Okay, I'm sold on the new OOTP talent model

[sprague]

Originally Posted by JohnHoward

With all due respect, I disagree. Many people work hard in order to keep their jobs and justify their salaries. It doesn't actually mean they are doing anything of value, and the occasional late-round anomaly should not make us think that somehow the scouts saw something. If anything, that is a result of coaching and development, not scouting.

john has a point
i think part of the key is the right coaches in the system to teach the player, and finding coachable players- no matter how good a coach is, if a player is not interested in listening and applying the knowledge it does no good
in reality from the standpoint of development in most any drafting sport these two things go together

[Curve Ball Dave]

I have no issue with the new model.

I don't want the draft to be a slam dunk with 5 star players available in the fifth round. IRL, the MLB draft is a total crapshoot once you get beyond the top prospects.

What I'm finding in my league is some guys developing into MLB talent, and others not. The farm systems have some solid MLB prospects and a bunch of filler. That's how it is in the real world. On any given minor league there may be two or three guys the organization considers a prospect, and the rest of the guys on there so the team has 9 guys to put on the field each night. If that's the result you have with OOTP, then it's a very realistic result.

Minor league talent is abundant. Major league talent is scarce. It is not hard to find a guy who can compete and put up respectable numbers in A ball. Finding a guy who can put up good numbers in the Majors is hard.

After the second or third round I'm drafting tools. I look for guys with speed and defensive ability. If I draft ten of these guys hopefully one of them will become good enough to hit Major League pitching. With the pitchers, I look for control and movement. If one of these guys learns a new pitch or develops one he already has and eventually has Major League stuff then I had a good draft.

You have to understand that the MLB draft is not an exercise in instant gratification like drafts for other sports. If you draft a kid out of high school it may be six years before he plays in a big league Spring Training game, much less crack the starting lineup. Be patient, hire good coaches, select kids with good work ethics and intelligence and if you have a really good draft one year, maybe 3 or 4 or these kids will contribute to your big league club...same as in real life.

[The Wolf]

Originally Posted by JohnHoward

With all due respect, I disagree. Many people work hard in order to keep their jobs and justify their salaries. It doesn't actually mean they are doing anything of value, and the occasional late-round anomaly should not make us think that somehow the scouts saw something. If anything, that is a result of coaching and development, not scouting.

I agree. Look how flat that curve is.

[HH20xx convert]

Originally Posted by JohnHoward

With all due respect, I disagree. Many people work hard in order to keep their jobs and justify their salaries. It doesn't actually mean they are doing anything of value, and the occasional late-round anomaly should not make us think that somehow the scouts saw something. If anything, that is a result of coaching and development, not scouting.

Working hard, but producing nothing of value. Millions of dollars wasted on a futile effort called scouting. Sounds like many folks think this sounds logical, but I don't. If scouting were not valuable, and a difference maker, every team would not invest heavily in it.

In my opinion, the OOTP 14 draft process (as opposed to the talent model) is seriously flawed, just a lottery ticket after the first round, and should be fixed. I've said my piece, and I hope the brain trust considers it.

[The Wolf]

Doesn't that curve just scream "AUTODRAFT!" after a few rounds?

[SirMichaelJordan]

Originally Posted by Curve Ball Dave

I have no issue with the new model.

I don't want the draft to be a slam dunk with 5 star players available in the fifth round. IRL, the MLB draft is a total crapshoot once you get beyond the top prospects.

What I'm finding in my league is some guys developing into MLB talent, and others not. The farm systems have some solid MLB prospects and a bunch of filler. That's how it is in the real world. On any given minor league there may be two or three guys the organization considers a prospect, and the rest of the guys on there so the team has 9 guys to put on the field each night. If that's the result you have with OOTP, then it's a very realistic result.

Minor league talent is abundant. Major league talent is scarce. It is not hard to find a guy who can compete and put up respectable numbers in A ball. Finding a guy who can put up good numbers in the Majors is hard.

After the second or third round I'm drafting tools. I look for guys with speed and defensive ability. If I draft ten of these guys hopefully one of them will become good enough to hit Major League pitching. With the pitchers, I look for control and movement. If one of these guys learns a new pitch or develops one he already has and eventually has Major League stuff then I had a good draft.

