Like matty said at the very end of his post, it doesn't matter what we do if we don't lower the caps since the game will just bump it back up. Hence why I focus on those, not to say I don't believe adjusting the farm sliders would do nothing (like was implied a few times for some reason). The big issue with just lowering farm talent has remained the same: the GMs at the greatest risk and traditionally most adverse to talent reductions are the one's in the middle of a rebuild. You're setting those guys back simply by lower talent progression, at least if you do a manual reduction of talent and lower the caps correspondingly you don't ruin or impede their rebuild.
Yes on the surface we have the right total number of "aces" or "middle of the order bats" and yes on a case-by-case basis they generally don't get hosed too badly on the stat distribution. It's the variance, parity and randomness that gets killed off when you have an overabundance of talent. It creates a caste system and simply retarding prospect development does nothing about that for a long time and certainly not permanently if talent caps remain high. I think this remains true even if the game trends towards developing hollow overalls since those guys don't get the roles to maintain their overall. Once they drop the game replaces them, it's what causes the ebbs and flow with talent. We always have 120-150 90s but the quality will always vary no matter what we do with sliders, IMO.
To summarize, my POV isn't as black and white as previous posts have made it seem. I actually support a reduction in amateur talent but not without or in conjunction with lowered talent caps . Because no matter what we do with farm talent if the caps aren't reduced the game will continue to have too many middle of the road players taxing stats that normally would go elsewhere and a FA market so inundated with talent it makes pretty much 0 sense to extend a guy before you have to. Instead the game (seems) to feel obligated to the studs (Pace has never waivered, top bats have no trouble hitting 300/400/500 but they never flirt with a super high ba or 50 HRs, it's the exceptions that don't seem to play out anymore) and for everyone else they're lucky to reach 80% of their predicted stats.
Yes on the surface we have the right total number of "aces" or "middle of the order bats" and yes on a case-by-case basis they generally don't get hosed too badly on the stat distribution. It's the variance, parity and randomness that gets killed off when you have an overabundance of talent. It creates a caste system and simply retarding prospect development does nothing about that for a long time and certainly not permanently if talent caps remain high. I think this remains true even if the game trends towards developing hollow overalls since those guys don't get the roles to maintain their overall. Once they drop the game replaces them, it's what causes the ebbs and flow with talent. We always have 120-150 90s but the quality will always vary no matter what we do with sliders, IMO.
To summarize, my POV isn't as black and white as previous posts have made it seem. I actually support a reduction in amateur talent but not without or in conjunction with lowered talent caps . Because no matter what we do with farm talent if the caps aren't reduced the game will continue to have too many middle of the road players taxing stats that normally would go elsewhere and a FA market so inundated with talent it makes pretty much 0 sense to extend a guy before you have to. Instead the game (seems) to feel obligated to the studs (Pace has never waivered, top bats have no trouble hitting 300/400/500 but they never flirt with a super high ba or 50 HRs, it's the exceptions that don't seem to play out anymore) and for everyone else they're lucky to reach 80% of their predicted stats.
Houston Astros - 2012/2016/2023/2025 Champs!
Cumulative Record: 1894 - 1184 (.615%)
Cumulative Record: 1894 - 1184 (.615%)