Poor talent in recent Draft Years

[Lukas Berger]

Originally Posted by TNCubsFan

Scouts dont make their reputations on first round draft picks. They make them on 30th rounders who make contributions to the ML team. Scouts dont keep their jobs telling the brain trust that this kid is the next Mickey Mantle. They keep it by finding the kids who develop.

This. For everyone complaining about there not being enough "star quality" in the drafts, how many guys do you actually think there are in the draft this year that project with any certainty as MLB stars? No more than 5-10 at best. Probably not even the entire first round will be projected with MLB starter type grades.

The real draft isn't full of players that look like future MLB stars. There's only a few per draft, they're really, really rare. That's not to say that some later round guys won't develop into stars, they will. But the key word is "develop". They don't go into the draft looking like future stars.

I think the problem is that everyone got used to OOTP's old way of doing things, which was to create 10 rounds of superstar potential players and then regress their potentials. Totally unrealistic and silly imo. Now things are much better, much more realistic.

Plus it's worth noting that the ratings don't have any absolute values. So in a league where everyone's average ratings are 5, a guy with 10 average ratings projects to be a superstar. But if your league has overinflated ratings then that guy with all the beautiful 15's across the board might actually be a career minor leaguer.

I just don't see why everyone's wringing their hands and moaning so much.

[HH20xx convert]

Originally Posted by TNCubsFan

YMMV.

The overall talent pool is the same its just that your scouts are behaving in a more human way. Remember the movie "Moneyball"? The scouts are telling Beanes parents that most kids only have one or two tools and they hope to develop another one. Basically thats what the scouts are telling you too. I had a scout tell me that the first time he saw Tim Hudson pitch he knew he was going to have a long MLB career as long as he stayed healthy. The same scout was almost fired for not turning in one of our kids who touched 93 with wicked movement from the left side in an open camp.

Scouts dont make their reputations on first round draft picks. They make them on 30th rounders who make contributions to the ML team. Scouts dont keep their jobs telling the brain trust that this kid is the next Mickey Mantle. They keep it by finding the kids who develop.

The problem with the current scouting reports is that this is not a more human way. No human scouting department will finish their work before this year's draft and conclude that on ten or fifteen guys have better potential, to any degree, than the rest of the draft pool. There will be a number of projected stars, starters, and minor league filler, and the better scouting departments will be better at identifying each, while everyone will be far from perfect. Right now, drafting after halfway through the first round is a total, complete crapshoot as everyone is projected exactly the same. Not realistic, in my opinion.

[Cinnamon J. Scudworth]

Originally Posted by lukasberger

This. For everyone complaining about there not being enough "star quality" in the drafts, how many guys do you actually think there are in the draft this year that project with any certainty as MLB stars? No more than 5-10 at best. Probably not even the entire first round will be projected with MLB starter type grades.

The real draft isn't full of players that look like future MLB stars. There's only a few per draft, they're really, really rare. That's not to say that some later round guys won't develop into stars, they will. But the key word is "develop". They don't go into the draft looking like future stars.

I think the problem is that everyone got used to OOTP's old way of doing things, which was to create 10 rounds of superstar potential players and then regress their potentials. Totally unrealistic and silly imo. Now things are much better, much more realistic.

Plus it's worth noting that the ratings don't have any absolute values. So in a league where everyone's average ratings are 5, a guy with 10 average ratings projects to be a superstar. But if your league has overinflated ratings then that guy with all the beautiful 15's across the board might actually be a career minor leaguer.

I just don't see why everyone's wringing their hands and moaning so much.

I haven't drafted in OOTP 14 yet, and perhaps there is enough minor variation in the specific hitting/defense ratings and personality ratings of all of the 1 star players to make drafting seem like less of a crapshoot out of the gate, but I can certainly understand why this change would make drafting less fun for some players, realism aside.

To HH20xx's point, if you are going for full realism, it almost feels like we need a completely separate rating scale for the draft pool. Because while maybe a scouting department will only label the top 15 players as near-certain major league material, they're basing the rest of the rankings on something, even if it doesn't translate very well to the OOTP rating model. Or maybe I'll just change my rating scale to be 1-100 for draft day.

