International Scouting Experiment

[injury log]

I wanted to test just how much international scouting can improve a team. I created a new MLB-style league, sent my six scouts on one-way flights to Mexico, Cuba, Canada, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic and Japan (the 'Excellent' baseball nations), and signed everyone they found. Over the first four years of the league, I gradually replaced every player on my team with international signings, and from year 5 onwards, imposed a rule that every player on my 25 and 40-man roster needed to be an international signing.

So, of course, from year 5 onwards, every team but mine could benefit from the amateur draft, signing free agents, trading, the rule 5 draft, and waiver claims. My team would lose all of its good amateur draft prospects in the rule 5 after three or four years, because I couldn't protect them on my 40-man roster. I was expecting to find some good prospects in other countries, and to have a few good players on my roster, but I was also expecting to have holes I couldn't fill; if I didn't find, say, any starting pitchers while scouting internationally, I'd have no choice but to put shortstops and catchers on the mound and hope for the best. Well, that didn't prove to be a problem. My team's records in its first three years of only using international signings:

Year 5: 60-162
Year 6: 68-94
Year 7: 89-73

The Year 7 team had an expected record of 92-70, was first in the NL in ERA, and 7th in runs scored.

In case anyone's interested, I broke down the scouting results:

-In seven years, my scouts found 125 players in total, for an average of just under 18 per year. So on average, each scout found one player every 4 months;

-Of the 125 players found, 11 requested Major League contracts, the other 114 minor league contracts. Of the 11 who were 'big league ready', three were 4-star relievers, four were 3-4-star position players, and the others backup types. So I found roughly one player every two years who was ready to start at the big-league level, one star reliever every two years, and another player every two years who could immediately be a bench guy. The sample size is small, of course;

-The breakdown by position was a bit uncanny:

SP: 22
RP: 21
C: 21
Infielders: 39
OF: 21

Relievers, starters, catchers and outfielders were found in almost exactly equal numbers, with about twice as many infielders as any other position. My minor league system is, of course, now overflowing with catchers, who seem disproportionately represented in the international player pool;


Players found by country [in brackets, the number who requested a Major League contract]:
Dominican Republic: 27 [3]
Canada: 25 [2]
Cuba: 22 [1]
Mexico: 19 [3]
Japan: 18 [1]
Puerto Rico: 14 [1]

My head scout was in Canada, so his other duties didn't seem to distract him from scouting the country. My scouts had similar ratings and experience, though my worst scouts were in Mexico and Japan- hard to say if scouting ratings have an effect, whether some countries are less populated than others, or if the sample size is too small.

Among players who became above average regulars, or who are now star prospects, by country:
DR: 7
Mexico: 6
Canada: 4
Cuba: 3
Japan: 1
Puerto Rico: 1

Again, it's a small sample size, so I wouldn't draw any firm conclusions, but the Dominican Republic proved the most profitable country to scout in this league, Japan and Puerto Rico the least.

As in other leagues where I've scouted internationally, it seems that only young players are created to begin with, though the age range expands as the league progresses. Ages of players found, by year:

year 1: 17-21
year 2: 17-23
year 3: 18-23
year 4: 19-26
year 5: 18-25
year 6: 19-29
year 7: 17-27

Even the 29 year old, signed in year 6, was 23 when the league was created, leading me to suspect that newly created hidden players are between 16 and 23 years of age, but of course can be much older when discovered, if they remain hidden long enough. The fact that I was finding 17-18 year olds most years makes me think a hidden player is replaced with a newly generated one soon after he is signed (elsewhere, I speculated that players were replaced more slowly, based on results from a different league).

May try again with the 'Good' countries (Venezuela, Taiwan, South Korea, Australia, China, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Panama...)

[1998 Yankees]

Your distribution of countries for players found and successful is interesting in the range from DR down to PR even though each (and all in your survey) have excellent baseball quality. Why such a disparity in that case?

As you mention, it could be scouting quality; could you continue the test but reassign scouts to countries in reverse order? Population? DR has 2.5 times the population of PR. Could it be that, the number of cities and their populations in the cities.txt file? Or is it just sample size?

Your age ranges by year are also noteworthy. The upper number seems to be increasing; does this mean there are hidden players out there who by random chance never get picked until much older, if at all? I think I remember reading somebody talking about his scout finding a 40-year-old prospect! If they are never "discovered," what happens to them? I guess we will never know the answer to that.

i.l., I'll keep reading if you want to keep doing the work.

