I was thinking about this this morning, a few people have suggested that a way to increase the value of the ADV scouting budget would be to make it impact current ratings as well as projected ratings, but there seems a flaw in this with regard to vetos that no one has yet addressed.

I can see a few benefits to this approach, namely, you're getting diverse player evaluations, rather than everyone seeing perfect ratings, which is somewhat unrealistic, which therefore gives the desired effect of making it a more important budget category, unlike now, where you can effectively ignore it.

Imperfect current ratings would also allow players to be under evaluated (whereas at the moment, players can only ever be valued on a par with their current ratings or above) which i actually like a as a game mechanic improvement, since i find it wildly unrealistic that players are never under evaluated. this basically benefits

My problem with this whole approach therefore becomes trade vetoes. This problem exists to a lesser extent at the moment, since i've already seen people veto trades and kick up a fuss in WC about it, when they have 0 adv scouting, and their basing their complaint on nothing more than draft slot. A benefit of ADV scouting was always that you had a competative advantage in trades, because in theory you had better numbers to base your decision off. The veto system builds in a safety net for minimal ADV players, in that should you decide to trade your star prospect for a bag of balls, the league will notice and veto the trade as anti-competitive.

By amending the way ADV works so that it impacts both current and projected ratings, do you run the risk of running into veto scenarios, where 10 owners with low/minimal ADV scouting are seeing the inverse of what the high ADV trading partners are seeing and vetoing based on invalid assumptions/numbers? I've seen all sorts of stinks kicked up for perfectly decent trades already, based on someone not liking what someone else likes, if you increase the variance in the numbers it stands to reason that those evaluations will be more diverse and therefore more vetoes will occur?

A smart man would simply adjust how he looks at players.   If a player with "poor" ratings has 609 AB and has hit .307, he's a .307 hitter.   Small sample size but that's what we'd have to work with. 

Well quite, but people are already firing off vetoes on the assumption that "i'd have offered more than that. he's getting screwed over, that's a veto", if you increase the disparity between how two owners see a player, you obviously increase the chances that a signficant number of owners will have wildly different opinions on who is involved in a trade, at which point the potential for unfair vetoing increases.

already happens

Exactly.  Owners looking to veto will find a reason.   As I said, a smart man would adjust how he looks at players.   With 0 ADV, you'll still see ratings.  If a hitter has 50/43/60/65/25 as the core hitting ratings yet he's producing 302/377/425 with a homer every 17 AB, it's safe to assume the ratings you see are complete crap.

As someone who uses 0 ADV, I have my ways of figuring out what I CAN'T see.   I'd simply adjust that. 

Posted by MikeT23 on 11/15/2011 8:47:00 AM (view original):
Exactly.  Owners looking to veto will find a reason.   As I said, a smart man would adjust how he looks at players.   With 0 ADV, you'll still see ratings.  If a hitter has 50/43/60/65/25 as the core hitting ratings yet he's producing 302/377/425 with a homer every 17 AB, it's safe to assume the ratings you see are complete crap.

As someone who uses 0 ADV, I have my ways of figuring out what I CAN'T see.   I'd simply adjust that. 

The primary value of fuzzy current ratings would be to make prospect evaluation more difficult.  That way you only have minor league stats as a frame of reference, and it's a bit trickier to evaluate them.

But increasing complexity and/or randomness will probably turn off more people than it excites, so I doubt it happens.

And I do agree with Mike that smart people would find a way to work around it.  n00bs would just end up confused by it and start off further behind the vets than they already are.

Posted by deanod on 11/16/2011 3:52:00 PM (view original):

Posted by MikeT23 on 11/15/2011 8:47:00 AM (view original):
Exactly.  Owners looking to veto will find a reason.   As I said, a smart man would adjust how he looks at players.   With 0 ADV, you'll still see ratings.  If a hitter has 50/43/60/65/25 as the core hitting ratings yet he's producing 302/377/425 with a homer every 17 AB, it's safe to assume the ratings you see are complete crap.

As someone who uses 0 ADV, I have my ways of figuring out what I CAN'T see.   I'd simply adjust that. 

The primary value of fuzzy current ratings would be to make prospect evaluation more difficult.  That way you only have minor league stats as a frame of reference, and it's a bit trickier to evaluate them.

But increasing complexity and/or randomness will probably turn off more people than it excites, so I doubt it happens.

You have a lot more than minor league stats to evaluate prospects. 

Historical record.

I'm not sure how this flies but, to me, what is advanced scouting in real life? "I think we can find value if you acquire player X for no more than player Y"

If you see fuzzy ratings on someone hitting 40 HR in the majors, well duh. Pretty sure the general public would be the equivalent of 0 advanced scounting, and they recognize a 40 HR hitter as having value.

If it were me, I'd do one of two things;

• Scrap it, and make the budget 165M-175M or
• Use it in terms of correspondence. Two ways;
  • "Player X on team Y is not progressing because he should be in AA by now and is in High A. Acquire him, put him in AA, and you should see him reach potential". Not "he's a star", or "he'll make the majors if you acquire him", more a programmed awareness. More budget, more correspondence.
  • "Player X on team Y is underrated". Advance notice of DITR bumps on other teams before they happen. More budget, more correspondence.