Well, there are a few key quibbles that keep what I'm doing from being quite as all-powerful as you might think.
1) Everyone can get international prospects, not just me. I just enjoy that aspect of the game. Sure, I allocate 100% of my scouting budget to scouting as many countries as possible, but I still like the overall element of international prospect signings applying to the entire league.
2) I look in the editor to have a 100% accurate evaluation of what a player's capabilities are at that moment in time. This often has very little to do with what that player actually does. For example, the excellent replacement I found for David Ortiz has editor ratings that translate to an OPS of .996 per the editor. 2 months into 2013, he has an OPS that just now got to .800, and he is worthless against LHP despite strong ratings in the editor. The variance between capability and performance is part of what makes baseball, and OOTP's implementation thereof, so enjoyable. Relief pitching, in particular, is extremely variable from outing to outing and year to year, which is why I have such strict "pull the reliever" rules for my in-game playing.
I have also found, in general, that even at Very Low scouting, the AI is not quite as stupid about player evaluation on major pieces (really good or really bad players) as you might otherwise expect them to be at that level. As with any other sports game, I think the AI has some degree of visibility behind the curtain as well, although obviously I didn't code it. I mean, you can't set the AI evaluation to 100% current year stats, have Nick Punto go 3-for-4 on Opening Day, then trade him for King Felix.
All that said, yes, "cheating", "cheesing", or "winning" are all true ways to label my approach, depending on your point of view.
I don't want 100% accurate scouting less because the AI teams collectively will know what I know (although that is a factor), but more because every AI team will know, roughly, what every other AI team will know, and I want the fog of war between the AI teams almost as much as I want it between myself and all of them. It's the same functional effect, but the motivation isn't as purely self-serving as, say, looking at the editor ratings of the draft pool. Teams burn themselves with stupid trades in real life, I don't want to be the party involved with every uneven trade in the league. I want Kazmir-for-Zambrano trades happening elsewhere while I try to get my own Lowe/Varitek-for-Slocumb deals going.
Understanding my approach is pretty key to deciding which pieces of these tips/strategies to adopt/discard, so it is important for you or anyone else reading these tips to be able to understand where I'm coming from as much as possible. That's part of why I'm trying to deliberately point out where I'm being uniquely evil vs using generally recommended tactics, but the context matters too. Frankly, I'm surprised nobody else has been criticizing, since I know there is a very passionate "realism and difficulty above all" section of the community here, but I think the "live and let play" mentality is alive and well in this community.