Drafting Tips?

[Libid21]

How do you guys usually like to do your drafts? Do you auto-draft (sim) it or do you actually make the pick one by one? If you do choose every pick, do you mostly listen to what your scouting director suggests or do you go about your own standards and rulebooks? And if that's the case also, what is the stat / rating that you look for in batters, pitchers, etc. that you noticed is a pretty good indicator down the road for them in their careers?

[Déjà Bru]

Originally Posted by Libid21

How do you guys usually like to do your drafts? Do you auto-draft (sim) it or do you actually make the pick one by one? If you do choose every pick, do you mostly listen to what your scouting director suggests or do you go about your own standards and rulebooks? And if that's the case also, what is the stat / rating that you look for in batters, pitchers, etc. that you noticed is a pretty good indicator down the road for them in their careers?

Speaking for me only, since it might be an indication of my laziness, but I usually make it only half-way through a draft before turning it over to auto-pilot. After the gold nuggets are all gone, it gets boring and becomes a crap-shoot anyway; some of those late-round guys may pan out but I don't believe there is any way to tell after a while.

While I am engaged, however, I first ask the scouting director for his recommendation. By no means am I convinced by that, however. I next go looking at who is still available for myself, looking at particular potentials (stuff, contact, etc.), not overall ratings so much.

IMPORTANT: Look for guys with high intelligence, and particularly, high work ethic! These are the guys who have the best chance of fulfilling their potentials. High leadership ratings will also help you down the line, and low greediness will spare you some headaches.

You don't say whether you have feeder leagues and therefore stats to look at in the draft. Treat them as advisories and with a grain of salt. I would think they tend to predict ML sucess, but are far from definite foretellers of fame and fortune. I have read some people here who say feeder league stats mean virtually nothing in that regard. I think there is some correlation, just not a strong one.

[Libid21]

That's another thing... how come they don't show the prospects' high school or college stats? I think it'd be more realistic if they did that. And if they do allow that, how do I activate it?

[Athletics17]

Sometimes I will trade my late draft picks to someone for higher draft picks. I figure that i will get a better quality guy if I trade up then using my 25-30 round picks on some scrubs that fill up my rookie leagues.

You would have to have the draft pick trade option on. I like using them as bargaining chips.

[Djanvk]

Originally Posted by Libid21

That's another thing... how come they don't show the prospects' high school or college stats? I think it'd be more realistic if they did that. And if they do allow that, how do I activate it?

This is a good question, I don't know the answer but would like to know it. Also how do you set up feeder leagues?

[ryan008]

Originally Posted by Djanvk

This is a good question, I don't know the answer but would like to know it. Also how do you set up feeder leagues?

Their stats will only display if you have either a college or highschool feeder league set up. OOTP X is not like older versions (I think it was back in 5 or 6) where the players would have stats created for each player if the draft pool was just generated each year.

So since I am rambling here, if you want the players that you are going to be drafting to have stats to display at draft time you have to have feeder leagues enabled.

I play with a 112 NCAA feeder league with real teams and a 80 team highshool league and I really like the realism the statistics add to the overall drafting experience.

Hope this helps

Ryan

Edit: I forgot to answer the second part

As for adding feeder leagues it is very easy. You just go to the game setup screen, select the League Setup Tab, and than click on the add minor league dropdown in the bottom right corner. from there you select either a highschool or a college league and it will add it. You can add teams and divisions tot he newly created league in the league functions options, but one quick thing to remember is if you add or subtract teams make sure to generate a new schedule (under the same league functions ooptions).