Amateur draft strategy

[boogeyboard1]

What is your typical strategy for the amateur draft? How much do you prepare? Do you listen to your scout or the OSA? Best player available or positional needs?

[Critical Mass]

Don't prepare at all. I usually draft at the bottom of the order, and more than half the time, I don't have a pick in the 1st round. In other words, it's a real crapshoot.

I go for best available player. Drafting by need is pointless, because I don't know what my team needs will be in 2-5 years when (and if) the player comes up to the bigs.

I look at OSA and my scout, but usually go with my gut. Sometimes we agree, sometimes not.

[Arobbins]

I go by best available and mostly look at personality traits. Leader and high work ethic almost always outweigh anything else besides bonus/slot for me. I don't worry about the signing difficulty in the first three rounds because if they don't sign you get extra picks.

[dbqs]

Draft the guys with the funniest names! It works.

[Silfir]

I sort by my head scout's potential rating expectations, and go through them one by one. I draft the highest rated potential unless one of the disqualifying factors apply:

a) Contact lower than 9/20 for batters.
b) For pitchers, Stamina <6/20 or no third pitch. (If the third pitch is a changeup rated at the minimum amount, I don't trust it either, regardless of listed potential.)
c) Poor work ethic.
d) Come to think of it, for pitchers I also treat Movement potential of 7 or lower as a disqualification factor.

That being said, I'll still draft a good relief pitcher prospect over a fringe batting or starting one, so b) isn't a hard disqualification factor, just a penalty.

Once I get to the draft rounds in which all players are either rated 20 or disqualified for the aforementioned reasons, I set the view to batting/pitching potential and look for players who might conceivably work out *somehow*. Work Ethic is a bigger bonus the deeper you dive into the dross. And I tend to look for pitchers more than batters at this stage, since scouting pitchers is more difficult - stands to reason that if it's more likely for scouts to be wrong about pitchers, the potential upside of fringe pitching prospects should be higher than for batters.

For batters, I just sort by contact potential and look for somebody not awful; for pitchers, I sort by movement potential and try to pick out some that also have good potential stuff, and were disregarded by scouts for their poor control, or maybe some 18-year-olds with undervalued stuff, but decent movement and control who could still pick up velocity.

[beorn]

I count my scout and amateur stats roughly equally. (But for amateur stats, I factor in the competition level.)

[Arobbins]

Originally Posted by beorn

I count my scout and amateur stats roughly equally. (But for amateur stats, I factor in the competition level.)

Almost forgot this! This is a big factor when two prospects look pretty even.

[NoOne]

if you draft late often, i like to go for younger / riskier SP, if there isn't anything slipping on the draft board. most years nothing is there, but if somethingn looks good i go with 'best available'. by the 2nd round, especially late 2nd, the difference between the 'top' and a 21/80 potential isn't much and it's incredibly inaccurate, anyway. you should be looking and individual traits that fit a role out of batters and SP.

potential is fine as a sorting method then picking through list, but it's summation of the ratings is hardly perfect. especially since differnet roles value different ratings at different weights. in the draft, a "21/80" potential can be better than a "40/80" and easy to see with the eye and little to no socuting incaccuacy invovled. (probably a point where they will never be better, of course, without being blinded by inaccuracy)

one thing i'd learn to do for batters is deduce the unseen BABIP rating. it is part of Contact.

Contact = BABIP(x) * Avoid K(y) * Power(z) (x,y,z adding up to 1).

as with any other individual rating, you can see a floor that is required for most any player to have success. e.g. control for a pitcher cannot be too low. while a hitter can overcome a bad power ratings or strike out ~200/year and still be ~decent, it's really difficult to overcome a very low BABIP rating as a hitter, imo. certainly any decent hitter.

in the end, after the first 5-10 picks in any year, it's pure luck or a deep draft if you see 'real' talent that can make ASGs and HoF potential. i think you're way more likely to pick up a good SP than a good hitter outside of the top picks in draft -- excludes TCR. they have the greatest potential for change without TCR. velocity increases can turn average stuff into elite stuff.

so, 18 year olds, with good movement and control.. 3+ pitches with 2 being 'higher' than the others or all three ~high relative to current velo.

as with BABIP rating above, learn how velocity affects stuff... maybe go play around in editor with 100% accuracy and switch back to profile (pitchers look different in profile compared to editor with Stuff and movement) individual pitch stuff, not overall stuff is what you care about.

imo, i avoid dipping to low on mph range, even if 18 years old. i.e. a 93-95mph guy is more likely to increast velo from 18-20ish than a 88-90mph guy. i think they have reduced chances of increases, but could be wrong. i also think height may help velocity increases. simple physics there -- bet data backs me up and if so, likely in ootp.

if i were 6' tall, i'd be a 300+ yard driver, but i'm not that tall, lol. such is life.

i've never tried to look at stats much. i just assumed they were like RL hs/coll stats and only a very weak correlation at best...college being much stronger than HS, of course. in RL they were playing against "me(s)" in high school, lol. (me(s) = people that can't play baseball beyond HS or some dinky college, or what ~97-99% of all people?)