What's up with this player? No injuries, good makeup. 20m training and good to excellent coaching every year. I have a top hs draft pick that has followed him through the minors and he has gained nearly 3x the ratings growth? Sup?

http://www.whatifsports.com/HBD/Pages/Popups/PlayerRatings.aspx?pid=7734510

This smells like one of those threads where the poster won't accept the answer.

Development patterns aren't the same is the company line. It's kind of BS but IFA don't always develop like draftees. It's almost like they lie about their age.

No, just curious. I happen to have a pitcher that had the same coaches and worse makeup vastly out preform this dude and it caught my attention. He was an 18yr old ifa so it didn't make sense to me.

Mike,

Is Ifa development more random in your opinion than drafted players? I'm going on the notion that older IFA don't improve alot and younger should improve similar to draft picks, which is obviously flawed? Ironically, I signed a 22yr old ifa 2 years ago expecting no gains, and he had progressed pretty nicely for his age! Weird? Any way to decipher which one your getting?

Yeah. You're correct in that 21-23 y/o IFA generally don't develop. But then they do. And you'd expect the 18-19 y/o will develop. Then they don't. I haven't found a key to figuring it out.

Is this since the "fuzzy" update or has it always been this way?

I can't say for sure. I got out of the IFA market for a long time because it didn't seem cost effective. I got back in after the update. Essentially 3-4 years elapsed in that time.

You got a big league starter for under $20 million IFA. I'd be pretty happy about that regardless of development.