Most reliable scouting indicators

Acuna Matata · 09-11-2018, 04:00 AM

Just wondering if anyone can help me figure out which of the following are best to pay attention to when analysing the true value, skill and talent of a player

Current Pitching/Batting Star Rating
Current Pitching/Batting Potential Star Rating
Scouting report in Scouting Tab
On the field performance and stats

Im guessing the answer is that all of them are reliable in their own ways but there must be some kind of order of importance of which info is more likely to feed into making a sound assesssment

battists · 09-11-2018, 10:12 AM

On the field performance, as it should be!

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NoOne · 09-11-2018, 11:22 AM

potential only matters when developing -- identifying the better prospects and maybe hastening their promotion or giving more attention etc.

as far as your mlb team's w/l record is concerned, their current ability is all that matters. obviously, if there is room for further development, you can reasonably speculate for growth and that would improve w/l of mlb team.

i think developement is ~100% hopeless at 28? 27? would need responses of worst experience, but thereabouts. so, at some point untapped potential is absolutely meaningless.

'older' prospects with a 1-10 (to X?, 'very low') out of 100 rating for any pitch is not likely to develope. that's true well before ~27-28. by ~21-22 or at least a year into MiL if older, it gets increasingly less likely.

it's not necessarily the 1 thing i am suggesting to look at, as you should look at many factors, but contact is probably one of the more accurately scouted stats for draft pools. after the top half of potential scale (for simplicity) is gone it's a crapshoot for a needle in a haystack of mediocre players. 29 other teams' scouts have to be wrong multiple times for a player to slip.

accuracy improves as that player gains service time in your league -- age may also be part of the equation. college kids are more accurate than HS kids etc. by A (if older with at least 1-2 years or more OR younger with ~3-4 pro svc years) / AA / and defintieyl AAA you will almost assuredly have a good idea of that player's ability.

you know your players better than other organization's players. (this is another fairly sure, like age).

pitching is in some ways more consistent than batting for draftees, but in the end becomes even more of a crapshoot. if any of the three major ratings, movement might be the least accurate of the three?

stuff (under the hood value) affects movement. velo affects stuff. velo can change for 'younger' players. not so often after ~21.. so 18 yo with velo bumps can take great leaps.

other than that avoid the 2-pitch SP, unless you plan to convert to RP, and anything that is under 1/2 scale by a large amount movement/control. likely a 1/200 under the hood.

chew on that for a bit

oh as far as mlb results -- consistency is only for those extremely highly rated, the rest are just a typical player... can look like an mvp one year than back to mediocrity or a bit better. there might be 10-20 batters that are potential future HoF guys with health and age well out of 350ish? so, if not familiar with the distribution of talent, temper expectations of even a ~70/80current ability guy. heck, with pitchers you can find 'bad' ~80/80 guys relative to money or even simply just bad results, consistently.

if you can accurately speculate results from ratings relative to your league (settings / stats and ai stuff), then you will know things years in advance in many cases. (i'm sure battists incorporates something into it beyond just on-field, so not a remark aimed at anyone -- his response was much more to the point, eh?)

Acuna Matata · 09-11-2018, 05:28 PM

Many thanks for all the ideas there.
At the core it does come back to the on field production but the idea of all but the most elite players having up and down years (severe in some cases) was something i thought must be a blip but no longer.
Really interested by the thoughts on when velocity and the like settles down.
Ive read previously on this forum about the crapshoot of very young players and it makes me think that investing in the international free agent draft for 16 year olds is pretty much a waste of time. More than happy to hear thoughts to the contrary though. Instead i feel ive got much better value from siging international free agents who have dropped into the standard free agent pool. The only drawback i would say is that picking up a handful of those each year leaves less room for the high performing minor leaguers developing through the system. Its a balancing act i guess which i hope i’ll get to grips with.
At the minute ive clocked just over 200 hours on the game but still find im learning so much from other players and through practical trial and error as i go.
Once again many thanks for the contributions

battists · 09-11-2018, 05:58 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Acuna Matata

