A growing percentage of my teams are in progressives, so I find it more and more time consuming to scout players for each season's draft, especially after the 1st round superstars are taken. I'm curious as to what methods people use to scout players for an upcoming draft. I'm not asking for help in determining what makes a good player, just ideas on methods for efficiently sorting through rookies and free agents in each season's draft. Currently, I waste a bunch of time looking at each available player and noting a few key statistics for that season plus I give them an arbitrary rating on how useful they are for the remainder of their career. That method works fairly well, but takes WAAAY too long, and I'm growing tired of doing it. Anyone found another method that works well?

Currently, I waste a bunch of time looking at each available player and noting a few key statistics for that season plus I give them an arbitrary rating on how useful they are for the remainder of their career.

That's it, in a nutshell.  

I always do a quick assessment prior to the draft.  I copy and paste all the available players into Word.  Then I go down the list. 

For batters I search by season, and AVG+, OBP+, SLG+ ,OPS+.  For more than half of them I'll just write an X next to their names (meaning completely useless to me).  For pitchers I search by season, and HR/9+, OAV+, WHIP+ and ERC+.  Again, half of them get an X right off the bat.

The really good players (potential first rounders) get highlighted in red.  For the rest, I'll write a quick note like "good 500 PA this season, then nothing" or "crap this season, but good 50-75 IP for following 3 seasons."

When it's my turn to draft, I do a more thorough evaluation based on my team's needs, but that takes a lot less time once I've separated the wheat from the chaff.

By the way, I'm in three progs.  I've hit the wall in terms of how much time I can/want to put into prog teams.  I like all three teams a lot, but it's rather time-consuming doing this stuff every couple months for 3 teams.  I definitely wouldn't join another prog unless one of these leagues ended.

I'm in two progs.  I'm contemplating joining a 3rd because it starts in a period I want, but I can't justify the time.

Honestly, I don't do a lot of stat scanning. 
1.  Sort players by position.
2.  I will pull up each player's career and see if he warrants a 1st, 2nd, or 3rd round pick.  If he does, I'll write down his career total salary (rounded to nearest 100k), counting only seasons that I would actually use (adding 200k for a season he'll spend in the minors doesn't make a lot of sense to me).  If he doesn't I delete his name, immediately.
3.  Then, I'll add a note describing the type of player, if I don't already know (e.g. for Maddux I noted that he was a SP - ace - with peak years from 1992-1998), for role players or 1-3 year players I'll be more specific, i.e. 49 ip,  OAV .218  WHIP 1.13 in 1992). 
4.  Once my list is running low I'll rescout the remaining picks with an eye towards short term need.
5.  I always try to post that my 2nd round pick is available for a future 1st rounder since 1st round picks are so valuable (this has only garnered interest a few times).

I consider more mainstream stats in progs than I do in open leagues, because normalization is minimized in comparison.  I am a big fan of batting average, ops, HRs, and speed.  I concentrate more on fielding than range.

For pitchers, I concentrate almost entirely on whip, oav, and era (the last one should be erc, but i'm lazy).

One of my two teams has been rebuilt from a hopeless team without a future to a team that should make the playoffs 8-9 seasons in a row.

I also have started saving my old prog drafts as a reference point for new ones.

One other note, I don't draft the players based on their total salary, I just use that as a reference  point for knowing which 10-20 players to consider at any given point. 

I look at players and keep track of what I consider:

Full Time All Star quality seasons
Full Time useable seasons
PT useable seasons

you can also look at career WAR 

http://www.baseballprojection.com/war/top500.htm and http://www.baseballprojection.com/war/playerindex.htm

not exact, but a fairly good representation.

usually i use that to identify the top 15-20 guys and then look at how many seasons they are contributors, using something like TJ's list above.

scarce positions (C, SS, maybe CF): OPS+ of 90 or better for single season
average positions (2B, 3B) : OPS+ of 100 or better
corner positions (1B, LF, RF): OPS+ of 110 or better

starting pitchers: ERC# of 3.50 or under (or maybe 3.00/4.00 depending on park)
relievers: 1/2 a run better than starters

Lots of good ideas - I appreciate all the thoughts. Keep them coming!

I'm currently in 4 progs, and that is plenty. One is nearing a draft, but it is a team Icon league, where my available are only guys who played for my franchise, so that's a fairly easy draft. I'm gonna try out some of your ideas when the next one comes along.

I created an excel spreadsheet.  I then search by position and list every player that is has any kind of future or usable seasons on the list (I usually do this around the all star game of the current season) - once it gets around time for keepers I go through the players again and bold the 1st round quality players, italicize the 2nd rounders, and underline the 3rd rounders.  It makes it pretty simple for me.

I am currently in 6 progressives - 2 just finished their drafts - 3 are in the middle of their drafts - and 1 is just past the all star break.  Researching players is why I love progressives.  I've learned more about the history of the game just by playing different era progressives, and finding good players I'd never heard of before!!

I just go down the first year player lists, get the whole thing, and then search each player individually by season and copy them into another sheet, giving me a look at every rookie's entire career. I'm only in 1 single-year progressive admittedly, and because of the salary structure very few players are "useless".

(Generally speaking, I don't bother looking through other teams' throwaways, though if I don't see any useable rookies to fill a particular hole have a hole I may take a look for someone to fill that hole.)

Would be really nice to be able to see actual drafts listed by season.  A few months ago threads for drafts for 2000, 2001, and 2002 were running and gave me some ideas as to how the late 1st round ans subsequent rounds might play out.  Haven't seen any other seasons though.  Feel free all you Prog managers to list any single season drafts...Just the first 2 or 3 rounds.  Might prove interesting and a nice guide for others.

This is for my current 1969 RPL progressive - 
All players begin in their rookie season:

whatifsports.com/forums/Posts.aspx

Thanks chargingryno.  Who else?  Come on, I know you're out there.

I pick a season that I want to win the Series, usually 7 seasons or so down the road
 
I see who is best at each position for that target season,
 
I look to see when their rookie season is

I try to draft the best player that will help me in my target season in the drafts prior to my target season

not really an answer to your question, but it's how I play progressives.

fewer progressives would help with less scouting

I am bumping this old thread because I have learned a lot, as a new progressives player, from all that has been posted above. 

My own method so far has been to decide on priorities to fill - say for a certain team, catcher, shortstop, one more pitcher. 

Do a 1-2 sentence scouting report on a Word document for each available player at those positions, noting at what point in a list, going from best to worst among those players it becomes worthwhile to move on to the next priority if better quality players are still available by the time we have reached the player in question at the prior priority. So let's say I need a starting catcher. There are perhaps 4 available. I note when they are useful - some this season, some not for 2-3 years. I put them in order of preference. Maybe by catcher number 5 I think the rest, or comparable quality players will be available in later rounds or trades, so I note that it is now worth moving on the pitchers or shortstops. 

I don't do this for every position for time reasons. Only those I want to draft in. But I do note every single potentially useful utility player at any position that I could use help at or where I could conceivably decide that is the best late round player now available. 

Probably not the most efficient system and I will try to incorporate lessons learned from more experienced players who posted here first. But how a newby in progressives has started trying to participate in the drafting process.