[injury log]

Originally Posted by 1998 Yankees

Your distribution of countries for players found and successful is interesting in the range from DR down to PR even though each (and all in your survey) have excellent baseball quality. Why such a disparity in that case?

As you mention, it could be scouting quality; could you continue the test but reassign scouts to countries in reverse order? Population? DR has 2.5 times the population of PR. Could it be that, the number of cities and their populations in the cities.txt file? Or is it just sample size?

I've simmed forward a year (team record: 85-77), and Japan, at least, has caught up a bit. Updated numbers:

Dominican Republic: 31 [4]
Canada: 27 [2]
Cuba: 26 [1]
Japan: 24 [2]
Mex ico: 24 [3]
Puerto Rico: 15 [1]

Puerto Rico yielded only one new player in the year, despite the fact that my third best scout is there. Japan produced six new players, so have caught up to the other countries. It may just be sample size. Still I'll run a more extreme version of the test you suggest; I'll edit the scouts so three are as poor as possible, three as good as possible, and see how they perform. Now I've got baselines to judge their results.

Originally Posted by 1998 Yankees

Your age ranges by year are also noteworthy. The upper number seems to be increasing; does this mean there are hidden players out there who by random chance never get picked until much older, if at all? I think I remember reading somebody talking about his scout finding a 40-year-old prospect! If they are never "discovered," what happens to them? I guess we will never know the answer to that.

I think the hidden player pool will age as players aren't discovered, though weaker players will likely retire in their late 20s. I've certainly discovered players in their late 30s before, though they clearly had good ratings at one point, even if they were in decline when I found them (when you take over a team, and your head scout scouts all players, he also scouts hidden players, so you can sometimes see a player's ratings from several years ago when you first discover him). If I'm correct that newly generated hidden players are 23 and younger, then I wouldn't be able to find a player over 31 at the moment. I'm probably burning through the hidden players in my chosen countries as well, so I don't expect to find many older players unless I move to an unscouted country- something I'll try in a couple of years.

Originally Posted by 1998 Yankees

i.l., I'll keep reading if you want to keep doing the work.

I'll keep writing then!

[injury log]

dola,

And of course five minutes after posting the comments above about how unlikely it would be that I'd find older players, my scout digs up a 29 year old 5-star third baseman in Cuba.

[Tony M]

I don't know how often the game refreshes the international scouting pool, but in my editor (which I know you can't use i_l) there's an international scouting tab and I have seen on some of my leagues, the occassional retired international prospect!

[John]

I usually only keep 2 of my scouts engaged in foreign countries... and mix between very good and not so good countries... mixed results but it doesn't skew my team a whole lot. And I only sign 1 - 2 per year...

[1998 Yankees]

Originally Posted by injury log

I think the hidden player pool will age as players aren't discovered, though weaker players will likely retire in their late 20s. I've certainly discovered players in their late 30s before, though they clearly had good ratings at one point, even if they were in decline when I found them (when you take over a team, and your head scout scouts all players, he also scouts hidden players, so you can sometimes see a player's ratings from several years ago when you first discover him).

This is what really interests me in this already interesting thread. I always thought that hidden players were magically created just before a scout "discovered" them, and whatever age and potential they had were just random. What you are revealing here is a "hidden" world of hidden players just waiting to be discovered and given their chance, aging all the while they go undetected and their hopes fading with each passing season.

This almost makes me regret not using hidden players in my current league, but then I am consoled by the thought if I did not create them in the first place, then I am not neglecting them by failing to look for them. That would be the worst thing to do: Create hidden players and not scout for them, letting them languish, fade, and die in foreign lands, their talents wasted. Gosh.

[injury log]

Originally Posted by 1998 Yankees

This is what really interests me in this already interesting thread. I always thought that hidden players were magically created just before a scout "discovered" them, and whatever age and potential they had were just random. What you are revealing here is a "hidden" world of hidden players just waiting to be discovered and given their chance, aging all the while they go undetected and their hopes fading with each passing season.

I think the option is called 'Create and Maintain Hidden Players' because the game does just that- maintains a pool of hidden players who age and develop in their home countries until some scout lucks upon them, or until they give up and get a day job.

I wish I could use redsoxford's utilities (I'm on a Mac), but I'd think someone who could might be able to answer a couple of questions quickly:

-when you create a fresh league, what is the age range among hidden players? I suspect they'll be between 16 and 23, but would be interested to know for sure;

-can one tell how many players are hidden in each nation? If so, is there a significant difference in numbers hidden in the various Excellent baseball nations? I'm curious as to why Puerto Rico isn't on par with the other nations in my current league, and it may be that there just aren't as many players there.

