One thing I never considered was starting an expansion team like this. Very interesting and am looking forward to seeing how this works out for you. And then decide if I might do something similar in starting a long term play through.
Yes I’m trying this as well except my plan is to create all the rookie Ball teams first let them draft in the expansion draft and rookie draft then send them down to the appropriate levels then let them partake in the rookie draft each year I until I do the expansion draft for the big team
Medina is by far the nuttiest catching prospect I've seen since starting on OOTP. The catching ability plus potentislly being a top 25 bat is eye watering
Apologize if i missed where you explained it, but what was your process to not have Nashville fill a major league team each offseason with big time free agents and still participate in internation free agency?
It's a good question, but I don't really have an answer, as it's not something I really thought about at the time even though I should have in retrospect! It's possible Nashville did sign some players to MLB contracts and they just sent them to the minors, or maybe because Nashville and Buffalo were not on the MLB schedule the AI "knew" not to do that... I'm not sure and I don't recall checking on it. I don't remember any big time players wasting a season or two in the minors while part of the Nashville organization, but it doesn't mean it didn't happen...
@oldschoolsports yeah I didn't think about it either until I was going through my first offseason and noticed the AI had signed some pretty big named players that were FA. Most notably, they had Gleyber torres on a multi year deal. It's not the end of the world, but it's definitely something I didn't think about. Either way, it's been a ton of fun building up my minor leagues from ground up!
@@masejr21 Oh, that stinks, but agree it's not the end of the world. Building your entire organization from scratch those first few years is definitely a lot of fun, enjoy!!!
Just doing a rewatch of the series trying to do this myself in OOTP24 and a couple things I keep running into was the second team keeps signing MLB players with the AI taking control and at the end of the season the 2 teams get listed as inactive. How did you deal with these two issues?
Love the concept of an expansion team. Hopefully it goes well and the Buffalo wings end up being a better team than their big market counterparts that are the Yanks and Mets! I can understand the hesitation in drafting catchers with mediocre catcher ability. But I think you can draft them if they have high work ethic and intelligence. In my sims, Catchers with a low catcher ability but a good personality have ended up with increased catcher ability and arm, when paired with a coach who is Legendary or Outstanding in teaching Catching and has a good relationship with the catchers. I have had a number of catchers who had 50 or 55 catcher ability end up with 65 or 70!
That’s a good point, and something I should keep in mind. I generally always have excellent coaches in the majors, so I probably can get another 5-10 defensive points for some of these guys eventually!
You know, if you move the International Amateur Draft to February 15th, the reveal date doesn't run interference with the playoffs and instead takes place during the off season.
It wasn’t completely intuitive to me, but I eventually figured it out, I’ll post how here when I am back in OOTP since I can’t remember exactly what I needed to do…
@@oldschoolsports Thanks. What is going on with the Nashville Stars? I assume they are building through the drafts too. Are they able to take advantage of minor league free agents too, or is your team the only one who is benefiting from that? How about established International Free Agents? Can either team sign those?
Quick and probably dumb question.. why is your IAFA pick Medina not showing any stats / games? Is he not playing at all? He dropped from 1st to 3rd without playing it seems 🤷🏻♂️
I let most of my IAFA guys, who are typically 16 years old when I sign them, spend a season or two (or sometimes three) at the International Complex before they actually start playing in rookie ball in the DSL. Gives them more time to mature and hopefully be ready to play well when they start facing other professionals, and also prevents their service time clock making them eligible for the Rule 5 draft from starting to tick too soon...
I would love to see you add logos to the minor league teams! Also if you can give us some insight on the ownership situation but I’m sure you’ll show us that when the major league team is ready to play ball
I would definitely consider promoting your minor league coaches and managers to your MLB team. You get them on the cheap for the duration of their contracts. I'm sure you already signed them for five years.
@@oldschoolsportsI have found that when I promote coaches on their minor league contracts to the majors, they get hired away by other major league teams due to their salary being so low.
Lonnie Goldberg is your scout? Ouch ... OOTP seems to like him a lot but if he scouts like he did for the Royals IRL then you're never going to win at the MLB level.
What are you going to do with the AAA teams in Buffalo and Nashville? I'd just leave them be, but IRL, they would be moved. Also, are you creating your own minor league teams, or are you letting AI do that. I would do it myself because AI does stupid things like giving you Virgina Beach and putting them in the Northwest League.
I did manually move them both myself… Buffalo ended up in New Haven, CT and Nashville I moved to Baton Rouge. And I did pick the cities for all the affiliates of the new MLB Buffalo and Nashville teams as well for exactly the reason you noted… outside of Florida, Buffalo’s affiliates are in New York, and Nashville’s affiliates are in the southeast.
I think you are handcuffing yourself by making multiple offers in a top heavy draft class. This is a strategy you'd use for a deeper, more wide open draft pool. Here, you'd be better off to zero in on the guy you want, even if it means offering the max straight up. Otherwise, you run the risk of one of your lesser choices accepting your offer, leaving you insufficient funds to pursue one of the top dogs.
