How do you get ready for your draft?

[ForeverRoyalKC]

As immersed and deep as some of you go, I was very curious to know how you go about your upcoming drafts. Do you scout tons of players? Make a sheet of who you want and who your backup picks are? Do you get involved emotionally by being really happy you got your guy or that your pick fell to you? Just how deep do you get into the draft?

Right now, I am starting to scout the draft pool and I believe I found a real hidden gem! I am pretty happy and it's even helped my mood!

[sabrtoothtiger]

One of the first things I do is look at the depth at Catcher, SS and CF as well as projected starters both RH and LH.

Sometimes you will see clear instances where you are better to 'overdraft' a player because of scarcity at a position. I have filters developed for each of the positions specified above which makes things much easier.

My draft board is positionally broken into the following;

Catchers
Shortstops
Center Fielders
College Bats (guys who will hit, but will end up on a corner)
High School Bats ("", typically with more of an emphasis on younger for class guys)
Left handed starters
Right handed starters
Lefty Specialists
High Leverage Reliever skill-sets


In terms of scouting, I have a filter that provides a list of players who are below a certain accuracy. For ones that are draftable I will request reports on.

[KBLover]

Originally Posted by ForeverRoyalKC

As immersed and deep as some of you go, I was very curious to know how you go about your upcoming drafts. Do you scout tons of players? Make a sheet of who you want and who your backup picks are? Do you get involved emotionally by being really happy you got your guy or that your pick fell to you? Just how deep do you get into the draft?

Right now, I am starting to scout the draft pool and I believe I found a real hidden gem! I am pretty happy and it's even helped my mood!

First I check how much accuracy I have, especially on those 45-55 POT players. Maybe they are being under appreciated or they may go undiscovered by other teams if my scout says they are higher. (Or maybe he's wrong but that's the drafting game).

I'll look at those and if I see any that might fall or look like "more than the sum of their tools", I'll scout them until at least High accuracy.

I'll shortlist any interesting looking talents. I always like to draft a few "oddball" players. Knuckleballers (hence my user name), players with "weird" hitting profiles (all gap and walks for example), and any halfway decent two-way player (I want to draft an Ohtani, dammit. The CPU Rockies did in one of my franchises and he played there his whole career and was a Hall of Famer). I'll also look for pitchers who suck at pitching but have good bats. If they are two way (and they usually are), I'll earmark them and try to "steal" them late and convert them to pure hitters or hitter/pitcher two-ways (primary hitter/pitcher).

Players the CPU teams get that look interesting, I'll short list these for when they are eligible to be traded (next offseason in my leagues). I'll also do this for the chaotic international signing period. I do this to remember them and track their development.

And I definitely get excited when players like this fall or I can execute my draft list exactly. I get a kick out of the scouting director recommend my guy, gives a extra boost of hope that maybe I'm making a good selection.

[Sweed]

Here is a thread I started in the v21 forum last year. I used the same process for v22.
https://forums.ootpdevelopments.com/...d.php?t=319942

I'll quote my first post and link it above so you can read the responses.

Originally Posted by Sweed

Finished my first v21 draft a couple weeks ago, been meaning to post my thoughts, and finally getting to it.

First I setup shortlists for the "2036 draft" and a "2036 draft board". I made filters to sort out "draftable pitchers" and "draftable hitters" to fit my standards with enough looseness to allow for players to be taken in the late rounds. As always I ignored the stars (to vague and a waste IMHO) and for later rounds did not let low overall potential scare me away. Even if a guy on my list projects as a 20/25 somewhere in there, confirmed by my "draftable" sorts are a skill or two that say he at least has a remote chance of making it to the show

Draftable players were put in the Draft shortlist and would be moved to the Draft Board shortlist once they had a "high" rating. Player reports would be requested to keep these players at "high" or "very high" as time progressed.

By the time the draft arrived I had over 300 players scouted and on my board. In previous versions my board would be ~10 players, I mean why not? In previous versions all of the scouting was done early. In v21 having to continually update the reports made me very familiar with all of the players on my board.

The draft was set for 25 rounds and enough players in the pool to cover 26 rounds. As the draft started I was prepared to do my "normal" draft through round 6-7 and let the AI sort out the chaff, but... a funny thing happened. I ended up drafting all 25 rounds and enjoyed it. I never thought this possible but with the new system, having better knowledge of the pool, and a huge list of "draftable players" it became impossible for me to walk away

When my turn came up in the 25th round I still had two players from my board undrafted, I thought this was very cool. I only took one player that had not made it onto my draft board. I did this in round 19, as this round came up I decided to take a look at the pool that was not on my board (easily done in the draft screen with all of the new sorting optons). There was a guy that did have a high rating, skills I liked, with one skill being just under my "acceptable" scale. But late round I thought worth a gamble.

In short.. having to scout got me more involved,

having so many ways to sort talent made building a draft list very fun and interesting

There was enough talent in the draft. I never felt like I was making a useless pick in context with the round I was drafting in. Do these low round picks have a good chance at making the show? No, but they do have potential skills and, also current skills that suggest there is a chance. Not sure I saw these guys in previous versions or it could be I had so little interest in these "back of the draft" players I just never noticed.

This was done with OOTP's new created draft classes replacing my old feeder leagues. IMHO the whole draft, start to finish, is a huge step up from previous versions.