We're seeing a couple players pop up like this every once in a while, and I find them really interesting. It seems like they could only result from the following two scenarios:
1) Some combination of all 32 teams under-scout or don't see the player in question.
2) All 32 teams don't see the player in question.
I question (1), because the scouting variability required to modify the ratings of a top-50 player such that they appear to be a top-500 player is so huge that it's either outside of the reasonable bounds of scouting, or it would require someone with $0M scouting to see AND under-project a player that everyone with $10M+ scouting doesn't see at all.
This, combined with anecdotal evidence where I haven't seen anyone claim they scouted a such a player prior to the draft, leads me to believe (2) is the likely case.
To me, the interesting question then is, is this random chance, or did WiS actively program something like this into the draft? I guess there is no way to know for sure, but my inclination is it would be exceedingly rare for all 32 teams, with their varying levels of scouting, to all miss on the same subset of players, AND to have at least 1 player from that subset end up being a top 50 player. There are approximately 850 players drafted each season, so being in the top 50 represents only 6% of all players.
I guess I do have a question for you more veteran owners out there: is there a way to see the entire prospect class, not just the entire drafted class? That is, can we see how many players are eligible to be drafted? Even when I have $20M/$20M scouting, I can only seem to see the "top" 500. I'd like to be able to see the rest of the players, even if I haven't scouted them.