You are right… it worked out for me this year… but if you keep watching, you will see the exact scenario you outlined will cost me one of the top guys in an upcoming episode!
Of course, it can work the reverse way too. You can get in a bidding war for the best player, lose the war, and when the smoke clears, all the other guys you liked are gone. In that case, it might be best to shove all in on the top player, so if you lose out on him, it is resolved quickly enough for you to pivot towards another player.
Definitely… I tried to hedge to keep as many options as possible open in both in ‘24 and ‘25… worked out fine in ‘24… as you will see, it burned me in ‘25!
That's true. Without any MLB contracts, I had so much money that it didn't really matter though. I definitely don't want to get into the habit of using Commish Mode for anything, since that could be a slippery slope to manipulating the entire league. There's really no reason I should need to use it again since the league is all set up now!
It looks like you have inflation turned on. If so, your salary minimums and baselines are going to grow exponentially. That's not really a problem, just be aware of it. Likewise, the point of diminishing returns for player development has traditionally been at $36 million - 3x the baseline. Also, the scouting maximum is also 3x the baseline. Using this logic, with inflation, your point of diminishing return will increase accordingly. It is doubtful that the developers used a hard figure to determine this, because inflation would defeat the purpose. So, I would conclude that you could invest up to 3x your baseline, before you start throwing money away.
Got my eye on Jesus Brito. Dude looks very promising
One thing I never considered was starting an expansion team like this. Very interesting and am looking forward to seeing how this works out for you. And then decide if I might do something similar in starting a long term play through.
Yes I’m trying this as well except my plan is to create all the rookie Ball teams first let them draft in the expansion draft and rookie draft then send them down to the appropriate levels then let them partake in the rookie draft each year I until I do the expansion draft for the big team
Medina is by far the nuttiest catching prospect I've seen since starting on OOTP. The catching ability plus potentislly being a top 25 bat is eye watering
I’m definitely excited to see what he may turn into! Hopefully I won’t ruin him!
Hooked already......watched the first two twice already
Love this series so far! If you want I am proficient with the jersey maker so I could make a few custom jerseys for your Wings and Stars
Thanks for watching. I appreciate the offer, but I almost never actually play out games, so I rarely would even see what the uniforms looked like!
@@oldschoolsports Makes sense, keep up the great work!
Apologize if i missed where you explained it, but what was your process to not have Nashville fill a major league team each offseason with big time free agents and still participate in internation free agency?
It's a good question, but I don't really have an answer, as it's not something I really thought about at the time even though I should have in retrospect!
It's possible Nashville did sign some players to MLB contracts and they just sent them to the minors, or maybe because Nashville and Buffalo were not on the MLB schedule the AI "knew" not to do that... I'm not sure and I don't recall checking on it. I don't remember any big time players wasting a season or two in the minors while part of the Nashville organization, but it doesn't mean it didn't happen...
@oldschoolsports yeah I didn't think about it either until I was going through my first offseason and noticed the AI had signed some pretty big named players that were FA. Most notably, they had Gleyber torres on a multi year deal. It's not the end of the world, but it's definitely something I didn't think about. Either way, it's been a ton of fun building up my minor leagues from ground up!
@@masejr21 Oh, that stinks, but agree it's not the end of the world. Building your entire organization from scratch those first few years is definitely a lot of fun, enjoy!!!
Just doing a rewatch of the series trying to do this myself in OOTP24 and a couple things I keep running into was the second team keeps signing MLB players with the AI taking control and at the end of the season the 2 teams get listed as inactive. How did you deal with these two issues?
Love the concept of an expansion team. Hopefully it goes well and the Buffalo wings end up being a better team than their big market counterparts that are the Yanks and Mets!
I can understand the hesitation in drafting catchers with mediocre catcher ability. But I think you can draft them if they have high work ethic and intelligence. In my sims, Catchers with a low catcher ability but a good personality have ended up with increased catcher ability and arm, when paired with a coach who is Legendary or Outstanding in teaching Catching and has a good relationship with the catchers. I have had a number of catchers who had 50 or 55 catcher ability end up with 65 or 70!
That’s a good point, and something I should keep in mind. I generally always have excellent coaches in the majors, so I probably can get another 5-10 defensive points for some of these guys eventually!
Love the new series and can’t wait to get into it! I was wondering if you could say what your trade settings are for this long term save
Thank you, I'm looking forward to it as well. Will definitely touch on the settings in an upcoming episode.
What kind of coaches do you have down on that rookie ball team for all those ‘23 draft picks?
You know, if you move the International Amateur Draft to February 15th, the reveal date doesn't run interference with the playoffs and instead takes place during the off season.
When you’re in the draft screen - did it really say you already have 15 catchers in the organization?
It will be interesting to see how the AI handles the Nashville minor league teams. If yours was 31/32 at the start, were the stars 32/32?
