Scouting Consensus

[jcard]

I simmed the 2021 MLB with myself technically in control of all of the teams, though I delegated all of the tasks to the AI in the manager options and didnÂ’t take any jobs. I had Scouting Report Updates set to frequently but accuracy at normal. I then temporarily acted as each team so that I could compare their head scouts assessments of players at both the minor league and major league levels. I was surprised to see that there was very little difference between them in how they rated the vast majority of players, even the potentials of players in the low minors. It seems like the particular head scout a team hires doesnÂ’t matter very much. Is there a way to get more variation between head scouts? For example, are the differences more significant with the Incorporate Stats into Scouting Reports enabled?

I also noticed that the majority of reports were marked as High or Very High accuracy, which perhaps is the reason for the common evaluations. If the cause was that the reports were being updated more frequently (thus, monthly), I donÂ’t see why that should override the global scouting accuracy setting. Your scout is still facing the constraints imposed by time. More frequent updates over a period doesnÂ’t mean more total scouting over that period, just that the number of players scouted or the scouting per player is less for each report. At the end of the period you should not have more total (thus, accurate) scouting from the same invested resources.

Thank you in advance for any informed feedback.

[cyrusb]

Originally Posted by jcard

Is there a way to get more variation between head scouts?

Yes, if you set scouting accuracy to LOW or VERY LOW then you'll have greater variation between different head scouts. In general, they will all tend to be less accurate, and their respective biases will be more apparent.

Normal accuracy is actually quite accurate, too accurate in my opinion.

Originally Posted by jcard

I donÂ’t see why that should override the global scouting accuracy setting. Your scout is still facing the constraints imposed by time. More frequent updates over a period doesnÂ’t mean more total scouting over that period, just that the number of players scouted or the scouting per player is less for each report. At the end of the period you should not have more total (thus, accurate) scouting from the same invested resources.

More frequent reports will increase the accuracy of your reports over time, since your reports are always more accurate as you collect more and more reports on the same player and from the same scout.

So it's not "overriding" the gloabl scouting accuracy. It is just something that happens under every level of accuracy. More reports = more accurate reports over time.

[jcard]

Originally Posted by cyrusb

Yes, if you set scouting accuracy to LOW or VERY LOW then you'll have greater variation between different head scouts. In general, they will all tend to be less accurate, and their respective biases will be more apparent.

Normal accuracy is actually quite accurate, too accurate in my opinion.



More frequent reports will increase the accuracy of your reports over time, since your reports are always more accurate as you collect more and more reports on the same player and from the same scout.

So it's not "overriding" the gloabl scouting accuracy. It is just something that happens under every level of accuracy. More reports = more accurate reports over time.

First, thank you for taking the time to respond.

Assuming your scout isnÂ’t working harder than before, he canÂ’t be scouting the same number of players each for the same amount of time with a greater frequency. He or she must be reducing the number of players scouted per report and / or the amount of time spent scouting per player on each report in order to provide you with more information. At the end a given cycle of scouting, he cannot acquire more total information in the same time period, and this canÂ’t give you both more accuracy and equal breadth. I was seeing the majority of players with Very High or High accuracy scouting reports. Similarly, the gains in recently from more frequent updates require a trade off for each update in the sample of players scouted or the sample size of scouted performance per player in that sample.

[BirdWatcher]

While I am not suggesting an answer for your overarching question, I would offer one point of clarification.
When you refer to your scout what you are actually referring to is the Scouting Director. So while there are admittedly limitations to how much a single scout could do in a time period, I believe the reality is that the more money a team is spending on scouting the more robust and active a scouting staff they can employ.

At this time OOTP abstracts this process by only having one person- the Scouting Director- represent what would actually be an entire team of scouts. I think it would make sense that the Scouting Director's ratings indicate not just how well they evaluate individual players they personally scout, but also how well they evaluate the reports they receive from the various members of their staff and presumably even how smart they are about hiring the right folks and putting them into the correct roles.

[cyrusb]

BirdWatcher's comment is on point. The manual even describes the amount of money you put into your scouting budget as if it is funding the entire scouting staff. More scouts, betters scouts, and generally just more money for your scouting director to allocate to different areas of need.