I picked up a team as a mid-season replacement owner, and have noticed that I've been with a 0 College and 0 HS scouting budget for the upcoming draft by the previous owner. Looks like another team in this world is going that route for the first time as well.

Anybody else done this, or has seen it happen? Just wondering what to expect. I suppose I'll just draft 25 pieces of random crap. But it will be interesting to see what actually happens, to see if by random chance I actually draft anybody who is in anyway decent (I also have an $18m AS budget).

FYI . . . this team is one of the teams from the "Alias Pair Uncovered" thread. The other team in the pair has a 13/4 College/HS budget.

Everyone was saying how they never traded, signed each other's Comp. FAs... but that's how you really cheat!

I've never done it but somebody in my world has. He said that that he only saw ratings on about 40 players. He actually got lucky and drafted a pretty good RP in the first round, but he didn't have enough prospect money to offer him his demands.

the only was I could see going 0/0 is if you are planning on signing a bunch of Type As and wouldn't have a pick until round 4 or 5

but it would take you longer than a season to both get down to 0/0 and get back up to a good scouring budget that it wouldn't really be too effective

You should rank the players based on how high their current ratings are in the key categories, and put the younger draftees (18-20 yos) ahead of the older ones. Then pray.

Prospect lists get released on Thursday. I'm wondering if I'll see any ratings, or if it will be 500 "Not scouted enough to get ratings" guys on my list.

I've seen people do this, and I think you'll probably get ratings for 50-100 players. If you can get a couple of decent draft picks out of it, then consider it a pyrrhic victory.

I'm probably going to punt the first round pick (#26) by going "Very Aggressive" for round 1. Leave a type D for next season's owner.

OR, you can wait until some dumbass posts how great a certain player is, then put him at the top of your list and surround him with players with ID#'s right around his.

Probably just slightly better than completely random. They say they "adjusted" the numbering system, but I haven't seen a significant change.

Quote: Originally Posted By tecwrg2 on 11/30/2009I'm probably going to punt the first round pick (#26) by going "Very Aggressive" for round 1. Leave a type D for next season's owner

If you're lucky, one of the 40 or so players you'll see will be "probably won't sign." You can move him to the top of your list (especially if he's not, as best you can tell by current ratings, first round caliber) and guarantee the type D that way. If you have enough prospect budget to meet the initial demand.

I've actually thought about doing this, and then just consistently putting "Looking to be drafted in the 1st round" guys at the top. I feel like, about half of the time, they actually are worth drafting, at least in the top 3 rounds.

I don't know if you could do it with 0 scouting... but maybe keep it at 4M, so you can see some guys. Rank by current ratings and see if there's anybody who appears to be half-decent and then throw some "probably won't sign" guys behind that, so if you don't get one of the guys with decent current ratings, you can at least pick up a Comp pick for next year and bump up to 8M to have a better chance at not wasting it.

Would be risky, but if done properly, could reward you. I would do it with HS scouting rather than college, because it's tough to compare progression rates for college players who can be anywhere from 19 to 22, but all the HS players are the same age, so they'll have a comparable growth curve. Draft "toolsy" guys (since a guy who is drafted at 20 power often stays that low) and hope the splits catch up enough to be decent.

I'm a believer in this. I usually have very low in both and still get a pretty decent first round pick and some fringe players in 2nd and 3rd rounds. Totaly worth it.

Im starting to do this with my San Jose team. The team is built to win for a long time so i figure i've got a much better chance of getting top prospects in the IFA market (with about $25-$30 mil to spend every year) then I do drafting 30-32 every year.

This is an intriguing idea, but I wouldn't go to zero. You are usually only going to get 1-2 MLers out of most drafts anyway. And since many experienced owners also drop their ADV scouting down low and rely on current ratings to extrapolate future usefullness, this could possibly be used as a way to either sign high $$ IFAs, or FAs whose performance is already established, with the money you saved going into payroll.

In the case of my team (again, I've inherited this team from the previous owner after the season started), the budgets are set at $0 for HS and College, and also for IFA. I assume the prospect budget was set at the minimum of $6m . . . it's at $4m now, I assume due to auto-budget transfers after arbitration (that was before I got there). Last season's College budget was also $5m, so I'm guessing he brought it down to $1m for this season and then lost that $1m due to an auto-budget transfer as well. It looks like he was trying to funnel all the scouting money into payroll (currently at $122m).

It's interesting to note that the AS budget was set at $18m, and training/medical were both set at $15m. I would think that if you're going to be jacking up your player payroll for an "all-in, win now" stategy that your AS budget would be the first to go since projections don't really matter in that scenario.