You have to understand that the MLB draft is not an exercise in instant gratification like drafts for other sports. If you draft a kid out of high school it may be six years before he plays in a big league Spring Training game, much less crack the starting lineup. Be patient, hire good coaches, select kids with good work ethics and intelligence and if you have a really good draft one year, maybe 3 or 4 or these kids will contribute to your big league club...same as in real life.

[HH20xx convert]

Originally Posted by The Wolf

Doesn't that curve just scream "AUTODRAFT!" after a few rounds?

Even 'Autodraft' is based upon your scout's evaluation of the scrubs available. Right now, we have no way of seeing why our scout prefers one scrub over all the others when it is our turn to draft, autodraft or not. In other words, there is a basis for each draft pick being made, but all we see is pages of one star, or '20' prospects with no differentiation shown.

[The Wolf]

Originally Posted by HH20xx convert

Even 'Autodraft' is based upon your scout's evaluation of the scrubs available. Right now, we have no way of seeing why our scout prefers one scrub over all the others when it is our turn to draft, autodraft or not. In other words, there is a basis for each draft pick being made, but all we see is pages of one star, or '20' prospects with no differentiation shown.

If the range of value among the scrubs is as small as it looks to be, then it's really not worth our time to manually pick and choose among them.

[SirMichaelJordan]

Originally Posted by HH20xx convert

Even 'Autodraft' is based upon your scout's evaluation of the scrubs available. Right now, we have no way of seeing why our scout prefers one scrub over all the others when it is our turn to draft, autodraft or not. In other words, there is a basis for each draft pick being made, but all we see is pages of one star, or '20' prospects with no differentiation shown.

Organization depth? Individual attribute ratings? Lefty vs Righty? Personality type?

[Marinersfan51]

Originally Posted by HH20xx convert

In my opinion, the OOTP 14 draft process (as opposed to the talent model) is seriously flawed, just a lottery ticket after the first round, and should be fixed. I've said my piece, and I hope the brain trust considers it.

I don't really understand what you think is wrong with the OOTP 14 draft process. After the first few rounds the MLB draft is little more than a lottery ticket, a few guys make it big, Pujols, and most don't, Marc Bluma. However they are not true lottery tickets because all the players are not identical, you select the ticket that you think has the best chance. We have no reason to believe that there is anything that sets these real life late round gems apart from the players selected around them, because if there was, then they would have been selected much earlier.

[HH20xx convert]

Originally Posted by Marinersfan51

I don't really understand what you think is wrong with the OOTP 14 draft process. After the first few rounds the MLB draft is little more than a lottery ticket, a few guys make it big, Pujols, and most don't, Marc Bluma. However they are not true lottery tickets because all the players are not identical, you select the ticket that you think has the best chance. We have no reason to believe that there is anything that sets these real life late round gems apart from the players selected around them, because if there was, then they would have been selected much earlier.

I don't want to hijack the thread, or bore everyone not really interested, but I will take one more shot at making myself understood, then everyone can decide for themselves whether they agree with my complaint:

You are correct, the players chosen are different, not really lottery tickets because they are not identical. There are differences that make your scout prefer one guy over all the other guys left on the board. Presently, the OOTP 14 overall draft rating by our scout is hidden from us in a generic 'one star' or '20' rating, while there are differences which would make our scout choose one over another in an autodraft process. This used to be a problem in the later rounds of drafts, now with talent evaluations compressed in 14 (and I am not complaining about that), we are blind to our scout's evaluations very very early in the draft. What do I want? I want our scout's overall evaluation be displayed to us so we can see the reason our scout prefers one player over all others at any point in the draft--whether round 1, round 10, or round 25. The differences may be minor, but they exist, and are the reason that player is the scout's recommendation. Let's see the scout's overall evaluation expressed numerically, not page after page of identical one star evaluations where the scout's actual overall evaluation is hidden.

Thanks for considering my thoughts, and now back to your regularly scheduled thread discussion............................

[Le Grande Orange]

Originally Posted by The Wolf

I hate being wrong...

Is there anyone who enjoys being wrong?

