Everyone in the draft pool sucks-- is this normal?

[kikker]

Originally Posted by Dark Horse

....If you wanted more talent in the draft you would want make it create for many more rounds than you need...

What are the recommendations for number of rounds in the amateur draft? I have 24 pro teams in my league with 4 minor league teams under each pro team (A through AAA, plus a short season A ball).

Is there a generally accepted formula for calculating the number of rounds?

[Ruthian23]

Originally Posted by bwd

I think the bigger question is how often do 1 star players develop into decent or even great major leaguers in the game? IRL there are tons of examples of all-star caliber players that went in late rounds and suddenly had something click a couple years later. Does this happen?

I just opened up OOTP 9 and took a look at where some of the best players in an extended league that I had in 9 were drafted. It was my impression that OOTP did not have many guys at all who turn into great or good players who were drafted in later rounds (even after the beginning of the first round) and that's what I expected to find, but I am pleased to say that I appear to have been flat out wrong about that aspect of it. There are a TON of top players who got big ratings bumps and turned from * prospect types into All-Stars and potential HOFers (13th rounders, 15th rounders, 18th rounders, a bunch of 3rd rounders, etc.) I'm very happy to stand corrected from my earlier view.

I do think that it is just wrong that any MLB scout would look at an entire draft class and think that only nine guys in the whole class had over * potential--I think that most teams at least think that there's an outside shot at their first several picks helping the major league team and I think that there should be more separation between players in the later rounds in OOTP, since I agree with the poster who said that he basically does the first one or two rounds and then lets the computer do the rest since the rest of the draft pool is basically the game, but as long as there are those diamonds in the rough, and there appear to be, I'm happy enough for now. I just hope I find one some day.

[Curtis]

Originally Posted by kikker

What are the recommendations for number of rounds in the amateur draft? I have 24 pro teams in my league with 4 minor league teams under each pro team (A through AAA, plus a short season A ball).

Is there a generally accepted formula for calculating the number of rounds?

The generally accepted formula is five rounds per affiliated minor, which would be 20 rounds for you. My formula is four rounds per affiliated minor, plus four for the parent club, which would also yield twenty. (Other formulae also exist.)

Some posters have advocated one more round of players created than of draft, especially for 12 or fewer rounds of draft. More commonly the recommendation is to increase by 20 or 25%, which would result in 24 or 25 rounds created for you. Personally, I like a bigger bump, so I'll go 50% for smaller drafts, and for MLB universes with seven affilated minors I'll use 32 rounds of draft and 50 rounds of creation.

[lynchjm24]

The single biggest negative issue with OOTP is the draft. It sucks, plain and simple.

[Afino]

Originally Posted by Curtis

The generally accepted formula is five rounds per affiliated minor, which would be 20 rounds for you. My formula is four rounds per affiliated minor, plus four for the parent club, which would also yield twenty. (Other formulae also exist.)

Some posters have advocated one more round of players created than of draft, especially for 12 or fewer rounds of draft. More commonly the recommendation is to increase by 20 or 25%, which would result in 24 or 25 rounds created for you. Personally, I like a bigger bump, so I'll go 50% for smaller drafts, and for MLB universes with seven affilated minors I'll use 32 rounds of draft and 50 rounds of creation.

I'm also an advocate of the upping the rounds of players created, but ALSO dropping the draft rounds.

So say if the traditional formula would result in 15 rounds suggested, I'd put the draft rounds at 12 and the created players for x rounds at 20.

[Broth32]

Originally Posted by lynchjm24

The single biggest negative issue with OOTP is the draft. It sucks, plain and simple.

+1 - I agree... but I do for see that one of these years we are going to see a "new feature" about the draft in later installments of OOTP.

[lynchjm24]

Originally Posted by Broth32

+1 - I agree... but I do for see that one of these years we are going to see a "new feature" about the draft in later installments of OOTP.

I have no idea how it hasn't been addressed before. I'm completely at a loss as to how anyone who plays a solo league with scouting isn't 100% infuriated by the draft.

[Curtis]

Well, a poster just today said that he was getting three star draftees well into the middle rounds, so not everyone is being affected by this.

[Matter2003]

Increasing the size of your draft pool will likely increase the number of good players...

Is it realistic that there are only 150 players available to be drafted after the draft ends? IRL there are thousands and thousands of players...

Then again, if there were more good players, we would be hearing from the other group of people who are complaining about why their scouts say the players are great at draft time but then 2 years later their ratings suck. Isn't that what usually happens when scouts realize the players just aren't going to be as good as they thought?

