Impossibly incompetent scout!

thedudeingram · 07-12-2009, 03:03 PM

What the heck is up with this? Fictional league, scouting on, accuracy normal. Up to this point I have had pretty much expected results with scouting. Went out and hired a scout, ratings 18/20/19/21 and I maxed out my scouting budget (seems to be set at 5X league average). I went into the draft and was both excited and wary that there were 5 star prospects left at my position (100 team fictional league, I drafted near the end). I managed to pick up 4+ star guys through the first 8 rounds. Something seemed off, but that was what I had to go on. Checked back after the first year and ratings were still off the charts high, but all were terrible, even in rookie league. It turns out that one year later their "real" stats came out (pathetic).

It's not so much that I am complaining, more that I am curious if anyone else has seen this and if it is supposed to be that way (ie if the "real" ratings of scouts are not knowable). Though it killed my minor league system, I cant say it bothers me that much. It seems fairly realistic that you just dont know what you are getting with a guy even if he manages to convince you that his picks are going to turn it around this year and have just hit some bad luck.

And no, before anyone asks, this guy's name was NOT Matt Millen!

Questdog · 07-12-2009, 03:13 PM

Could it possibly be that your international expenditures are non-existant? I seen the player is named Lopez....

turdfurgeson · 07-12-2009, 03:28 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Questdog

Could it possibly be that your international expenditures are non-existant? I seen the player is named Lopez....

I think that only applies to the ability to find "hidden players" and these guys were drafted.

thedudeingram · 07-12-2009, 03:45 PM

Yeah, these were all amature draft guys. As far as I know, they are seperate from "hidden" international players.

Pirate Fan · 07-12-2009, 04:20 PM

I've experienced the exact same thing and I've also tended to spend a lot more on scouting than the average team and even allocate more to amatuer scouting than you have. It makes me wonder if the programing in this area was somehow inverted and the more one spends on scouting the worse the results.

I'll have minor league teams with several players who, according to my scout, are solid prospects, then suddenly they are all career minor leaguers. I added a player in the Rule V draft, who at the time was a potential super star according to my scout but by the time the season started the scout thought he was worthless. It is particularly odd since these sudden drastic changes in the scout's opinion, usually happen over the off season and definately before the season actually starts. One would think that scouts would form and revise their opinions of players by, you know, watching them actually play.

risp2out · 07-13-2009, 01:32 PM

I also notice that the scout favors tools. That means he's more interested in players with talent potential than with proven results. I tend to go more with ability scouts because I like to build teams with 8 guys who are solid more than find the next superstar and surround him with scrubs. For every A Rod that turns up, there are dozens of Darren Drieforts (or whomever else you'd like to pick that had huge talent but no follow through).

Nutlaw · 07-13-2009, 05:45 PM

Prospect scouting is a very inexact science in real life, too.

Also keep in mind that prospects regularly gain and lose potential ratings as time goes on. It could be that this player's real ratings did decline.

Pirate Fan · 07-13-2009, 06:14 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nutlaw

Prospect scouting is a very inexact science in real life, too.

Also keep in mind that prospects regularly gain and lose potential ratings as time goes on. It could be that this player's real ratings did decline.

What I have noticed though, is that the BA-top-100 prospect list and the top 20 list for individual teams is a lot more accurate and stable than the ratings provided by the scouts. This seems backwards since for the most part the scouting departments of individual teams have all of the information that BA has plus some, not the reverse.

Over and over again I see players that my scouting department absolutely loves but are not highly regarded by BA and the result is almost always a huge and sudden downward revision of the scout's opinion. This leads me to suspect that it was the scout that was originally wrong about the prospect and not a ratings decline that caused the opinion to change.

thedudeingram · 07-13-2009, 09:55 PM

This wasnt a case where just one guy lost a bunch of ratings all at once. It was two entire drafts. About the first eight rounds seemed to be filled with superstars. then *poof* they are not even AA filler worthy.

I'm not going to sweat it though. I have a new scout and will have to rebuild my minors, but I will just chalk it up to the Matt Millen effect and hope it doesnt happen again.

Rand · 07-14-2009, 11:58 AM

What is your league wide scouting accuracy set to? It defaults to 'normal', which at least in my mind seems to roughly correlate to your scout randomly picking players to apply a randomly chosen rating to, and players seem to go from 5 star to 1 star and back every time their rescouted.
I'm not at all convinced the scouts are even remotely capable of differentiating between me and Strasburg.

I set it to high myself, there is still a fair degree of inaccuracy. Plenty of players your scout loves will bust, and vice versa but you don't get the feeling their picking players at random anymore.

