I'm sure you guys get tired of all the newbie questions, but here's another one.

If, for example, let's compare two players

Player 1 has a rating of 5 in a particular category but has HIGH potential.

Player 2 has a rating of 40 in the same category, but has LOW potential.

If you trained the players the same for 4 years, who's going to end up having the higher rating?

Or how much higher would the original rating need to be for a LOW potential guy to still end up with the higher rating in the end?

Normally, high potential growth maxes out around 25. Of course, the high - high (sky's the limit, incredible upside, etc. from the scouting report) will see 40+ growth.

In most cases, I would go with player 2 in your example. He probably will have higher rating by end of 4 yrs and even if he doesn't, he has more value over 4 years while player 1 is only playable in his SR year. 

Alot of factors at play.  The players position and the category in question, work ethic, playing time, etc.  But generally, I think player 1 ends up around 30-35 in that category and player 2 ends up around 45-50.  A real general rule of thumb - Low=0-10; Med=10-20; and High=20-30.

Posted by skinndogg on 10/30/2010 4:19:00 PM (view original):
     
I'm sure you guys get tired of all the newbie questions, but here's another one.

If, for example, let's compare two players

Player 1 has a rating of 5 in a particular category but has HIGH potential.

Player 2 has a rating of 40 in the same category, but has LOW potential.

If you trained the players the same for 4 years, who's going to end up having the higher rating?

Or how much higher would the original rating need to be for a LOW potential guy to still end up with the higher rating in the end?

Well, the first thing I want to point out is that you'd never want to give those two guys similar practice time.

Having low potential in a category means you're going to see very, very little improvement. It's barely worth practicing that category at all.

High potential means more than 20 pts of improvement are possible. That could be 21 points, it could be 30+. Generally, if it's a 35-pt gap like that, the guy starting with 40 will usually end up higher.

You should also keep in mind that starting with a rating of 5 will mean extremely slow growth at first. So even if you had a 5 (high) vs. a 25 (low), I would look at that differently than, say, a 25 (high) and a 45 (low). In the latter example, the high player will catch up to the lower player much more quickly.