A miscarriage of justice

[Alan Ehlers]

How Hancock lost the Wunderkind award is a total injustice. He only pitched 46 innings last year so he qualified. Someone explain to me how he did not win

[John]

I can explain. The fault here lies with OOTP, not with the owners. Most owners choose their Wunderkind award winners by going to the "Sortable Stats" page and telling it to display "Only Rookies". OOTP has a funny idea about what constitutes a "rookie", and oftentimes it leaves off players who should qualify. That's what happened to Markus; OOTP wasn't listing him as a rookie, so most owners didn't vote for him. A few who looked deeper into the stats did (for the record, I cast my vote for him).

You can't blame the owners; they're working off the information being provided by the game. What we really need here is for OOTP to more accurately label players as rookies. Had it done so, Hancock would have certainly been a shoo-in.

[Rudel.Dietrich]

OOTP qualifies rookies correctly except in one occurance. The player in question has 1 year and 63 days of service time. I am guessing he collected the 63 service days in the previous year (which would about match up to 46 IP).
MLB rules stipulate if a player collects more than 45 service days on a 25 man roster they lose their rookie status.

The only flaw in OOTP that I know of is that in MLB a player does not accumulate service time against his rookie status after Sept 1st roster inflation to 40 man. In OOTP he collects service time no matter what time of the year he is on the roster.
Now that I write all of that out I am not 100% sure that is the case. I have never paid enough attention to it to be sure. I think I will use my solo league to test it out.


Saying all of that, while Hancock had a outstanding year it looks like it was his sophmore year and he did not have rookie status.


The rookie/non rookie status is light years ahead of OOTP 6
I remember creating a solo league just to try and figure out the question and after three seasons of trying still could not figure out when rookie status was lost.
After I do my testing I will be able to find out if OOTP 9 has any problems.
One of my wishes for a future OOTP is in the league setup menu having the option of IP/AB and service days to determine rookie status

[John]

One of my wishes for a future OOTP is in the league setup menu having the option of IP/AB and service days to determine rookie status

That would certainly be a nice feature. I'd like to be able to remove the service days portion of the equation and stick to the minimum IP/AB for determining rookie eligibility. Easier for owners to track.

Of course the nicest addition would be in-game awards voting. Commissioners around the OOTP world would thank Markus profusely for such a feature.

[Matt]

Fwiw, I voted for him for Golden Arm. Go past the won/lost record, and I thought he deserved it. Had he qualified as a rookie, I certainly would have voted for him there as well.

[Hitmen]

So, which way are we supposed to qualify rookies? IP or service days?

[John]

So, which way are we supposed to qualify rookies? IP or service days?

I think in the future, to avoid confusion, we're going to go strictly by the game's classification of "rookie". That means only players that show up when you filter by "Only Rookies" will be eligible for the Wunderkind. That will also unfortunately invalidate foreign newcomers like Augusto Quiñones - who did receive a Wunderkind vote this time around - but it's just too difficult for owners to search through otherwise.

[Maulers]

I actually thought about exactly this player when voting. I went by Hancock's service time, which (as Rudel says) made it seem like he was not a rookie.

[Hitmen]

Yeah, Hancock would have had my vote.

[Tyler]

Agreed. Just a little too much experience to be a rookie.

[Hitmen]

Just to make sure - this award has no bearing on the actual game mechanics (salaries, etc.), right? Only the Raker and Arm awards do?

[John]

Just to make sure - this award has no bearing on the actual game mechanics (salaries, etc.), right? Only the Raker and Arm awards do?

If you're asking if there are any Wunderkind-related performance bonuses, no, there aren't.