger and more powerful. Larger budget teams will still have ALL of their advantages above. And more teams, even really good teams, larger budget and not, will be drafting better quality players toward the end of the first, but really the first few rounds. In short, if the argument is that we're doing this to help the little guy, then I politely disagree. My other point is that I contend a league with a much higher talent floor will have poorer draft pools as the game tries to balance things (and I'll leave that there, so as not to confuse things).
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Post by MetDaMeats on Aug 23, 2019 17:32:19 GMT -5
I guess I don't follow your logic. If I've understood correctly, you've claimed the following:
A) That the early rounds of drafts are always relatively better than the later ones, so nerfing them doesn't effect the teams in the long run. B) Big budget teams can improve by free agency, IAFA, buying out young guys, so they shouldn't be allowed to improve via tanking in the draft.
But here's the thing. I don't see how those two ideas cohere. If A) is true and everything's relative, then there shouldn't be a way for big budget teams to improve. If B) is true and increasing player quality is something big budget teams can take advantage of, then why can't small market teams do so as well? So if B) is true, it's not really the case that the increase is relative.
Either increasing the talent pool is something teams can take advantage of, or its a neutral, relative change. It can't be both at the same time.
If you're making the argument that somehow small budget teams benefit, but less than big budget teams I don't see it. You've admitted that lowering the draft actively lessens the quality of players entering the league. BUT what about the other ways that players enter the league that are entirely budget based? Scouting and IAFA are not being nerfed at the same rate. So a large budget team that tosses tons of money in those directions will continue to benefit, while a small budget team has its only reliable source of talent decreased.
To me a lot also hinges on that final statement that the game naturally balances out talent. Maybe that's true? So in theory if you made a league entirely of 5 star players, you are arguing that the new players generated would be comparatively worse that those for a more balanced league. If you want to try it out and present the numbers, I'll buy it. But otherwise I've don't know if I've seen proof of that automatic mechanism existing. But I'll admit I'm wrong if you can show me that the balancing occurs.
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Post by David_ExposGM on Aug 23, 2019 19:01:02 GMT -5
I apologize for not being clearer with my argument. I have no idea how you came to point A and B in your reply? But I'll take the blame for not being more succinct.
Why I responded to the quotes was to be as specific as possible responding to what was quoted.
You stated "top picks in the draft have become deeply devalued." I responded to that by saying "value is relative". Meaning that the top picks are always the top picks, whether a deep draft or not. In 33 rounds there will just be MORE top, more very good, and far more average players, before you get to purge-quality. Compared to a draft I would prefer, with fewer rounds generated (again say 25) there will be relatively far FEWER quality players at the top.
You also stated "Those (meaning top picks) are the only tools poor rebuilding teams have to work with." I'll just assume you mean low team budget, hence lower payroll and other negatively contributing factors teams as the poor. When you raise the talent level with more rounds, there is less separation between a poor team picking a top/elite player and a championship team, drafting near the end of the first round possibly only having good to average players from which to pick. Raising the talent level with more rounds generated will definitely mean even a championship team is picking better players, lessening the impact of the "tool" you claim is the only one a poor team has.
And I also contend that if you have a "right-sized" draft, then the game has more impact on the talent pool, generation, equillibrium than manual interference with more rounds and purging. And will keep the file at whatever size is required to make that work. That's all...
I will leave it there, to focus on just the question/polls of generating more rounds and the manual, annual purge of talent both raising the overall talent level of the incoming draftees each year. But I will add that I also believe the overall effect will be cumulative the further into the future PBL travels.
I'm sure we'll all agree the bigger the budget the more "other" tools one has.
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Post by sansterre - Milwaukee Brewers on Aug 23, 2019 19:56:27 GMT -5
I do not wish to dogpile, but neither do I wish to leave the issue unclear. There are two different things happening: a discussion of the consequences of the change along with a discussion of how the ups and downs should be weighed for the decision.
The latter is subjective; if anyone in the league has different priorities than me it stands to reason that they'll come to different conclusions. That's fine; this is a complicated discussion. But as for the consequences of the change, I think those may be stated pretty objectively and it is about those I wish to speak.
