I guess my question is this.  Can the projected "worth" of an International Prospect be determined by his signing bonus demands?  In other words, if Owner A budgets $2 mil to International Scouting, it can be assumed that his prospect projections will be pretty inaccurate, right?  So if Owner A's scout projects Prospect A to be a lousy player, but he is asking for $10 mil in signing bonus money, will he most likely be a star that the bad scout is wrong about? 

I suppose I'm mostly just confused about what determines a prospects signing bonus demands.  His true projections or his perceived ones depending on the skill of the scout.

In most cases, a high demand indicates a good player.   But I've seen 5m demands from high durability, high health guys that just aren't 5m players.

(1) I've never seen a 10M demand. I haven't explicitly tracked this, but I don't recall seeing much more than a 5M demand.

(2) AFAIK, their demand is a constant, and doesn't change from team to team, ie it doesn't depend on the skill of the scout. Thus, the demands must be based on some combination of projections and current ratings.

(3) As MikeT echoed, a high demand correlates fairly well with a good prospect, but not perfectly. I would estimate that, in a given season, there will be between 3 and 6 guys who demand 4M+. 1 or 2 will be inflated-OVR guys who probably are only worth a 3-6M signing bonus. 1 or 2 will be decent-but-not-great and probably worth between 8-14M. And then there will probably be 1 or 2 studs in there who are worth 16M+

I've thought about dropping IFA down and going based off demands and whether other owners are bidding, but it just doesn't seem worth it. I can't really imagine a scenario where you plan to invest heavily into IFA but only go in the 6M range of IFA.

I've seen one or two IFA's ask for $9-$10M.

Only problem with the low IFA strategy is that you will see fewer players.

If a guy is asking for $10 mil (the highest I've seen is somewhere b/w $7.5 & 9.5 mil, can't remember exactly) I don't care what your scouting says, he's going to be a great player.  Odds are, his current ratings are high enough that even crappy scouting will show him as a decent at worst player.

Their intial demands is also dependent upon what their signability is.  If a guy is asking for $5 mil and says he'd love to sign and play in america, he's likely going to have a higher overall projected rating than a guy asking for $5 mil and saying he's not sure that he wants to sign or would prefer playing overseas (all IFAs will sign as long as their minimum demands are offered).  However, as MikeT pointed out, overall rating can be influenced by things you don't put much value in, so that alone isn't the best route.

Good points taz.

If you studied it, you could probably predict with a fair amount of accuracy how good a guy will be even if you only had 2-4M in IFA scouting. The problem is that you probably would miss the star IFAs because you wouldn't see very many with scouting that low.

People use low IFA budgets and then bid off of a players demands.  If you see a demand in the 2M+ range, there is a decent chance he can make it to AAA/ML at some point in his career.  3M+ demands and he should be a ML'er.  5M demands and you start to get into the difference maker range at the ML level.  Most times.

A low IFA budget will lower the amount of players you see IFA wise though and that is where it can hurt you a little.  The highest IFA demands I have ever seen are in the 8M+ range.  On average, most IFA's end up being bid up to about triple their demands.