International Scouting Experiment

[injury log]

Originally Posted by mrcoach00

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.

The docs have been at work for 5 years now, in the Dominican, Puerto Rico and Mexico. Raw numbers first:

Dominican: 33 players found
Mexico: 28 players
Puerto Rico: 21 players found
Cuba: 20 players
Canada: 15 players
Japan: 7 players

Even over the last three years, they have been significantly more productive than the more experienced and more highly rated scouts (56 players found for the three doctors, only 27 for the three real scouts). Overall, the doctors are finding 4.5 players per year each, compared to 3.5 players per year for all scouts over the 16 years I've simmed. The Dominican also continues to outperform other nations, which seems unlikely if things are random. To check if there was a 'newness effect', I replaced my Canadian scout with an average scout, and after four years he's only found 2.75 players per year, much worse than the docs, and the docs are actually getting better the longer they stay- they've found more players per year over the last three years than in their first two. It's not a large sample from which to draw conclusions, but it doesn't seem that scout ratings have a large effect on how many players they find, and the data actually seems to suggest an inverse correlation (I doubt that's true, though; it seems improbable the game would be coded that way).

Now, the hypothetical you suggest is an interesting one, and it's a bit more difficult to judge talent, because player performance will also be affected by OOTP's vagaries of player development. Still, the doctors seem to be doing very well- far too well for me to think they're finding weaker players than other scouts would. For example, they've found 9 of my team's top 10 prospects (the other was found before the doctors were hired). They've also found the starters the AI inserts as no.1, no. 2 and no. 3 in my rotation. While Japan, Cuba and Canada have produced four or five pitchers who look like they might be useful, including a couple of very good relievers, only one, a starter from Japan, has ranked in my team's top 10 prospects, and he never made the league top 100. The players found in the doctors' countires, on the other hand (just the highlights):

Dominican Republic:
SP
Pepe Aviles [no. 35 prospect in MLB]
David Ojeda [no. 65 prospect in MLB, and my team's no 2 starter]
1B
Francisco Freitas [no. 4 prospect in MLB; .381 AVG with 35 HRs in AAA]
2B
Andres Espinoza [no. 9 prospect on team, not ranked in top 100]
CF
Alberto Moran [no. 75 prospect in MLB]
Jose Flores [no. 77 prospect in MLB]
Carlos Gonzales [a fast, MLB-ready outfielder, average hitter]

Puerto Rico
SP
Alonso Sandaval [no. 42 prospect in MLB]
Mo Grose [MLB-ready when found; my team's no. 1 starter]
Jose Romero [no. 58 prospect in MLB; my team's no. 3 starter]
RF
Dave Hathaway [no. 10 prospect on my team, not in league top 100]

Mexico:
sp
Stewart Huggett [was MLB-ready when found, and went 18-4, 2.30 ERA in the Majors after signing, but has declined quickly]

It's a productive-looking group, and their ratings seem in line with their prospect rankings. So, if better ranked scouts do better in international scouting, I've had an absolutely absurd run of luck in my league. From the data, I'm pretty sure ratings don't make a difference.

Time for a late lunch, but enuttage- interesting data!- I'll respond in a bit. The final overall tallies in my league after 16 years [in brackets, the number requesting MLB contracts]:

DR: 79 [6]
Mexico: 61 [7]
Cuba: 53 [3]
PR: 49 [8]
Canada: 48 [3]
Japan: 44 [4]

[injury log]

Originally Posted by 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.

Those numbers are very interesting indeed- I'd be interested to know where you found them, and if a complete list by nationality is available. It is, of course, possible to customize the nations.txt file, and with information like the above, it should be possible to make a more accurate nations list. That's something I'd be happy to do if I had the data. It does seem that Venezuela and Mexico should have their ratings reversed, for example, and that the Netherlands Antilles (Curacao) should maybe be a bit higher in rating; right now it's on par with Tuvalu, and I'd be surprised if Tuvalu has ever produced a professional ballplayer, let alone a big leaguer (quick research reveals that they do have a baseball federation, however, so there's some baseball there). It seems clear from redsoxford's results that population isn't important- only the program quality matters- when the game generates hidden players.