1. I do not agree with Ben's preference for players with higher ratings. Or rather, I do, but I don't agree that it's worth the hassle of adding more players than our minors need and purging the leftovers for what is essentially a cosmetic difference.
2. That said, I disagree with David's characterization of the Talent Floor rising as a result of the free agent purging. Bear with me. There are something like 11-12 thousand players in this universe. The PBL is made up of the top 800 (approximate) of that 11,000. The PBL + AAA is made up of the top 1600 players out of those 11,000. The PBL + AAA + AA is made up of the top 2400 players of that 11,000. And so on. So here's the question: if the bottom 4,000 just disappeared in a puff of smoke, where would be the rise in talent? The PBL is still the top 800 players of an 11,000 player talent pool (even if the bottom 4k disappeared). The entire minor league system is only going to be around 6k players; if the bottom 4k vanished it wouldn't hit the minors at all; after all, it's the bottom 4k, the players that aren't even good/valuable enough to be on a roster. If you want to argue that the purge will be inaccurate and get some of those top 6k players that would actually play . . . maybe. But I doubt it'd be by much. If you want to argue that by purging the bottom 4k (I just picked 4k, it's not actually a thing) we deprive the league of possible surprise studs, that's true too, but removing them would actually lower the talent floor, not raise it. Either way, I think the purge, if it has an effect at all on the talent level floor will be minimal.
3. I am most confused by the following assertion: "With respect to the draft, my point is that the more quality you generate on the high end (again the intention of more generated rounds), the less talent separation between higher picks with which a poor record team can get relatively better."
Bear with me. I think we can all agree that (when draft talent is nerfed) all teams suffer a talent loss proportional to the amount on which they rely on the talent in the draft (this is a bit of a complicated sentence but I think it's hard to argue with).
Your contention (which I'm paraphrasing as "increasing the amount of talent in the draft hurts worse teams") seems to be disproven by the following:
a) Bad teams receive a higher percentage of the talent in the draft than good teams. This seems pretty obvious. Yeah, some players drop for signing bonus reasons, but nowhere near enough to balance out the advantage of drafting earlier in every round. If this premise is true (which again seems clear) then increasing the talent in the draft improves the bad teams more than the good (at least within the context of the draft itself). To counter this you'd have to argue that one of the following is true: 1) Good and Bad teams get the same value out of the draft, 2) that Good teams get more talent out of the draft, 3) that increasing the number of rounds fundamentally changes the nature of the draft talent bell curve such that the advantage of bad teams is diminished (given that the players are randomly generated I think that this is hard to argue and flies in the face of most probability theory) or 4) that even if the increased talent totally helps bad teams, the end result of more talent in the league just means that in the end that talent will end up with the good teams (one way or another).
I think that of all the above only #4 has much merit, but is kind of damaged as an argument by:
b) Remember when I said when draft talent is nerfed "all teams suffer a talent loss proportional to the amount on which they rely on the talent in the draft"? In your own post you don't dispute (and to some extent rely upon) the idea that Good teams have many more avenues of acquiring talent than the draft. If this is the case then, by definition, the Poor teams rely on the draft more and therefor are hurt more by a drop in draft talent. I don't dispute that all talent rivers flow to the top teams (within reason); increasing the amount of talent in the draft simply encourages more of that talent to *start* with the Bad teams. Which is the whole point of the draft.
I just don't see the argument that increasing the talent in the draft *hurts* the Poor teams. Let us take the premise to its natural conclusion and imagine a league environment that had zero draft talent, because it had no draft. Every single freaking player entered either in IAFA, as a Scouting Discovery or as an International Free Agent. If you look at that and think "man, that would be so much easier to rebuild a poor, weak team with, imagine how awesome it would be to receive zero advantage from my crappy record and be dependent on my low budget for most of my talent acquisition" . . . well, I don't really know what to tell you. If you think that a league where no talent came in the amateur draft favors the poor teams then absolutely nothing I can say will persuade you otherwise. And conversely, imagine that we turned off IAFA (bidding on free agents), Scouting Discoveries (random but skewed toward budget) and International Free Agents (bid on with money). There's no way that doesn't tilt toward the weak teams (compared to what we have now). I don't think the idea that more talent in the draft hurts bad teams is remotely supportable.
