Fuzzy rating adjustments Topic

First, I want to say that I am not a fan of the adjustments WIS did to fuzzy projected ratings, especially to undrafted and unsigned college, high school, and international players. I understand what they meant to do, however, I think they tweaked it way way way too far. To me, it's totally unrealistic and it's ruining this game for me.

I obviously haven't adjusted too well to the changes. I'm drafting and signing flops even with Col/HS/IFA budgets in the teens. My Advanced scouting budget has been $0 for many years. So my question is: Have you adjusted? Would you mind sharing some tips?
  • How do you scout pre-draft now knowing the ratings you're seeing are fuzzy?
  • Does your strategy change if you have a high pick (top 10) compared to lower pick (20s-30s)?
  • Do you sign IFAs and how hard do you go after them? One observation I have made is that since the fuzzy rating change it seems the best IFAs now get $18-22m bonuses whereas before they were routinely getting $25-30m bonuses.
  • Has your budget strategy changed? What do you do?
2/22/2017 7:48 AM
I've landed a few nice players in multiple worlds, but I feel it's pretty much luck. I couldn't tell you the difference between my success stories and my flops. I just go after players I think will help my team, and I'm wrong a lot more often than I was before WIS made any programming changes.
2/22/2017 7:52 AM
Going with $20 million in College will make things less fuzzy. From what I have seen, the College scouting seems to be most accurate where as HS can be way off.

I'd say take $20 million and plop it into either HS, College or INT. punt the rest. Save it for free agents where you know what you are getting.

Rank loooooots of players. This was a big one for me. Before fuzzy ratings I would rank only guys I could see making the bigs. Now, if I rank a pitcher with 50-50 splits, I might get them 3rd round and it turns out their splits were actually 70-75. It's quantity now over quality.

I hate having a high pick now because if it's a bust, it his a lot harder then a bust in the 20-35 range. But you can also make up for it with good suplamental picks and 2-3 rounders. I'd say just stay away from odd ratings (anything that is 100 is probably inaccurate).

Last part is sign everyone you can. I got a potential all star in the 19th round because he wasn't scouted by anyone. I hear more and more of these popping up. If they sign for cheap, what is the worst thing that can happen?
2/22/2017 7:55 AM
I've done OK with 14m but better with 18m. I'd suggest 20m.

If something looks "odd", say RHB with 83 VR and 42 VL, just avoid that guy.

And, as hockeyeh? says, sign everybody you can.
2/22/2017 9:07 AM (edited)
First, as others have said, anything below 16 mil scouting (HS, College, or Int) carries increased inaccuracy. 14 mil, you're guaranteed to see inaccurate projections; 12 mil or lower, I'm going to exaggerate a little, but you're wasting money.

hockey1984 makes a good point about odd ratings; with inaccurate scouting you start to see things that don't make sense when you consider what HBD players generally look like. Pitchers with 48/92 DUR/STA or 28/100 left/right splits, things like that. I find you have to look out for what just looks out of place; it's a tell that your projections are BS.

And yes, pre-ranking the draft is, IMO, everything. No matter what settings you use, if you just draft off your master list you're going to pick up some players who are just placeholders. I try as much as I can to filter out players who I think have no shot at the majors. Like pitchers with control but poor splits, or second basemen who will never hit enough to get out of AAA. I aim to not pick career minor leaguers in the first five rounds.

2/22/2017 9:04 AM
The other thing too, if you are bored or trying to avoid work (like I do over the winter) you can gain so much from reviewing the draft after it happens. Once a draft takes place and guys have signed with their respective squads, I'll open up a 'Amateur draft prospects page' and a 'Draft results page'

(Don't know how many people know this.) Even after the draft, if you open up the 'Amateur draft prospects' page, it will still say what your projected ratings for a player was before they were signed, regardless of what point in the season it is. By comparing those numbers to their true ratings on the 'draft results' page, I easily get an idea for what my scouts were off on. I pick up trends as to what to look out for and it makes me a smarter drafter overall. It takes time but a looooooooot can be learned about a draft after it has happened. Don't just look at your picks. Look at everyones and see where you could have made smarter decisions.
2/22/2017 9:55 AM
$20M is a no brain-er if your budget allows it. I've had one first rounder I wasn't happy with using $20M scouting and even he wasn't too bad. At $20M, the most any individual rating will be off by will be -10, (or +10 if you're lucky, but in many cases the differences across all ratings will net fairly close to 0 in my experience).

