Posted by hockey1984 on 12/22/2020 12:38:00 PM (view original):

Posted by jimt14120 on 12/22/2020 12:17:00 PM (view original):

Posted by hockey1984 on 12/22/2020 8:25:00 AM (view original):
There is some stuff I want to add but I feel as though when you delve in further its not just a small tweak / quality of life.

I'll bring it up anyways because small is better then nothing but I think budget distribution in terms of scouting needs to be tweaked.

It would be nice if HS/College was a combined pool that you decide where it goes every year. So if you have 30 million in this combined pool one year you could have 20 HS / 10 college and then go 15/15 the next year or switch and go 20 college /10 HS the next season. I feel these should be separate from the international scouting budget. I want to say for now allowing the budgets to be moved by more then 4 million would be nice, but I don't think that is the right solution. Maybe for now have it so the budgets can be moved by 5 million rather then 4 so that its 4 seasons and not 5 to go from 20 million to 0 and vice versa?

I've always felt scouting budgeting should be like prospect budgeting, no restriction on your movement between seasons. It's ridiculous that if you want to change your focus it takes 4-5 seasons. In reality it's a plane trip redeploying your scouts..

I'm so split down the middle on this. (Political response).

The player in me wants prospect budget to be free flowing. Move stuff from HS to College or to INT, go for it. It rewards people who know the game better and that budget better.

My own personal strategy would be to have my College scouting at 20 million when I pick 16th or higher in the draft to ensure I don't waste a pick, then I would switch over the HS for 17th or lower as it would be more likely to take a 'lottery ticket' with a better chance of paying off, then switching to full INT budget if I'm planning on spending money on free agents and giving away my first round pick to a type A guy.


The owner who wants new owners to invest in HBD and stick around can see it as being problematic. Mostly because what I just mentioned, new owners wouldn't know to move the money around and it could be a steep learning curve to get caught up. Having to keep 16 - 20 million in my College scouting just incase I have a bad season means I have less money to go elsewhere, evening the playing field.

Also I can kind of see it from a real life perspective. If I have had 20 million in college for years, my scouts know which school to go to, which players to look at, which games to watch. If I think switch over to international scouting they would have to figure out where teams play, which are the good teams overseas, what different techniques to look for. It could take a few years to get an accurate representation of talent.

After having said all of that I think the draft scouting needs a massive overhaul that can't be done with a small tweak. I'd love to see where prospects have letter or color grades similar to that which they have in hoops or gridiron (or so I'm told) or a range that the players ratings could fall under.

I think scouting is fine outside of advanced scouting. I think advanced scouting should be changed because barely anybody uses it. I think a good idea would be to keep it the same name, but what ever you put into it gives you a 1 for 2 extra accuracy on any other scouting department that you're maxed out on. For instance, if you are maxed out on college scouting ($20MM) and maxed out on intl scouting ($20MM), then if you put $2MM in advanced scouting, it is equivalent to having $21 in both college and intl scouting. Another example would be that if you are maxed out in only high school scouting, then the $2MM in advanced scouting would give you the equivalent $21MM in high school scouting.

So, if you're in full rebuild mode, you could max out college scouting, high school scouting and advanced scouting and you would have the equivalent of $30MM in both college and high scouting for your draft.

Just an idea to get more people to use advanced scouting.. The future projections for players would still be on the player card, but they would be the same for everyone (as if everyone subscribed to an online scouting subscription for current players).

For advanced scouting I think it should be the players current ratings. Want to make a trade for a vet? If your advanced scouting is low you had better be able to read stats and contracts really well. Want to trade for a prospect? Better hope you kept the pre-draft scouting report or that you trust where the previous owner picked the player.

I've always felt that the prospect pool for international players should mirror how it works for real life rather than a random trickle over the season. The pool is the pool for everyone to see with their own ratings and then there is a day where internationals can be signed for MLB, I feel like it should happen the same in HBD. It's basically like a free agent rookie pool that would have a number of days where players who really want to sign a contract do so in the first week... maybe others who aren't sure they want to sign take longer.

Countering the last post, I like the "trickle" of IFAs...applying strategy whether to bid higher on a current prospect or wait for something better. makes it interesting. However, I would like a deadline date where you know no more IFAs are coming.

Separately, it would be nice to see the overall current record of future opponents the rest of the season....helps to know whether to push chips in or hold back. (maybe this already exists?). Currently doing this manually when it should be an easy addition...can take out Spring Training record from Advanced Standings page to free up screen space.

