2) Does $30M wasted mean $20M in Prospect money and $10M in INT scouting, or is the whole $30M in Prospect? Someone counting on an ace SP through IFA should have incentive to max INT. If he didn't see the stud and had $20M in INT that would be extremely unlucky. If he had $10M in INT, that would just be losing a gamble. If the update pushes teams aiming for top IFA or with top draft picks to put $20M into either scouting category, that's a sensible change.

5) Logically, one shouldn't wish for a crippling injury to a top prospect. Low Health should be a negative. That would seem to be an improvement.

5) do you mean in real life or in the sim? In the sim with the injury bug, if I was having a rough year or for guys in the minors I was always hoping for an injury. In real life, although you never hope your guy goes down with an injury, I have heard of pitchers throwing 2-3 MPH faster after having Tommy John surgery

The new normal isn't that bad.   You just have to formulate a new game plan for success. 

And, again, the new way removes tanking as a surefire way to future success.   You could lose 120 three seasons in a row, have 20m in HS/College scouting and still get nothing more than a solid bench player with those three picks.   That's far closer to real life than what we've ever had.

Posted by hockey1984 on 8/28/2015 7:49:00 AM (view original):
5) do you mean in real life or in the sim? In the sim with the injury bug, if I was having a rough year or for guys in the minors I was always hoping for an injury. In real life, although you never hope your guy goes down with an injury, I have heard of pitchers throwing 2-3 MPH faster after having Tommy John surgery

I mean in the sim. The game should be somewhat intuitive for a new player, and a new player would expect high Health to be a good thing. Just because we learned oveer time or through the forums that low Health or a major injury were positives doesn't mean it's a sensible way for the game to work.

In RL, for every pitcher who gains 2-3 MPH after TJ there are 10 who are never quite as good and five more who are never even effective again. And those who do improve take years to do so, not 60 days.

Posted by MikeT23 on 8/28/2015 8:27:00 AM (view original):
The new normal isn't that bad.   You just have to formulate a new game plan for success. 

And, again, the new way removes tanking as a surefire way to future success.   You could lose 120 three seasons in a row, have 20m in HS/College scouting and still get nothing more than a solid bench player with those three picks.   That's far closer to real life than what we've ever had.

Amen.

Tanking should be far less viable with a need to get 2 scouting depts. (IFA & HS or COL) up to $20M. That adds seasons and cost to the process, and adds time to get them back down to $0 to maximize FA money. As it was you could put $4M in INT and $8M in HS or COL and be assured of at least two superstars, and have enough $ to outbid everyone for top FA when ready to try to win again. A team with a $40M payroll should have to pour big money into scouting to rebuild, and that appears to now be the case. It was not when we could see accurate Current ratings of IFA/draft prospects. And that rebuilding should not be a sure thing.

Posted by joshkvt on 8/27/2015 10:14:00 PM (view original):
More random is great as long as I continue to nail my first three picks, snap up a stud in Round 18, and everyone else gets crap from the start. Or to paraphrase Garrison Keilor, everyone's draft should be above average. Problem solved.

I'd love if that were my argument. My argument is that I've already drafted several times under these rules. I always rank my players manually and use a college budget of 16-18. I ignore the high school players. In the 3 drafts since the "Change," my 1 st round picks are not anywhere close to their projection, but my 3rd picks aren't any better either. IF there is randomness in the draft, THEN where did the talent go, why can't I see it with my high budget, and why am I not getting it in later rounds.

My question (which is separate from my complaint) is if anyone has a strategy to deal with my conundrum. Once I joined a league and had the #1 pick. It's not why I took the team, but it seemed cool (after all, as someone who wants to "win now," I never draft in the Top Ten. The pitcher/borderline HOFer who was the best pick of the draft went with the #2 pick, because I couldn't see with my 14 million. That was under old rules and was annoying enough. Given that, WTF do I do now? Draft is tomorrow and there are allegedly 3 guys with overall 90+ ratings. I know the projections are wrong, but I want to know if anyone has any guesses about how to draft from that position?

PS I picked this team not because of the #1 pick, but because the previous owner had little idea what he was doing, but drafted well and the 3 #1-7 picks he left behind will form the core nucleus of a fine team.

