I'm back to the game from a long hiatus and trying to figure out the best way to leverage my dollar. I used to be big on the IFA front, but the new fuzziness in scouting has me wondering if it's worth it anymore? I'm so torn between playing in the IFA market with 20M in EITHER HS or COL scouting, or going 20M in BOTH HS and COL scouting.

Argument for IFA: They way I see it, IFA is the great equalizer. Everyone has access to the same amount of money. If you have a bad team, IFA and draft is a quick way to reload. If you have a good team, your draft picks will suck but you can still take a chance at landing an IFA star that you most certainly won't get in the draft. The negative is it can get expensive. At $20M IFA scouting and an elite IFA costing $25M, that's $50M for one player. The fuzziness of scouting now makes this risky.

Argument for HS/COL. You're always guaranteed a draft pick. The fuzziness appears to benefit those owners who spend a lot of money on scouting because you don't NEED a top 5 pick to grab that super star. I feel like giving the fuzziness of the scouting, with 20M scouting in both, you can grab high end ML contributors in the first 5 rounds instead of the first 2. Downside is you could totally whiff. It's a crapshoot. You could invest $40M in scouting and $14M in contracts to come away with a total turd.

I'm looking to see if I'm missing anything and what all of you think.

I think your arguments have merit. My personal experience, having experienced the draft before and after the "new scouting" update, is that picks 16-30 are now more potentially impactful than they used to be. With most owners opting to invest 20 mil either/or HS/College, the talent pool is distributed more evenly downward. I have no idea what investing 20/20 would be like, but in theory I suppose if you did see almost every player you'd stand a better chance of scoring major league caliber players down through Round 5.

The one time I have found myself with low enough payroll to blow extra cash, I went into IFA with it, because it still takes a few seasons to build up the side of amateur scouting you don't already have big money in. The downside to IFA is of course that you kind of lock yourself into getting one great player a season, if that. But in my case, I did get a couple of players of a type I'd never have had a shot at in the draft.

I'd go with Damag. If there were a way to garentee acquiring draft picks (trading players for pics) I'd go 20 coll and 20 HS but with being able to see every player, you still only probably get 6 picks in the top 100. Maybe 8 max. And it's a lot of money. Plus, when you want to drop to 0 it takes a while.

With 20 mill in HS or Coll Plus IFA, if you need the cash, you can always keep one or the other IFA plus amature. I've never been a fan of IFA because guys used to pay +$20 million for any player that could make the majors. I just do $20 mill into the armatuer draft with the rest into free agents.

Right, free agents. Don't forget the variables depend on the tendencies of your other owners in the world. Two worlds I'm in, one world is tooth and nail fighting over every worthwhile free agent; in the other one you can practically build an entire roster with cheap veterans at the end of free agency.

Damag brings up a good point.

There are 4 ways you can acquire the best players for your team. (5 if you count trades). HS draft, COLL draft, IFA and free agents. The best owners notice which markets have the least pressure and jump into them. It gives you the best opportunity to get good players for the least amount of money.

I played about 10 seasons pre-fuzziness, took some time off, and have played 5 seasons post-fuzziness.

In my first stint, I went the $20M HS/$0M College route after reading about that idea in the forums. My first few seasons (before getting to max HS) I didn't draft anybody worthwhile outside of the top 15 or so (although I did get a low durability, no power but good contact, splits and eye guy who was a high average, high OBP, low slugging pinch hitter extraordinaire - with the 66th pick, he was fun: Player Profile: Rich Salmon - Hardball Dynasty Baseball | WhatIfSports).

Once I maxed out HS, I was able to land a few surprisingly good players later in the draft (my ML team was doing well at that point, so I was drafting late unless I lucked into a good pick from a type A guy).

A few examples:
Player Profile: Mendy Salas - Hardball Dynasty Baseball | WhatIfSports at 30
Player Profile: Thom Black - Hardball Dynasty Baseball | WhatIfSports at 62
Player Profile: Yovani Tavarez - Hardball Dynasty Baseball | WhatIfSports at 26
Player Profile: Gerald Comer - Hardball Dynasty Baseball | WhatIfSports at 38

Not necessarily studs (though Tavarez is close), but all were very valuable relative to their draft slot IMO - and only possible because I was maxing out HS scouting.

Now I'm going in the other direction with $0 HS/ near-max college, and still having some success in the late first round and after:
Player Profile: Jesse Cashman - Hardball Dynasty Baseball | WhatIfSports at 46
Player Profile: Brett Terrell - Hardball Dynasty Baseball | WhatIfSports at 42
Player Profile: Wilt Adkinson - Hardball Dynasty Baseball | WhatIfSports at 23 (I think he was top-10 worthy, and should be better than a lot of guys drafted ahead of him)

On the IFA front, I've never really gone "all in." Our world is pretty competitive for the best IFAs, but I've had a few decent players from $12M-$14M-ish Int'l scouting and landing players in the $7M-$12M range:
Player Profile: Jeurys Bournigal - Hardball Dynasty Baseball | WhatIfSports for $7.1M
Player Profile: Al Liz - Hardball Dynasty Baseball | WhatIfSports for $12.1M (although it doesn't look like his vL will get to the 70 my scouts projected)