I have a couple more results from the 16 years of my survey:

334 players found in total. Of these, 155 have played in the Majors, and I expect there are enough players who have yet to make it to bring the percentage to near 50%. Of course, several of the guys who made the Majors only had a cup of coffee there, but since I only ever promoted players who were storming AAA, this should give some indication of how good international players are overall. My team has made the playoffs eight years running (though still hasn't won the WS in three trips), which gives some idea of the quality of the top players as well.

My system became so stacked with international prospects that I've lost 39 players in the Rule 5 draft, during the 11-12 years when my signings might be eligible, despite the fact that I was protecting 40 international signs each year. Finally, my minor league system has performed exceedingly well, in large part, I think, because I continually resigned my international players when they were eligible for minor league free agency. I think this points to a separate game issue, and I'll probably start a separate thread about it (retaining minor league free agents leads to a great system, because AI teams don't resign theirs, and AI teams also don't seem to sign enough good minor league FAs- many minor league vets sit in the FA pool and then retire). It's also indicative of the number and quality of the international players signed; in most cases, when discovered they have much higher ratings than your average draft pick, and the majority make good AA or AAA players immediately. After signing many international players, a lot of good guys get shunted down the system, making for dominant teams at the lower levels.

As a representative example, the team records for my minor league squads last season were:

AAA: 113-31
AA: 111-29
hi-A: 115-25
lo-A: 122-18
rookie1: 65-11 [68-8 was their best record, five years ago]
rookie2: 36-18 [49-5 was their best, eight years ago]

[injury log]

One last update- I think I've learned what I can from the 16 year sim scouting Excellent baseball nations. I've reassigned my scouts to six nations ranked 'Poor':

Indonesia
The Netherlands Antilles (thanks, enuttage!)
Tuvalu
Uzbekistan
Mali
Ecuador

From past experience, I know they're very unlikely to find any good players. I'm interested to know how often they'll find players- whether it's 1/5th as often, directly proportional to the number of hidden players, or more frequent. This will also put the bad scouts and good scouts on equal footing, all with a fresh start, so I can test further whether ratings make any difference in how many players are discovered. Will post results when I get them...

[jar2574]

Great thread. Keep up the good work.

I just started a league with "hidden players." I don't know if I'll send my scouts out to other nations though. It will feel like cheating unless the AI can do it, and I thought I had heard that the AI doesn't scout abroad.

[Curtis]

They do, just not frequently.

[zukes]

I've had it when a new free agent shows up out of the blue with no stats. My league has a feeder high school and college level and all players from the draft come from there and it is MLB style with no other leagues (i.e. Japan etc). What I figured was another team unearthed this guy, he was from Columbia I believe, and then decided not to sign him. I scooped him up since a quick-scout said he was a decent prospect. So it does happen.

The prospect had a few talent hits since then so I guess whoever found him was right.

[enuttage]

Originally Posted by injury log

Those numbers are very interesting indeed- I'd be interested to know where you found them, and if a complete list by nationality is available. It is, of course, possible to customize the nations.txt file, and with information like the above, it should be possible to make a more accurate nations list. That's something I'd be happy to do if I had the data. It does seem that Venezuela and Mexico should have their ratings reversed, for example, and that the Netherlands Antilles (Curacao) should maybe be a bit higher in rating; right now it's on par with Tuvalu, and I'd be surprised if Tuvalu has ever produced a professional ballplayer, let alone a big leaguer (quick research reveals that they do have a baseball federation, however, so there's some baseball there). It seems clear from redsoxford's results that population isn't important- only the program quality matters- when the game generates hidden players.

Oop. Meant to mention where I'd found the data.

http://www.baseball-reference.com/bio/

And...you are correct. No, er, Tuvaluians have made it. One from Afghanistan, though. One from Indonesia (just debuted). And one (my personal fav) from A Ship on Atlantic Ocean.