Posted by joshkvt on 8/28/2015 9:59:00 AM (view original):

Posted by hockey1984 on 8/28/2015 7:49:00 AM (view original):
5) do you mean in real life or in the sim? In the sim with the injury bug, if I was having a rough year or for guys in the minors I was always hoping for an injury. In real life, although you never hope your guy goes down with an injury, I have heard of pitchers throwing 2-3 MPH faster after having Tommy John surgery

I mean in the sim. The game should be somewhat intuitive for a new player, and a new player would expect high Health to be a good thing. Just because we learned oveer time or through the forums that low Health or a major injury were positives doesn't mean it's a sensible way for the game to work.

In RL, for every pitcher who gains 2-3 MPH after TJ there are 10 who are never quite as good and five more who are never even effective again. And those who do improve take years to do so, not 60 days.

That part about TJ surgery is not true. Almost every pitcher comes back from TJ close to what they were before.  The "throwing harder" thing is bs, but the question for post-TJ pitchers is whether they regain command of the pitches.

Now, shoulder surgery?  GL for the guy ever returning to form

Pedantry aside, getting rid of that injury trick is and was a great idea. 

Getting rid of the injury trick removes another dimension or way to build a team in my opinion. I loved the injury trick because you had guys with $20 mill hoping to cash in. You also had guys with $0 in medical saying 'I'll take my chances' and guys at $10 mill saying 'I don't need my injured guys to get a boost but I don't want them out 3 months with a sore thumb'. I feel like taking away the injury trick reduces a lot of owners options to either the $0 or $10 mill choice.

That particular bit of sarcasm wasn't directed at anyone in particular, but at general calls for more randomness being followed by general complaints that having the randomness sucks.

Obviously the only strategy that makes sense is to go by the data you have available from your scouts' projections (I'm inclined to pay a little attention now to the auto-rankings as part of my prospect-shuffling; the rankings could include factors/accuracy we can't see). We do not know how the update will affect long-term development, and won't know that for a few seasons. We've been told that projections can now be understated, which is new; that HS/COL/INT has been made less dependable; and that there are unspecified changes in development patterns. It's too early to do more than guess at what those changes mean. We're basing thoughts about a new system on facts learned using the old system. Pre-update, a player with a Current of 25 and Projection of 70 would never get anywhere close to 70. We don't know whether that's still the case.

A goal of the update was to make ADV relevant. It's conceivable that they plunged draftees'/signess' Currents (so only high ADV would show which of of those players are real prospects) with a corresponding increase in length/amount of development. It's conceivable that some of those early picks with horrible Currents are future HOFers that we won't recognize until they've had multiple seasons of development — unless we have $16M-$20M in ADV — because we're conditioned to expect a maximum amount of development. If you have low ADV, you don't know that those draft busts are really busts. We knew that multiplying ST1-ST2 growth by 1.5 would give us a rough idea of where a player would end up. We do not know whether that's still true.

Are people with high ADV seeing signed players' projections vastly lower than the HS/COL/INT scouts' projections?

Posted by timb116 on 8/28/2015 2:09:00 PM (view original):

Posted by joshkvt on 8/28/2015 9:59:00 AM (view original):

Posted by hockey1984 on 8/28/2015 7:49:00 AM (view original):
5) do you mean in real life or in the sim? In the sim with the injury bug, if I was having a rough year or for guys in the minors I was always hoping for an injury. In real life, although you never hope your guy goes down with an injury, I have heard of pitchers throwing 2-3 MPH faster after having Tommy John surgery

I mean in the sim. The game should be somewhat intuitive for a new player, and a new player would expect high Health to be a good thing. Just because we learned oveer time or through the forums that low Health or a major injury were positives doesn't mean it's a sensible way for the game to work.

In RL, for every pitcher who gains 2-3 MPH after TJ there are 10 who are never quite as good and five more who are never even effective again. And those who do improve take years to do so, not 60 days.

That part about TJ surgery is not true. Almost every pitcher comes back from TJ close to what they were before.  The "throwing harder" thing is bs, but the question for post-TJ pitchers is whether they regain command of the pitches.

