Been a little while since I had some big money into scouting. I have 14 in Coll and HS in a team I just took over. Anyone have any rough explanation for what that means? I.e how far off these projections might be. Been relying on advanced at 0 for a while and have sort of punted the draft in exchange for international money in my other league.

It's enough to give you a good idea.   If it tells you a 21 y/o can increase 24 points in power, you can probably discard that jewel. 

I suppose I'm asking for a question I might already know the answer to.

Pitcher 1 is 20 and his current ratings are:

Stamina Control vL vR Velo GB P1 P2 P3 P4 P5
     76           62     55 57  74    65  70 54 27  26 0

Pitcher 2 is 18 and his current ratings are:

Stamina Control vL vR Velo GB P1 P2 P3 P4 P5
  62             63      60  61   74  63 65  55  35 35 0 


Projections are clearly in favor of Pitcher 1, but its a little hard to believe.

I'd take pitcher 2 in a heartbeat.

When the younger guy has similar/better currents with the same scouting, it's a pretty good bet that he'll be the better pitcher regardless of projections.

Ya this is a tough one. I combed through the draft history and there are a few examples of 18 year olds only improving 12-15 in vL and vR, and 20 year olds improving 20-25. My projections show the 20 year old ending up with 18 better control, 12 better vL, and 22 better vR. I don't think the gap could possibly be that big, but still the projections clearly favor the 20 year old so its tough to just ignore them, and its very much possible that the 20 year old becomes a much better pitcher based on past history.

So that's why I was wondering if anyone has an idea what the rough confidence bands for 14 scouting would be.

What's the make-up on the players?

81 on the 20 year old, 68 on the 18 year old.

I'd still be inclined to go with the 18 y/o but make-up does make a difference. 

Just as a follow-up to this post, I went with the 20 year old. My adv scouting is 6, but those projections show the 20 year old ending up with 18 better control, 6 better vL, and 31 better vR. The 18 year old also fell to 20th in the draft. So time will tell but I definitely think I made the right choice in who I picked. If you've got 0 in draft scouting you would be happy to see either one of them, but it shows that when you have no development data to go off of, sometimes you have to trust the projections.

I've had all different draft budgets across my leagues so far, but 14s for draft is generally fine, it's my favorite level.  I prefer going high for volume rather than for the accuracy, because I prefer the moneyball strategy of letting type-A and type-B guys all leave in free agency and I want to make the most of those extra picks.  20 scouting gives you literally every single player, and it also basically gives you pinpoint projections (based on 20 training) across every single attribute. Despite that, 20-20 scouting was a waste of 12 budget units as you will get the same quality of player at 14 as you do at 20, it's not like they give you special guys that nobody else sees. 

14 will provide reasonable estimates of maybe 75% of the attributes but you'll notice for certain ones it leaves their projected at the same as their current and for others it drastically overprojects. So like it'll say a RF with 58 range current will finish with a 58 range projected, even though your training will boost him to something like 63-67 or whatever, and conversely it'll say a LH batter with 45 vsL current will get to 75 vsL projected.  So that kind of stuff throws their overall ratings off and if you're ranking exclusively on projected overall (the default) then your list is inherently wrong.

I also just took over a team that had scouting budgets of 9 college and 0 HS, I only had I think 12 high school players total, and the scouting was so wild (like pitchers with current 0 range projected for 20 range, etc) that I had to rely entirely on current + age and formulate my own projections based on the patterns I'm familiar with. Not so good but I still did pretty well in that draft given the circumstances

you don't see every player even with 20 scouting

"20 scouting gives you literally every single player, and it also basically gives you pinpoint projections (based on 20 training) across every single attribute."

This statement makes me very uncomfortable. 

FWIW, I use 16 scouting for the amateur draft.

Yeah, most of us ignore PJF because he makes statements that aren't correct.     But that's not the worst ever so I figured I'd ignore it since gdm pointed out the inaccuracy.

Posted by gdmetz on 1/21/2015 3:10:00 PM (view original):
you don't see every player even with 20 scouting

I swear to science I saw every single player drafted in the top 100 that season except one DH because I set my draft settings to draft DH 0 and Other 0 that season. You have no reason nor evidence to dispute my claim. Just trust me. Or go 20-20 for yourself sometime and see what happens