[olivertheorem]

I've been through 3 drafts in my Astros game, and once I get past the first 4-5 rounds I really start looking for guys with at least one MLB-quality potential or two, even if they're fringy. My thought is that "well, this guy will have good movement if it maxes, and if he catches some stuff and/or control improvements too, he could be a solid big-leaguer or org depth guy", just as an example. To me, it's all about finding the guys who have the fewest holes to fill to make the bigs. I've got a 1B I drafted in 2013 around the 5th pick who has really good gap, hr power, and eye potentials, but his contact potential was something like 35, not nearly good enough for MLB. But a couple years later that potential is up to 40, and if he gets it to 45 and maxes out I'll have a Carlos Pena type on my hands, which isn't so bad.

[struggles_mightily]

Originally Posted by The Wolf

If the range of value among the scrubs is as small as it looks to be, then it's really not worth our time to manually pick and choose among them.

The links you posted don't say anything about ranges in values (of scrubs or anyone else) -- they're about the average career values of particular types of players. It should be obvious that the range of values is very high in most rounds -- with lower values always of 0 WAR and the upper bound being some higher value (in some cases perhaps not much higher). The upper value for ranges of career value for picks in the 61st round is surely 67 bb-ref WAR (Mike Piazza). For the 38th round it's probably 54 WAR (Mark Buehrle), for the 13th it might be 60 (Jim Thome), etc., etc.. I think some posters are wanting to know whether finding the Piazzas, Buehrles and Thomes is luck or design and, to the extent that it is design (since the answer is surely that it's a mix), whether and how this is incorporated into OOTP, and how else it might be.

[The Wolf]

Originally Posted by Le Grande Orange

Is there anyone who enjoys being wrong?

Eugene Church.

[The Wolf]

Originally Posted by struggles_mightily

The links you posted don't say anything about ranges in values (of scrubs or anyone else) -- they're about the average career values of particular types of players. It should be obvious that the range of values is very high in most rounds -- with lower values always of 0 WAR and the upper bound being some higher value (in some cases perhaps not much higher). The upper value for ranges of career value for picks in the 61st round is surely 67 bb-ref WAR (Mike Piazza). For the 38th round it's probably 54 WAR (Mark Buehrle), for the 13th it might be 60 (Jim Thome), etc., etc.. I think some posters are wanting to know whether finding the Piazzas, Buehrles and Thomes is luck or design and, to the extent that it is design (since the answer is surely that it's a mix), whether and how this is incorporated into OOTP, and how else it might be.

I wish them luck and success. And hopefully when they figure all this out, they'll post it here.

[The Yurpman]

Originally Posted by olivertheorem

I've been through 3 drafts in my Astros game, and once I get past the first 4-5 rounds I really start looking for guys with at least one MLB-quality potential or two, even if they're fringy. My thought is that "well, this guy will have good movement if it maxes, and if he catches some stuff and/or control improvements too, he could be a solid big-leaguer or org depth guy", just as an example. To me, it's all about finding the guys who have the fewest holes to fill to make the bigs. I've got a 1B I drafted in 2013 around the 5th pick who has really good gap, hr power, and eye potentials, but his contact potential was something like 35, not nearly good enough for MLB. But a couple years later that potential is up to 40, and if he gets it to 45 and maxes out I'll have a Carlos Pena type on my hands, which isn't so bad.

Couldn't have said it better myself. After the first 5 rounds or so you have to look for players that do one, maybe two, things well or at least above average and hope maybe a few of them will get better over time. I've also been through 3 drafts in my game and I have a 16th round pick from my first draft, a college RP whose only qualities were a 16/20 movement and one above average pitch, who now three years later could potentially make my big league roster in the spring. You just have to try to find guys that are good at something, not everything.

[endgame]

Good discussion and exchanges. I'll only add at this point, after a few rounds into my first draft of v14, that early on it became rather a joint effort with my scouting director. He'd make a suggestion, I'd click a couple more times to see who else he was thinking about, look at their BNN pages, try to determine what he saw in them, go looking for a few other candidates who possessed similar attributes like the one he suggested; if it's high work ethic or OBP, etc.... All in all, while the first couple of rounds felt a bit odd to me, the fun quickly returned as I realized, at least for me, most of the game is always the one I create and isn't limited to mere details on the screen. It's what they become, and what that player might become.

