Has anyone successfully tried focusing solely on high school or college players? Specifically budget and draft exclusively for one and completely ignore the other? If so, do you put a $20M in one area or go with a more modest number? Does the strategy change if you have a higher or lower pick? Specifically is it best to focus your resources in one area or get a good mix in a wider, albeit less precise, draft pool?

A lot to touch on here. I'll try to organize it as best as I can but I'm usually all over the place.

If you don't put $20 million into HS and or College scouting you are going to get fuzzy ratings and it is going to be hard to pick out the best players or even get players that will make the majors ESPECIALLY if you are going for high school kids. For me, its 20 million or bust.

I'll pick either HS or College but never both. I find that 40 million is a lot of money just to be able to see a bunch of players. Even when I have had the most draft picks I have ever had I think I may have had 5 in the top 100 and I was able to sort out a lot of good players. Having both HS and College I may have found a few more but not enough to justify the extra 20 million. There is a chance that you'll have a high draft pick and miss the future HOF'er because you put all your money into HS and they are college or vice versa, but that is possible even with 20 million in both (I saw that happen in one of my leagues this season. Felt bad for the guy).

In a perfect world if I was able to do whatever I wanted in HBD, I would have 20 million in College if I was picking 15th or higher and I would have 20 million in HS for anything after the 16th pick. (based off of my first overall pick. the rest are irrelevant) Before the fuzzy ratings I used to love HS. I found the ceiling was higher and players were less scouted but it took 4-5 seasons to get to the majors. Now with the new fuzzy ratings I find scouting HS kids can be too unpredictable. I'll draft kids with splits in the 90's only to have them max out in the mid 60's. So I would want a more sure fire thing (college kids tend to be more predictable) for my top 15 picks and then take a lottery ticket for anything after that hoping to strike it rich and not caring if the player never makes the majors if I pick then 16 or later.

Since I can't game the system and do whatever I want I just have 20 million in college and I don't think about it. I've been doing that for about 20 seasons in my one league and have had no issues or complaints.

Hockey and I think about this in similar ways.

I haven't found a ton of value in spending $20M in both college and HS because while you're increasing your pool options, you're still stuck with a static amount of picks. So you're investing $40M in taking, at best, probably 4 or 5 guys who might make your ML roster one day if you have a couple of comp picks? Pass.

The value in paying the full $20M is the accuracy of the ratings. This obviously is helpful in the draft, but also if you're keeping a spreadsheet of the players from the draft pool each year, it's useful data to go back to when making trade proposals, particularly if you believe in $0M for Advanced Scouting, like many here do.

Be aware, 1 or 2 guys from whichever college or HS you have $0M scouting against still could show up in your Top 50. Typically I'll notice splits looking too good to be true and realize the guy is 18 years old (I'm a college scouter) and move him down my list. I find that those players who make it through are usually pretty good but you're taking a wild/blind chance given the inaccuracy of those ratings.

I try to find value. Look at past budget averages and see which one is lower. Spend your money there because you will get a better value for your money at $20MM. For example- one of my leagues the average over the last 4 seasons has been $11MM spent on HS scouting and $8MM in college. So I would rather spend my money on college than HS because that is where I might get a player one or two higher on my board.

Thank you for all your feedback. My takeaways:

Spend $20M on one area and zero on the other. You might miss out on some names but it's better spent money.
College is safer/better but high school may be a good strategy if you are picking lower or going against the grain (ex: teams scouting college more heavily).
Beware of draftees with favorable numbers from an unallocated budgeted group. Rank lower, you might get lucky but will need to accept the blind risk.

Slightly shifting gears, if you are planning to be a player for international prospects, should you spend $20M as well or is that overkill? I recall even a $20M budget will only show about 2/3 of available names.

Sounds like you nailed it. Sadly can’t help you with IFA’s. I avoid those most of the time.

I only dabble in IFAs, you'll see fewer players at a budget less than $20M and you'll have a hard time gauging their actual potential. Really hard to trust the ratings the further away from $20M you get. That said I've had some success using intuition/luck to find decent IFAs at low-medium budgets. I find that mid-tier RPs are usually undervalued, but with a low IFA scouting budget I've also signed my share of turkeys who I thought might have better potential based on how much I was getting outbid by others.

As a first year owner, I can go use the previous season or default as my starting point. Which is the better approach for this season and to get me where I want be in upcoming seasons? I want to get to $20M for one domestic (college or high school), zero for the other and advanced scouting but don't want to get screwed over in this year's draft.

Note: for each, advanced scouting and one domestic scouting at minimum, the other domestic at the max allowed.

category. Plan A. Plan B
payroll. $78M. $83M
Scouting. $20/$10M. $15/$5M
Advanced $0. $5M

I min/max all my scouting depending on where my team's life cycle for competing is.

I go 20/20/20 HS/COL/IFA for the first few seasons of a rebuild, get a solid core, and then flip the switch and begin drawing them all down to 0/0/0 in order to fill out the remainder of my roster through regular FA. The downside/difficult part is that you have to be very efficient with your budget since you've only got $45-55M for player payroll (assuming $0 med budget and a $25-30M IFA).

Posted by mg050369 on 8/10/2021 11:41:00 PM (view original):
As a first year owner, I can go use the previous season or default as my starting point. Which is the better approach for this season and to get me where I want be in upcoming seasons? I want to get to $20M for one domestic (college or high school), zero for the other and advanced scouting but don't want to get screwed over in this year's draft.

Note: for each, advanced scouting and one domestic scouting at minimum, the other domestic at the max allowed.

category. Plan A. Plan B
payroll. $78M. $83M
Scouting. $20/$10M. $15/$5M
Advanced $0. $5M

I would go plan A.