[Broth32]

I guess my problem is the potential of draftees. I'm not saying that there should be better players in the draft but it's such a crap shoot after the first round because everyone left in the draft is 1 star potential. Maybe have several 2-3 star potentials that may or may not pan out.

[Matter2003]

looking at baseball-reference.com's list of 1st round picks over the years and their careers, shows that in any given 1st round, there are only between 1 and 4 players that go on to have really good MLB careers. Sure there are a lot of players who make it to the majors, as should be expected---usually between 63-79% of a given class, and probably about half of them turn into regular major league players with nice careers, but most of them are just your every day run of the mill average to good players---not the really great ones you expect when you draft them in the first round.

How else is OOTP supposed to model this? Obviously the scouts all thought at the time, these players were going to be really good, otherwise they would not have wasted a 1st round pick on them. They all thought their potentials were going to be very high. Over time however, they started realizing the players just didn't have the potential they thought they did, or they just didn't develop properly. Either way, the players never turned out to be what they thought they would be, and this is the case for 86-96% of the players drafted in the first round. I am still trying to understand the drafting problem when this type of factual information is presented...

[Pdubya64]

What tends to make things confusing Broth is that Head Scouting can vary so widely. Not only is there the ratings difference- obviously you want the best guy you can afford to increase the "truth factor", but then one has to consider the type of scout wrt his position on the tools/neutral/ability spectrum. I won't even go into all the other factors involved.
Since there is quite a bit of debate concerning these issues and subjects, it only compounds the problems. I don't think we typically come into any discussion around the boards with everyone on the same page. Look at practically any thread and a large portion of it consists of contributors asking Who, What, When, Where, Why and How... just to get to agreement on where to start.

No wonder there are some pretty grumpy folks at times.

[Matter2003]

Originally Posted by Pdubya64

Since there is quite a bit of debate concerning these issues and subjects, it only compounds the problems. I don't think we typically come into any discussion around the boards with everyone on the same page. Look at practically any thread and a large portion of it consists of contributors asking Who, What, When, Where, Why and How... just to get to agreement on where to start.

No wonder there are some pretty grumpy folks at times.

Well, I think where the problem lies is that most people agree that many players who are rated good or great in the first round draft will likely never become anything more than a decent major leaguer, but there is a big difference as to how to implement the potential decline...

[lynchjm24]

My problem isn't with the quality or number of players. My problem is that I can easily tell by using OSA compared with my scout who the actual prospects are and who the busts are.

It's little fun to do the draft knowing that the more my scout likes a player, the more likely it is he is wrong. I posted this in another thread showing how bad scouting is implemented from a gaming standpoint with respect to the draft. I simmed to the draft and walked through the info available to me and how easy it is to make conclusions about the players, then I verified them in the editor.

-------


I'm Philadelphia, I pick 7th.

My scout is maxed out rating amateurs and the budget is maxed out to scout them.

Potentials are contact-power-eye hitters stuff-movement-control pitchers

My scout thinks the 8 best non MR players are
Mangan CF 14-13-14
Miller SP 12-13-11
Rigney SP 15-16-17
Martinez CF 14-12-11
Ford SP 9-15-13
Luna C 10-16-9
Osborn C 12-12-15
Gonzalez LF 11-12-11

OSA on these players (I haven't looked but already have a good idea of who my scout is HIGHLY overrating)
Mangan CF 12-8-8
Miller SP 5-7-6
Rigney SP 9-13-14
Martinez CF 7-6-6
Ford SP 8-17-14
Luna C 9-13-7
Osborn C 7-6-6
Gonzalez LF 11-13-11

I have not looked in the editor yet, but I'm guessing best player available when I pick according to my scout is the SP Miller and he's probably actually terrible. My guess is that Rigney is the best player in the draft. I'll check their actuals as we go.

Let's see:
1. St. Louis picks Rigney P true potentials 14-16-17
2. Boston picks Ford P 10-16-15

I have little doubt that my scout is 100% wrong about Miller

3. New Yorks picks Magnan 14-13-13
4. Detroit picks Luna 10-17-9

I also have little doubt that Osborn stinks and will be available at 7.

5. Cleveland goes off my board and takes Young OF 10-16-11 my scout has him at 9-10-8 OSA 13-16-12

I think that LF Gonzalez is best player left on board based on who has been taken and the ratings I'm getting from OSA/Scout

6. Chicago takes Gonzalez 11-12-11

I'm up. My scout tells me best two players on the board are
Miller P 12-13-11 with 20 Endurance
Martinez CF 14-11-13

Scouting Director Suggestion is Martinez.