Of course, another aspect of this is that, in my understanding, in real life teams often don't hang around until the very last draft round, so a lot of the scrubs we're talking about go undrafted. And beyond that, a lot more drafted players go unsigned.

[HH20xx convert]

Originally Posted by lukasberger

This. For everyone complaining about there not being enough "star quality" in the drafts, how many guys do you actually think there are in the draft this year that project with any certainty as MLB stars? No more than 5-10 at best. Probably not even the entire first round will be projected with MLB starter type grades.

The real draft isn't full of players that look like future MLB stars. There's only a few per draft, they're really, really rare. That's not to say that some later round guys won't develop into stars, they will. But the key word is "develop". They don't go into the draft looking like future stars.

I think the problem is that everyone got used to OOTP's old way of doing things, which was to create 10 rounds of superstar potential players and then regress their potentials. Totally unrealistic and silly imo. Now things are much better, much more realistic.

Plus it's worth noting that the ratings don't have any absolute values. So in a league where everyone's average ratings are 5, a guy with 10 average ratings projects to be a superstar. But if your league has overinflated ratings then that guy with all the beautiful 15's across the board might actually be a career minor leaguer.

I just don't see why everyone's wringing their hands and moaning so much.

In my experience, the old way produced about one round of highly rated prospects, then 2-3 rounds of guys with some talent and some flaws, maybe 3 rounds of guys with one good skill and lots of flaws, then the rest of the pack. And this varied from year to year. And the question is not whether this is 'with any certainty', as you say. Obviously it is not with any certainty, but it is a scout's projection, with all the flaws inherent in that projection, including the scout's skill. I believe that system is far preferable to ten projected top players followed by lottery tickets for the next twenty rounds.

[sprague]

Originally Posted by HH20xx convert

The problem with the current scouting reports is that this is not a more human way. No human scouting department will finish their work before this year's draft and conclude that on ten or fifteen guys have better potential, to any degree, than the rest of the draft pool. There will be a number of projected stars, starters, and minor league filler, and the better scouting departments will be better at identifying each, while everyone will be far from perfect. Right now, drafting after halfway through the first round is a total, complete crapshoot as everyone is projected exactly the same. Not realistic, in my opinion.

Right that is the issue. real drafts have intangibles that say why you draft one player over an other. some scouts catch them, other dont

ootp with everything hidden about how development will happen means everyone can be equally good or equally bad,

in theory the new ootp system is realistic, but it is more like playing roulette, it doesnt really matter if you put the chip on 15, 22, 37...all the same variable.
there are reasons certain teams tend to get good over time, they find 4th and 6th round draft choices that develop, but that is not a total crapshoot, there were people in the organization who knew what to look for in players who have a higher chance of devloping to or past thier potential and which ones will likely fall

[Lukas Berger]

Originally Posted by sprague

there are reasons certain teams tend to get good over time, they find 4th and 6th round draft choices that develop, but that is not a total crapshoot, there were people in the organization who knew what to look for in players who have a higher chance of devloping to or past thier potential and which ones will likely fall

This is right to some small extent. Really, though teams tend to get good through nailing their 1st and 2nd round picks, much more so than through getting a few nice later round picks.

I think there's also much, much more luck involved than you're implying. After all, if the teams really knew that those players had a better chance to pan out then they wouldn't have taken them in the 6th round, or 10th or 15th, or 30th behind guys that didn't end up panning out. They'd have grabbed them earlier, before any "busts".

So when you get Pujols in the 13th, or even a MLB bench player in the 20th, really all that happened is that you got lucky. You can't pat yourself on the back and say "oh I'm such a good scout/gm, look at the great player I got through my scouting skill". If you really thought he'd be that great then you'd take him in the first or second round.

Generally for these kind of guys, there weren't any signs that they'd be that great, except in hindsight. If those signs were there at draft time then they'd have gone higher than they did. Seems pretty self evident.

To use a cross sport example. Everyone was giving the NY Giants tons of props for signing Victor Cruz as an UDFA.

But Jerry Reese, the Giants GM, had some interesting comments on that. Essentially saying that no credit was due, it was really simply luck.

That they had no idea at all that he could be a good NFL player, much less a star. They happened to sign him as just another guy among their 20 UDFA signings for the year. If they had had any clue that he could be good, then they would've drafted him!