Posted by hockey1984 on 12/22/2020 4:03:00 PM (view original):
For advanced scouting I think it should be the players current ratings. Want to make a trade for a vet? If your advanced scouting is low you had better be able to read stats and contracts really well. Want to trade for a prospect? Better hope you kept the pre-draft scouting report or that you trust where the previous owner picked the player.

As a veteran owner that sounds kind of fun. (It would also make my current play style more advantageous) I wonder how new players would fare in that kind of environment though. Might take even longer to understand the game.

Posted by Scotb50 on 12/22/2020 5:14:00 PM (view original):
Countering the last post, I like the "trickle" of IFAs...applying strategy whether to bid higher on a current prospect or wait for something better. makes it interesting. However, I would like a deadline date where you know no more IFAs are coming.

Separately, it would be nice to see the overall current record of future opponents the rest of the season....helps to know whether to push chips in or hold back. (maybe this already exists?). Currently doing this manually when it should be an easy addition...can take out Spring Training record from Advanced Standings page to free up screen space.

IFAs stop showing up at the end of the minor league season.

Just thought of a new quick fix -- Adding a header to the free agent page that shows the amount of options the player has without having to click into the player card.

Posted by hockey1984 on 12/22/2020 4:03:00 PM (view original):
For advanced scouting I think it should be the players current ratings. Want to make a trade for a vet? If your advanced scouting is low you had better be able to read stats and contracts really well. Want to trade for a prospect? Better hope you kept the pre-draft scouting report or that you trust where the previous owner picked the player.

This is interesting. As posted above, I would be concerned about new players, but maybe they need to used advanced in the beginning to help them learn???

For IFA’s they need to add a few veteran Korean or Japanese players as fully developed players. You don’t see older IFA’s at all.

Posted by tlowster on 12/22/2020 8:12:00 PM (view original):

Posted by hockey1984 on 12/22/2020 4:03:00 PM (view original):
For advanced scouting I think it should be the players current ratings. Want to make a trade for a vet? If your advanced scouting is low you had better be able to read stats and contracts really well. Want to trade for a prospect? Better hope you kept the pre-draft scouting report or that you trust where the previous owner picked the player.

This is interesting. As posted above, I would be concerned about new players, but maybe they need to used advanced in the beginning to help them learn???

All that would change for newbies is vets would be telling newbies to keep their advanced scouting at 20 million until they get a feel for the game.

for vets it would be time for people to put their money where their mouth is in terms of knowledge of the game. Would lead to some interesting trades.

MikeT spent a lot of time lobbying with WIS about fixing some things in HBD, and Advanced Scouting was part of that. As much as I was at odds with MikeT many times, most of what he got changed was for the good. There's no need to change Advanced Scouting. It serves a purpose for new owners, and as those owners get more experience, they can gain confidence that they can back off of it.

Posted by hockey1984 on 12/22/2020 11:10:00 PM (view original):

Posted by tlowster on 12/22/2020 8:12:00 PM (view original):

Posted by hockey1984 on 12/22/2020 4:03:00 PM (view original):
For advanced scouting I think it should be the players current ratings. Want to make a trade for a vet? If your advanced scouting is low you had better be able to read stats and contracts really well. Want to trade for a prospect? Better hope you kept the pre-draft scouting report or that you trust where the previous owner picked the player.

This is interesting. As posted above, I would be concerned about new players, but maybe they need to used advanced in the beginning to help them learn???

All that would change for newbies is vets would be telling newbies to keep their advanced scouting at 20 million until they get a feel for the game.

for vets it would be time for people to put their money where their mouth is in terms of knowledge of the game. Would lead to some interesting trades.

The more I think about this, the more I like the idea.

If you put some thought into it, it makes sense. If I have no high school recruiting budget in real life, I may see and know the top recruits because they are known and hyped commodities. Outside of emails in your inbox from a player's agent, there is no hype in HBD. In HBD, if you don't have much of a high school recruiting budget, you don't get to see all the high school players in your draft class. However, as soon as they are drafted by another team, you now not only see the player, but you have a 100 percent accurate moment in time picture of that player's current talent and a great idea where he ends up. That is not realistic. You may have a scouting report out there, but it would mostly be a scouting report that every one has access to and not a report that gives 100 percent accurate evaluations.

I think it is an excellent idea to hide the current ratings of a player if they are not a player within your organization. Once the player is in your organization, you have a more clear picture of his current talent and potential. I think they should change advanced scouting to where if a player is not in your organization, the player's ratings are as accurate as your advanced scouts are. For instance, I think if you have 20 Million in high school budget, your scouting is some where between 85-100 percent accurate. This would be the same for advanced scouting. When you go look at a player on another team or a free agent, if you have 20 Million in advanced scouting, you have 85-100 percentage precision evaluating the player's ratings. I know that this is probably a minority opinion, but love the idea. It kills two birds with one stone --
1. It will likely make owners that are too lazy to evaluate stats used advanced scouting;
2. It will lower the amount of veteran owners that snipe young players from inexperienced owners because now those veteran owners will need to spend money on advanced scouting to see that 19 year old second baseman that already has a right split rating of 65.

