[NoOne]

work ethic doesn't help development, despite teh common thought in the forums -- intelligence would be what you want for development. Regardless, anytime the difference in talent is large you should probably ignore the fact the lesser player is smarter... Talent, then all other factors at a lesser weight. can it be trumped? sure, but not too large of a difference. work ethic is important if you want them into their 30's.

if they have a low intelligence, trade them before they start taking a dump unless extremely talented and you want to roll the dice.

the moment i think the players available are interchangeable, i let the AI finish it up. i don't typically make it past round 10, but where you draw the line is an opinion, but you should definitely draw one for the sake of effort somewhere unless you really enjoy the draft, of course. the more you do, the better you'll be, but by how much? at some point it's a very negligible increase.

if you aren't drafting high in the first round or not at all, it's difficult to draft high-end players... the higher the inaccuracy, the more money in scouting and the better scout you have, the greater the difference you can put between yourself and the AI -- ie you'll see the talent that falls, while they see a low rating more often. these thing will increase the frequency that it will occur, but does not guarantee anything for a particular year's result.

so budget and scout is the foundation. timing of when to splurge on these things and when to dump more assets into payroll is another decision. imo, if you can afford max budgets here (at least 20-24M in development, max scouting for sure) and afford 250M or more in payroll, you should do it every year. assumes 250M would be the high-end of the league's payrolls.

some things i believe are trends with amatuer draft -

Movement for pitchers after the top-flight prospects are off the board is the biggest key to future success based on what you can see due to inaccuracy (assumes at least normal setting). there will be more landmines than gold.. even when you do it the 'best' way... so, don't expect a magic bullet here. and the gold in rounds 5-10+ doesn't have a whole lot of shine to it. (round 3+ for pitchers some years).

when i get past good potential picks i am sorting pitchers by movement (before that i sort by potential). test my theory -- sort by movement once they are sub 1/2 scale potential left or maybe a bit less, then turn comissioner mode on, go into the editor and scan through the top 20 (sorting includes inaccuracy, which you see through in player editor - what you see relative to that is part of reasoning too), then do the same with sorting by control and compare wht you see... Especially rounds 5-15 significantly more viable AAA MiL talent at the top when sorted by movement vs anything else -- mind you, we are not talking about everyday players most likely and maybe 1 out of 4 sorted by movement vs 1 out of 10 sorted by other means -- It's still a crapshoot, but a better one!! So, if oyu have 2x or 3x these types of players in your system vs what the AI has unearthed, which over time it will inevitably happen, you get TCR-goodness at a higher rate too with those 'better' MiL/borderline players... you also have better mil teams and multiple replacement level options at AAA without haveing to spend 535k per player just for depth as much.

With batters i am sorting by contact once the potential ratings drop off... i'll start sorting by potential and contact and seeing what's there.. once it bcomes apparent i should sort by contact, i shift. can't play in the majors if you can't hit somehwere approaching average.

with both batters and pitchers i am going to sort by other important ratings just to see what's at the top + available... like power for hitters and stuff/control for pitchers -- but with batters i am keeping an eye onthat contact column and skipping anythign that's junky and possibly the eye column for any extreme weaknesses... and with pitchers it's a bit more complicated - stuff, move, contr and relative to RP vs SP all important. avoid extreme weaknesses as best you can... 1 or 20 out of 200 for control/movement potential won't ever make it. they are landmines in teh draft. batters have equivalents to that.

if you are picking top-10 and still missing alot, you need to change how you assess talent -- somewhere near 1/2 1st rd. picks panning out well is respectable, but you should shoot for a higher percentage... as far as Rd. 5-15ish, just do your best and don't expect much.

with teh amatuer draft and international amatuers july 2nd, i'd avoid filters. inaccuracy is so great, that you want to make the decision yourself... typically only a handful will fit the Round, so just find the ones that are suitable, shortlist and compar them if you want a small list. it's hard to value thngs differently than perceived, but if you fail more times than not, that's all that is left to change for these high-end picks... it's more about accuracy than anything else.... if you ick a player and he's inaccurately rated, you cannot be too hard on yourself, and exclude that from success/fail rate if you are doing any research or testing to see if a change(s) in behaviour is working out.

Avoid using filters inthe draft. mlb FA aren't the same... they ware well known commodities... however, filters will miss the younger less-known players on a rare occasion, too... but it's significantly less often than the amatuer draft, and no problem relative to context to miss 1 replacement level depth player / year. you don't want to chop out a viable player rd 5-15+ when only 1 out of 5 under-the-hood is actually decent.