OSAs top players are
SP Morgan 9-11-9
CF Ortiz 9-11-10 w 18 speed and 22 stealing

My scout has Ortiz at 6-8-8 and Morgan at 9-9-8

My guess is that Morgan is the best prospect of the 4 and that Miller is an absolute bust, as is my scouts 3rd choice the C Osborn.

So if I 'play' the game and make believe that I'm a real GM can't see that these are overdrafts, I pick Martinez. If I try and actually build the best team I draft Morgan.

I took Martinez. Let's see what their ratings are:
Martinez is 10-8-10. A little better then I anticipated.
The SP Miller is 8-10-7.
C Osborn is horrible 8-8-9

So the three players that my scout liked were all terrible overdrafts. Using OSA I was able to pick the least busted of the three.

OSA liked Morgan.. he's a 9-10-9
and Ortiz 9-11-10



That leaves you with 2 choices doing a draft with scouting on.

1. Continually pick bad players by listening to your scout
2. Pretty much ignore your scout

Neither of those is fun, and that's a poor design - there is no way around it.

I knew that Miller and Osborn were overrated just by checking their OSA ratings. How is that anything like the real life?

Got to second round and Miller is still available. Yeah, this is a lot of fun. My scout thinks there is a future all-star being ignored by every other team in the league. I wonder if he is right? He also has a 9-9-13 starter left Parker, I know he's a bust too. He's actually a 7-6-7. I'm shocked.

My highly paid highly rated scout likes
1. Miller 12-13-11
2. Parker 9-9-13

Yet I know the best SP left on the board is Morgan who is OSA's top starter left.

So poorly implemented.

[Pdubya64]

Yeesh Lynch... that's pretty telling evidence in my book. Obviously it doesn't really matter how "good" of a head scout you hire then, does it?
This is definitely ruining my Sunday afternoon, you know.

Well, it's still early. Maybe Markus can look at this stuff. Pretty alarming.

[lynchjm24]

Originally Posted by Pdubya64

Yeesh Lynch... that's pretty telling evidence in my book. Obviously it doesn't really matter how "good" of a head scout you hire then, does it?
This is definitely ruining my Sunday afternoon, you know.

Well, it's still early. Maybe Markus can look at this stuff. Pretty alarming.

That's an OOTP9 league, but I'm pretty sure nothing has changed. There have been plenty of threads on this in the past.

Even without OSA leading you to the answer, much of the time the player your scout likes most is going to be a much lesser player then the scout predicts.

That's because OOTP generates a true potential. Then it has all the teams scout the player. The majority of the scouted ratings are clustered near the true answer. If you are the high outlier, then most likely you are wrong. What players does your scout suggest in the draft? The players on which you are the highest outlier. This is because the other teams have a more correct look at their true potentials and these players fall to you in every round.

In a mature 60 year league like mine with ghost players there are few players with huge ratings, almost none have true ratings >20. When I see players in the draft with huge ratings like >20, it's an immediate red flag that it's scouting error.

I'd rather try and draft players, not figure out where my scout error is.

[rjv3]

I'm really interested in this topic because I have always felt that over-drafting was a severe problem in my experience. So--and I would totally do this if I weren't currently running a long sim to establish a solo league history--would anyone be interested in the following experiment (lynch perhaps since you just drafted)?

A) Draft
B) Sim until following year's draft
C) Repeat (do this maybe like 10 times)
D) Run a 25-50 year sim
E) Check the career numbers of the guys you drafted in part C. How did guys picked in round 1 do? round 5? round 20? Were there severe over-drafts (Daniel Moskos - 4th overall, 2007)? Were there legit all-stars that went in the middle rounds (Jake Peavy - 15th round, 1999)?

I think this would be totally worthwhile and if I weren't at the beginning of my long sim I would totally do it. Thoughts?

[PAtricapillus]

Originally Posted by Matter2003

looking at baseball-reference.com's list of 1st round picks over the years and their careers, shows that in any given 1st round, there are only between 1 and 4 players that go on to have really good MLB careers. Sure there are a lot of players who make it to the majors, as should be expected---usually between 63-79% of a given class, and probably about half of them turn into regular major league players with nice careers, but most of them are just your every day run of the mill average to good players---not the really great ones you expect when you draft them in the first round.