Now, shoulder surgery?  GL for the guy ever returning to form

Pedantry aside, getting rid of that injury trick is and was a great idea. 

It does appear true, keeping in mind that I was referring to the rare-to-mythical "throws harder" player and not those who come back more or less as they were. Hardball Times did a study that's relevant. 20% never pitch in the majors again. The median for pitchers returning from TJ is 100 innings for the rest of their careers. IOW, half of those who have the surgery end up with about one season's worth of ML innings at any level of effectiveness.

What you say about success rates is accurate only if you define "almost every" as "less than half." Half will come back to throw 100+ more career innings, with some percentage of that half approaching or equaling what they were before.

http://www.hardballtimes.com/tommy-john-surgery-success-rates-in-the-majors/

When we think about pitchers who have recovered from Tommy John surgery, our minds tend to lock onto the successful ones. Tommy John himself. A.J. Burnett. Adam Wainwright. Jordan Zimmermann.

What is critical to understand is that one out of every five major pitchers who undergoes the operation never throws another pitch at that level. These are less familiar names, given their career-ending injuries. Ambiorix Burgos. Anthony Reyes. Macay McBride. Bill Simas.

The most recent data suggest that one out of two major league pitchers who has Tommy John surgery will throw fewer than 100 innings the rest of his big league career. Bill Bray. B.J. Ryan. Taylor Buchholz. Victor Zambrano.

Thanks. I like that very rational answer. I forgot about fuzzy development too

Posted by timb116 on 8/28/2015 2:03:00 PM (view original):

Posted by joshkvt on 8/27/2015 10:14:00 PM (view original):
More random is great as long as I continue to nail my first three picks, snap up a stud in Round 18, and everyone else gets crap from the start. Or to paraphrase Garrison Keilor, everyone's draft should be above average. Problem solved.

I'd love if that were my argument. My argument is that I've already drafted several times under these rules. I always rank my players manually and use a college budget of 16-18. I ignore the high school players. In the 3 drafts since the "Change," my 1 st round picks are not anywhere close to their projection, but my 3rd picks aren't any better either. IF there is randomness in the draft, THEN where did the talent go, why can't I see it with my high budget, and why am I not getting it in later rounds.

My question (which is separate from my complaint) is if anyone has a strategy to deal with my conundrum. Once I joined a league and had the #1 pick. It's not why I took the team, but it seemed cool (after all, as someone who wants to "win now," I never draft in the Top Ten. The pitcher/borderline HOFer who was the best pick of the draft went with the #2 pick, because I couldn't see with my 14 million. That was under old rules and was annoying enough. Given that, WTF do I do now? Draft is tomorrow and there are allegedly 3 guys with overall 90+ ratings. I know the projections are wrong, but I want to know if anyone has any guesses about how to draft from that position?

PS I picked this team not because of the #1 pick, but because the previous owner had little idea what he was doing, but drafted well and the 3 #1-7 picks he left behind will form the core nucleus of a fine team.

The common sense answer is to rank the best projections at the top.    While projections may not be as reliable as they once were, thus reducing the "sure thing" that promotes tanking, they are still what we have to work with.     90 is better than 80 and 80 is better than 70 until there's a pattern telling us that it is not true.   A few months into the new program will not give us a pattern. 

The problem with making advance scouting more relevant is it gives you a glimpse into players you may never be able to acquire. Teams tend to get married to their first round picks regardless of what their projections look like after they sign them. These were the guys they considered 'the best' and they are going to make it or rot in the minors trying. Seeing your guys actual projections is pointless too. MikeT put it best 'what else are you going to do?' You promote guys who deserve it and send the ones to the majors with the best ratings. That isn't going to change.

Has anyone seen posts from folks saying that they scored on an inordinate number of picks?  If there is more randomness to the draft, it stands to reason someone will be lucky enough to hit it big on the majority of their first 5 picks, for example, and/or a late round gift.

The talent in the draft didn't change.   Someone is still getting the best player, someone is getting the best and so on down the line.  I don't think we have enough info yet to know at what slot those players are going.