Does OOTP Player Development Needs to Be Fixed?

[Syd Thrift]

The other thing I proposed a while back but which may take up too much space or coding time is that real, actual ratings should be completely hidden from everybody and scouted ratings should be based on player performance. Not exactly stats, but stats would make up a large part of it. You could also base things like power on the location of a guy's outs or patience/avoiding Ks on how deep he gets into counts or sees 0-2 pitches, for example. If a guy hits .300 for 2 straight seasons in A-ball, he should be given a pretty decent contact rating, at least one you can see. Whether that .300 is due to poor competition, luck, or actual skill is up to you to figure out.

[cuervo72]

Originally Posted by Markus Heinsohn

Some players just start aging very early... this guy is 31, so that's probably the case here.

Ok, how about a 22 year old then?

Player Report for #22 James 'The Shield' Coutee

58 HR, 171 RBI at 22. Then a dev hit the following April 5th, another the March after that, and another decrease in talent that May. Goes from 58HR, to 21HR, to 5 to being in the minors at 25 (edit: probably on the off chance that at 25, he might post great AAA numbers and get a talent boost...Killebrew is his current owner, fwiw).

Normal progression?

[Matches]

Originally Posted by kq76

I would vehemently disagree with the notion that a player's potential should be a fixed point. Maybe a fixed range (a short fat guy even with everything else going perfect is probably not going to make the majors), but not a fixed point. There are just too many things that change over time that affect one's potential to believe that we have fixed potential at anything.

As for scouting I think the game should allow an individual scout to completely be off on guys, but the average ratings of scouts should be pretty accurate with the understanding that changes in development could make them look pretty far off over time.

I think at any given point in time every human has a fixed point of potential in every skill. Things change over time but I think that really the only thing that changes a person's true potential in any given skill is physiological changes. If a player breaks his leg, his potential for running speed may be irrevocably diminished. If he his beaned in the eye by a pitch, his potential any number of hitting skills may be gone for good.

Scouting is interesting. Should an individual scout, be "completely" off on guys? Depends on what you mean by completely. What is represented by a scout with a "1" in evaluating batting talent? How about a "10"? Would an even a mediocre professional scout ever study Alex Rodriguez and decide he was an average hitter? Would he ever scout Juan Pierre and decide he had a 15 homer season in him? No more than one should scout an OOTP player at the end of a .300 season and report that his ability in contact hitting has dropped from 12 to 9.

Of course, young players and scouting potential is a whole other story. Of course scouts should be way off at times, and the SCOUTED talents and potential should be dependent partly on a player's performance.

[Neags23]

Originally Posted by Matches

Scouting is interesting. Should an individual scout, be "completely" off on guys? Depends on what you mean by completely. What is represented by a scout with a "1" in evaluating batting talent? How about a "10"? Would an even a mediocre professional scout ever study Alex Rodriguez and decide he was an average hitter? Would he ever scout Juan Pierre and decide he had a 15 homer season in him? No more than one should scout an OOTP player at the end of a .300 season and report that his ability in contact hitting has dropped from 12 to 9.

But we (like scouts) only know ARod is much more than an average hitter because we have 10+ seasons showing us that. Same with Pierre (with 7 years worth of stats). When ARod was in high school, it might be reasonable for a scout to say he might only be an average hitter. Once he started clobbering 50 homers a year, though, no scout is going to say that. Scouting established ML players is a whole different ballgame from scouting the draft.

[Matches]

Yes, yes. Hence the third paragraph of my post. I don't find much wrong with how the game appears to scout young talent. It is a little odd to semi-frequently see 4 scouts judge a high schooler as a future all-star and then 1 of your scouts think he's chopped liver. On the whole I think ... Well, I've read that in 9 scouting got a makeover, so this may be moot. But I've always wanted a composite sketch of my scouting staff's opinion on players. If 3 of my scouts think a guy is a future all-star, but the other 3 think he' a chump, there's no way to easily know this unless I go to the scouting reports tab on the player's card.