Many thanks for all the ideas there.
At the core it does come back to the on field production but the idea of all but the most elite players having up and down years (severe in some cases) was something i thought must be a blip but no longer.
Really interested by the thoughts on when velocity and the like settles down.
Ive read previously on this forum about the crapshoot of very young players and it makes me think that investing in the international free agent draft for 16 year olds is pretty much a waste of time. More than happy to hear thoughts to the contrary though. Instead i feel ive got much better value from siging international free agents who have dropped into the standard free agent pool. The only drawback i would say is that picking up a handful of those each year leaves less room for the high performing minor leaguers developing through the system. Its a balancing act i guess which i hope i’ll get to grips with.
At the minute ive clocked just over 200 hours on the game but still find im learning so much from other players and through practical trial and error as i go.
Once again many thanks for the contributions

Yeah, honestly, part of what makes the game cool is that the questions you are asking yourself are, I imagine, precisely part of being a GM in the real world. Do you take a risk on some 16-yo from the Dominican, or sign an experienced FA from Japan? Do you draft young kids with super-high potential, or go for more proven commodities who played 4 years of college and produced, like Aaron Nola.

I think a lot of it has to do with your risk tolerance. If you're a big market team, you can afford to take chances and potentially spend your way out of them. If you're a small market team, you have limited resources, so you have to be, I think, a little more conservative with your approach, unless you want to go "boom or bust" and hope you get lucky, knowing there will be more chances of bust than boom. (In the real world this can often get you fired.)

Enjoy!

NoOne · 09-12-2018, 02:18 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Acuna Matata

Many thanks for all the ideas there.
At the core it does come back to the on field production but the idea of all but the most elite players having up and down years (severe in some cases) was something i thought must be a blip but no longer.
Really interested by the thoughts on when velocity and the like settles down.
Ive read previously on this forum about the crapshoot of very young players and it makes me think that investing in the international free agent draft for 16 year olds is pretty much a waste of time. More than happy to hear thoughts to the contrary though. Instead i feel ive got much better value from siging international free agents who have dropped into the standard free agent pool. The only drawback i would say is that picking up a handful of those each year leaves less room for the high performing minor leaguers developing through the system. Its a balancing act i guess which i hope iÂ’ll get to grips with.
At the minute ive clocked just over 200 hours on the game but still find im learning so much from other players and through practical trial and error as i go.
Once again many thanks for the contributions

if you have 5million to spare every year, you should spend it. otherwise, i could see some financial situations where i'd rather save that 5M than spend on an IAFA. but not many and only in a tiny market.

unspent money is useless. merits to using max cash on hand as a reserve for spikes in payroll (an 'oh s%#$!' fund? -- don't hold too much back), but for the most part you want to spend what you have.

developement doesn't require good performance, fwiw. i've seen a 'kid' go from rookie to MLB in little over a year and never hit well in the minor leagues... then go on to 10+ straight .300 BA seasons in MLB... it does correlate, though. medium to strong. since i draft at bottom of rounds, i typically spend more on MiL Scouting than amatuers. it really pays off for developing players at a faster rate with the improved accuracy on scouting reports.

ratings are lead indicators... results follow ratings, incontrevertibly. it is simply how the game works. results will help you learn which combination of ratings are best for various roles on an MLB team and relative to your settings (not overall or potential). it's simple, yet it isn't, and potentially different weights in every single league in a large variety of ways.

draft stuff

it's crapshoot due to 2 factors -- age and more time for TCR to occur = more risk. that amounts to more opportunities to not develop compared to a colelge kid.... what can outweigh that risk is a very high potential or 'if' their velo goes up they go from a good SP to a future HoF SP with 5 cy youngs -- assuming they do make it to the MLB with their ability intact.

as with anything else, there are good times to take a HS and good times to take a college kid. there are few rules without exception.

more players will not hinder 'better' prospects movement through system. on the contrary, too few is more likely to have this effect in comparison. promotions will be hindered by neccessity. the ones that are poorly scouted are always going to require more time to out. as long as they are accurately scouted and they have talent, they are likely to get playing time over others. (settings for MiL(s):use potential for depth chart choices.)

of course, if you have 2 guys at ~28/80 potential, the ai is going to split time between these two. in cases where it matters to you, you can force start.

chriskelly · 09-13-2018, 02:08 PM

A lot of this depends on your settings. The higher your scouting accuracy, the more reliable the scouting reports will be, so the more you can depend on them. Then, your scout's own talent will come into play. same thing for random talent changes.....the more randomness, the more variability over time. The younger the player, the more likely the impact.

