Matrix Games Forums

Why does the fictitious draft always include a hitter and a pitcher who around 30 years old and major league ready? And why are there so many 30-something scrubs available at the same time? I understand the need for scrubs but it seems to be they should be ages 17-23.

Am I alone in thinking that the draft is almost always very pitching-heavy? If you're routinely choosing in one of the last slots, you will almost never see a positional prospect with a 60 in contact or power. However, it seems that I can find quality pitching prospects all the way through the draft. I'm just finding it very hard to develop any of my own positional players.

I'm in year 14 of a 2004 Replay association and there are only 20 or so positional players in the entire league with contact ratings of over 70. Yet almost every team has 6-7 pitchers with stuff ratings higher than 70. At the same time, the association is still dominated by the offense. It's kinda strange.

I've noticed that the CPU prefers to draft position players first, saving pitchers for the later rounds. After running a few sample fictional leagues, that appears to be a common pattern. It makes it easy to grab the pitching talent, but you do have to work harder to find prospects in the field. Go younger, and look for potential. It'll take a couple extra years for them to blossom, but you'll get a good pipeline of talent going for the future.