Curious how other owners prepare for the Amateur Draft each season. I'm a big excel fan so I typically do a little bit of copying and pasting to get everyone's hitting/general&fielding and pitching/general&fielding metrics together and then I use a few formulas based mostly around:
Hitters: Contact, Power, vL, vR
Pitching: Control, vL, vR, P1

I weigh vR a little heavier than vL since there are more righty pitchers and there are a few attributes that I'll generally eyeball as well - DUR, Makeup, GB for pitchers, Eye for hitters. Lately I've been also using some conditional formatting in excel to highlight any ratings in the major categories projected to fall 80 or above. I don't have evidence here, nor do I know if that's the right cutoff, but I feel like targeting players who will be elite in a couple of ratings might be better bets to perform well at the ML level one day.

That's a high-level explanation of my process. Interested to hear from others...

I do something similar -- place hitters into my hitters tab; place pitchers in my pitchers tab. Then enter a formula on each player to find projected OPS for hitters and projected OBP for pitchers. Then do some sorting and eyeballing. Sometimes my formula is way off because of obvious holes like those left handed pitchers that have great pitches, control and L split, but have 60 or below R split. So, a little eyeballing is needed.

It has worked quite well. I build through the draft and Ditr mostly. I might throw down some bank on an IFA every now and then or trade every now now and then, but most of my guys are home grown from the draft.

I’m too lazy to import into excel but I do something similar.

load all of the position players I think to be all stars into the top followed by all star pitchers.

next sort out pitchers I think can be 3-4 guys along with position players that can do 2 things well or hit a ton (2 things is usually field and hit, run bases and field). After that is top of the line bullpen guys, if they are really good they’ll fall into category 2 but they would have to be closer type guys. Then last is boarde line pitchers that are 5s and long relief as well as specialty position players (defensive stud SS or catchers with high arm, accuracy and PC)

then I go back through and sort out who I think fits best in each of those categories, sometimes moving players up and down.

last I’ll look to see signability. Usually I don’t keep enough money to ‘probably won’t sign’ so those guys get bumped to the end of the list. The rest can usually stay where they are.

Posted by tlowster on 6/10/2021 5:23:00 PM (view original):
I do something similar -- place hitters into my hitters tab; place pitchers in my pitchers tab. Then enter a formula on each player to find projected OPS for hitters and projected OBP for pitchers. Then do some sorting and eyeballing. Sometimes my formula is way off because of obvious holes like those left handed pitchers that have great pitches, control and L split, but have 60 or below R split. So, a little eyeballing is needed.

It has worked quite well. I build through the draft and Ditr mostly. I might throw down some bank on an IFA every now and then or trade every now now and then, but most of my guys are home grown from the draft.

I used to something very similar. But lately, I've just been leaving the draft board alone, but tweak what I want for positions and pitchers. Unless I have a top 10 draft pick...then I will spend more time on the rankings.

And I still try to use the formula builder, just to see. But it still gives you a lot of weird outliers, so I should just give up on that completely.

Posted by hockey1984 on 6/10/2021 7:14:00 PM (view original):
I’m too lazy to import into excel but I do something similar.

load all of the position players I think to be all stars into the top followed by all star pitchers.

next sort out pitchers I think can be 3-4 guys along with position players that can do 2 things well or hit a ton (2 things is usually field and hit, run bases and field). After that is top of the line bullpen guys, if they are really good they’ll fall into category 2 but they would have to be closer type guys. Then last is boarde line pitchers that are 5s and long relief as well as specialty position players (defensive stud SS or catchers with high arm, accuracy and PC)

then I go back through and sort out who I think fits best in each of those categories, sometimes moving players up and down.

last I’ll look to see signability. Usually I don’t keep enough money to ‘probably won’t sign’ so those guys get bumped to the end of the list. The rest can usually stay where they are.

Definitely need to filter out the probably won't sign guys. I forgot to do that one year and ended up spending 23mm on my draft class.

Similar to all the above, I export to excel, one tab for pitchers and one for hitters. I use conditional formatting for any of the big ratings above 65. Then I use my formulas for OPS & ERA. Then for anybody below 60, I use another formula to try and project DITR ratings and their OPS/ERAs if they were to hit

Posted by tlowster on 6/10/2021 9:19:00 PM (view original):

Posted by hockey1984 on 6/10/2021 7:14:00 PM (view original):
I’m too lazy to import into excel but I do something similar.

load all of the position players I think to be all stars into the top followed by all star pitchers.

next sort out pitchers I think can be 3-4 guys along with position players that can do 2 things well or hit a ton (2 things is usually field and hit, run bases and field). After that is top of the line bullpen guys, if they are really good they’ll fall into category 2 but they would have to be closer type guys. Then last is boarde line pitchers that are 5s and long relief as well as specialty position players (defensive stud SS or catchers with high arm, accuracy and PC)

then I go back through and sort out who I think fits best in each of those categories, sometimes moving players up and down.

last I’ll look to see signability. Usually I don’t keep enough money to ‘probably won’t sign’ so those guys get bumped to the end of the list. The rest can usually stay where they are.

