STEP 3 (A) -- EVALUATING THE MINORS, POSITION PLAYERS
I spend a ton of time working on my team during the offseason (from budget day until the end of free agency). The majority of that time is spent working on my minor leagues - evaluating the talent, ranking it, getting my players set to the appropriate level, and finally filling out the minor league rosters with the right mix of players. This is time I consider well spent because if I put my minor league teams together properly, they will need very little time commitment during the regular season from me.
With projected ratings out, I will of course first take a look at any major leaguers that are younger than 27 and get a good idea of where they are. My next step is to go through each player on every minor league level one at a time. I use the GM Office screen to do this so I can edit their positions. I use the recommended based on projected ratings button here, but will occasionally edit it myself if I do not agree with the projections.
One more thing I forgot to mention -- Any minor league players that get any of my top three ratings also get a note added on their player profile stating what level prospect they are. This will allow me to quickly look at the GM Office Roster Management page and know who my prospects are and therefore who needs to get maximum playing time. I can then make certain that these players spend little to no time on inactive lists and stay in the lineup as much as possible without having to go back to my notes constantly. ***EDITOR’S NOTE: The addition of the multi-colored dots on a player card are perfect for marking the three different levels of prospects: green for future ML starters, yellow for borderline/long-shot guys and red for complete trash.
Since I was the owner of this team already, I’d done all of that legwork before the merger, and luckily the colored dots stayed the same even after the merger. That meant that I could simply look at each level and count the number of green and orange dots to see what kind of talent I have in the system. The unfortunate part is that I did have to re-do the exact evaluations because my scouting budgets are now different than they were pre-merge. To save time I simply started with the “dotted” prospects, aka those I’d previously assigned a green or orange dot to on their player card, to get an idea of who is ready for the big time now and who still needs a season or two.
STEP 3(B) - EVALUATING THE MINORS - PITCHERS
You may have noticed that up until now I have not made a big deal about what ballpark I am in and the "park effects". I personally do not believe that they play into the game nearly as much as some people claim. Yes, if you look across the worlds, you will see a lot of great pitching numbers for the all - parks and a lot of great offense for the all + parks. However, I believe that people build their teams towards what they think their park will do. So the people with all + parks load their teams with offense and skimp on pitching, and vice versa.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: this makes a lot of sense to me and I think the best way to figure it out is to compare a single player’s performance in a hitter’s park versus a pitchers park over the course of a season...how do they compare? Could make for an interesting blog post someday, but that’s besides the point.
That being said, I don't ignore park effects entirely. I am in Cincinnati. My park is -1 for singles, 0 for doubles, -4 for triples, and +1 in both home run directions. The +1 and -1 are not that big of a deal, although I do note that I would prefer groundball pitchers (which I would have preferred anyhow). The -4 for triples I do believe will have an impact. But as I have never built a team around trying to get or not get triples, I don't think there is much I will do in terms of building my team because of that number.
Seattle is a true pitcher’s paradise, with a Net Park Effect of -10 (-3 for 1B, -2 for 2B, -1 for 3B, -2 HR LF, -2 HR RF.) Looking at those effects, the park appears to be most friendly to triples. As he notes above, “I have never built a team around trying to get or not get triples” which means that I’ll likely just focus on the ratings that I feel are most important.
Knowing that I prefer groundball pitchers because of the slightly short outfield walls, and knowing that control is important as well (I consider control perhaps the most important pitching stat), it is time to analyze my under-27 pitchers throughout the organization.
There are four ratings that I have anecdotally found to be the most important, although I have never gone to the trouble of mathematically proving it (I think others have, but I can’t remember where or how.) Those ratings are Control, the splits and GB/FB since they answer the questions “how often does Pitcher X walk people?” “How good is he against lefties/righties?” and “How often does he give up the longball?”