Roster Generation Part 3! (and team caps!)

[alexfall862]

Hi! 

Welcome back to development for the baseball sim!

This week I wanted to cover a handful of administrative things as we’re entering testing phase next month in June. 

- Sample Roster
- Team Cap
- Hybrid Fantasy Draft Scheduling
- Roster Odds and Ends

Sample Roster

Earlier this year we went over some broad strokes on the roster. After some testing I ran a 30 season test run to make sure that the matriculation made sense and was sustaining at a spot that made sense. 

The first test run of a full 305 college team sized universe took 5 days to run, so I took a couple of days to reduce and refine the process until it only takes 3 hours to produce and process the 99,000 players over a 30 season period for the full roster tests. 

With that now being successful and somewhat easier to run, I present to you the alpha rosters! These are not final, but will be used in testing. The teams earlier alphabetically got better players and the teams that were later in the list did not. For the production run the team list will be randomized and the players awarded in a snake draft, but what we have now will give us the widest 'likely' range of team quality to tune the game results/strategy (although I know a few of you will likely go Full Marlins and sell your entire roster down to the rookie-ball scraps).

The ability grades are all relative to their competition on a 20-80 scale, so an MLB 20 is the worst overall rating for the MLB, but might be solid to great in the minors. A 50 is average and an 80 is best in the league. I expect more variance once users are setting MLB rosters, where some younger players will likely get promoted earlier than their overall suggests and some better players may not be employed due to not fitting with any teams' financial or strategy plans despite having redeeming qualities.

These ratings will update along with roster moves, which will happen once per week. We may move from this if it proves too fiddly at the MLB level. Other levels have enough of a sample size that a handful of players at the extremes doesn't through things off too much.

In this test roster, you can see that a handful of very good position players are throwing the average off a bit, so the vast majority of players are around 45 or so at the MLB level while being more spread out at other levels and at pitcher. If this gets to be troublesome, we may switch to a method based on standard deviation, but the premise remains the same that 20 = bad, 80 = good, and it's based on your peers at that level.

You may also notice there are no defined positions. This is because y'all will set your own positions! (and I'll start soliciting some help on this front for planning an AI to do this for HS/College) 

The purpose of sharing is to help you become familiar with what the roster file looks like ahead of June testing runs.

Link to MLB+Minors Roster (easier download): https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1BgzJeo5IxHizG0-yqchp2pPkiEFv4cqTrEAPiEdo0Sw/edit?usp=sharing

Link to Full Roster (MLB/Minors/College/Int Amateur/High School): https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1TUX1QaiDVP2jMY8clwDEAVrH13YDAI_9?usp=drive_link

Team Cap

Earlier users voted for a split model where the payroll revenue in the league comes from a split of media market and money from team performance (an abstraction of merchandising, gate receipts, etc.)

Compared to IRL, the average payroll is exactly the same, at $165m, while teams starting equivalent at the money tied to performance reduces the standard deviation between teams, with most teams falling within ~$40m whereas irl baseball is at ~$66m.

Below are the payrolls for teams to start the season!

Spoiler

Team	Performance Money	Media Money	Total Payroll Budget	2024 IRL (for comparison)
New York Yankees	$82m	$192m	$274m	$308m
New York Mets	$82m	$192m	$274m	$308m
Los Angeles Dodgers	$82m	$147m	$229m	$229m
Los Angeles Angels	$82m	$147m	$229m	$171m
Chicago Cubs	$82m	$98m	$180m	$226m
Chicago White Sox	$82m	$98m	$180m	$135m
Toronto Blue Jays	$82m	$94m	$176m	$226m
San Francisco Giants	$82m	$91m	$173m	$198m
Oakland Athletics	$82m	$91m	$173m	$63m
Philadelphia Phillies	$82m	$90m	$172m	$244m
Washington Nationals	$82m	$90m	$172m	$110m
Boston Red Sox	$82m	$83m	$165m	$183m
Texas Rangers	$82m	$81m	$163m	$231m
Atlanta Braves	$82m	$79m	$161m	$230m
Houston Astros	$82m	$75m	$157m	$249m
Seattle Mariners	$82m	$71m	$153m	$141m
San Diego Padres	$82m	$67m	$149m	$161m
Minnesota Twins	$82m	$64m	$146m	$129m
Arizona Diamondbacks	$82m	$62m	$144m	$169m
Tampa Bay Rays	$82m	$60m	$142m	$100m
Detroit Tigers	$82m	$60m	$142m	$106m
Colorado Rockies	$82m	$60m	$142m	$144m
Miami Marlins	$82m	$56m	$138m	$98m
Baltimore Orioles	$82m	$55m	$137m	$102m
Cleveland Guardians	$82m	$51m	$133m	$101m
St Louis Cardinals	$82m	$47m	$129m	$175m
Pittsburgh Pirates	$82m	$46m	$128m	$83m
Kansas City Royals	$82m	$45m	$127m	$117m
Cincinnati Reds	$82m	$42m	$124m	$102m
Milwaukee Brewers	$82m	$41m	$123m	$107m