Yes, we were the two worst at the start of things... will check in on where Nashville is today in Episode 5!
I read Zenmasta's pos. I'm still not sure about how to hide the MLB team into a dummy league. I would be interested to see how you did it.
It wasn’t completely intuitive to me, but I eventually figured it out, I’ll post how here when I am back in OOTP since I can’t remember exactly what I needed to do…
@@oldschoolsports Thanks. What is going on with the Nashville Stars? I assume they are building through the drafts too. Are they able to take advantage of minor league free agents too, or is your team the only one who is benefiting from that? How about established International Free Agents? Can either team sign those?
I notice you are ignoring trades. Had any of them been good would you have considered, or did you only ignore on the stream?
Quick and probably dumb question.. why is your IAFA pick Medina not showing any stats / games? Is he not playing at all? He dropped from 1st to 3rd without playing it seems 🤷🏻♂️
I let most of my IAFA guys, who are typically 16 years old when I sign them, spend a season or two (or sometimes three) at the International Complex before they actually start playing in rookie ball in the DSL. Gives them more time to mature and hopefully be ready to play well when they start facing other professionals, and also prevents their service time clock making them eligible for the Rule 5 draft from starting to tick too soon...
Are you moving Tampa Bay to Montreal? Your expansion and relocation ideas do have a logical trend.
I would love to see you add logos to the minor league teams! Also if you can give us some insight on the ownership situation but I’m sure you’ll show us that when the major league team is ready to play ball
Good point, a lot of information I will try to share in Episode 5 now that all of the behind the scenes stuff actually wotked!
I would definitely consider promoting your minor league coaches and managers to your MLB team. You get them on the cheap for the duration of their contracts. I'm sure you already signed them for five years.
Ha, you know me well, everyone signed for five years for as little as I possibly can get them for!
@@oldschoolsportsI have found that when I promote coaches on their minor league contracts to the majors, they get hired away by other major league teams due to their salary being so low.
Lonnie Goldberg is your scout? Ouch ... OOTP seems to like him a lot but if he scouts like he did for the Royals IRL then you're never going to win at the MLB level.
I'm surprised that Goldberg is willing to work for you again. You fired his ass in KC to bring in Travis Lee.
I am sure I will fire him again as soon as someone better is available!
What are you going to do with the AAA teams in Buffalo and Nashville? I'd just leave them be, but IRL, they would be moved. Also, are you creating your own minor league teams, or are you letting AI do that. I would do it myself because AI does stupid things like giving you Virgina Beach and putting them in the Northwest League.
I did manually move them both myself… Buffalo ended up in New Haven, CT and Nashville I moved to Baton Rouge. And I did pick the cities for all the affiliates of the new MLB Buffalo and Nashville teams as well for exactly the reason you noted… outside of Florida, Buffalo’s affiliates are in New York, and Nashville’s affiliates are in the southeast.
I think you are handcuffing yourself by making multiple offers in a top heavy draft class. This is a strategy you'd use for a deeper, more wide open draft pool. Here, you'd be better off to zero in on the guy you want, even if it means offering the max straight up. Otherwise, you run the risk of one of your lesser choices accepting your offer, leaving you insufficient funds to pursue one of the top dogs.
You are right… it worked out for me this year… but if you keep watching, you will see the exact scenario you outlined will cost me one of the top guys in an upcoming episode!
Of course, it can work the reverse way too. You can get in a bidding war for the best player, lose the war, and when the smoke clears, all the other guys you liked are gone. In that case, it might be best to shove all in on the top player, so if you lose out on him, it is resolved quickly enough for you to pivot towards another player.
Definitely… I tried to hedge to keep as many options as possible open in both in ‘24 and ‘25… worked out fine in ‘24… as you will see, it burned me in ‘25!
You are in Commish Mode, just retire Coaches and Trainers you don't want. Why take the Financial Hit?
That's true. Without any MLB contracts, I had so much money that it didn't really matter though. I definitely don't want to get into the habit of using Commish Mode for anything, since that could be a slippery slope to manipulating the entire league. There's really no reason I should need to use it again since the league is all set up now!
What a shitty draft! It is a good thing that you put off drafting first until 2026, when they go back to normal.
Yeah, that was kind of intentional!
It looks like you have inflation turned on. If so, your salary minimums and baselines are going to grow exponentially. That's not really a problem, just be aware of it. Likewise, the point of diminishing returns for player development has traditionally been at $36 million - 3x the baseline. Also, the scouting maximum is also 3x the baseline. Using this logic, with inflation, your point of diminishing return will increase accordingly. It is doubtful that the developers used a hard figure to determine this, because inflation would defeat the purpose. So, I would conclude that you could invest up to 3x your baseline, before you start throwing money away.
I have inflation on, but at 0% to 0%, so essentially it should be turned off!
@@oldschoolsports i thought i saw you baselines increase. I may need glasses.