[injury log]

So far, one 4-star prospect from Uzbekistan (!), but many fewer players overall, almost all of whom look terrible. Still need to get a few years in.

enuttage- that's fantastic info. I'll look at it further, and see if I can draw up a more realistic nations.txt file based on those numbers. I'll have to add 'Ship on the Atlantic' to the nations file as well- I like the idea of sending one of my scouts off to scour some ocean liner for pitching prospects.

jar- whenever I've played a non-test league with hidden players, I've always imposed restrictions, because of the serious edge I can gain otherwise. Some examples that I've used (they're mostly very strict, and some penalize more than they help!):

-only sign players who are under 16 or 17 years old;
-sign all players, but release all who are 18 and over, so the AI can sign them;
-sign and keep only 10% of players found; release the rest to free agency (determining the 10% randomly, of course);
-sign only one player per calendar year, while releasing the rest to free agency. Once you've signed your guy for the year, you can't sign another, no matter how good he might look. Of course, this only works if you make a signing decision as soon as you find each player;
-only scout countries rated 'Fair' or below (or 'Poor' and below);
-etc...

I normally play with the first restriction, which seems the most realistic to me (since most prospects from Central and South America are signed at 16 or 17). In the 16 years of my test so far, my six scouts have found 20 players in total who were 16 or 17 years old, so each scout finds one such player about once every five years- not many, though some of them are very good.

zukes- While the player you mention sounds like an international player, it seems strange to me that he ended up in free agency. In the few cases where I've tracked it, if I don't sign a hidden player that my scouts discover, he stays in his home country, and doesn't become a free agent. I wonder whether AI teams truly 'find' hidden players in the first place, or whether the game just introduces them to the FA pool, and AI teams sign them from there.

[SDtwin]

This could explain my current team's awesomeness. I Like this thread

[injury log]

I've simmed three years, scouting the Poor countries (10 players each), and have only found 12 original players in total (and five unoriginal ones; see below). The number found is very roughly proportional to the number of players in the nations- it's approximately one fifth the number I was finding in Excellent nations (50 players each).

Unfortunately I've encountered a bug, and because of this, I'm going to run a fresh test; with the 'delete retired players who never reach the Majors' option turned on, it seems the game eventually mangles the player ids for hidden players, and this means I'm discovering some existing players, with several years Major League experience, while scouting Tuvalu. I actually (re)discovered my team's current no. 1 starter, 6 years MLB experience, in Tuvalu- my guess is he was on a surfing holiday. The major problem is that when I rediscover these guys, the game immediately voids their contracts, so by scouting Tuvalu, I'm causing several players around my minors and Majors to be released for no good reason. I've posted a very long report to Tech Support, with my best stab at an explanation of the game's behaviour.

Will try anew, to see how the Poor nations do!

[zukes]

It's possible that the game may do that because if it's not AI teams scouting them and then not signing that is the only other way to get into my game. He didn't play college or high school so I guess he could have been around since my inagural draft (3 years ago) got a talent and ratings boost just as I found him.

[injury log]

I started a new league, and sent all six scouts (one who is actually a team doctor) to six countries ranked 'Fair' (India, Russia, Armenia, Ghana, Honduras and Finland). According to redsoxford's analysis of the international scouting pool, Fair countries should have 20 hidden players each. When scouting Excellent countries (50 players each), each of my scouts found, on average 3.6 players per year. I was curious to see whether the number found in a country was directly proportional to the number of players hidden in that country- that is, I was interested to know whether I'd find 40% as many players in a Fair country as in an Excellent country. After 4 years, I've found 36 players in total, or 1.5 players per year per scout. This is consistent with the hypothesis, that there is a direct proportion between hidden players and players found. A quick test with Poor nations also supported this hypothesis, so assuming it's true, one can expect one scout to find:

Excellent nation (50 hidden players): 3.6 players per year
Good nation (40 hidden players): 2.9 players per year
Average nation (30 hidden players): 2.2 players per year
Fair nation (20 hidden players): 1.4 players per year
Poor nation (10 hidden players): 0.7 players per year
Non-Existent nation (3 hidden players): 0.2 players per year

These are averages only, and the distribution per scout can be quite skewed. My Honduras scout, for example, didn't find a single player in his first two years in the country (and he is my highest rated scout). I'll likely run a test with Non-Existent nations to confirm the above rates.