and for a sense of how things might shake out long term, here's the performance money if we treat the IRL 2023 season as real input data for the sim.  (used just 2023 for quick test data, but the sim will use 3 seasons worth of data, with the 'previous seasons' being 81 wins for all teams and will input new seasons over time, slowly increasing performance money disparity.) 

Spoiler

Team	Performance Money	Media Money	Total Payroll Budget	2024 IRL (for comparison)
New York Yankees	$83m	$192m	$275m	$308m
New York Mets	$76m	$192m	$268m	$308m
Los Angeles Dodgers	$102m	$147m	$249m	$229m
Los Angeles Angels	$74m	$147m	$221m	$171m
Chicago Cubs	$84m	$98m	$182m	$226m
Chicago White Sox	$62m	$98m	$160m	$135m
Toronto Blue Jays	$91m	$94m	$185m	$226m
San Francisco Giants	$80m	$91m	$171m	$198m
Oakland Athletics	$51m	$91m	$142m	$63m
Philadelphia Phillies	$92m	$90m	$182m	$244m
Washington Nationals	$72m	$90m	$162m	$110m
Boston Red Sox	$79m	$83m	$162m	$183m
Texas Rangers	$92m	$81m	$173m	$231m
Atlanta Braves	$106m	$79m	$185m	$230m
Houston Astros	$92m	$75m	$167m	$249m
Seattle Mariners	$90m	$71m	$161m	$141m
San Diego Padres	$83m	$67m	$150m	$161m
Minnesota Twins	$89m	$64m	$153m	$129m
Arizona Diamondbacks	$85m	$62m	$147m	$169m
Tampa Bay Rays	$101m	$60m	$161m	$100m
Detroit Tigers	$79m	$60m	$139m	$106m
Colorado Rockies	$60m	$60m	$120m	$144m
Miami Marlins	$85m	$56m	$141m	$98m
Baltimore Orioles	$103m	$55m	$158m	$102m
Cleveland Guardians	$77m	$51m	$128m	$101m
St Louis Cardinals	$72m	$47m	$119m	$175m
Pittsburgh Pirates	$77m	$46m	$123m	$83m
Kansas City Royals	$57m	$45m	$102m	$117m
Cincinnati Reds	$83m	$42m	$125m	$102m
Milwaukee Brewers	$94m	$41m	$135m	$107m

Contracts
To start next season, we'll take test season data and generate a kind of WAR to give a $ per WAR contract to veteran players. Those in Arbitration years will likely get something like a reduced $ per WAR, while rookie will get rookie scale.

Hybrid Fantasy Draft Scheduling

Users voted to have teams assembled partially randomly and partially with a draft. So we'll set up a 10 round fantasy draft for users to select the top players on their roster. The draft will be populated by the top 300 players in the sim by overall and the rest will be given out via snaking selection through the bottom 16 MLB players and the farm system (A/AA/AAA).

 You don't need to be present for a live draft, but I'll ask that you make yourself available by DM/text or be able to submit a preference list before the drafting session. It will probably take about two days to work through the entire 10 round asynchronous draft, so I have listed some dates for that to execute. Ideally it will happen a week or two before 7/1/24, but I'm open to other situations.

Roster Odds and Ends

Completing the roster file generator included adding some additional flavor that wasn't already present, and that includes adding in City/State/Country to player's status. All countries are included in the generator, with the generator getting as close to a reflection of IRL demographic makeup of the MLB as possible. 

If there's a city you'd like to see included in the sim, let me know in the poll!

As mentioned above, I'll also start reaching out to users to help plan out how to set positions for players.

POLL!

Link to Poll: https://forms.gle/ydcPBiikaarSALECA

Thanks,
alexfall862