I have seen two extremely successful owners use this strategy. One guy just won five straight World Series rings using this strategy. The other one was a long time owner and commissioner of two separate leagues. He won quite a few titles using this strategy. However, he wouldn't do two INTL prospects a year. He would only do one a year, but he would hold out for the very best one each year. Then, he would fill his team with the best free agents left just after rule 5 draft. He would also trade away the players once they aged and he would get back younger players that might not be as good, but would have had to pay more for them in Free Agency, so yes, the strategy works. He was able to get three starting pitchers that can pitch 250+ innings a season. Now, the guy left the game and even his replacement owner, who is an extremely new owner, has a super talented team that can win 110+ games.

So, yes. This strategy can work. I wouldn't recommend starting with this strategy. I would do it once I have already built up a young core, then work from there like you have already done.

One thing you can probably take advantage of too is signing cheaper Type A free agents. Guys who will help you, but teams don't want to lose a first round pick on. Let their salary creep down a little, and then snag them. If you don't have scouting anway, what does the 1st rounder mean lol.

Also on the extreme flip side, does anybody roll with 20/20 draft scouting long term? The draft might honestly be my favorite part, but like it's been said, seems to be maybe not useful to max out both without a high pick. My thought is with that scouting you can zero out int/keep a lower prospect payroll (So you can safely keep a bigger payroll). Keep anyone who might eventually get you a comp pick, target FAs who maybe get cut in the 5th/6th year of arb but can provide you a comp pick without you losing one (Ie. try to have comp picks flowing every year). I would think you would build a ton of depth in the minors (which you could flip for high end talent, which you can keep with a bigger payroll). And then with all the depth you'll have, you can focus in a spending your money on only select players, and the rest of the roster can be filled with quality guys from the draft. You could build team with few weaknesses and hopefully be able to snatch a few high end guys by trading away depth (or taking on a bad contract).

The downside would you would need to hit on most draft picks, and there could be years where you just have a 1st/2nd rounder. But I think it would be a ton of fun to fill out that draft board (I'm one of the weird ones who ranks a ton of guys, including many many DITR candidates).

Sadly the draft is such a crapshoot now. I used to love the draft and would go 20/0 or even 20/10 but now after the fuzzy ratings it’s near impossible. Sometime tomorrow when i’m On my laptop i’ll Post my hits and misses and why I picked them over the past 10 seasons.

Ok so here is my update on the draft. Sadly back in the day you could take advantage of the draft and go 10/10 and see most of if not all of the good players. It was actually easier to see great players late because you had a large pool to chose from and often people would allocate less then 20 milion for the draft one way or the other.

A bit of background, I'm currently in Riley in season 49. The fuzzy draft ratings started in season 36 so I'll start from there.

S36
HS scouting $14/ COLL $0:
This is the season I'll forever be angry at Admin for and forever cursing the name Bob Greenwood. Admin told us scouting ratings were going to be fuzzy, less so for College players and more so for HS. They also said we wouldn't be able to change our budget more then normal. So I upped my scouting 4 million and picked this piece of garbage 9th overall. (Greenwood). The worst part of this is I saw Rickey Coleman but thought Greenwood was better. OOPS. I kind of saved myself with Kevin Kelly . But he was unlikly to sign and cost me almost $9 million.

9th pick: Bob Greenwood (HS)
45th pick: Kevin Kelly (HS)
(nothing worth reporting after round 1 draft)
Overall draft rating: F

S37
HS $18 / COLL 0

34th pick: Walter Young (HS).

Young is a little better then what I would expect for a 34th overall pick. I'd place him in the mid 20's someplace so I was pretty happy with him. I traded him off before he ever hit the majors but he has had a good career. Nothing past the first pick to report.
Stone Wilson was an AAAA player who never hit 70's in splits and Gene Tehan was an experiment that never worked.
Overall draft rating: B-

S38
HS: $20 / COLL $0
23rd Pick: Darren Hendricks
85th Pick: Al Carreras

Hendricks was when I knew that the draft would never be the same again. With $20 million in HS I saw Hendricks as a VsR 90 with decent ratings in every other category. Obviously he never became the stud I thought but was still serviceable. Carreras was good trade bait. As soon as owners see VsR 90 they tend to ignore all other ratings.


I'm going to kind of lump everything else together as the draft is just too inconsistent from year to year (as you will soon see)

The best draft years I had was season 45 ($18 HS / $12 COLL)
Where I got Johan Butcher 26th and Jimmy McMicheal 32nd (both HS players)

But then two years before that I took Andrew Jefferies (who was supposed to have a VsR in the mid 90's). Who was a HS drafter with $20 in HS. Now I've switched over to College but I still haven't had enough seasons to say if it has been better or worse.

Overall I love the draft too much to punt on it. There is just something so fun about ordering my draft board then waking up the next day and seeing who I got.