If you are going to use stats as an indicator, you have to be careful with which stats you use, especially with minor leaguers. ERA for example...if your minor leaguers are learning to play D, you will see lots more hits and runs against.

If you go by current/potential ratings, you have to be careful w/ the overall ones. For example, defense is factored in. So, if you look at 2 3B, and you know one is better defensively, and you decide based on that overall ranking, you might be double counting the defensive impact.

If you wanted to get under the hood and "cheat" a little bit (for the purpose of seeing what ratings do what), then clone a player, then go into the editor and change each rating a little bit....you will be able to see the impact each part will play.

One biggie that I overthink....relating your SPs to your D. One year, I had an amazing defensive infield, and went out of my way to find extreme Ground ball pitchers. It worked, to an extent....more Ground balls in gloves for outs vs hits or errors. but, I overlooked movement as a factor. a groundball pitcher with crappy movement will give up HRs. I also used to shy away from flyball pitchers, but if they have good movement, the flyball rating means less risk.

NoOne · 09-13-2018, 08:46 PM

i'm not a fan of autocalculating the modifiers often at ML-level leagues, but in the minors i try to do every 2-3 years or so. this keeps them near baseline league-wide results from league totals and other related settings. you can evaluate players more easily.

even without autocalculate, go check out league results at end of the year before considering an ERA too high, or any other stat for that matter. it's all relative.

i get a little tunnel vision. nowadays, i play with a maxed out scouting budget and with the best scout money can buy... you only need ~4-6mill in mlb, so ~8-12m per amatuer and minor leagues... either way, by the time they get to AAA, few things are unknown. power can still be untapped or miscouted more often than the others, i guess. spoiled with good information, nonetheless.

09-11-2018, 04:00 AM	#1
Acuna Matata Minors (Rookie Ball) Join Date: Jul 2018 Posts: 32	Most reliable scouting indicators Just wondering if anyone can help me figure out which of the following are best to pay attention to when analysing the true value, skill and talent of a player Current Pitching/Batting Star Rating Current Pitching/Batting Potential Star Rating Scouting report in Scouting Tab On the field performance and stats Im guessing the answer is that all of them are reliable in their own ways but there must be some kind of order of importance of which info is more likely to feed into making a sound assesssment

09-11-2018, 10:12 AM	#2
battists Hall Of Famer Join Date: Jul 2004 Posts: 18,506 Blog Entries: 7	On the field performance, as it should be! Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk __________________ Come check out my dynasty report, Funky Times!

09-11-2018, 11:22 AM	#3
NoOne Hall Of Famer Join Date: Apr 2015 Posts: 7,167	potential only matters when developing -- identifying the better prospects and maybe hastening their promotion or giving more attention etc. as far as your mlb team's w/l record is concerned, their current ability is all that matters. obviously, if there is room for further development, you can reasonably speculate for growth and that would improve w/l of mlb team. i think developement is ~100% hopeless at 28? 27? would need responses of worst experience, but thereabouts. so, at some point untapped potential is absolutely meaningless. 'older' prospects with a 1-10 (to X?, 'very low') out of 100 rating for any pitch is not likely to develope. that's true well before ~27-28. by ~21-22 or at least a year into MiL if older, it gets increasingly less likely. it's not necessarily the 1 thing i am suggesting to look at, as you should look at many factors, but contact is probably one of the more accurately scouted stats for draft pools. after the top half of potential scale (for simplicity) is gone it's a crapshoot for a needle in a haystack of mediocre players. 29 other teams' scouts have to be wrong multiple times for a player to slip. accuracy improves as that player gains service time in your league -- age may also be part of the equation. college kids are more accurate than HS kids etc. by A (if older with at least 1-2 years or more OR younger with ~3-4 pro svc years) / AA / and defintieyl AAA you will almost assuredly have a good idea of that player's ability. you know your players better than other organization's players. (this is another fairly sure, like age). pitching is in some ways more consistent than batting for draftees, but in the end becomes even more of a crapshoot. if any of the three major ratings, movement might be the least accurate of the three? stuff (under the hood value) affects movement. velo affects stuff. velo can change for 'younger' players. not so often after ~21.. so 18 yo with velo bumps can take great leaps. other than that avoid the 2-pitch SP, unless you plan to convert to RP, and anything that is under 1/2 scale by a large amount movement/control. likely a 1/200 under the hood. chew on that for a bit oh as far as mlb results -- consistency is only for those extremely highly rated, the rest are just a typical player... can look like an mvp one year than back to mediocrity or a bit better. there might be 10-20 batters that are potential future HoF guys with health and age well out of 350ish? so, if not familiar with the distribution of talent, temper expectations of even a ~70/80current ability guy. heck, with pitchers you can find 'bad' ~80/80 guys relative to money or even simply just bad results, consistently. if you can accurately speculate results from ratings relative to your league (settings / stats and ai stuff), then you will know things years in advance in many cases. (i'm sure battists incorporates something into it beyond just on-field, so not a remark aimed at anyone -- his response was much more to the point, eh?) Last edited by NoOne; 09-11-2018 at 11:29 AM.