And besides, you see a bigger player pool (90% or so).
2/22/2017 11:46 AM
I run 20 HS in one league and 20 college in another. Ratings are still fuzzy and off on both sides. Seems like a lack of talent in the pool more than anything.
2/22/2017 12:43 PM
There's some good advice in here. Thanks.

The player I'm mad about is https://www.whatifsports.com/hbd/Pages/Popups/PlayerRatings.aspx?pid=8479041

He's certainly not a bust. He's a viable player, maybe a lot better than viable. But my problem is that I had $14m in college scouting and WIS said that the older the player, the more accurate the ratings. I did not want to miss on the 5th overall pick in the draft, so I targeted all 22 year old players. Gwynn projected to have splits in the 60s, but his contact, power, and eye all had projected ratings of 95. And, although I saw a projected 0 range, I saw projected AA, AS, and PC ratings in the 70s, so I'm thinking he's a bona-fide catcher with silver slugger written all over him. I had him ranked #1 which means if I had the first overall pick, Gwynn is who I would have grabbed.

He's a guy I would put a second round grade on. I think with $14 million invested in college scouting I should be able to tell the difference between a number one overall type of player and a second round draft selection. It's absolutely stupid the way they tweaked it. It would be like if it's 65 in my house and people feel cold so I turned the thermostat up to 90. They just went way too overboard with the tweaking fuzziness. I'm going to follow many of these tips and try to get better at it.
2/22/2017 8:10 PM
Your reasoning was pretty sound. What you ended up with was, IMO, the limitation of 14 mil scouting. There's definitely a difference between 14 and 16, I've seen it in my IFA results.

All projections are fuzzy, we know that. But we have to commit to ranking players based on projections, as you did. That's why many of us go with 20 mil college or HS and zero the other. It's to maximize the basis for committing.

2/22/2017 8:44 PM
If that happened with $20M scouting you'd get more sympathy. The fact is you have a means of dealing with the fuzziness, but you chose not to use it.
2/23/2017 1:18 AM
I didn't really have any means. This is my second year with the team. I inherited a $6m Coll budget and went to $10 my first season and then $14 this year, so it was the highest I could go. And again, $14 should absolutely be high enough to tell the difference between the #1 overall pick an a second round pick.
2/23/2017 7:13 AM
I think a lot of owners get stuck with what they think the game "should" be. I hear it a lot with injuries too. I "shouldn't" get so many injuries with 14 in training; I "should" be able to see somewhat accurate projections with 14, etc. The running theme here, and in similar forums, is that you need to budget near the ceiling to maximize results. The game is what it is, plan and budget accordingly, and if you can"t get your budgets high enough early on, plan for that too.
2/23/2017 7:50 AM
Posted by cebola on 2/23/2017 7:50:00 AM (view original):
I think a lot of owners get stuck with what they think the game "should" be. I hear it a lot with injuries too. I "shouldn't" get so many injuries with 14 in training; I "should" be able to see somewhat accurate projections with 14, etc. The running theme here, and in similar forums, is that you need to budget near the ceiling to maximize results. The game is what it is, plan and budget accordingly, and if you can"t get your budgets high enough early on, plan for that too.
Agree with this. I laugh when anyone complains about injuries. Crank your medical to $20 and you look forward to the injuries. Whenever one of my AAAA guys sneezes he gets hauled off to the 60 day DL in hopes of making an ML'er out of it.
2/23/2017 8:06 AM
People want "realism" until they don't want it. Injuries in HBD are FAR less frequent than in MLB. There are MLB teams with horrible farm systems. Think of them as the 14m scouting teams when the top farm systems are using 20m.

The difference between 14m and 20m is that FA secondbaseman who is only slightly better than that 3rd year pro in AAA that you're "holding back for full development."
2/23/2017 8:20 AM
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