I've been slowed by FaceGen issues, but I'll update soon on results of further tests.

[Tony M]

Originally Posted by injury log

I think the option is called 'Create and Maintain Hidden Players' because the game does just that- maintains a pool of hidden players who age and develop in their home countries until some scout lucks upon them, or until they give up and get a day job.

I wish I could use redsoxford's utilities (I'm on a Mac), but I'd think someone who could might be able to answer a couple of questions quickly:

-when you create a fresh league, what is the age range among hidden players? I suspect they'll be between 16 and 23, but would be interested to know for sure;

-can one tell how many players are hidden in each nation? If so, is there a significant difference in numbers hidden in the various Excellent baseball nations? I'm curious as to why Puerto Rico isn't on par with the other nations in my current league, and it may be that there just aren't as many players there.

I've been slowed by FaceGen issues, but I'll update soon on results of further tests.

I'll check that out later this evening i_l... Feeling completely wiped out by two long days in London.

[Tony M]

I just created an MLB style league and saved it on the 1-1-2007, and dumped out a list of country, position and age of all the 'hidden' players.

It's available at http://www.bourtonville.f2s.com/inte...nal_hidden.txt if anyone wants to number crunch it in Excel.

It's there now.

[Tony M]

triola,

it looks like there are 6 levels of numbers created 3, 10, 20, 30, 40 and 50 which must correspond with the baseball level in the country.

Position Split

1B - 147
2B - 195
3B - 121
C - 178
LF - 153
CF - 161
RF - 124
SS - 173
P - 1101

Age Split

16 - 396
17 - 407
18 - 407
19 - 394
20 - 472
21 - 31
22 - 44
23 - 55
24 - 50
25 - 43
26 - 31
27 - 15
28 - 8

[injury log]

Thanks, redsoxford- very interesting data. I'll have a few more comments tomorrow, but for now:

-I'm wondering what makes Puerto Rico so different from other nations in my current league. Clearly it's not the number of players; as redsoxford points out, all nations of equal quality have the same number of hidden players. I've simmed three more years (the team is now a perennial playoff team), and Puerto Rico has again yielded the fewest players, close to half as many as the Dominican Republic, even though the scout in Puerto Rico has the same ratings and more experience than the scout in the DR. Could still be sample size. I'll do a scout quality test soon...

-Small sample size may be a factor, of course- the position breakdown makes that clear, as I found the same number of catchers as outfielders in my league, despite the fact that outfielders outnumber catchers almost three to one in the hidden player pool;

-Good to be proven wrong about the ages of hidden players, and to get the true breakdown. Nearly 90% are 20 years and under, though six percent are over 23;

-I'll see whether the frequency of finding hidden players is proportional to the number of hidden players in a country with another test- sending scouts to some of the weaker nations;

-Have you ever checked, by signing a hidden player, then checking the nation numbers the following day, whether hidden players are immediately replaced? I'd predict hidden players are either replaced immediately, or on a certain calendar date (end of year or start of Pre-Season, perhaps);

-I like the fact that Sao Tome and Principe have a population of zero, according to the OOTP Nations list, but still have three hidden players. Zombies? And Tuvalu, with a real life population of 10,000, has 10 hidden players, thanks to their 'Poor' (as opposed to 'Non-Existent') baseball rating.

Thanks again.

[injury log]

Well, 12 years on, still following the same rules (international signs are the only players allowed on the roster), and I've made the World Series three of the last four seasons, have four-star infielders rotting in the minors because I have no room for them, and am losing 5-10 players per year in the rule 5 draft because I can't protect all my good prospects. I've convinced myself of just how sizeable an advantage international scouting provides the human player over the AI.

So now I'm moving on to other tests. I've begun testing whether scout ratings influence results when international scouting. I fired three of my current scouts, and hired three unemployed Team Doctors to fill the vacant scouting positions (even though I have coaches off, there are a lot of unemployed doctors hanging around). Of course the Doctors had mostly 0s for scouting ratings; I changed them to 1/200 in the Editor just in case the game had a problem or bug with 0 ratings. I've never hired such bad scouts before, and I found a few things interesting:

-they still requested massive salaries, commensurate, I suppose, with their skills in the medical profession;

-they're so bad they can't do a single quickscout, ever;

-they seemed to be wildly enthusiastic about every player they found internationally, while my Head Scout, after a quickscout, gave a much more sober assessment.