Nutlaw · 07-14-2009, 01:34 PM

Yeah, I haven't looked lately, but maybe the BA Top Prospect lists are too accurate with scouting enabled.

I could be mistaken, but I believe that the younger a player is, the more uncertainty gets thrown into scouting reports on him. So you may want to be cautious about chasing after every five star 17-year-old your scout drools over and start looking at the 21 to 22-year-olds as more sure things.

thedudeingram · 07-14-2009, 10:12 PM

I have my scouting set to normal. Not only that, the previous scout had what I would consider pretty normal success rates. Sometimes he would be wrong and a guy wouldnt hit his potential, but you didnt get a situation where exactly one year after the draft they would be beyond useless even if they lived up to their pathetic potential. My new scout is pretty much the same, some hits some misses.

Not sure if this is a glitch or not and frankly I dont care as long as it doesnt happen that often.

Pirate Fan · 07-15-2009, 01:33 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nutlaw

Yeah, I haven't looked lately, but maybe the BA Top Prospect lists are too accurate with scouting enabled.

I could be mistaken, but I believe that the younger a player is, the more uncertainty gets thrown into scouting reports on him. So you may want to be cautious about chasing after every five star 17-year-old your scout drools over and start looking at the 21 to 22-year-olds as more sure things.

I am interested in your remark about the Top Prospect lists with scouting enabled. Do you mean that the lists work differently when playing without scouts, or that they work the same way but that it makes sense to have them be accurate without scouts since you have accurate ratings data anyway?

I think you are right about the scouting and younger players. I've pretty much stopped drafting anyone under 18 in the first round.

oneton · 07-18-2009, 12:04 PM

I'm interested in what your experience is with veterans. I've had a SS for several years who has been extremely solid (great fielder, solid BA, etc) who had been rated in the low 70's (I use the 20-80 rating system) for several seasons. This last season, he had a rather sharp drop-off and I ended up using him sparingly. His OVR/POT went from something like 72/74 to 44/44. I assumed that it was due to him turning 30 and starting to decline. I decided to use him as a utility infielder and picked up a younger guy with better ratings/potential. As soon as I picked up the new guy, my vet's ratings went to 75/75. I'm not sure how this happened. I've been playing this game for a while and although I'm no expert, I've never had this happen to me.

BTW - this huge jump up in ratings occurred during the off-season.

Anyone else had this happen?

Oh, another issue I'm curious about...
When I check the Player development report, why is it that the current rating on the report does not match the rating when you open up the player profile (i.e. it's 01/01/09, a PDR comes out, it says John Smith's current rating is 51/80 - you click on John Smith and it says his ratings are 24/60) - this is just a random example, but it happens often. It makes it very difficult to interpret the PDR's.

Regardless, a very fun game!

07-12-2009, 03:03 PM	#1
thedudeingram Bat Boy Join Date: Jun 2009 Posts: 9	Impossibly incompetent scout! What the heck is up with this? Fictional league, scouting on, accuracy normal. Up to this point I have had pretty much expected results with scouting. Went out and hired a scout, ratings 18/20/19/21 and I maxed out my scouting budget (seems to be set at 5X league average). I went into the draft and was both excited and wary that there were 5 star prospects left at my position (100 team fictional league, I drafted near the end). I managed to pick up 4+ star guys through the first 8 rounds. Something seemed off, but that was what I had to go on. Checked back after the first year and ratings were still off the charts high, but all were terrible, even in rookie league. It turns out that one year later their "real" stats came out (pathetic). It's not so much that I am complaining, more that I am curious if anyone else has seen this and if it is supposed to be that way (ie if the "real" ratings of scouts are not knowable). Though it killed my minor league system, I cant say it bothers me that much. It seems fairly realistic that you just dont know what you are getting with a guy even if he manages to convince you that his picks are going to turn it around this year and have just hit some bad luck. And no, before anyone asks, this guy's name was NOT Matt Millen! Attached Images

07-18-2009, 12:04 PM	#14
oneton Bat Boy Join Date: Jun 2007 Posts: 6	huge scouting fluxuations with vets? I'm interested in what your experience is with veterans. I've had a SS for several years who has been extremely solid (great fielder, solid BA, etc) who had been rated in the low 70's (I use the 20-80 rating system) for several seasons. This last season, he had a rather sharp drop-off and I ended up using him sparingly. His OVR/POT went from something like 72/74 to 44/44. I assumed that it was due to him turning 30 and starting to decline. I decided to use him as a utility infielder and picked up a younger guy with better ratings/potential. As soon as I picked up the new guy, my vet's ratings went to 75/75. I'm not sure how this happened. I've been playing this game for a while and although I'm no expert, I've never had this happen to me. BTW - this huge jump up in ratings occurred during the off-season. Anyone else had this happen? Oh, another issue I'm curious about... When I check the Player development report, why is it that the current rating on the report does not match the rating when you open up the player profile (i.e. it's 01/01/09, a PDR comes out, it says John Smith's current rating is 51/80 - you click on John Smith and it says his ratings are 24/60) - this is just a random example, but it happens often. It makes it very difficult to interpret the PDR's. Regardless, a very fun game!