4. I certainly do not know that the game tries to "balance" things by controlling the draft. As a programmer I'd rather trust the power of the RNG along with a large sample size to take care of the problem for me. I don't know that there's any evidence of the game "controlling drafts", but if you look at the past ten drafts, there sure as heck is plenty of evidence that dropping the number of generated rounds guts the draft pretty hard. Even if there is a secret balancing mechanic (which I am skeptical of) it's pretty clearly wildly less powerful than the effect of increasing/decreasing rounds.
Also, I don't think you can argue both of 1) Increasing the number of rounds will lead to the game nerfing the draft and 2) the flood of increased talent into the draft will have bad consequences. The change will either help or hurt the draft, but not both.
Nor do I think you can argue both of 1) talent is all relative so regardless of increases or decreases it'll all wash out in the end and 2) increasing draft talent will hurt poor teams. "All talent is relative" argues for no skew from increasing/decreasing the talent pool, which contradicts the argument of a negative effect.
And while we're at it, I don't think you can argue 1) talent is all relative and also 2) "Raising the talent level with more rounds generated will definitely mean even a championship team is picking better players", given that those "better players" aren't actually better relative to the overall draft quality.
And let us recall that the PBL had 33 rounds for quite some time (and had the same number of PBL, AAA, AA teams and so on to soak up those draftees), so any arguments that going back to 33 will have a terrible consequence must either contend that 1) the PBL before the change was suffering these consequences and . . . well, I guess nobody noticed or 2) that deleting one level of the minors will make 33 rounds game-breaking when the existence of that level of minors made 33 rounds pretty mundane.
If you believe that the aesthetics of simply not having to purge free agents are a priority, more power to you.
If you believe that changes to basic league mechanics should simply not be made for fear of unforeseen consequences, I can understand that (and given the unintentional consequences of the drop to 28 rounds I think there's some evidence there. Though in this case we're just returning to an old setting, not blazing new ground. But I digress).
But if you believe that pulling talent out of the draft will *help* bad teams then there's clearly nothing productive I can say to that.
I'm sorry for two walls of text in the same thread.
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Post by David_ExposGM on Aug 23, 2019 22:02:22 GMT -5
Wall of Text! Indeed.
Let me try to more briefly respond to the only two points I am trying most to argue, and for which we are voting, as clearly as I can. And I think I'm done after this because I don't think I can state my case any clearer.
I am not suggesting "increasing the amount of talent in the draft hurts worse teams" as they will always pick at the top. I am saying it has to help the teams picking later in the first round (the good, championship teams), and all teams deeper into the draft because there are better players, deeper into the draft. Thus, I am simply saying a far deeper draft is not as beneficial to the poor teams. But more importantly, and the point on which I seem to stand alone, is that purging of the lower end annually will hurt even more over time in combination with the deeper annual draft.
I'll agree, for argument sake, to your 800 PBL of 11,000 Universe with 4,000 lowest level players purged annually. 4000!
I'll also agree that if 4000 were purged tomorrow, nothing at all would be different at the PBL level tomorrow.
I argue, given that premise, the 800 get better over time with a far deeper draft adding better top end and middling talent each season as that better talent filters up from the lower levels. And you would correspondingly be purging slightly better players annually if you stay at 4000 (to maintain the universe at 11000). I think that has to be the case if the overall talent in the league rises? No?
More talent each season would make the league more fun for some, as we've heard (from those that chose to comment). That's fine. It just wouldn't for me.
The game is designed to generate an accurate representation when simulated over many, many seasons, emulating baseball as statistically best it can, particularly historically. It would be the world's worst game design if Markus suggested you must stop after every season and manually purge 4000 players. And I know we're not contemplating a purge of 4000 annually, but it could very well be 400, and the point remains.
I guess I am simply against talent creep through both proposals. That's all.
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Post by Sean_RedsGM on Aug 27, 2019 8:11:21 GMT -5
A deeper draft does benefit rebuilding teams because there are more players with higher potential deeper into the draft.
If you are rebuilding, would you rather have an elite player and a good player or a good player and an average player with your first two picks?
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