Of course, the quality of players in Fair nations is also significantly worse than those from Excellent nations. I was curious to see whether there was any point to scouting weaker countries. I was able to get a scouting assessment of all my players by quitting and rehiring myself (luckily this doesn't affect the international scouting assignments), and of the 36 players found in Fair nations, only three have a Potential rating higher than one star. One SP and one RP have a Potential of 1+ stars, and one RP has a Potential of 4+ stars. This was the result of Potential boosts after signing the player; while four or five of the players I've found at first appear to have the Potential to serve as bench players or mop up relievers in the Majors, none looks to have the upside to serve an important role on my team. Only two of the players I've found have climbed even as far as AAA, with the AI determining minor league assignments, and none has yet played in the Majors. So the quality of players is very weak, but the randomness of OOTP's development engine ensures that, very rarely, some of these guys will turn into prospects. Still, they don't seem to be any better bets than random players one could draft at the end of the amateur draft.

I should add that, with 'Delete retired players who never make the Majors' on, the game eventually scrambles the player ids of hidden players (but only after hidden players start retiring, so it takes several years before the effect is noticeable). Because of this, if this option is on, it is possible to find very good players in bad countries after simming for a decade or two. This has been 'claimed fixed' for the next patch.

And an update on Ivan Hernandez, whose screenshot I posted earlier- after several consecutive all-star seasons and one MVP award, he suffered a career ending injury at age 28. I think I jinxed him...

[1998 Yankees]

Originally Posted by injury log

And an update on Ivan Hernandez, whose screenshot I posted earlier- after several consecutive all-star seasons and one MVP award, he suffered a career ending injury at age 28. I think I jinxed him...

As one recent poster observed, "Och." Oh well. Maybe now he will go to medical school and become a real surgeon, living up to his nickname. He will not need any student loans, I wager.

[1998 Yankees]

Oh, I should add that you have done a fine job of analysis in this thread, by the way.

[darkcloud4579]

This thread is very handy and useful. Thanks for it.

[injury log]

It's been fun. I'll post one final update: I sent scouts to countries with 'non-existent' baseball, and found a few more players than I expected- not many, but slightly more than the numbers above would predict- and I'll report back on that when I have a bit more data.

[Mike775]

Ive sent my scouts to other countries and found lousy players. I was wondering If I did find a potential superstar from lets say; Puerto Rico, how do I sign him? Do I wait for the draft or am I missing something on the drop down menu in "action" in the players stats?

[injury log]

Originally Posted by Mike775

Ive sent my scouts to other countries and found lousy players. I was wondering If I did find a potential superstar from lets say; Puerto Rico, how do I sign him? Do I wait for the draft or am I missing something on the drop down menu in "action" in the players stats?

If you find a player, he'll be a free agent (but a hidden one; he won't be in the free agent pool), so you'll never see him in the draft. When you get the email from your scout reporting that he's found the player, you can sign him either by:

-clicking on the player's name to open his player Profile, and then choosing 'Offer Contract' from the Action menu at the bottom of the screen;

-right-clicking (ctrl-clicking on Mac) on the player's name and choosing 'Offer Contract'.

The player will also be added to your shortlist, so if you don't sign him right away, you can still find him later and sign him then.

If your scout is in Puerto Rico, he'll find some good players eventually!

[tasan01]

Originally Posted by injury log

... 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?

I found one that compares rather nicely, someone we all love to hate:
Barry Bond, 2004
In 373 ABs, he hit 45 HRs while walking 232 times and only striking out 41 times.

Wowzers, he was a beast that year.

All courtesy of baseball-reference.com

[bailey]

I'm wondering if there is a best time of year to scout internationally. Or are you finding players to sign equally throughout the year? For example, I might like to scout the teams in my league, but I don't want to miss a good time for making international signings, either. I'm also wondering, if in an online league for example, if several GMs are looking in the same country, if it reduces everyone's chance of discovering a player.