How else is OOTP supposed to model this? Obviously the scouts all thought at the time, these players were going to be really good, otherwise they would not have wasted a 1st round pick on them. They all thought their potentials were going to be very high. Over time however, they started realizing the players just didn't have the potential they thought they did, or they just didn't develop properly. Either way, the players never turned out to be what they thought they would be, and this is the case for 86-96% of the players drafted in the first round. I am still trying to understand the drafting problem when this type of factual information is presented...

Especially in the first round, I think we'd agree that MLB scouts feel that their options are considered 5-star prospect potential. So, I'd also think that there should be 5-star draftees, at least to fill out the 1st round, if not the second.

70% or so of 1st rounders make it to the MLB.

Of those 70%, 21 of 30, how many become all-stars? 3 or 4 of 21? 14-20%?

How many are serviceable WARP? 10 of 21?

Of those how many are cup of coffee and gone? 7 of 21?

Of those 21, only 1 every two years or so becomes a HOF?

Developing a 5 star draftee into an all star should be more likely to happen when compared to a 1 star draftee. 1 star draftees are mostly seen as filler for the minors.

So, what should the odds be that your 5 star draftee becomes an all star, relative to how many draft rounds you have and compared to the odds for a 1 star becoming an all star... Both should be possible, but one should be more likely to happen.


As for the investment in scouting, the Red Sox and Theo made a commitment to their 100 million dollar development machine and they have produced results. Youk, Pedroia, Ellsbury, Masterson, Papelbon, Hanley Ramirez, Bard, Delcarmen, Lester, Lowrie... (Some All-Stars and MVPs) All these guys weren't coming around prior to Theo, relatively speaking. So, if you look at it in OOTP terms, if you are to invest heavily in scouting and development, you should see some results at least compared to those who don't invest in scouting.

[dawurm9]

Originally Posted by lynchjm24

That's an OOTP9 league, but I'm pretty sure nothing has changed. There have been plenty of threads on this in the past.

Even without OSA leading you to the answer, much of the time the player your scout likes most is going to be a much lesser player then the scout predicts.

That's because OOTP generates a true potential. Then it has all the teams scout the player. The majority of the scouted ratings are clustered near the true answer. If you are the high outlier, then most likely you are wrong. What players does your scout suggest in the draft? The players on which you are the highest outlier. This is because the other teams have a more correct look at their true potentials and these players fall to you in every round.

In a mature 60 year league like mine with ghost players there are few players with huge ratings, almost none have true ratings >20. When I see players in the draft with huge ratings like >20, it's an immediate red flag that it's scouting error.

I'd rather try and draft players, not figure out where my scout error is.

If done correctly, wouldn't every scout be producing outliers, including AI scouts? Or do they ignore their scouts, and use their true potential or OSA to make their picks?

Thanks for explaining all of this. I had always assumed I was getting hurt by the player development process - not my scout being consistently wrong. I gave up playing OOTP9 after 10 straight years of first round pick busts - not one even getting a sniff in the big leagues. In fact, I think only a few draft picks made it, and both were after the 15th round. I'm hoping to figure out the draft with this version, or else I'll likely stop playing this one as well.

I've tried turning scouting off recently, but that might be even more frustrating. Would I rather have scouts and see 3-5 star potential beyond the first round (even if they are the outliers mentioned above)? or turn scouting off and accept the fact that there is no ML-level talent after the 1st or 2nd round? Either way the draft process isn't nearly as interesting as it could, and should, be.

[Curtis]

Originally Posted by Pdubya64

I don't think we typically come into any discussion around the boards with everyone on the same page. Look at practically any thread and a large portion of it consists of contributors asking Who, What, When, Where, Why and How... just to get to agreement on where to start.

Originally Posted by Matter2003

Well, I think where the problem lies is that most people agree that many players who are rated good or great in the first round draft will likely never become anything more than a decent major leaguer, but there is a big difference as to how to implement the potential decline...

And I thought (until I read Lynchjim's post after yours) the problem was that after the first round all the remaining draftees are rated 20/20. So, I guess Pdubya64 was right.

This problem of few 21 or higher potential draftees came in with Version 9. In 2006/2007/8 You got six different opinions from six scouts. I arranged my wish list by how many scouts put a guy on their Top 20 list, regardless of where on the list they put him, so every draftee got a score from 6 to 0. I would still have 1's available on round 18 of a 25 round draft.

I loved that system, but most posters felt it was too labor-intensive, so Markus changed it. I'm not happy with the change.