The following player was drafted in the 16th round in one of my worlds:

https://www.whatifsports.com/HBD/Pages/Popups/PlayerRatings.aspx?pid=8231248

At least half the owners went back to check their draft scouting and he wasn't even listed Top 500 - even for those with high scouting budgets.

Someone wrote to CS and received the following response:

"This is probably a more rarer case but is definitely possible with the fuzzier scouting that was implemented last year. There are a lot of factors that could have led to it such as lower HS scouting by the owners, the player's signability, etc."

I guess this adds more of a randomness element and allows for gems in later rounds, which I'm fine with, but I do have an issue that this guy didn't even appear on the draft board for multiple owners with $18-20M scouting budgets.

Thoughts?

I'm inclined to take CS's word on this. Even at $20M budgets, something like 10% of the player pool is completely hidden. So it is statistically possible that one player falls through the cracks of all the high prospect budget teams (and many of the lower scouting budget teams who miss players at a higher clip than 10%). He then gets scooped up by one of, if not the the only (low draft budget) teams that even had him in their draft pool. Improbable, but not impossible.

Makes you wonder how many studs have fallen completely through the cracks of every teams' scouts. That's my theory for those garbage drafts without even one elite prospect at the top. Probably happened in Mantle's recent draft, whole draft class was a bunch of turds.

Albert Pujols was drafted in the 13th round. It happens. And in this case simmy reflects this can sometimes happen.

Posted by sjpoker on 10/17/2016 5:31:00 AM (view original):
Albert Pujols was drafted in the 13th round. It happens. And in this case simmy reflects this can sometimes happen.

Read my post more carefully. I have no problem with studs going in later rounds. I do have a problem with no one seeing them.

I guarantee every team had the chance to scout Pujols. There's no way a player this good wouldn't be on the draft boards of every MLB team.

Well, if someone sees him, he doesn't go in a later round.

https://www.whatifsports.com/HBD/Pages/Popups/PlayerRatings.aspx?pid=7834708

got him in the 21st round and had 14 million in HS scouting. I have some other big league talent fall to the later rounds, but he is the best one I have seen.

People had asked form some Mike Piazza type randomness, so now we see it once in a while

Posted by MikeT23 on 10/17/2016 10:16:00 AM (view original):
Well, if someone sees him, he doesn't go in a later round.

Fair point. So what's better - having teams not see a guy at all, or having them miss on their projections? It's a sincere question - I'm not sure which would frustrate me more. But I sincerely doubt a team that invests nothing in scouting would see or "scout" a great player that other teams don't.

I'm not sure how much of an overhaul it would take to implement, but it would be interesting if owners could choose regions to scout in. That way there's at least an explanation if you completely miss a guy in an area you didn't scout. I just have a hard time believing a player this good wouldn't be on the "national radar".

Players like Pujols or Piazza obviously weren't highly rated when they were drafted. So perhaps random late round players getting huge development spikes would be a better solution than just having a great prospect slip through the cracks of almost every team. Look at Brady in the NFL - it's not that no other team scouted him; it's that no team thought he'd amount to much and he far exceeded expectations. I'd prefer that to some team randomly drafting a Peyton Manning in the 6th round.

Note the date and realize it will never happen.

7/25/2007 4:19 PM

MikeT23

This is just a "wish" item. I stumbled upon the idea in a thread griping about coach hiring when someone sarcastically mentioned "scout hiring". Anyway, I'm not sure if it's practical to program but I think it would be pretty nice and add a handful of options/strategy to scouting(which is pretty much hands off except for budgeting). Thanks in advance for taking the time to read the following. The concept: Each 1m you allot "buys" you one scout. This applies to Int'l, HS and college. Scouts are of equal ability(for the most part). Each country will be a seperate entity for international scouts. The US will be split up into regions(15 is what I'm thinking. Probably by state). The regions will not be equal nor will they produce the same quality/quantity of players. The same applies to countries. The owner assigns a scout to a region(for HS or college) or a country(for internationals). Domestically, a scout in a region will find the top 5 players and 25(or whatever) other players of varying ability. If two scouts are placed in the same region, the numbers will double. Obviously college scouts will only report on college players. Internationally, each scout will find up to 8 players(or whatever # is chosen). These will be random and there will be no guarantee that you see the best 8. You will simply see the first 8 he finds. Doubling up scouting will double the number of prospect found. Regions/Countries: At the beginning of the season, before scouts are assigned, the owners will be sent a report giving the number of colleges in each region, the number of high school seniors playing ball in each region and the number of international prospects in each country. Again, the only constant from season to season would be the number of colleges playing baseball from each region. I'd recommend varying the number of colleges per region during set-up as opposed to making each region the same "size" to add to strategy. During the arbitration process, the owner will assign scouts based upon these reports/personal strategy. If an owner fails to assign scouts, they will default to previous season settings and/or one scout to the most populated region on down until scouting budget runs out. Overall scouting For each 2m spent domestically, the owner will see the top overall player regardless of region. This will not "add" a player to scouted regions but simply ensures he sees the top player(s).

Which blows. I get why they're doing what they're doing, but the optics of it are awful.

"Well, we want to make it realistic, and since real teams find hidden gems in later rounds, we're going to just randomly distribute stud players to teams in these rounds, regardless of scouting budget."

As previously mentioned, I'd much prefer random mediocre prospects get huge development bumps (similar to DITR concept). You end up with the same end result - late round player turned stud - but it just has the look of a more legit process.

Sad part is, the old gridiron dynasty game basically had this concept coded into it. there were levels of development hidden, and one level was rare but gave huge developmental gains. I'm sure most of the code already exists.

Pretty sure GD still works that way and HD incorporates geography like Mike's idea does.
I love the geographical stuff in Mike's idea but as he said it's not going to happen.