The other thing about scouting is your scouting budget. If you ever run a deficit you will be reset to half the average scouting budget, 1 mil. What you spend there makes a huge impact on how accurate your scouts are. I don't see this as big of an issue in established leagues where you know the player's history but it is huge in the draft and for new leagues.
It works this way. The more times your scouts scout a player the better accuracy the scouted ratings are. The more you spend on scout the more your scouts update reports, scout the player. Therefore, the more accurate your reports are at any time. At minimum spending you might be looking at the same report that was issued on opening day and the player may have seriously learned or declined. Hence, the old problem that if you spent average or less you used to get the 1/1 severe ratings change because the game re-scouts everyone for the first time since opening day.
From the manual,
"
Scouting Accuracy
The accuracy of player scouting depends on a number of factors:
- Your scouting director's ratings in the appropriate area
- Your Scouting Budget in the appropriate area
- The age of the player (older = more accurate reports)
- How many times this scouting team has scouted the player
- Whether the player is in your organization or not (in your organization = higher accuracy)
In general, this means that the longer you have the same team in place, the better your scouting will become, with better scouts with bigger budgets producing more accurate results. Older players and players in your organization are also easier to scout."
Also the manual notes that a bad scout is still going to a bad scout no matter how much you spend. Maxing scouting budget will make him as good as he can be but a poor rated guy will never scout that area as well as a legendary guy no matter how much you spend.
I am also note sure if manually scouting impacts accuracy. It seems you could cheat on the budget by manually scouting players daily but that would be a pain.