[gopads02]

Originally posted by clarnzz
Guess like anything it's all a matter of perspective. I would still prefer the prospects list to not have statistics be a factor just for the reason that without it I felt it was more accurate than with it. That said, your post was a good one and I can see what your saying.

OK I don't know about you other guys, but I've always been a subscriber to Baseball America and I really enjoy reading their top 100 prospect lists and their annual top 30 organizational prospects list. I like those lists because feel those lists identify true prospects, not just stat leaders (I can check stat leaders out just by running a AAA league leaders report). Those lists take into account the players age, current performance (stats), current skills & mechanics (ratings bars) and future potential (talent bars).

Originally posted by sixto
I agree with your first sentence 100%, and disagree with your second sentence 100%.

The Top 100 list is not important. It is a prestige thing and nothing else. "Hmm, who of my prospects can I feel proud about?" That's all the list does.

I beg to differ, I like to use the top 100 list as a starting off point when I'm trying to gain awareness for who the prospects are and which ones I should pursue. The other method of manually sifting through every minor league player on every team is too time consuming and tedious. I'd rather just have a good list of the top guys who are the only ones I'm truly interested in trading for in the first place.

Additionally I'd like to know where my prospect stands in comparison to all the other teams prospects overall, not just in a 1 vs. 1 head-up comparison between 2 prospects and to a certain extent the top 100 did that.

I guess the bottom line is if the changes to the top 100 list in the new patch were the result of new tweaks to the player development curves (as in having minor league stats have more of an influence in affecting talent development increases/decreases) I'd be more than welcoming to the changes.

But if the changes to the top 100 list is just a change in how the list is compiled- then I have to agree with clarnazz that it's just a "smoke and mirrors" job to make it seem as if Stats are more important now in ranking Prospects when in fact minorleague Stats still have nothing to do with the outcome of how your player's talent levels develops (I said Talent not Ratings levels, as ratings are a function of talent and talent is a function of randomness not stats.)

Originally posted by sixto
You might as well go by stats. I really don't see, given the fact that talent/bustability is random, how adding another possibly random factor in the mix is a problem. It's either random or not random, you can't be somewhat random.

Again I beg to differ, maybe this is semantics, but when we refer to the system being random it's a bit of a misnomer, what we really are referring to is probability.

The current system for whether Talent Levels increase or decrease as I see it is "random". And by "random" I mean all players having an equal probability of X% for a talent increase. That means there's an X% chance across the entire board for every player regardless of current talent levels, ratings or stats.

Say X is 5% probability right now for all players of having their talent levels increasing.

Since this is just a probability function, we indeed can "make it somewhat random." You can do this by saying since Player A has been overachieving in the minors (having stats that goes beyond their talent potential), lets have their probability for a talent increase be better than the other Players B-C-D, etc . Player A now has another +2% added to their 5% chance, making him have a 7% chance at a talent increase as compared to the 5% that all the other players have. The important point to note is that the system is still for the most part "random" since the percentages are still very low.

Of course, the biggest worry of having stats dictate to a degree whether Talent Potential increases is that you'll have a spiralling situation where players with good stats will get all the talent increases and those with bad stats will suffer a downward spiral of talent decreases. Again, this is not true, because there are at least 2 controls besides age. The first control is that again the percentages are still very low. The 2nd control is that players must Overachieve or Underachieve relative to their Talent Levels in order to have a higher probability of a talent increase/decrease, otherwise they're percent chance remains at 5%.

To illustrate what I mean, let's assume that there are two players, "Player A" and "Player B." Both players are exactly the same (same age, position) except that both their Talent and Ratings differ. So "Player A" who has a Homerun Talent of Fair and hits 15 HRs each year in AA and AAA will get that +2% added to his base 5% for a Talent Increase. "Player B," who has a Homerun Talent of Average, hits 15 HRs in AA and AAA, however he will get nothing or +0% added to his base 5% probability. Even though both players have performed exactly the same statistically, Player A has a higher probability of a talent increase than Player B (7% for A vs. 5% for B) because it is perceived that Player A is overachieving relative to his Talent Level of Poor while Player B is merely performing at a level that is expected of him.

This "performance vs. expectations" mechanism acts as a control because say now Player A does get lucky and indeed receives a Talent Increase. His Homerun Talent Level increases from Fair to Average. Now since his Talent Level is higher, his expectations are higher as well, which makes it more diffucult for him to "overachieve" again. Essentially this means his probability for another Talent increase is reset from 7% back to the normal base level of 5%. It will only go up to 7% if he overachieves again and hits like 30+ HRs in AAA which is considered "Overachieving" for a prospect who has a HR Talent of Average. The same concept is applied for underachievers and talent decreases.

I hope i'm making sense and I hope you see why I think it's not that difficult and more importantly, disruptive at all to make these small tweaks to the Player Development curves. NOTE TO HENRY And by tweaking the Player Development curves first, the top 100 list will automatically adjust (and in effect change) while keeping the criteria for choosing who's on the list the same as before- that is what I hope happenned in the last patch...only Marcus and maybe Henry knows for sure.