From a strategy perspective though I have noticed the IFA's to be a lot more consistent regardless of age (Which I have a big problem with.) of the few IFA's that I have signed, even if they were 18 there was never a ratings hit where I was surprised or upset. The numbers may have been off 5 points at the most but nothing like the 15-25 point shifts I have seen in the draft (especially with HS players)

I DISAGREE COMPLETELY. (LOL)

As an owner who never tanks, I usually draft, at best, around the 20th pick or later.

The statement that "It was actually easier to see great players late because you had a large pool to chose from" is only half-assed right. You could see the players, and you could see the greater pool with lesser scouting money invested. BUT YOU HAD NO WAY TO DRAFT THEM.

EVERYONE saw the same players, with the same projections. In every draft, leading up to Season 36, EVERY owner saw the same top players in the same order. And that's how they came off the board.

The premise of this thread's original post is that drafting in the late 20s or lower is not worth it. But it is certainly more worth it now than it was then. You can get players later if you invest time and scouting money in the draft now, because it weeds out the owners who don't invest time and money in the draft and they F up and draft mistakes. If you only draft players based on their Overall ratings now you're gonna get beat. If you don't sort your top players manually you're gonna get beat.

We've all seen drafts with less than 20, hell, maybe less than TEN genuine major league prospects. I remember one draft in Riley with only ONE star player in it. He ended up in the HOF. The player drafted SECOND ended up in the Rule 5 Draft.

But my point is, back before they made the scouting fuzzy, anyone drafting in the first round and lower had NO chance at the REAL prospects, and as a matter of fact, almost NO players drafted outside the first round EVER made it to the majors.

The fuzzy scouting had the main effect of redistributing talent, which is exactly what it was designed to do.


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BUT I do agree on a couple of things. One, IFA scouting on 18 year olds seems more accurate than HS scouting on 18 year olds. And two, HS scouting really does feel like crap. I have one team that, because I took over from an owner in midseason, had 20 mil HS so I rolled with it till I got sick of seeing less than 200 players, and drafting total crap players in the fifth round. I just spent a few seasons switching my money from HS into College instead. Yes I know if everyone drafts College players because they like the scouting better, the few owners left drafting HS will clean up on those top prospects. But the HS scouting is just so crap I got tired of looking at it.

So that is the big one for me (I may change my mind on the draft being better after a few years of College drafting) but I used to love the HS draft. I found some owners would avoid it because they wanted their prospects sooner rather then later. So the draft wasn't money spent vs no money spent, it was HS vs College and which one was better. I liked drafting guys at 18 because it meant 4 years of growing in my minors and then they were ready in 5 years. Most owners didn't want that commitment. Now, it started driving me bonkers when I would draft a kid at 18, develop him for 4 years and then end up giving him up in the rule 5 because he never made the gains I thought he would.

(And yes I realize these are the exception and not the rule)
Patsy Thomas had a decent ML career.
Jair Sanchez was probably one of the best pitchers I ever owned (Though there is a lot to that story)
Alex Bennett pitched a bit for my team.

......... ok so those aren't great examples in 20 years of drafting. Maybe I'll change my tune now that I've switched to $20 College.

Edit: I think I'm going to retract my previous statement. The HS thing still sucks but I'll be honest, I was looking at all of the misses and not any of the hits. Since the new draft settings I've been picking up some very serviceable players after round 1, which was pretty much unheard of before.

If I can keep him healthy, Johan Butcher may be the best pitcher I have ever had and I drafted him 26th.
Gregory Goldman is the type of leadoff man most owners dream of and I picked him 73rd overall.
and Jimmy McMicheal I would pick top 20, and I got him 32nd.

I guess my new opinion on this is, stock up on those A and B free agents. Take as many lotto tickets as you can and hope a few of em cash in.

I'm right there with you Hockey, I just love filling at the draft board for some reason. Something about the excitement/potential of all the new players I guess (as cheesy as that sounds lol). I feel like I've gotten pretty good players in the later 1st/comp round, and even useful guys with 2nd round picks (my backup catcher next season will be a super low durability C from the 3rd round, but has 70+ splits with a 90+ eye). And like Damag pointed out, with increased fuzziness now might be the best time for better scouting.

One thing too if you go higher scouting, you would almost have an indirect advanced scouting. For example, lets say you go 20/20. You see what, 70-80% of the draft picks if not more? If you save those draft projections, or note a couple guys you like (especially if they were picked lower than you thought), then you have a decent projection of what they might become. Could be useful in trades/etc.

Oh boy. I only have one squad where I have been running it more than five seasons. I would say about half of my guys have met their projections from a $20 million HS budget. They have not all been far off, but they have certainly been far enough off to where it turns a serviceable MLB player or MLB platoon player turns into a AAAA player. I have not drafted many pitchers with a high pick, but I have recently. A guy to have a projected 92 R Split only making it to 74 R Split is HUGELY disappointing. If it were 92 projected and he still made it to 85, it would be disappointing, but he would still be a great pitcher. I hope that doesn't happen to the guys I just drafted recently.