Franchise Help!

[Nolove626]

Quote: Originally Posted by Chisoxfan14

Hello everyone, I've never played the game in the way I plan to this year so I wanted a little assistance with some questions about Franchise mode. Typically, I have played the game two different ways, Road to the Show, and a Franchise mode where I play every game of the current season with real life rosters. I never really go into the future. This year I have a different agenda. I am a White Sox fan and don't have a lot of interest in playing the 2017 season. My ideal goal this year for my rebuilding fandom is to simulate at least 2017 and possibly 2018 as well while making trades to rebuild the team and then pick up for the 2019 season and start playing games. Of course I will be using the very awesome OS all minors roster (whoever does this here rules!) I have some questions though for people more experienced with long term simming. I think mainly around my farm system. Do prospects tend to fluctuate in their performance and potential? Example: Do I just always want to go for 'A' potential guys and they will always become great players? Or do they ever bust? Secondly, the flip side, does a 'C' level prospect ever overachieve? Can a potential rating increase or is it set in stone? I will be controlling everything but scouting and whatever is attached to that. Some additional questions related around this. How important is keeping my AAA and AA lineups how I want them? This becomes kind of a headache every injury etc and I just feel like hitting 'auto fix' on them but then the next thing I know Moncada is playing third or something. Does any of this really matter or is the minors just there to allow you to gauge a guy's performance as a prospect. Example: who cares if your top prospect hits ninth or whatever as long as he starts in the lineup. Finally, do I want to keep guys in the minors for an extended period? Do they increase their potential and skills faster as young prospects down there and get their growth stunted if I call them up early or does is matter? If it doesn't matter, how long in general before you call a guy up? A 70 overall A rated potential Reynaldo Lopez could obviously break my crappy MLB rotation but if he has a better chance to ht his ace ceiling by keeping him in AAA I will do that. Also, do guys in Single A even play any games? Is it just kinda a holding pattern for your lesser prospects until you move them to a league where you have a MILB lineup and season? Sorry for all this. Been playing the game faithfully since 2008 and feel like I should know more about this stuff. I appreciate any help!

I will try and help you as best as I can since I have done a lot of long term summing with this years version while waiting for OSFM to drop. I am currently running a padres franchise with OSFM so I will use his as an example.

First of all the game will always value A and B potentials over C and D. This means the player has a higher ceiling. Try and use the overall number (let's just say an 83 potential) as a baseline of where any given players overall will most likely be capped. Can they get better than this ceiling? Absolutely. But probably not by much. To answer your question about dynamic potentials, they are still dynamic in this years iteration. Meaning they can increase or decrease but believe me when I tell you this seems to be completely random. With a diamondbacks franchise I ran, I had Jake lamb tie for second in the league in home runs with 36, finish 5th in RBI's with 99 and bat around .260 and he took a potential hit even after making an all star team. While Brandon drug hit .234 with 16 HR and 57 RBI's and saw a potential increase.

A and B potential is not guaranteed to hit their ceiling just because it is sett higher. In my padres franchise I have minor league C rate prospects improving way faster than hunter renfroe who is a high 97 potential. While dynamic potential increases/decreases seem to be random, progression seems to be largely production based this year (this will lead me into your third question in just a moment). This does pose a potential problem however. From the short testing I have done it seems that the minor league production progression is based on the same curve as MLB production progression. The problem is most prospects simply do not have the attributes to replicate here numbers even though they are facing way lesser pitching competition. I have sinned 4 franchise seasons and have only seen 1 20+ home run season in triple A from a player that was rated 73 overall and could have been on my MLB roster. This seems to make the high potential prospects with low overalls flounder. My C potential prospects with high overalls seem to progress quicker and greater than my high potential low overall prospects. Sure I could stick them in single A but win only 90 players available on my roster I would not be able to fill out a AAA or AA lineup.

Now to your third question. It doesn't really matter where you play your prospects in the field. Let's say your stud 3B prospect has a secondary position of 2nd base, it is more Han fine to play him there. However, since the progression system is largely based seemingly on production this year you do want to make sure your studs bat 1-5 in the order since they will generally see more at bats and generate more production.

I hope this helps. Forgive any spelling errors as I typed this from iPhone with auto correct on

[Chisoxfan14]

Thank you all so much! This is exactly the info I needed. Especially nolove's detailed response.

Looking forward to firing up my more educated franchise run tonight

Now if I can just get the Yankees to give me a Frazier+ package for Quintana (real life or video game lol)

[disk]

This is one of my favorite things to do in the show as well, nothing like being able to sim multiple seasons and watch your prospects bloom into superstars.

Some advice on scouting, control it yourself. Discover all position players from each region and scout based on contact. I have found this to be the best way to build a system that routinely pumps out studs. Ignore scouting pitchers as it takes up way too much time and good pitchers are easy to trade for if your system is stocked with A and B potential position players.

As far as controlling your minor leagues, I have not found setting the lineups yourself beneficial, however I do check to make sure my position players are starting and my starters I like are in the rotation and not the bullpen. This is because player progression seems to be tied to performance in some way. As a white sox fan myself I like to move Zack Collins to first and put him in AA where he usually tears it up and he sees a huge jump in overall and sometimes I can get his low B potential into the low A range. I like to move guys up based on stats but I have had guys come up as an injury replacement who had poor AAA stats and they dominated in the bigs, so it is a little random.

Some final thoughts in terms of team building, ignore player potential for everything but trades. I look for guys who have high contact, discipline and vision. Even if they have a C potential, FOR SIMMULATING things like power, speed and defense are over rated (totally different if you play games). You wont have guys hitting 40+ HRs but you'll have a ton of high OBP guys with 20-30 HRs. I hate to say it as a Sox fan but guys like Moncada are over rated, he's super fast and a good defender so his overall is pretty high and he has 90+ potential but he's not a great hitter and probably never will be in The Show. I much prefer good contact B potential guys who won't ask for 30 million a year and trade my jack of all trades A potential guys for stud pitchers.