While it's a small sample size, the results after one year seem informative:

players found, by country:
Canada: 3
Japan: 0
Cuba: 2
Dominican Republic: 6
Puerto Rico: 3
Mexico: 5

The doctors are earning their paycheques- surprisingly enough, they're scouting the Dominican, Puerto Rico and Mexico, the most productive countries on the year. On average, each country has produced three players per year, so despite their brutal scouting ratings, the doctors are well outperforming the good scouts they replaced. I'm confident one of the two following conclusions are true:

-scout ratings have no or almost no influence on the number of players found internationally. An inverse correlation seems wildly unlikely to be programmed into the game, and statistically there's no way my doctors would have found so many players if ratings were anything but very weakly correlated with players found. Of course, the quality of players found is a different matter- I don't have enough data to judge;

OR
-there is a 'newness effect', whereby scouts discover more players when they are first assigned to a nation then they do later on. This doesn't accord with my past impressions in the game, however, though I've never collected data before this league.

In any case, I'll sim forward another couple of years to see if anything changes, and to see if the medics find many good players.

[injury log]

Triola,

I don't normally post stories about players in my leagues, but this guy was so remarkable that I'm making an exception. Ivan 'Surgeon' Hernandez is a third baseman my Dominican scout discovered. First off, his ratings were literally off the charts when my Head Scout quickscouted him- I'm on the 1-5 scouting scale, and most of his Potentials are 6s (even his Power was a 6 the next time I quickscouted him). More amazing still was his performance in his first few games (see screenshot below)- in 8 games, his RBI and HR totals are absolutely insane (the AI assigned him to Rookie ball for reasons passing understanding). The next year, in his first 5 games in AAA, he had 4 HRs and 18 RBIs, so this fast start wasn't an exceptional case. One reason I'm continuing with this league for these tests is to see how this guy turns out.

[1998 Yankees]

I always get a tingling sensation when I see solid blue in the potential ratings area. However, there may be several flies in the ointment:

1. This fellow better hit 'em high and far because he's not going to leg out too many hits! Fielding improves with experience, but not running skill, if I am not mistaken.
2. I know it's early, but I don't like his contact and eye/avoid K's ratings lagging so far behind his power numbers. This looks like it might be the beginnings of one of those career .200 batters who hit 25-30 home runs, 60-70 RBI's or so each season; when they make contact, it's usually a home run but they strike out too much.
3. Worst of all, though, are those low numbers for Intelligence and Work Ethic. Those don't change with age, for sure (um, do they?). Have you ever seen a "flash in the pan" player start out with a bang followed by a long slide into mediocrity and out of baseball? I think this is associated with low numbers in those personality traits which prevent the player from ever reaching full potential. At least, they may be the reason he never learns how to avoid K's and becomes the musclebound .200 hitter that I envision.

Now, having said all that, I would be very interested to see how this player turned out when his career is over. Hopefully there were no flies in your ointment after all!

[Curtis]

I found redsoxford's list illuminating. The one time I tried international scouting, the only 'prospect' I turned up was a 28 year old shortstop in Canada (in the first season of a league, by the way) who was a 20/23 overall/potential. I see that in his sample Canada has one of the few 28 year olds, along with two 26 year olds, making it probably the geriatric capital of international scouting (though Chile with two 27 year olds is also doing its part).

[mrcoach00]

Originally Posted by injury log

The doctors are earning their paycheques- surprisingly enough, they're scouting the Dominican, Puerto Rico and Mexico, the most productive countries on the year. On average, each country has produced three players per year, so despite their brutal scouting ratings, the doctors are well outperforming the good scouts they replaced. I'm confident one of the two following conclusions are true:

-scout ratings have no or almost no influence on the number of players found internationally.
OR
-there is a 'newness effect', whereby scouts discover more players when they are first assigned to a nation then they do later on.

How about this for a hypothetical? Perhaps since the doctors have such poor talent evaluation skills, they think anyone they come across carrying a glove and wearing spikes is a prospect; whereas, the "real" scouts are a bit more selective and they don't e-mail you with news about every Tom, Dick, or Harry?

I'd be curious to see if the doctors continue to lead the way in the department of uncovering talent, and what percent of the talent they find are actually decent prospects compared to the "real" scouts' percentages.

By the way, I love the work that you are doing here. Keep up the posts!
I run a fictional league with the smallest market and smallest payroll in the league, and I've been paying my scouts big money to keep me competitive!

[enuttage]

To integrate some real-world data into this very interesting thread, here are the numbers of MLB players from the countries you've been scouting. I suspect that, due to your results so far, these were NOT considered in this part of the game, but...just in case.

