5 remaining major issues in BBM 2k6
Here are the 5 biggest issues I'm seing still in BBM 2k6
Minor League Stats Cleanup
Minor league assignments are much, much better now, but there are a few minor glitches left.
- At bats and games played are being generated oddly, with younger players unable to get to 400-500 at bats int he minor leagues. The only players reaching reasonable minor league starting player at bats are 30+ year old former major leaguers. Something strange going on there. Also there is a severe disconnect between number of games in the fielding tab and the hitting tab. I see players regularly starting 170 games at RF, but only getting 90 games of hitting in.
- Players with pre-generated Minor League stats have college and HS stats and minor league stats generated for the same seasons (ie players who play college and A in the same year). Also NO players are generated with AAA stats, giving us players who apperently stayed in AA for 10 years till age 34. Not likely.
- The April 1st bug for pitchers is still there where pitchers have 1 game saved as a historical stat line for the year the sim is taking place, giving us strange stat lines (2 2003 AAA stat lines...). I have found that hitters will sometimes have fielding stats on april first as well. Both bugs.
- Minor League roster limits. The AI needs to be limited, especially at the AAA level where after a while a team can end up with 20-30 hitters and nearly as many pitchers. The AI should begin aggressively cutting Minor League players on an age priority basis as soon as it reaches 14 hitters and 11 pitchers.
- Minor LEague retirements. Players age 31+ with ratings <60 need to retire at the end of a season. This would solve the problem of legit MLB players staying longer than anything logical, as well as the dozens of career minor leaguers that simply need to go away.
Major League Roster Management
- Playing the Kids. The AI should exclusively look at players that are AAA caliber(***) and better when choosing it's 25 man roster. I am seeing WAY too many players jumping straight to the major leagues. That MAY mean playing players out of position at times (ie if there are no SS that are AAA level the AI may have to play a 2B) but then atleast the AI could make better use of it's existing players instead of sending it's 2 million $ backup 2B to AAA and playing his newly drafted 17 year old SS. Obviously if the AI runs out of AAA players it should then, and only then look to AA and then other levels for more players.
- Putting together the best bench possible. The AI is TERRIBLE at putting together a bench. First of all each bench should be atleast composed of 2 OF, 2 IF and a catcher, with the extra spot (PH in NL and DH in AL) going to the best hitter not in the starting 8 regardless of position. That is the most basic bench composition. Now when choosing those players, the AI should ALWAYS take the best rated AAA caliber player available at the position it is trying to fill. I have seen the AI take as a backup infielder a player rated 68/75 while putting a 75/75 infielder in AAA.
- Pitching. The AI needs to spread the pitching appearances around more, particularly to the Long reliever and alternate starter. The AI also needs to put it's best relief pitcher consistently in the Closer spot (John Smolts almost never gets put in the Closer slot despite being the best braves reliever post-2003). And in general The AI needs to place it's best 11 AAA caliber pitchers in it's major league lineup, not call up unproven rookies while sending better more mature pitchers to the minors.
Major League Service Time/Arbitration/Contracts
- Contract negotiations. For some reason I cannot negotitate any contracts after a few years of play. Even for players who are past arbitration, with no contract options whose deals are up, the only time I can negotiate is during the free-agent period.
- Service Time. The automatically expanded 40 man roster is just not cool. The players almost never see any playing time anyway, and the game ends up adding 32 games of service time to players we otherwise wouldn't have called up. If we need players in september we can call them up... This is seriously messing with rookie status.
Expansion Draft
- The Draft rules. The expansion draft in historical seasons is brutally bad. I have seen upwards of 10 players taken off the same team, and the teams in general do a *HORRID* job of stacking their lineup, and never seem to work very hard to make sure they have viable major leaguers at all positions. This leads them to play college ballers as regulars, and can result in season records that are absurd (4-158?).
Historical Career Peaks
- For Baseball recreationists, this is still an issue, and I for one would like to see authentic career peaks so that career's atleast follow the same general outline as IRL. Suggested Career Peak = ML debut age +3 to retirement age -6. If a player has retirement age - 6 < ML debut age +3, then the range would be age - 6 to age - 6 (example player debuted at 21 and retired at 43, that would be 24-37. Player debuted at 25, and retired at 28, ist would be 28-22, fixed to 22-22. Players become useless in BBM at max peak +6, therefore the logic suggested).
Other pending issues
- Historical Teams are still defaulting at Fan Loyalty = F
- Dead Players are still hanging around after they die
- Players names are being generated with symbols (leading to interesting names like Robert %)
- Negative college and HS stats.
I'm not sure if the Arizona catcher bug is still there in 8.28 or not.
Finally a delete minor league historical stats option would be extremely cool.
*** AAA Caliber player meaning players based on ratings and age that the AI would normally send to AAA if he was sent to the minors. In effect meaning AAA or better players. Ex: Albert Pujols if he were sent to the minors would go to AAA based on his ratings.