I think the same is pretty much true of baseball.

[milkman41]

Originally Posted by TNCubsFan

YMMV.

The overall talent pool is the same its just that your scouts are behaving in a more human way. Remember the movie "Moneyball"? The scouts are telling Beanes parents that most kids only have one or two tools and they hope to develop another one. Basically thats what the scouts are telling you too. I had a scout tell me that the first time he saw Tim Hudson pitch he knew he was going to have a long MLB career as long as he stayed healthy. The same scout was almost fired for not turning in one of our kids who touched 93 with wicked movement from the left side in an open camp.

Scouts dont make their reputations on first round draft picks. They make them on 30th rounders who make contributions to the ML team. Scouts dont keep their jobs telling the brain trust that this kid is the next Mickey Mantle. They keep it by finding the kids who develop.

I'm sorry, but merely telling me that scouting is nebulous and that 30th round gems occur is not a satisfactory answer. I understand that scouting is not black and white, and that some players bust and some blossom. Its part of why I love this game. The problem is that there appears to be too few good players in this pool. Whether that's a scouting issue or a player creation issue, its still an issue - do you think any team had only 9 players rated at above a 50 in potential (whatever that translates to in real-world terms)?

I've seen some stuff about it possible being an issue with conversion from 13 to 14, so I tried to test it out a bit. I created a new game in 14, and simmed to the announcement of the draft class. In this game, I am the Marlins, and my scout is Stan Meek, with an Outstanding for scouting amateurs and Favors Ability. The scouting budget is $1,336,500. Here is that draft class:



There are tons of high-potential players being generated/scouted as such here. In my imported league (head scout Tommy Tanous: Outstanding for amateurs, Highly Favors Ability [basically the same scout], budget for amateurs is $3,600,000), the difference in the number of players with 50+ potential is enormous, and I just can't see that difference merely being a case of 'YMMV'. But heck, what do I know.

[Lukas Berger]

Originally Posted by milkman41

There are tons of high-potential players being generated/scouted as such here.

A lot of those players aren't generated players. They're real draft prospects created in the MLB quickstart.

[sc_superstar]

I feel like the talent pools are very realistic, you do get some good years and some bad ones, I usually get anywhere from 15-30 players who are 4.5 or 5* 32 team league with 25 round draft w/feeders

You get some project style prospects and some lower ceiling ready very quickly guys.

I think the biggest difference is seeing how players are valued by the game. In versions prior it was very easy to build a stacked team and have 3-4 star players sitting on your bench. I've actually found 14 to be less a crapshoot once I adjusted to valuing players differently.

I've found that the 4.5 and 5* guys are perennial all star and MVP type guys.
The 3.5* and and 4* guys are your above average who will have some all star years, but are the glue on your team.
the 2.5 and 3* guys are your lower end starters, who usually have something that you dont like but enough you do like that they have a job.
The 1-2* guys are usually my bench guys, and specialty players.

Typically the first 2-3 rounds I know what im going to draft, after that I look for higher INT/WE type guys who have a skill I want/need who with a talent improvment or two can become servicable MLB players. Ex that low contact high defense speedster, who could go from a .220 AAA fodder to a .290+ leadoff man with a few points in contact

[sc_superstar]

I grabbed a 1.5* potential 1B who couldnt field or run in the 5th or 6th round. he was 18 and had decent contact and good power, but no eye or avoid K he had avg INT and a very high WE

On a 1-10 scale he looked like this (or close to it)

OVR/POT

CON 1/6
GAP 1/5
POW 2/7
EYE 1/4
AVK 1/3

With a 1B rating of 1, all his fielding stats were 1 and his speed and steal was 1.

by age 22 I found him mashing in AAA with these ratings

CON 6
GAP 6
POW 7
EYE 5
AVK 4

He played for me for 7 seasons at DH before he flamed out hit above .280 with 25+ HR and 80+ RBI 6 times with one season even being an ortiz like .304 37 HR 128 RBI

[milkman41]

Originally Posted by lukasberger

A lot of those players aren't generated players. They're real draft prospects created in the MLB quickstart.

Sure, that's true, that'll account for some more players with higher potentials, but no 3+ pages of players with pot > 50 compared to 9 players in my imported league.

