It looks like MLB is going to go towards a world wide draft, and for the competitive balance for HBD this may be an area to pursue.



1.  We are already a step behind what MLB is doing.  They have scrapped the Type A/B system and moved to a Qualifying Offer.  Moving to this would be helpful for HBD.  There are a lot of quality players who do not end up on teams because of the draft pick compensation tied to them.  There should be very few players who are tied to compensation, and the owners should only get compensation for losing a guy they want to keep.  A lot of times players are sent packing because you can either get a pick, or wait out the market and sign these guys for below market value.  I have seen numerous Type B pitchers get 2 to 4 times the money than a similar pitcher who get the Type A label.  I game the draft/compensation system myself, but think it would be better for leagues if this were to go away.

2.  Create a world wide draft.  Part of the allure of tanking a team is you can spend no money on your ML team, and transfer it into international.  Then while sucking at the ML level and getting high picks in the draft, which are usually locks for an All-Star bid, you also get to sign the best international players, which are usually locks for an All-Star bid.  A team can conceivably get both the best amateur prospect plus the best international prospect.  By combining the two pools into a larger pool, you deepen the draft making later picks more valuable, while no longer encouraging owners to dump money out of what should be their budgets for ML players.  This would make the competitive balance of a league better.

3.  Scouting is stupid.  Advanced scouting is next to worthless.  It is usually better to use your budget on one scouting area (college/high school) as opposed to splitting that money up.  You can usually tell by an International players bonus demands whether they are going to be good or not.  The whole system needs a change.  Many changes have been suggested before, so I'm sure this is similar to other suggestions.

     a.  Remove all ratings from player profiles for players not on your team, and projected ratings all together.  FC Dynasty (soccer) does this, and something similar would good for HBD.  Part of the problem with Adv. Scouting is I can look at the ratings and development of a player and make a reliable determination of where he is going to end up, so I don't need to spend money there because I can do it myself.  If I want those ratings for a player, I should have to pay for them.

     b.  Replace the College/High School/International budgets with a regional budget.  Divide the map into certain regions (Northeast, Southeast, Midwest, Northwest, Southwest, Asia, Latin America, Europe) and then I can distribute money accordingly.  However much money I spend in will give X number of prospects out of that region.  If I want numbers, I pay for that by sending advance scouts.

3 (synposis).  There should be two scouting budgets, Regional and Advance.  The regional budget populates your draft list with players.  The advanced budget gives you the numbers.  By doing this, it would make Scouting Budgets have value.  It would give those who spend more in these areas an advantage by possibly being able to find players in later rounds, or facilitate trades.


Overall, I think a worldwide draft makes sense even if the rest of the draft/scouting system were to remain the same.  There are probably holes within my scouting ideas, and there are always going to be ways to game the system, but the current system should be repaired.  I would like to hear ideas from others.

Not too bad of a set of ideas, methinks.  Good work

Well, to be fair, MLB teams always had to make a "qualifying offer" to a player even under the old system to get compensation, you had to offer arbitration - and I've always said something like that should have been incorporated into HBD.  You should never get compensation for someone you didn't even make a token effort to keep.

I'm fine with the idea of the world-wide draft but would settle for signficant reform of the IFA process.

Scouting needs to be redone, and I've seen any number of suggestions which would be better than what we had now.

I like the idea of getting rid of the current IFA process altogether and just grouping them all in with the college and high school prospects into a single draft.  I would propose that instead of being governed by two scouting budgets (college and high school), it would now be governed by three (adding IFA scouting to the draft).  Those budgets could work exactly the same as they do today: the more you allocate to each budget, the more prospects or that type you will see, and the more accurate their projected ratings would be.

I don't like the proposed changes to ADV scouting as written, though there is a bit of merit there.  You should ALWAYS see current ratings for all players.  I do kind of like the concept of tying seeing the history of ratings progression from season to season (and within the current season) to ADV scouting.  If you budget $0m ADV, then you ONLY see current ratings; if you budget $20m ADV, then you see the full history (as you currently do today).  Exactly what you can see when you budget somewhere $1m and $19m ADV needs to be fleshed out.

I'll refer to my interview a year and a half ago.   Solves most of these problems.

As an example of the current uselessness of ADV, Cooperstown just finished budgeting.  It's a very competitive world with an experience requirement and a MWR.   All but two owners are either at 0 ADV or are working themselves in that direction.

Posted by tecwrg on 4/12/2013 9:41:00 AM (view original):
I like the idea of getting rid of the current IFA process altogether and just grouping them all in with the college and high school prospects into a single draft.  I would propose that instead of being governed by two scouting budgets (college and high school), it would now be governed by three (adding IFA scouting to the draft).  Those budgets could work exactly the same as they do today: the more you allocate to each budget, the more prospects or that type you will see, and the more accurate their projected ratings would be.

I don't like the proposed changes to ADV scouting as written, though there is a bit of merit there.  You should ALWAYS see current ratings for all players.  I do kind of like the concept of tying seeing the history of ratings progression from season to season (and within the current season) to ADV scouting.  If you budget $0m ADV, then you ONLY see current ratings; if you budget $20m ADV, then you see the full history (as you currently do today).  Exactly what you can see when you budget somewhere $1m and $19m ADV needs to be fleshed out.

Player development is one of the weakest parts of the game and should be improved.

If you see it once, you can save it. Under any model like this, once per season I'd open a beer or two, sit in front of the screen for about an hour and copy all current player ratings to spreadsheet or document.

Before making any trades, it would be easy to check any player's development. Just like now, I'd know about where they'd end up if I had 2 seasons of numbers.

I'd stay at 0 ADV. And owners with a few seasons in a world would have a big advantage over newer owners.

And, as you can see, sitestaff did check in and comment. 

I wonder where the 0 Adv scouting numbers are now, almost a year later. I looked at my 5 worlds and the average # of 0 Adv GMs per world is 10.4 with a high of 14 and a low of 7.  The average Adv scouting budget is 7.8M, with an average spread of 6-9M.

Even if sitestaff believes an idea is a good one, they might not have a green light from Fox to allocate any resources into rewriting the program.  Enhancements for all WIS games have virtually stopped over the past few years.

To be fair, they did spend some money on pretty screen redesigns that they showed us and were going to implement any day now (then).