I love how moy is the only person that think paying a slightly below average pitching coach more than anyone else would makes him smart of helps his players in any way.

moy, if you want to understand what your budget does in terms of decline, all you need to do is look at what happened to Hootie after about age 30. You've increased training a bit since then, but not that much. It hasn't been a major problem for your team to date because your core has been young, but if your plan is to try to extend your window with your current core of talent, it's going to start to be a problem.

I know Darrell Rolle is only the 7th or 8th best PC now, but I love the guy for his loyalty...and his freestyle rap skills.

Sadly for Hootie, he also has a pretty good makeup rating...  so had he been "trained" properly, he could actually still have been an effective ML player at this point.

Posted by AlCheez on 10/28/2010 11:08:00 AM (view original):
moy, if you want to understand what your budget does in terms of decline, all you need to do is look at what happened to Hootie after about age 30. You've increased training a bit since then, but not that much. It hasn't been a major problem for your team to date because your core has been young, but if your plan is to try to extend your window with your current core of talent, it's going to start to be a problem.

That part I get - but I don't know if there is a 'huge' diff between 14mil and maxing out 20 mil. I pretty much mastered IFA a while back and it seems like a 20 mil Int Scouting Budget is way too much for what you get out of it (acurate ratings and all the IFAs show up). In fact - with a $10mil budget you can pretty much see all you need to see and get a pretty accurate rating as to attributes (including the asking price for the guy) to know if you want him. Sure you may miss out on maybe 1-2 elites because you can't see them - but you will still see another 1-2 elites that you can go after with the additional $10 mil you saved from IFA Scout budgeting.

Same goes for Advanced Scouting. I think $14mil is perfect for me. Its pretty damn acurate so I can get a read on my players - but it saves $6 mil to spend elsewhere. I don't have to be perfect at seeing what my players are rated - just close enough. I don't think the difference between a $20mil and a $14 mil Adv Budget is that great of a gap.

I'm banking on the fact that $14 mil vs $20 mil Training is like the other budgets in HBD - where once you are over a certain point in the budget it doesn't make as much of a difference (unless you are looking to be exact - I.e. I will pay $20 mil to know 'exactly' what a player is rated or to hold off on decline as long as possible). I don't plan to hang on to my players past age 34.... before letting them go to FA. In quantifiable terms - how many years will a $6 mil diff in training budget take off a players career? 1, 2, 3? I still consider a guy like Chris Offerman valuable at age 34. This is his last season with me and even with the decline he is a 70+ in Contact/Pwr/vLHP/vRHP/BE. I won't be keeping him any longer... so I don't care what happens afterwards.

Completely anecdotally, based only on my vague observation, I think there's a huge difference between 14 and 20 in advanced scouting, and I think the big jump is somewhere in the 16 to 18 range.

I don't care about advanced scouting, IFA budget is always debatable, and the difference between 20 million in training and 14 million in training is ******* massive.

Posted by tylermathias on 10/28/2010 9:51:00 AM (view original):
I think I'm out of the FA market unless there are last minute bargains.

Really could use a bullpen arm and, to a lesser extent, a better #5 starter to replace Kordell Rowand.

Nicky Harper's corpse should be available on the cheap for some bullpen/spot starting

And moy, even letting those guys go, you'd be better served the more signable/tradable they are.

Posted by tylermathias on 10/28/2010 11:33:00 AM (view original):
Completely anecdotally, based only on my vague observation, I think there's a huge difference between 14 and 20 in advanced scouting, and I think the big jump is somewhere in the 16 to 18 range.

18's been pretty much a sweet spot.  When I had  advanced at 20 and dropped to 18, my projections didnt change all that much.  It will be interesting how my 18m international budget looks.

moy - look at how Offerman declined in the 1 year you had him relative to how he declined before you got him for a picture of the difference between 14 and 20. And look at what happened to him when he was 30-32 as opposed to what happened to Hootie. If you had had Offerman for his entire career, he'd be significantly worse right now.

Plus, none of this even touches on how he would be affected by injuries with a proper training budget as well.

Combined with his crappy medical budget, he could be slammed worse than he has.

Nice opener for The Diary.

Posted by AlCheez on 10/28/2010 11:49:00 AM (view original):
moy - look at how Offerman declined in the 1 year you had him relative to how he declined before you got him for a picture of the difference between 14 and 20. And look at what happened to him when he was 30-32 as opposed to what happened to Hootie. If you had had Offerman for his entire career, he'd be significantly worse right now.

I'll consider 16-18 next season. valid point.