[Lukas Berger]

Originally Posted by milkman41

Sure, that's true, that'll account for some more players with higher potentials, but no 3+ pages of players with pot > 50 compared to 9 players in my imported league.

Well, only 3 of those on the screenshot are actually OOTP generated. Morrison, Newman and Vishwa.

[milkman41]

Originally Posted by lukasberger

Well, only 3 of those on the screenshot are actually OOTP generated. Morrison, Newman and Vishwa.

Right, so we're still left with the question of whether or not my draft class in the game I imported from 13 to 14 has a fundamental lack of talent compared to the one generated in 14. I know the two were generated using different methods, and are being looked at with difference scouts (though two with similar characteristics), but all things considered, you should get roughly similar draft classes, with some natural year-year variability.

[Buchs]

I suspect that the issue is that leagues that are imported form 13 are already stacked with too much talent. I think 14 is generating new players at a slightly less talented level than previously. This is not necessarily a bad thing, I think 13 was too easy to stock up high quality prospents and have a never ending stream of starters coming though your system (besides starting pitchers).

I think that as a test somebody that is having this issue should make a copy of their league and then sim out 20 and then look at the draft pool. By then the old players generated from 13 will be out of the league and there should be a balance in the talent between the draft and the league. I suspect at that point you will see the potential on players be similar to what you see in a new MLB quickstart. If not than I think it must be a scouting or creation issue.

If I'm right it is not really nothing to worry about as players move through the minors, retire, and age the prospects you have should start looking better and better. It will probably make drafting harder for the first few years, but after a few years you will start to see an improvement.

[Lukas Berger]

Originally Posted by Buchs

I suspect that the issue is that leagues that are imported form 13 are already stacked with too much talent. I think 14 is generating new players at a slightly less talented level than previously. This is not necessarily a bad thing, I think 13 was too easy to stock up high quality prospents and have a never ending stream of starters coming though your system (besides starting pitchers).
...
If I'm right it is not really nothing to worry about as players move through the minors, retire, and age the prospects you have should start looking better and better. It will probably make drafting harder for the first few years, but after a few years you will start to see an improvement.

[The Wolf]

I've played through fifteen years with one OOTP 14 league. The draft classes were pathetic, and their careers were pathetic.

[jldante56]

I'm definitely seeing the same thing - a serious degradation of the draft talent since switching to OOTP 14. . .

[Lukas Berger]

Originally Posted by The Wolf

I've played through fifteen years with one OOTP 14 league. The draft classes were pathetic, and their careers were pathetic.

You clearly don't understand how the ratings work in OOTP then. The ratings in and of themselves mean nothing. They only matter in the context of the overall league.

So even if the draft ratings are too low in the early part of that time period after 15 years the only talent you'd have in the league would be from those "pathetic" draft classes. So any new draft classes wouldn't be pathetic since they'd be rated according to the same conventions as the rest of the league.

So if all the drafts are using the lower ratings, then those "lower rated" players are actually highly rated players.

Additionally it's worth noting that in the past the engine uniformly knocked down many ratings of recently drafted players a few months after they were drafted. No it won't do so. So the only real difference in talent coming into the league is what you see at draft time is more realistic and essentially simply anticipates the rating drops that would occur after the draft in prior versions.

[Lukas Berger]

Originally Posted by jldante56

I'm definitely seeing the same thing - a serious degradation of the draft talent since switching to OOTP 14. . .

The talent in OOTP created drafts has definitely dropped. That's not even a question, it's fact. It was an intentional decision Markus made. So the question at this point shouldn't be "is it happening", it really is.

Rather the question should be, is it WAD, and more realistically than before?

I certainly think it is. The main issue here is that everyone has gotten used to seeing certain ratings as "good" and "bad". Now those ratings aren't quite as good or bad as they were before. So you simply have to adjust your pov to fit in with the new reality.

[Buchs]

Originally Posted by The Wolf

I've played through fifteen years with one OOTP 14 league. The draft classes were pathetic, and their careers were pathetic.

I havn't actually tested this out, but I would think that theoretically, if you are not getting enough talent coming into the league, you could increase the number of draft rounds generated. By doing this it should push the talent level up, due to the fact that more low talent players get cut out since they never get signed.