So this has been almost a 15 season study now and ongoing. Before the last update (ha) I used to love drafting HS players. I found that there was more high end talent if you were willing to put in the work as most owners didn’t want to wait the 5 seasons for the players to hit their prime.

Then the new fuzzy rankings came around and I found HS players were like buying a lotto ticket. I could pick guys 9th overall and have them never hit the majors........ then I also picked up the best pitcher I have ever had with the 26th pick.

Getting fed up I switched to College scouting and have done so for the past 5 seasons. I’ve found that with College scouting I will get more ‘mid level’ to low level ML players but I am finding getting superstars even at high picks are infrequent and I don’t see those gems after pick 20.

I’m debating going back to HS scouting now as I am finding HS is ‘less sure things but higher upside’ where college is ‘less top level talent but more ML serviceable players’

what is everyone one else’s experience in scouting? (I’ll post player examples when I get to work tomorrow)

I agree with almost everything you've said, with the following observations.

I recently switched one of my teams from 20 mil HS to 20 mil College. It took the requisite number of transition seasons during which time I was minimizing draft impact and spending heavily on Free Agents anyway.

Yes, it may be possible to hit bigger on a random player everyone else overlooks. But I got tired of shooting the whole draft for that one shot at those one or two players.

20 mil HS gets you maybe 200 prospects with projections you can see. The rest are '?' players. Under a normal distribution, maybe 100 of those are players you'd actually want to draft at all. So by the 8th to 10th rounds you're drafting players who are completely useless wastes of draft picks and not worth their signing bonuses at those slots.

I would actually rejig my entire draft, after moving actual prospects to the top, I'd then do a really boring process of moving all the complete **** players to the bottom so they were behind all the '?' players. Might as well have hoped to cash a lottery ticket or two.

Now of course, if 24 owners in a world all go with drafting only college players, the eight owners who draft HS players will clean up. That's risk, that's competitive balance in action.

But frankly, I just got tired of half my draft classes being completely useless for anything other than rookie ball.

The only thing I'd add is that signability is MUCH worse for HS; there is a real $$ cost to $20M HS over $20M COL. Not saying it isn't worth it, but it's worth mentioning.

Great point! Dude might want to play hockey. Dude might want to go to college. Meantime, with College scouting at least 3/4 of them will sign for slot money. A lot less guesswork in managing your budget.

Just scout the same from both pools

I think it's important to consider what the rest of your world is investing its draft budget. If you find that 2/3 of your world invests more heavily in HS, then I'd invest in college, and vice versa. If you find unbalance like that, it's a great way to snatch good players that fall further than they should.

Posted by pjfoster13 on 7/22/2019 8:15:00 AM (view original):
Just scout the same from both pools

That was an acceptable strategy when you could spend $10 mill on scouting but now 32-40 mill is a massive waste of money.

I find College scouting to be more fruitful but it depends on the world. I tend to put the weight on whichever scouting is less on average for the world. If one world averages 7 in Col but 10 in HS then I will heavily invest in college scouting because I have a higher likelihood of drafting a player at a better value. But it will also depend on my team- if I am missing 1 or 2 players for a big time playoff push then I will focus on college. If I am in a rebuild then I will focus on HS.

However, HS players are more tradable. I've been able to parlay HS picks into better college picks simply because the HS pick is younger. It is harder to do the opposite.

I feel like I posted this before but I actually haven't drafted as terribly in the first round as I let on.

With HS draft picks, there have been superstars I have gotten yet like this

Johan Butcher

But there have also been total duds like this:

Bob Greenwood
Andrew Jefferies

So like I had mentioned, higher risk, higher reward (keep in mind Greenwood was drafted with 10 million HS scouting)

With College I find there are more chance for players to make the big league but less chance at a superstar.

Vic Tartabull was drafted 12th and although he will not be a stud, could potentially be a started in the 4 or 5 role.

Kyle Rolls is just a hair below an everyday player due to a glove that never really made it but is still a very good bench piece.

Troy Zimmerman I think I got dazzled by his defensive stats and forgot he also needs to do something else. He could see play but is probably a AAAA piece. Also it wasn't a strong draft, looking back at it.

And if Alex Hunter can gain a few more points in his second season I could see him filling out the back of the rotation. \

So there we have it. I'm only going first round because, to be honest I have found every round past the supplemental and sometimes round 2 to be a crap shoot.

hockey - i feel like your point about risk/floor mirrors real life. HS guys with massive upside get $ thrown at them to come out after HS. Guys with high floors but low ceilings tend to go to college.

Posted by rdierkers on 7/24/2019 2:08:00 PM (view original):
hockey - i feel like your point about risk/floor mirrors real life. HS guys with massive upside get $ thrown at them to come out after HS. Guys with high floors but low ceilings tend to go to college.

Good point. Can’t argue that.

If you see your COL guys routinely making it to the ML level when compared to your HS guys it may be an indication that you're losing out valuable development points. COL players have more development points baked in because they're older whereas HS players need a really good development process in order to squeeze out all their development points. So drafting COL gives you more room for error.

$20M gets you a maximum variance of +/-10 ratings (when comparing your scouts projected ratings to the players true hidden ceiling ratings), regardless of HS or COL. So at $20M scouting that 90 POW rated prospect will max out somewhere between 80-100. That +/-10 fuzzy-ness range widens the lower the scouting budget.

But this +/-10 doesn't include any downside ratings variance due to mismanagement in the development process, if you lose a bunch of points because the player is sitting on the bench for portions of the season, or your coaches are garbage, your training isn't maxed at $20M, etc. that's your fault. You also have to deduct a few ratings points (2-3) from the coachable ratings, even if you have a perfect development process because there's something wonky with the development system in that players never quite reach their true full potential in those ratings.

It's also a reason I shy away from injury prone prospects. Prospects who are injured lose ratings to injury but also lose ratings due to missed playing time. (And that $20M medical budget can be used to scout both COL and HS instead of choosing one or the other).

Also realize that those guys who dropped to late first rd/sup/2nd rd (or much, much later in some cases when they were drafted as "???", no info available guys ) may just be guys that nobody else can see, as opposed to guys with "high ceilings". I've had a few studs drop to me in the late first for no other reason than because nobody could see them.

As for the sign-ability problem, if you use the email, resubmit offer, trick most of the time you can get around that problem.

I always draft late so its harder anyways. I feel like as long as I can get 1 ml player a season in the draft im good.