New Scouting System: Confusing and Way Too Complicated

[PSUColonel]

Originally Posted by BIG17EASY

A lot of this, particularly scheduling scouting trips to certain areas) was in the game years ago (I'm talking like 10 or more years ago) and was overwhelmingly unpopular with the community at the time. However, the community and the dev team have changed, so perhaps it will be re-visited. When it was in the game, it felt like A LOT of work with little payoff, to the point where it took as much time to manage scouting as it did to play all other aspects of the game. If it were implemented in a way where that's not the case, I could see it being a nice addition.

This is why ALL staff activities should be handled the way it’s done in FM. In FM...they have a lot of staff in the game...but you can delegate as little or much authority to any staff member.

[Syd Thrift]

Honestly, I've turned on POTs for the first time in years with this iteration of the game (I usually play stats only) and scouting is a big part of that. I don't put any extra time in micromanaging my scout and I *like* the relatively inaccurate and sometimes untimely information I get back.

My one preferred add is to make your scout more... human. Humans are stubborn creatures who will very often make an early impression about someone and then only change it via overwhelming evidence, if ever. I realize this would take a lot of extra tracking but I'd *love* to see a scout evaluate a HS prospect who's top-rated by everyone else and have them say he's kind of average, and then in ensuing reports he just doubles down on that while OSA (and presumably other scouts) think the kid is great. IMO it's stuff like that that causes players like Mike Trout to IRL fall to the 20s. Also, of course, amateur baseball is notoriously hard to evaluate and scouts should a. be all over the place and b. be conservative, knowing that they're probably all over the place (I think FWIW the game has made great strides on the latter part).

Conversely, for veteran players I don't think you should see a big drop-off in current ability the moment it occurs. In fact, I don't think scouts should be evaluating vets over the offseason at all, and even during the season I don't think you should get reports saying a guy's contact just cratered when he's hitting .350 (or much of any info at all on talent changes while a player is hurt).

So... I guess this is the workflow I'd love to see:

- A scout makes an initial judgment on a player based on their ability, their biases, etc.

- In ensuing reports, the scout doesn't just say "welp, this guy I thought had 30/80 control, now he suddenly has 60/80", he looks at his current judgment, compares it in a Bayesian sense with his priors, and updates it accordingly. His first impression should have a lot more sway than ensuing takes, and it might take him a couple years even to change his mind about a draft prospect turned minor league player.

- Yes, that also means that any given scout will be very, very loath to drop the ratings of a veteran player until it's very, very clear that they're totally done. Think of it this way: this scout has watched, let's say George Brett play for the past 20 years and he's always been a tremendous contact hitter. Now Brett's 40 and he's struggling to hit .270. Do you think the scout's just going to say "welp, my eye test says he's a 40/80 Contact hitter now", or do you think he's more likely to say "he must be in a slump"?

- For scouts, add in a rating called something like "intransigence" that measures how quickly a scout will override their own built up impressions or first takes on a player. Maybe give them separate ratings for prospects and veterans the way they have separate scouting ratings (which would still apply - those scouting ratings set the accuracy of the initial "take" as well as each additional "take" prior to consulting their priors). I think that ideally a scout with low intransigence and low scouting ratings would be a much, much worse hire than a guy with high intransigence and high scouting ratings because the former's ratings will be all over the place while the latter's would be pretty consistent. Hell, even a high-intransigence, low-rating guy might be a better choice because having *something* to go off of, however inaccurate, is better than chaos.

[Sweed]

Originally Posted by LegalEagle80

I agree with the sentiment that it's not a gamechanger but I think this is the start of something much better.

I think scouting needs to open up into something broader, but it's hard not to make that a game unto itself. Instead of having what feels like a single scout, it would be neat to have a scouting department, maybe something you can manage by region (maybe the budgets are tied into different regions, maybe you have to schedule scouting trips to certain areas on a calendar basis, that sort of thing) which would affect accuracy.

I like the idea of having more control over scouting but the way it's implemented now seems like micro-management without the payoff of feeling like one's time spent scouting has much of an effect.

OOTP 2006, a total rewrite of the code and the base of what we have today had a team of 5 scouts per team. You hired, sent them out, and compared their assessments of players. Users complained it was too much to manage. This resulted in the "one head scout' that controls a team of scouts you don't see.

I liked the model with the only thing I hated was scouts with little experience took longer to do a task than scouts with a lot of experience. I would have preferred the young scouts to just be not as accurate but take the same number of days to complete tasks. It was hard to setup schedules and have them mesh because of differing times needed.

Put a young guy on rookie ball and it might take him 6 months while a vet would only take 4. The challenge was to try to get guys to scout a couple of areas but be done in time to put everyone on the draft, keeping in mind the young scout was going to need more days then the old one to scout the draft. This was a bit like putting together a jigsaw puzzle and, if you wanted to do it right, just plain time consuming. If everyone took the same time, with less accuracy, it would not take long to make the schedule but you would have to decide which areas you could live with less accurate reports.

So I might have something like

scout A - Rookie ball, SA, and draft
B A-AA draft
c AA-AAA draft
d AAA- MLB Draft
e- 2 Feeder leagues (not in v 2006 but would apply to today) Draft

This way there would be some overlap to compare. And IIRC the head scout would by default have some knowledge about every league but a big fog of war on leagues he didn't scout? Or maybe his knowledge came from getting reports from scouting team? Not really sure, it was about 15 years ago.

Edit: I see Big17Easy was responding at the same time I was.

[BIG17EASY]

Originally Posted by Sweed

Edit: I see Big17Easy was responding at the same time I was.

You were much more thorough than I was, so thanks for your explanation!

[LegalEagle80]

It's definitely a balancing act. I didn't play OOTP back in 2006 but it sounds like it was the right idea but too cumbersome.

I wouldn't want to deal with individual scouts like they're coaches. I'd rather have a scouting director who manages (invisible) scouts based on my direction. Budget would dictate both how long something took (more scouts = more players reviewed) and maybe even 2nd opinions (cross-checking) on players, but not necessarily more accuracy.

I do like talent (based on history) to be a consideration in hiring a scouting director, however. It just sorta seems arbitrary right now. I just throw money at the guy who has the most "outstanding" and "legendary" ratings and call it a day. In this sense, the teams with the highest budgets essentially have the best scouting, but as history has shown, that's not always the case (look at Tampa Bay right now).

I'd prefer to dictate big-picture things -- favoring tools versus talent, favoring power pitchers versus finesse, college arms versus prep, which could dictate the types of players that get a more in-depth assessment, so there could be multiple layers to it without having to tell individual scouts to go do their jobs in certain places on a daily basis.

Anyways, I'm intrigued by them revisiting this idea. Seems like a lot of people would be open to it.