Question on Scouting

[Vitalogy80]

Hi All,

I've always/only played in Online Leagues with Scouting turned off. There are quite a few new features with Scouting so I thought I'd give it a try with a solo league.

So I created a brand new Fictional League with an Inaugural draft...my Scout was Excellent across the board. During the initial draft, I had 2 Scouting Opinions, my team scout and the OSA Scout. Obviously I chose my scout since he was Excellent.

Immediately after the draft finished, I took a look at my team and the ratings of every player had changed, some significantly. For example, my first round pick was a little worse, but still a stud, but my 2nd round pick was a bench player at best when I thought I was getting a superstar shortstop.

Why would my own scouts opinion change so much from one day to the next? How can I do an Inaugural Draft if it's a complete crapshoot?

Thanks for the help.

[GrantDawg]

Originally Posted by Vitalogy80

Hi All,

I've always/only played in Online Leagues with Scouting turned off. There are quite a few new features with Scouting so I thought I'd give it a try with a solo league.

So I created a brand new Fictional League with an Inaugural draft...my Scout was Excellent across the board. During the initial draft, I had 2 Scouting Opinions, my team scout and the OSA Scout. Obviously I chose my scout since he was Excellent.

Immediately after the draft finished, I took a look at my team and the ratings of every player had changed, some significantly. For example, my first round pick was a little worse, but still a stud, but my 2nd round pick was a bench player at best when I thought I was getting a superstar shortstop.

Why would my own scouts opinion change so much from one day to the next? How can I do an Inaugural Draft if it's a complete crapshoot?

Thanks for the help.

Yes and yes. It is a crapshoot, and the players ratings will end up being different in different settings. When the player is in your organization, the player may not look as good as he did coming out of high school. That is a real feel of what actually happens. Good news is, some will look better.

Also, sometimes guys get downgraded at first, and then build back up over time. I have seen that often (4 stars, goes to 2 stars, then moves back up to three stars in AAA or if he gets a call up).

Another factor is budget. If you have good money in amateur scouting, and not as much in minors (or vis-versa), the ratings might change because of that.

But all in all, especially with scouting on, but even if it is off, it is all a scratch-off lottery ticket, and that is pretty close to real life.

[Vitalogy80]

Thanks for the reply...

I do agree that drafting is a crapshoot, but I just find it weird that on January 1st, my Excellent scout thinks this guy is a 5 star Superstar and the next day he's a marginal big leaguer. As I said, he was Excellent across the board (Amateurs, International, Major Leagues etc) so how can his perception of a prospect or major leaguer change so much over 1 day?

[endgame]

Originally Posted by Vitalogy80

Thanks for the reply...

I do agree that drafting is a crapshoot, but I just find it weird that on January 1st, my Excellent scout thinks this guy is a 5 star Superstar and the next day he's a marginal big leaguer. As I said, he was Excellent across the board (Amateurs, International, Major Leagues etc) so how can his perception of a prospect or major leaguer change so much over 1 day?

I've noted this for logging and review. One 'theory' involves the selection or non-selection of the AI Evaluation box by position, player, or neither. The values are indicative of player quality and mostly right, but a possibility exists (remember none of this is proven or official), that when a player is moved into the new world environment, he is compared and rated differently because his comparison value changes.

I won't get into all the other 'ideas' revolving around this issue, except to say a form of it was logged, is logged, and will be logged again for review. Thanks for your patience and making the observation.

[Vitalogy80]

Thanks Endgame...

Just as an example...I have a player with the following stats

OSA (01/01/2011) STU = 50 (58), MOV = 66 (78), CON = 53 (70)
A. Liriano (01/02/2011) STU = 46 (49), MOV = 61 (69), CON = 45 (59)

Past Reports
A. Liriano (01/01/2011) STU = 55 (79), MOV 67 (82), CON = 56 (85)

So in one day, the same scout dropped his ratings on this player significantly...with the Potential ratings in brackets.

Cheers

[95Marinerschangedmylife]

One thing you could do is change the accuracy of scouting to a bit higher. If you have never used scouting, this can be very difficult to understand. I had to do this also.

[SteveV]

Initial drafts for fictional leagues get kind of crazy because there are no stats to go on for the 'scouts'. Also theres a massive drop off once you get past the 3rd round in most drafts no matter what the ratings look like, most players are barely adequate for their positions.

For example I had a snake draft in a league where 16 teams picked and there was only AAA level minors to fill out, so thats 800 players required, The draft had 1300 or so players generated.so I had the 1st, 32nd and 33rd picks.

My first pick was a SP whose revealed contract after the draft was for 15 million per over 3 years - a stud. Second pick I went the Fantasy Baseball positional scarcity route and took the best looking catcher, his revealed contract was for just over 17 million a year, another great pick.

Third pick was another great looking pitcher, his contract was 680k - oh-oh. After those first two picks I had nobody else on my team making more than 750k a year despite the fact I spent about fifteen to twenty minutes wading through player pages in each round trying to get the 'best looking' guys.

The only golden rule is never use OSA as a valuation device, even the manual says their ratings are useless. really all the draft is for is setting the baseline for all the teams in the league, You can then work your GM magic over the years to get the team better.

[endgame]

Okay, the 'official' response I received to this inquiry was "Stars are relative to the league strength, and before the draft it's just an estimate, since teams have no players yet. Hence things may change after the draft."

Now I get that, but would and will argue that there needs to be 1) a bit more of a consistency in the range of changes and 2) the front end system may well be improved if the pool itself were tightened up in terms of evaluating top tier candidates. That way the higher rated would probably remain the higher rated after the teams distribute. It's a bit unfair to assess a player as 1/5 star in a pool that may contain 200 1/1 star players that will end up in the undrafted FA pool once a league completes the inaugural.

ANYway, there's where it stands. On the one hand, small 'tatoes, it's a one-time thing; on the other, it's the very basis of a league's origin and its consequences will carry on for at least the first few years of your team.