07-12-2009, 03:13 PM	#2
Questdog Hall Of Famer Join Date: Jun 2006 Location: In a dark, damp cave where I'm training slugs to run the bases...... Posts: 16,142	Could it possibly be that your international expenditures are non-existant? I seen the player is named Lopez....

07-12-2009, 03:45 PM	#4
thedudeingram Bat Boy Join Date: Jun 2009 Posts: 9	Yeah, these were all amature draft guys. As far as I know, they are seperate from "hidden" international players.

07-12-2009, 04:20 PM	#5
Pirate Fan Minors (Double A) Join Date: Jun 2006 Posts: 166	I've experienced the exact same thing and I've also tended to spend a lot more on scouting than the average team and even allocate more to amatuer scouting than you have. It makes me wonder if the programing in this area was somehow inverted and the more one spends on scouting the worse the results. I'll have minor league teams with several players who, according to my scout, are solid prospects, then suddenly they are all career minor leaguers. I added a player in the Rule V draft, who at the time was a potential super star according to my scout but by the time the season started the scout thought he was worthless. It is particularly odd since these sudden drastic changes in the scout's opinion, usually happen over the off season and definately before the season actually starts. One would think that scouts would form and revise their opinions of players by, you know, watching them actually play.

07-13-2009, 01:32 PM	#6
risp2out All Star Reserve Join Date: Apr 2009 Posts: 648	I also notice that the scout favors tools. That means he's more interested in players with talent potential than with proven results. I tend to go more with ability scouts because I like to build teams with 8 guys who are solid more than find the next superstar and surround him with scrubs. For every A Rod that turns up, there are dozens of Darren Drieforts (or whomever else you'd like to pick that had huge talent but no follow through).

07-13-2009, 05:45 PM	#7
Nutlaw Hall Of Famer Join Date: Apr 2003 Posts: 9,538	Prospect scouting is a very inexact science in real life, too. Also keep in mind that prospects regularly gain and lose potential ratings as time goes on. It could be that this player's real ratings did decline.

07-13-2009, 09:55 PM	#9
thedudeingram Bat Boy Join Date: Jun 2009 Posts: 9	This wasnt a case where just one guy lost a bunch of ratings all at once. It was two entire drafts. About the first eight rounds seemed to be filled with superstars. then poof they are not even AA filler worthy. I'm not going to sweat it though. I have a new scout and will have to rebuild my minors, but I will just chalk it up to the Matt Millen effect and hope it doesnt happen again.

07-14-2009, 11:58 AM	#10
Rand Minors (Double A) Join Date: Dec 2003 Posts: 124	What is your league wide scouting accuracy set to? It defaults to 'normal', which at least in my mind seems to roughly correlate to your scout randomly picking players to apply a randomly chosen rating to, and players seem to go from 5 star to 1 star and back every time their rescouted. I'm not at all convinced the scouts are even remotely capable of differentiating between me and Strasburg. I set it to high myself, there is still a fair degree of inaccuracy. Plenty of players your scout loves will bust, and vice versa but you don't get the feeling their picking players at random anymore.

07-14-2009, 01:34 PM	#11
Nutlaw Hall Of Famer Join Date: Apr 2003 Posts: 9,538	Yeah, I haven't looked lately, but maybe the BA Top Prospect lists are too accurate with scouting enabled. I could be mistaken, but I believe that the younger a player is, the more uncertainty gets thrown into scouting reports on him. So you may want to be cautious about chasing after every five star 17-year-old your scout drools over and start looking at the 21 to 22-year-olds as more sure things.

07-14-2009, 10:12 PM	#12
thedudeingram Bat Boy Join Date: Jun 2009 Posts: 9	I have my scouting set to normal. Not only that, the previous scout had what I would consider pretty normal success rates. Sometimes he would be wrong and a guy wouldnt hit his potential, but you didnt get a situation where exactly one year after the draft they would be beyond useless even if they lived up to their pathetic potential. My new scout is pretty much the same, some hits some misses. Not sure if this is a glitch or not and frankly I dont care as long as it doesnt happen that often.