Are there or have there ever been any leagues that have placed a relatively low ceiling on IFA scouting to lower the barrier to entry for that market?

Are there or have there ever been any leagues that have introduced similar ceilings to college and high school scouting to discourage tanking?

Not on scouting budgets, but in ULB we have a prospect budget cap. Max you can spend is $25M on IFA and the draft combined. Makes the ultra low payroll strategy fairly useless and makes it more difficult to tank because the #1 pick team probably won't be able to compete for IFA's because the best ones get the max $25M offers.

Posted by brianplath on 10/19/2023 7:38:00 AM (view original):
Not on scouting budgets, but in ULB we have a prospect budget cap. Max you can spend is $25M on IFA and the draft combined. Makes the ultra low payroll strategy fairly useless and makes it more difficult to tank because the #1 pick team probably won't be able to compete for IFA's because the best ones get the max $25M offers.

I'm curious, how often do people jump straight to $25M on their initial bids?

Is there a tiebreaker for IFAs when all the contracts match? Real world it's probably easiest path to the majors, but obviously not easy to program I guess.

Posted by minihouston on 10/19/2023 10:08:00 AM (view original):

Posted by brianplath on 10/19/2023 7:38:00 AM (view original):
Not on scouting budgets, but in ULB we have a prospect budget cap. Max you can spend is $25M on IFA and the draft combined. Makes the ultra low payroll strategy fairly useless and makes it more difficult to tank because the #1 pick team probably won't be able to compete for IFA's because the best ones get the max $25M offers.

I'm curious, how often do people jump straight to $25M on their initial bids?

Is there a tiebreaker for IFAs when all the contracts match? Real world it's probably easiest path to the majors, but obviously not easy to program I guess.

A few do. I believe the tiebreakers are the same as they are for FA's.

If a league used the types of scouting caps I mentioned, what do you think the consequences would be?

In the draft, you would want the cap to be set at a number that would leave people just leery enough that it wouldn't be worthwhile to tank. What do you think that number might be?

In IFA, the point would be to encourage participation and to introduce greater random error and the possibility of more busts; to make signings more risky. There would also be the possibility of some dumb luck. At the same time, you wouldn't want scouting to be without value. Where would you put the number on that?

What got me thinking about this idea was reading the book "October 1964" by David Halberstam. He described how the Yankees discovered Mickey Mantle. Basically, in a moment of serendipity, one of their scouts decided to pull off the road a watch a random baseball game in Oklahoma. Still, from just this first encounter, the scout was positive that he had seen one of the greatest baseball talents of all-time. Skill and great fortune.

On the other hand, countless fine players were thought by many scouts not to have any real potential.

@mini - if he's a stud and I see him then immediately. Tiebreaker is first to offer the max so you can't really play footsie like you can in normal leagues.


@sean - not sure how you'd even enforce it since you can't see other teams budgets for those numbers. Would have to have an honor system or get admin involved which I doubt they'd agree to since they are in skeleton crew mode with this site.

That's interesting, I had been assuming the commissioner could see all the budget numbers. I had forgotten that would give them an unfair advantage.

Actually, I take that back. Now that I think about it I was assuming the site would allow the commissioner to change the maximum any owner could set scouting at on the set budget page.