This might make veteran owners leave the game though so I doubt it gets implemented. I would bet there would be many that would hate this, but I would be all for it. In fact, I think it would be cool to add more slots within each recruitment budget. For instance, in addition to the 0-20 million dollars each scouting budget, there are two extra siloed factions that can improve the scouting even further. The first would be a "support staff". For every $1m added to the support staff, you see an extra percent of the players in the pool. For instance, if a 20 Million Dollar high school scouting budget allows you to see 85 percent of the high school players in the pool, the extra $1MM allows you to see 86 percent of the pool. Put a Max of $10MM on the support staff so the most you wil ever see is 95 percent. Another faction could be "Consultant Staff". Thus would be the same idea, but from an accuracy perspective -- the 20 million dollar high school scouting budget gives you 85-100 percent accuracy in your evaluations. A $10MM investment here would up that to a 95-100 percent accuracy. For advanced scouting it would be the same idea for the Consultant Staff -- it affects accuracy. However, for the support staff, each $1MM spent shows 1 year of the players development up to ten years at $10MM.

I know this complicates things and many people won't like it, but I think it would be cool.

Yeah, I think it's a stupid idea. How realistic is it to not know the current ratings of players on other teams? In RL, everyone knows the 'ratings' of players on other teams. Also, I don't like how this would affect trading.

One more thing that would be fun: put bold ink on player cards for stats that led the league. Just like we used to get on the back of baseball cards when we were kids.

Posted by bjschumacher on 12/23/2020 6:56:00 PM (view original):
Yeah, I think it's a stupid idea. How realistic is it to not know the current ratings of players on other teams? In RL, everyone knows the 'ratings' of players on other teams. Also, I don't like how this would affect trading.

IRL, veteran MLB players have stats that you can backwards engineer into an HBD rating. For some players, some ratings are obvious (Joey Gallo has 100 power). For others, it is a lot more subjective and difficult (Marcus Semien's defensive range, glove, arm and arm accuracy rating). Prospects are even more variable in where they are and where they are going. A random GM can't just wave his magic wand and tell you that a random player on a random organization's single A team has a precisely 35 out of 80 rating when it comes to his hit tool against right handed pitching. He can tell you that it is 35, but that is his opinion, it isn't an actual rating. That is the premise behind the idea -- in order to be more accurate, you need a more in depth analysis. For instance, Marcus Semien's fielding improved during 2019, then slid during 2020 and if you talk to Semien, he will obviously tell you that it is just small sample size due to the shortened baseball season. However, in order to have the facts, you need to look at the tape -- was he not getting to balls that he usually got to because now he is 29? Was he getting to the balls and just making more errors? How was his footwork when he made the throwing errors, did he get into some bad habits? If so, has he corrected them? In relation to HBD, this is what an expensive advanced scout would be able to tell you. This is opposed to just looking at Marcus Semien and within 5 seconds, you know if he is still good enough play SS. So I disagree that it is a stupid idea, but to each their own.

Also, I figured somebody would bring up the affect that this would have on trading and that is why I briefly mentioned it in my post. I understand that some folks will trade less because if they don't have any advanced scouting, they will have no idea what to think of the player you're offering unless they look at his stats and that might turn them off to the trade you are offering because they have to do extra work. Where I am sure we will disagree is that I think this is a good thing. There are too many trades that should be vetoed that slip through for various reasons.

I think part of the reason that HBD can't keep new people around is because some veteran owners can easily pluck great players away from inexperienced owners by dangling a 30 year old 6 time all star 3b that will fill a hole on the inexperienced owner's MLB roster and help them move their team from being a 75 win team to a 79 win team. In return, the veteran owner gets a 20 year old that will likely be just as good as the 30 year old they just gave up that is two seasons away from his rookie year and now has a fresh 9 seasons of control. They rinse and repeat this process and before you know it, two newer owners that got fleeced are no longer playing HBD and the veteran owner that thinks he is so smooth has alienated 20 percent of the World in which he participates and good owner leave the World.

I think the implementation of this type of advanced scouting is a fun way to not only make advanced scouting more interesting and usable, but also make it more difficult for owners to use the divisive trading formula referenced above. If they still use the above referenced trading formula, at least they are paying for it unlike now where they get a free peak at players.

All this is probably moot because it makes things more complicated though.