Canada: 210 (Population - ~33M)
Japan: 39 (Population - ~127M)
Cuba: 153 (Population - ~11M)
Dominican Republic: 453 (Population - ~9M)
Puerto Rico: 220 (Population - ~4M)
Mexico: 100 (Population - ~108M)

Now, of course we know that the appearance of Japanese players here is a relatively new phenomenon. It IS interesting to see the number of players/total population (to me, anyway).

All this begs the question, for me, of why the developer(s) decided to label Venezuela (205 players, ~26M) as a 'Good' nation, instead of an 'Excellent' one. The reason that this is interesting to me is because I wonder if someone looked at current percentages from these countries, as well. It may be out there for easy access somewhere, but I haven't really looked.

It is absolutely stunning to me how productive the DR, Cuba, and Puerto Rico (holy cow have they been prolific) have been in contributing to MLB over the years, despite their incredibly small (by comparison) populations.

Of course, Curaçao is also off the charts with six players and a population of under 150K.

Sorry to semi-hijack the thread. I'm following with intense interest here.

[injury log]

I've simmed forward a few years, and will update the scouting results in an hour or so.

First, about 'The Surgeon':

Originally Posted by 1998 Yankees

I always get a tingling sensation when I see solid blue in the potential ratings area. However, there may be several flies in the ointment:

1. This fellow better hit 'em high and far because he's not going to leg out too many hits! Fielding improves with experience, but not running skill, if I am not mistaken.
2. I know it's early, but I don't like his contact and eye/avoid K's ratings lagging so far behind his power numbers. This looks like it might be the beginnings of one of those career .200 batters who hit 25-30 home runs, 60-70 RBI's or so each season; when they make contact, it's usually a home run but they strike out too much.
3. Worst of all, though, are those low numbers for Intelligence and Work Ethic. Those don't change with age, for sure (um, do they?). Have you ever seen a "flash in the pan" player start out with a bang followed by a long slide into mediocrity and out of baseball? I think this is associated with low numbers in those personality traits which prevent the player from ever reaching full potential. At least, they may be the reason he never learns how to avoid K's and becomes the musclebound .200 hitter that I envision.

Now, having said all that, I would be very interested to see how this player turned out when his career is over. Hopefully there were no flies in your ointment after all!

I'm still amazed by his 33 RBIs in his first 8 pro games, which would put him on pace for 668 RBIs in a season. Of course, that says more about the lineup he was in than about the player. I think you're right about Personality ratings; I'm almost certain they never change. I've seen improvements in the running ratings, but I'm never sure if that's scouting error. In any case, I've never seen running ratings improve by much, though they can certainly go down as a player gets older. My guess, but it's just that, is that the running ratings are like the Fielding component ratings (Range, Error, Arm), and that they can improve, but only by small amounts. Unlike fielding, there is no baserunning experience rating that I know of (anything could be hidden, of course), so I don't think experience plays a role.

I'd have been more concerned about his low ratings in Avoid K and Contact if he had been older, say 23-24. It does seem that the game favours very young players with exceptional Potential, and they often develop very quickly, as was the case with the Surgeon. Because his current ratings were very close to his Potential, in almost no time he was MLB-ready (less than a year). With any player that young, even with monster Potential, I agree there's a definite risk he burns out quickly, and perhaps the risk is higher for players with bad Personality ratings- that would be interesting to know.

Well, so far, so good. Hernandez is now 25 years old, has blue 5s for all of his current batting ratings, and red 1s for all of his running and bunting ratings (his Sac bunting has fallen, but that may be the scout). He has just won his first MVP with a .329/.460/.608 season (36 HRs, 110 RBIs), and his lowest OPS over the last four years was .969. So he's dimwitted, lazy, can't run, and can't field, but man can he hit. The most ridiculous part of his stats line this year is actually his K/BB ratio (despite his poor Avoid K when I found him): in 554 ABs, he walked 121 times, with only 20 strikeouts. Ten of the walks were intentional, but that's still an absurd ratio for a power hitter, and one that seems very unrealistic to me. Is there a comparable performance in recent MLB?

Perhaps he burns out soon, but his career is on hold for a bit while I compile my scouts' results...

[1998 Yankees]

Originally Posted by injury log

So he's dimwitted, lazy, can't run, and can't field, but man can he hit.

Good verbal picture. He sounds like baseball movie material! Please keep us posted on his career, perhaps one more post when it's over. HoF or bust?