Edit: I'm sure it's been suggested in past versions, but during this last round- my current round, and I still haven't made a decision -I discovered I was thinking about how this player's work ethic might be increased. Did I have the right kind of coach with the right skills? Would his skills fit the player's style, and so forth, when it dawned on me this was all fixed. So....on to some thought and notes in my little idea book about how to either implement coach influence in the game or set up some kind of table of influence on my own that might contribute to my personal game. Probably not this year's league or next, but I'm convinced I want some influence here, or at least some marginal chance of it occuring.

Edit2: Sorry. Just want to add this oddity, FWIW. Just completed the 15th round and guess what? Only pitchers left. No batters. I did not see that coming. Use 48 feeder teams HS and COL, along with "additional players" and got this mix? ? Still 618 players left, but not a single batter. NOT what I'm thinking is very realistic, but OTOH, it is my fictional league, just not to my immediate liking. Back on track now, apologies.

[VanillaGorilla]

Originally Posted by endgame

Just completed the 15th round and guess what? Only pitchers left. No batters. I did not see that coming. Use 48 feeder teams HS and COL, along with "additional players" and got this mix? ? Still 618 players left, but not a single batter. NOT what I'm thinking is very realistic, but OTOH, it is my fictional league, just not to my immediate liking. Back on track now, apologies.

Something I noticed in v 13 is that the AI teams will make a run on a position during the draft. I have incorporated this into my drafting, slightly. If there is a 2B and a SP I am interested in, and there are only 10 SP and 30 2B left, I grab the SP. If there are 10 2B and 30 SP, I take the 2B man.

I BELIEVE that the AI calculates scarcity at a position as part of its draft algorithm. I see this in random debut drafts where the names are knowable. This isn't something I have looked out for in v14, specifically, because I assumed it would be the same. However, I will keep an eye out in my next draft.

This might have happened in your draft (you can check the log to see). There were fewer position players than normal and this scarcity caused them to be drafted earlier than if their was a more usual spread re your previous drafts pitcher/hitter split.

[VanillaGorilla]

Originally Posted by HH20xx convert

Working hard, but producing nothing of value. Millions of dollars wasted on a futile effort called scouting. Sounds like many folks think this sounds logical, but I don't. If scouting were not valuable, and a difference maker, every team would not invest heavily in it.

In my opinion, the OOTP 14 draft process (as opposed to the talent model) is seriously flawed, just a lottery ticket after the first round, and should be fixed. I've said my piece, and I hope the brain trust considers it.

I don't get your beef.

Every year about 200 players make their major league debut. Every year about 1000 get drafted. 4/5 of the players drafted will never even get a cup of coffee. It is freaking hard to be a ML baseball player.

Including the supplementals, there were 60 players taken in the first rd in 2012. As the chart shows, once you have gone 60 deep, you are pretty much buying a lottery ticket.

What has not been noted is the chart demonstrating just how good RL scouting is. The guys that are coming into the league and producing are coming from those first 100 picks (keeping in mind 200 players debut when a 1000 are drafted).

I think we would all agree that Wade Boggs was a 5 star player. He was picked in the 7th rd of the 1976 draft. Bruce Sutter? 5 star guy. No one drafted him.

Now, in hindsight we see that they had 5 star/HOF potential because they became 5 star HOFers. If Boggs had actual 5 star potential, so then did Guy Hoffman, who the Red Sox chose prior to Boggs.

One could say that EVERY player has 5 star potential. Who knew Sutter would develop a revolutionary pitch? He did.

If we give everyone 5 star potential, then what is the point? Then you are back to the lottery complaint!

What scouts do is not pick out that special guy in the 7th rd. If they thought he was so special he wouldn't have lasted until the 7th rd. For these picks they say that this guy has a better chance of developing into ML player, 5 star or not, than the guy they suggest taking in the 17th rd, who has more of a chance than the guy they suggest taking in the 27th rd.

We can look back and highlight the misses (Ozzie Smith was also taken in the 7th rd of the '76 draft) very easily, 37 years later.

People complained that there were not enough gems found in the late rds, and Marcus & crew addressed this. How else can you possibly simulate getting 2 HOFers in the 7th rd of a draft if there is a way to know ahead of time that they will be HOFers? They won't last until the 7th rd if this is discernible!

I appreciate the fact that Wolf created this thread.