Definitely need to filter out the probably won't sign guys. I forgot to do that one year and ended up spending 23mm on my draft class.

I don’t mind if I have the money. I find sometimes you can steal a great player at a lower pick then you would be able to. But if I’m in ‘win now’ mode I never have more then 9 million and sometimes that isn’t even enough for their innitial offer.

I'm actually going to touch on something here because its an open forum and why the heck not.

I find 'probably won't sign' to be a massive waste of time and resources 95% of the time. 4 of that other 5% is when you want to punt on the draft because you budgeted wrong or the prospects are all crap, and the 1% of the time is when you actually get that probably won't sign but you got them to actually sign.

Damag mentioned a while ago that at its core HBD is a game about managing resources better then the other managers. The playoffs IMO have a lot to do with luck (its why I have 1 WS win, that is my story and I'm sticking to it). You almost have to plan to pick a 'probably won't sign' when you are doing budgeting. There are odd instances where you will have money for IFA's and not get one or budget poorly but for the most part, no one plans to sign a 'probably won't sign' because they cost a crap ton of money, aren't a guarantee player and the player falling into this category has to be better then the other players on your draft board. That is a lot of ifs.

Assuming you do or don't do this, I've found the 'probably won't sign' players initial asks to be unreasonable but not totally absurd. I think I had a guy in the 2nd round last season ask for 5 million. That is way too much, but I wanted the pick so I waited for him to turn it down then put the money elsewhere. He then went on to ask for something unreal like 11 million. This is the other big problem with 'probably won't sign'. Assuming you actually want them, there is probably a 1% chance they will take the first offer, a 94% chance they will out and out reject you, and a 4% chance they will ask for more money, meaning you have to plan or transfer even more of your budget to get them to sign.

All of this wouldn't be so bad if you could get potential 1st round picks in the 4th or 5th round but in all of my leagues these players might drop 5-6 spots at most. I never see a kid who projects to be a 1st rounder in the 2nd or 3rd round because they 'probably won't sign'. Either due to lazyness or fear of missing out, some owner always seems to take them right around where they should go in the draft.

TL/DR: I only draft 'probably won't sign' kids if I'm planning on punting the draft. All other times they are a waste and go right to the bottom of my 500.

I'll back you up on that. I saw it happen once - ONCE - that an owner had a PWS take the initial offer, and become a HOF player. I only ever bring it up because it's The 1% possibility. Some owners seem to take it as "well then it's worth trying." If the player doesn't sign that first offer, then it's more of a pain in the *** than I want to deal with - for all the reasons you said.

My draft process: I pull only the players who I think have a shot at making the majors, from seven categories.
1/ True hitters
2/ True SPs
3/ Major league RPs
4/ True SS
5/ Cs who can actually hit
6/ Long relievers (second-level SPs)
7/ Range/Glove - defensive specialists

Those become my ranked prospects, I move them all up (generally in that order) then fine tune individual rankings. I usually get between 40 and 60 total.
This pushes down all those high-Overall players who won't hit or can only play 1B/LF at best. When I go back and look at the high Overall players who fall outside these rankings, they invariably have 85+ durability (but can't hit) or low Control (if they're pitchers).

Hockey - you introduced the idea of wasting time and resources and it gave me an additional thought.

I find that I'm very unlikely to draft RPs -- I have them on my lists, but I typically find less value in most of them vs. starting pitchers with lower ratings just based on how many innings they'll contribute to in a normal season. So I rank them a little lower, and typically other owners scoop up the RPs before I do. Also, I believe you can find good RPs every single year in FA, sometimes at a discount too.

On the other hand I end up with a ton of what I think of as B+ catchers that you can typically find in the sandwich round or Rd2. I end up with a fair number of catchers. Guys who hit OK for a catcher, but only end up getting their PC to 60 or so points so their value is limited. There's probably a lesson about tweaking my rankings in here somewhere.

Heh. Have you been peeking at my draft boards? What you mentioned I’m pretty much the same.

edit: I will say the last handful of seasons I have been picking RPs in the first round. The main reason for this is I find I can only have so many SP5’s long relief guys, mediocre catchers and defensive studs that can’t do anything else.

part 2 which was a nice perk I stumbled upon is that it saves your budget a bit too.

but you are 100% correct. It is very easy to sign or trade for a RP without having to give up much in return.

I also generally draft the best player available. However, there are situations I get into from time to time where I am stacked in a certain area or I am in need of young talent in an area where I might move a slightly better guy down and a slightly worse guy up, but I would never move a top ten player at his position down the board even if I was stacked at that spot already.