Having 6 scouts give their opinions is great. But what's great about it (the ability to temper some scouts' exuberance with another scout's sour outlook to get a toned down sketch of the player in question) is always a couple clicks away rather than right at my fingertips. When doing an amateur draft I find myself going to the scouting reports tab and scrolling through the guys that way, looking for guys that my scouts have a better consensus on. The main draft window will show me, in order, the Potential for every player, according to ONE of my scouts. It's nice, but disastrous if you trust that one scout and draft him in the first round when 4 others think the guy stinks. A lot of clicks on that amateur draft page that could be avoided.

[conception]

Originally Posted by Matches

Yes, yes. Hence the third paragraph of my post. I don't find much wrong with how the game appears to scout young talent. It is a little odd to semi-frequently see 4 scouts judge a high schooler as a future all-star and then 1 of your scouts think he's chopped liver. On the whole I think ... Well, I've read that in 9 scouting got a makeover, so this may be moot. But I've always wanted a composite sketch of my scouting staff's opinion on players. If 3 of my scouts think a guy is a future all-star, but the other 3 think he' a chump, there's no way to easily know this unless I go to the scouting reports tab on the player's card.

Having 6 scouts give their opinions is great. But what's great about it (the ability to temper some scouts' exuberance with another scout's sour outlook to get a toned down sketch of the player in question) is always a couple clicks away rather than right at my fingertips. When doing an amateur draft I find myself going to the scouting reports tab and scrolling through the guys that way, looking for guys that my scouts have a better consensus on. The main draft window will show me, in order, the Potential for every player, according to ONE of my scouts. It's nice, but disastrous if you trust that one scout and draft him in the first round when 4 others think the guy stinks. A lot of clicks on that amateur draft page that could be avoided.

Yeah the amateur draft can be quote a headache. It also seems to be hard for me to have a good draft with scouts on, even though I pretty much have the best in the game on it and only draft players that scouts reach a consensus on.

[RonCo]

Originally Posted by Syd Thrift

Yeah, and on the other hand you get flashes in the pan like Eric Yelding.

I don't understand. Yelding was crappy from the moment he showed up, and was crappy in the minors. He played only because he had blazing speed. He was never considered to be a good ball player. Everything you heard was, "he'll be great if he can just learn to hit."

I don't mind the idea of stats leading to real talent increases on occasion (this would be a good way, for example, to model the career of a Luis Gonzalez),

No, this would be a bad way to model Gonzo. He was another guy who had cruddy early numbers but played through them because he was considered to have good talent. Other than his 33-yo season, his numbers fit a perfectly normal development curve that would be just as well modeled with a better process that was fueled by ratings adjustment rather than movement based on stats.

That being said, I still think the pitcher endurance/injury system is a much, much larger problem than this.

I think they are equal.

[RonCo]

Originally Posted by Syd Thrift

If we're going to have lots of ratings bumps and drops, they should be for other things like (I know you're going to not like this, but you're no longer on the beta team anyway) morale or the quality of the coaching staff or the level the player is at compared with his age ...

What does the fact that I'm on the beta team or not have to do with whether I like something or whether the model is any good? What I guess you must mean is: "since you're not there to defend against silly ideas like morale having a bearing on talent, we're going to push Markus to do that." If so, this is another example of Markus getting in trouble by listening to users.

[RonCo]

I hope I don't need to post another long list of players who were considered to be unhappy but played on just fine to refute the concept that morale makes a difference on a player's raw ability to play baseball.

[jarmenia]

Originally Posted by RonCo

I hope I don't need to post another long list of players who were considered to be unhappy but played on just fine to refute the concept that morale makes a difference on a player's raw ability to play baseball.

Well maybe only unhappy players, or players who are on the last year of their contract could get talent hits. Or maybe being born on a Tuesday could influence talent hits...







I'm being sarcastic if you couldn't tell....

[The Wolf]

Originally Posted by RonCo

I have seen no argument that successfully shows poor stats, all by themselves, lead to future poor performance. It is ill-logical to suggest such a model is "true" even though it can be made to work in a software environment.

Except for the spelling of "illogical," I agree with that 100%.

The player development model needs to be fixed.

[injury log]

Originally Posted by RonCo

What I guess you must mean "since you're not there to defend against silly ideas like morale having a bearing on talent, we're going to push Markus to do that."

You're not the only person who would defend against silly ideas like that- most of us would, quite adamantly.

