Posted by MikeT23 on 1/2/2011 2:06:00 PM (view original):
The "best" solution is to grade all prospects 1-6 or A-F.   Once they're signed, it converts to 0-100.

Then have players have a "peak development" season that varies.  Some players blossom in their first full season and level off.  Other "get it" in their 5th full season.

This solves a lot of problems because (1) or (A) would be 85-100.   (2) or (B) would be 70-84.    And higher budgeting reduces the chance of a mis-label.  While there's very little differnce between 84 and 85, there's a big difference between 71 and 99.  You'll want your prospect budget high.   And because development patterns will vary, you'll want your ADV budget to be high if you're trading for prospects.   Is that 8 point bump in his 2nd season his "peak development year" or is it just normal development and he's going to get a big one later on?

Of course, this would probably be a MF to program.   Or at least change from the current program.

I would think that this would be fairly easy to program.  They would still be storing the "real" 0-100 ratings in their database.  Only the draft prospect page would need to be changed, with only the presentation of the ratings being transformed from the rating numbers to the letter grade.  I'd guess that there's already some transformation being done on that page (as with many other pages) in which the "true" ratings are being "fuzzied" according to the appropriate scouting budget.

The biggest problem with this change would not be a technical coding/implementation issue, but would be the loud thumbs-down feedback from users that you know would happen.

Posted by mitchrapp on 1/1/2011 2:25:00 AM (view original):
Are you the tanker Lepp? Because OP guy correlates them as one.

Sadly, no. I've been abusing the system in other ways. 

Has anyone listened to Bill Simmons' podcast where he interviewed the Washington Capitals/Wizards owner, Ted Leonsis?  What I garnered from the interview was that he would rather lose for a couple seasons in order to set up a long term winner than try to win every season by throwing money at whatever talent is available.  It was definitely the soft tanking strategy that MikeT is against - ie not necessarily trying to lose as many games as possible but definitely not trying to win.  Anyway, the point is that it happens in real life and I doubt there will ever be a world where every owner is trying to make the playoffs every season.

Another possible solution would be use existing logic for "doubtful" signings that consider Wins-Losses.  For example, a prospect might sign with an 80-win team where he wouldn't sign with a 60-win team.  Or his initial signing demand might be $6M for an 80-win team, but $10M for a 60-win team. 

If you add possible incentives for winning that 60th game or that 70th game (i.e. greater likelihood of signing draft picks and/or free agents), you reduce the incentive to tank the last few games of the year.

Sounds good Todd but WIS won't do that.