What is the ideal roster size to get all real players?

[renojedi]

I went with 55 and it loaded about 2000 players or so. I am wondering what number gets all of the real players in? I assume if you do 25 man rosters a lot of real players won't be imported since I noticed no real players as free agents. Your thoughts?

[henry296]

35 seems to work best for me. That is about the average number who play on a major league roster in a given year.

[redeck]

i believe that it doesnt matter what your roster size is, the game will load all players who played in a chosen season. the roster size might determine for you how many of those players make it on teams for the season, but the remaining players will be available through free agency to any team.

[Amaroq]

35 = ONLY real players will be generated - but you might not get *all* of them. (Still, you'll get all significant ones)
50, 60, 70 = ALL real players will be generated - but you will also get fictional players of actual substance created.

[KG Erwin]

The best way to determine this is to run a mock draft for a given year, and see how many players get imported from the Lahman database.  For example, in 1946, 860 real players are imported, so a 50-man roster would be fine for the initial draft.  This allows 60 real players to remain in the free-agent pool. This has worked out well for my purposes.
 
However, in 1939, only 730 real players are available, so the initial draft pool would include 70 fictional players.
 
A comprehensive season-by-season list of the real-player pool, from 1901 to 2005, would be nice.