[andymac]

The way that I have always seen it is that no player has any type of true "potential" or ceiling in "talent". Players are always developing/aging/changing due to multiple factors. I would love to see the true potential ratings removed from the game and development run completely on the Tango modifiers with additional factors including work ethic, intelligence, athleticism, coaching, luck, etc. Scouts should use all of those same factors to varying degrees to give you a projection of where they think that player could end up.

[RonCo]

Originally Posted by The Wolf

Except for the spelling of "illogical," I agree with that 100%.

It's logical that you would disagree with my ill-logical spelling of illogical.

[RonCo]

Originally Posted by andymac

The way that I have always seen it is that no player has any type of true "potential" or ceiling in "talent". Players are always developing/aging/changing due to multiple factors. I would love to see the true potential ratings removed from the game and development run completely on the Tango modifiers with additional factors including work ethic, intelligence, athleticism, coaching, luck, etc. Scouts should use all of those same factors to varying degrees to give you a projection of where they think that player could end up.

What a concept.

[ctorg]

Actually, a better term for potential or talent might be something like "ideal projection" - which is to say: "This is how good this guy will be if things click right." There's no reason this can't change over time.

Realistically, if potential is something that doesn't move, then most players should be 4 or 5 star potential guys. Most professional players are potentially great players. Not many guys are drafted with the idea that they might one day, with work, become a marginal backup shortstop. They wouldn't be in the draft if there weren't some potential for them to break out into greatness, or at least very-goodness. Teams just wouldn't expend resources on that.

[RonCo]

Originally Posted by ctorg

Realistically, if potential is something that doesn't move, then most players should be 4 or 5 star potential guys. Most professional players are potentially great players. Not many guys are drafted with the idea that they might one day, with work, become a marginal backup shortstop. They wouldn't be in the draft if there weren't some potential for them to break out into greatness, or at least very-goodness. Teams just wouldn't expend resources on that.

I don't know that I agree. Teams draft 50+ rounds because:

1) They need to fill minor league teams rosters
2) They know they are very poor at determining who is going to make it, so they draft deep to cover the many cases where they are wrong
3) They know their opponents are drafting that deep, so to not draft that deep would give their opponents a competitive advantage
4) They know those late picks are like lottery tickets. It only takes one or two to pan out and they make it all back.
5) Minor league teams can actually make money
6) I'm sure there are other reasons...

Academically, I agree with the idea that if they could find a more efficient and cost-effective way to find talent they would do it. But I know that not every player drafted into an MLB organization is considered to have a major-league caliber top-end. So realistically, I think the minors exist because it's historically been a good investment, regardless of the number of 5-stars that appear to be available.

[jarmenia]

Originally Posted by andymac

The way that I have always seen it is that no player has any type of true "potential" or ceiling in "talent". Players are always developing/aging/changing due to multiple factors. I would love to see the true potential ratings removed from the game and development run completely on the Tango modifiers with additional factors including work ethic, intelligence, athleticism, coaching, luck, etc. Scouts should use all of those same factors to varying degrees to give you a projection of where they think that player could end up.

+1 billion zillion

Its not like this is a new suggestion but for some reason Markus just doesn't want it. It seems so straightforward and simple...

[andymac]

Yea, I definitely think that guys are drafted with the organization having the idea that "this guy has a shot at being a 25th man" but those are mostly the guys at the very end. I would say that anyone drafted in the first 30 rounds or so has at least one scout telling the team that he could be a solid major league player, usually based on one perceived skill and the idea that they could develop around it. Scouts definitely "overrate" the draft class at the beginning. This is because they are looking at their most optimistic perceived end for each player. They have to do that because the guys they are drafting have a ton of development ahead of them and there just isn't a good way to tell them apart at their young age.

[RonCo]

I definitely agree that there's no need for a dev engine to have a specified ceiling. I understand the attractivenss of the idea of a listed "true" potential, but there's no real need for it, or value in it in the design of a development model.

If your reaction to this idea is a visceral dislike, then I suggest you think about the difference between true development and scouting. These two models need to be separated. Development needs to work as close to real life as possible across all players, _then_ scouting needs to act as a projection for how _this one player_ is most likely progress _based on all stuff known at the time of the projection_.

Scouts deal in projected peaks. The dev engine itself does not _need_ it at all.