I paraphrased.  Quotes have these little things " " around them.  

And the honest discussion involves your crazy scheme where owners can invest all they want into scouting and still get killed in the draft year after year after year.

As for your other point, my goal is to try to make the draft more realistic, and more meaningful to the game. The changes I propose, I think, make for a more interesting draft, and also push owners to put more effort into developing and/or trading for minor league prospects.

As is, the draft is generally predictable, and of limited value to owners. You are unlikely to get more than a couple of major-league prospects, and even if you put minimal money/time into it, you're still likely to get one.

The odds of an owner getting killed year after year is minimal, just as the odds would be of an owner landing 9 surefire major leaguers in draft after draft.

And you paraphrased, but completely changed the meaning of what I said to fit your argument. It's a dishonest way to argue.

Posted by sanderbear on 7/23/2010 4:15:00 PM (view original):
As for your other point, my goal is to try to make the draft more realistic, and more meaningful to the game. The changes I propose, I think, make for a more interesting draft, and also push owners to put more effort into developing and/or trading for minor league prospects.

As is, the draft is generally predictable, and of limited value to owners. You are unlikely to get more than a couple of major-league prospects, and even if you put minimal money/time into it, you're still likely to get one.

"push owners to put more effort into developing and/or trading for minor league prospects."

The flip side to this is that if the potential of minor league prospects is more fuzzy (because so many of them look like major league quality until they flame out), owners might be less willing to trade them away.

True. But that's not a bad thing. That's the case now. Owners trade for guys based on what they see -- maybe their advanced scouting budget isn't great, maybe they are basing their trade on a guy maxing out his ratings.

The long/short is that in real baseball, on draft day a lot of guys look like they could be surefire major-league prospects, and of course, a lot of them in the top rounds never make it to the bigs. Some get hurt, but some just don't work out. IMHO, the HBD draft could be tweaked to create a similar scenario.

I think the problem you're actually seeking to fix is the predictability of development arcs, which I can get down with.

Introducing random busts to the draft process erases the advantage held by people who understand the game, budget properly and spend time doing due diligence. That's bad. I'd rather see the effects of makeup increased for player development or have more players with super-low current ratings but intriguingly high projections, or something along those lines.

"or have more players with super-low current ratings but intriguing high projections, or something along those lines." 

Sounds pretty similar to what I'm suggesting.

And Travis, one more time, if you spend the money on scouting/training/minor-league coaches, you would be rewarded with drafting 8 or 9 guys who on draft day have major league ceilings. Yes, some will bust. But some will hit projections. That's the way real baseball works.

Mike's worst-case scenario will happen to two-thirds of the teams in the league scenario just doesn't make much sense. If 20 owners spent heavily on scouting/training/minor-league coaches, would one or two of them realize after three seasons that they wound up with squat? Maybe. Would one or two realize after three seasons that they wound up with 7 true major-league prospects? Maybe. But the odds that it would be the same two or three teams on top and on bottom for mulitple consecutive drafts would be nil. And the odds that one or more owners, after one draft, would decide they had busts a-plenty and quit, are non-existent. The owners wouldn't know they had busts at the end of the first season -- if they claimed as much, they'd just be looking for an excuse.

The problem with your proposal, or any I've seen that are intended to place ML prospects in the later rounds, is that you've got to offset that potential influx of talent with random failures in the earlier rounds. If you simply added high-ceiling/low-floor prospects to the mix, then the market would decide how to value them. Maybe as early round talent, maybe not; it'll probably be different from league to league and year to year.

Artificially enhancing the value of late-round picks necessitates the devaluation of earlier round picks, whether through random busts or some other means. But for our purposes in this game, I think we can all agree that owners who spend more fake budget and real time should be rewarded. I'm going to argue against any proposal that diminishes that edge.

Fair enough. I'm going to submit my idea to WIS, and see what happens.

Nothing has changed.   Under your plan, one team can get multiple BL players in a draft and another team can get none regardless of budget/time spent.  Year after year after year.   Not good.   Hopefully WifS recognizes this and trashes your ticket.

Posted by MikeT23 on 7/26/2010 8:11:00 AM (view original):
Nothing has changed.   Under your plan, one team can get multiple BL players in a draft and another team can get none regardless of budget/time spent.  Year after year after year.   Not good.   Hopefully WifS recognizes this and trashes your ticket.

"Thanks for the suggestion."

"This will never happen" would be appropriate.

I was going old-school.  The "kinder, gentler" ADMIN.

Posted by MikeT23 on 7/26/2010 8:11:00 AM (view original):
Nothing has changed.   Under your plan, one team can get multiple BL players in a draft and another team can get none regardless of budget/time spent.  Year after year after year.   Not good.   Hopefully WifS recognizes this and trashes your ticket.

Under the current system, one team can get multiple BL players and another can get none.

Again, Mike, you present the worst-case scenario as if it is the most common example, then trash that example. The odds would greatly favor all (or nearly all) teams in every draft getting at least one BL player. The odds of a team getting 0 BL players year after year after year would be next to nil -- assuming the owner put any effort into ranking.

Obviously, teams that had 0 or very little money in advanced scouting, or didn't take the time to rank, would have a greater chance of having multple bad drafts. But those owners already have a greater chance of multiple bad drafts.

So what are you changing again?   If there's virtually no chance a team can get less BL players than now, there's virtually no chance a team can get more BL players than now.   Since nothing will really change as far as the distribution of talent, what's the point of your elaborate plan?