09-11-2018, 05:28 PM	#4
Acuna Matata Minors (Rookie Ball) Join Date: Jul 2018 Posts: 32	Many thanks for all the ideas there. At the core it does come back to the on field production but the idea of all but the most elite players having up and down years (severe in some cases) was something i thought must be a blip but no longer. Really interested by the thoughts on when velocity and the like settles down. Ive read previously on this forum about the crapshoot of very young players and it makes me think that investing in the international free agent draft for 16 year olds is pretty much a waste of time. More than happy to hear thoughts to the contrary though. Instead i feel ive got much better value from siging international free agents who have dropped into the standard free agent pool. The only drawback i would say is that picking up a handful of those each year leaves less room for the high performing minor leaguers developing through the system. Its a balancing act i guess which i hope i’ll get to grips with. At the minute ive clocked just over 200 hours on the game but still find im learning so much from other players and through practical trial and error as i go. Once again many thanks for the contributions

09-13-2018, 02:08 PM	#7
chriskelly All Star Reserve Join Date: Oct 2003 Posts: 738	A lot of this depends on your settings. The higher your scouting accuracy, the more reliable the scouting reports will be, so the more you can depend on them. Then, your scout's own talent will come into play. same thing for random talent changes.....the more randomness, the more variability over time. The younger the player, the more likely the impact. If you are going to use stats as an indicator, you have to be careful with which stats you use, especially with minor leaguers. ERA for example...if your minor leaguers are learning to play D, you will see lots more hits and runs against. If you go by current/potential ratings, you have to be careful w/ the overall ones. For example, defense is factored in. So, if you look at 2 3B, and you know one is better defensively, and you decide based on that overall ranking, you might be double counting the defensive impact. If you wanted to get under the hood and "cheat" a little bit (for the purpose of seeing what ratings do what), then clone a player, then go into the editor and change each rating a little bit....you will be able to see the impact each part will play. One biggie that I overthink....relating your SPs to your D. One year, I had an amazing defensive infield, and went out of my way to find extreme Ground ball pitchers. It worked, to an extent....more Ground balls in gloves for outs vs hits or errors. but, I overlooked movement as a factor. a groundball pitcher with crappy movement will give up HRs. I also used to shy away from flyball pitchers, but if they have good movement, the flyball rating means less risk.

09-13-2018, 08:46 PM	#8
NoOne Hall Of Famer Join Date: Apr 2015 Posts: 7,167	i'm not a fan of autocalculating the modifiers often at ML-level leagues, but in the minors i try to do every 2-3 years or so. this keeps them near baseline league-wide results from league totals and other related settings. you can evaluate players more easily. even without autocalculate, go check out league results at end of the year before considering an ERA too high, or any other stat for that matter. it's all relative. i get a little tunnel vision. nowadays, i play with a maxed out scouting budget and with the best scout money can buy... you only need ~4-6mill in mlb, so ~8-12m per amatuer and minor leagues... either way, by the time they get to AAA, few things are unknown. power can still be untapped or miscouted more often than the others, i guess. spoiled with good information, nonetheless.