I have 20 each on HS and College Scouting, and 0 on Advanced Scouting. I have always assumed Advanced Scouting was associated with players on other teams. But in my most recent draft, I saw that the projections for several players I drafted changed after the draft. I don't recall seeing this before. Has it always been this way, and I just missed it? Is it something new? Is it a bug? And if this is normal, which projections do I trust, in the first seasons before a pattern has been established: the original HS/COL projection, or the ADV projection?

ADV is all players.

The HS/COL is only for the draft, so write that down your ADV will change the ratings a lot.

I think what you are saying is how I've understood it. The "real" projection is the one I had when I prepared for the draft, the ADV after the draft is useless? That's how I've always done it, and I do save the HS/COL projections.

Good point, Mike. It's probably better to say that once I've stuck the info into a spreadsheet, I don't delete it ... I just make a new sheet when the next draft comes around.

I save the scouting projections for whatever ML prospects I acquire each draft in the player notes tab on their profile.  Usually 3-4 guys per draft.  That way, I don;t have to refer back to spreadsheets.

The notes also make it easy to quickly identify my prospects at each level.

I just put 22 to notate that I picked the guy with the 22nd pick.    I do that with each pick I felt worthy of ranking.    Sometimes it's just a couple of players, sometimes it might be 9-10. 

Picture this...

You have 3 scouts- 1 college guy, 1 HS guy and another pro guy. 

The 2 amateur guys are full time, work year round and do a good job (20 mil budget)

The pro guy is part time and doubles as a McD's line cook (0 budget)

During the draft, you see the ratings that your amateur guys have come up with and post draft, they're automatically transferred into your 'pro' database that your pro guy has compiled, and he's an idiot. 

So basically, everyone is right, copy and paste your draft ratings into the player notes right after the draft and use them as a reference.

Allow me to add a Part 2 to this question:

My first few seasons here, I left a little in ADV scouting money every season... just for security's sake, I suppose. I got used to what wildly inaccurate projections look like. (My favorite trick it does is showing that 26 year old players are going to gain six to eight points by age 27.)

This season, I went to Zero for the first time. And my ADV Projections don't really look any different, or more inaccurate, or more misleading than in previous seasons. So here's my question - seems like the usefulness of ADV projections runs out LONG before you get to Zero, probably at least Six or Eight Million.

What do you vets think the threshold for that probably is?

Anything below 8 seems to be a crapshoot.

Agreed.  If you're at 8, you might as well go to 0.

Until they make it useful somehow and you need more than an actual year to get it back to 20.



















HA.....updates

12 seemed like the last useful number when I used it.

And I still don't know why anyone is worrying about what their 1st round pick projects to be by his 2nd-3rd season.   He's either going to be useful or not.   Doesn't matter if your HS scouts, three seasons ago, said he was going to be an 83. 

It's helpful for newer players to see how accurate projections will be going forward if you're not using $20mm (well even $20 isn't supposed to 100%), so you can start to being able to discount future ratings.