for me IFA is a situational strategy- it's a MASSIVE investment, and it's a slow investment, and you have no idea what you're getting. Only one of my 5 teams is going IFA at the moment (Atlanta) because I took over an abandoned team midseason with literally 0 useful players or prospects but still a ~65 million payroll. So after finally shedding all the dead weight and after finally assembling a team of 20 minimum-salary and/or pre-arb ML players, I had enough money to throw at IFA for a few seasons in a row. You really have to go all-in or you're more likely to miss out
S41 was a weak crop and I was only able to net RP
Player Profile: Jeanmar Beltre for $14.1M, and that player didn't even show up until the very last day. Whatever, he has talent I guess. The other top players that season were SP
Player Profile: Midre Matos for $20.5 whom I didn't even see, and 3B
Player Profile: Wilmer Chavez for $14.0 whom I did see, but whom my scouts wildly under-projected as potential OVR 82 instead of potential OVR 90. I was not willing to risk my entire budget on somebody whose potential OVR 82 would actually be mis-projected in the other direction in the ~75 OVR range, that would have been a massive waste. Turns out the 16 scout lied and he was 89 instead of 75. It's a crapshoot even at 16!!! Stupid
S42 was also a weak crop where 3B
Player Profile: Eduardo Martin was the top bid at $23.4 and I was the 2nd highest with OF
Player Profile: Ismael Nicasio for $18.7. Decent player I guess, probably a LF/RF so while I'm disappointed he's not a CF, I like that he hits S and his eye/speed/BR combination is downright hilarious. There were seven $9M-$14M players which were mostly disappointments. I chopped up the remaining payroll for a 2nd bullet that I never got to fire, I literally did not see anybody 70 or above after Nicasio. Instead, I spent the leftovers at the end on about 40 $50k-100k guys hoping for future DITR. It allows me to fully stock my rookie/low-a/high-a with primo candidates, increasing my chances of getting lucky and hitting a guy who would have maybe gone for $10M on the ifa market such as RP
Player Profile: Matthew Dubler
S43 (current season finishing) was the only chance I've had to fire two bullets-- signed the #4 and #5 highest bids on $14.1 on 2B
Player Profile: Midre Paz ("90 potential OVR", allegedly), and another $14.1 at the end on RP
Player Profile: Gerardo Lopez which is an over-payment but since it was near the end I figured I might as well spend whatever I still had leftover. The top bid for the season was $20.5 for SP
Player Profile: Guilder Lopez, who I didn't even see with 20 scout. Stupid
Moving forward, I have 0 long-term contracts and only a few players just entering arb, so I expect to go IFA again for at least the next 2 seasons. Eventually I will ween myself off IFA around S46-47 and shift those budget units into Player payroll to spend on contract renewals and ML free agents. When that happens, I expect to drop IFA the max (4 units at a time) while immediately dropping prospect the max from 20 to 6-10 (depending on how many draft picks I have). I'm either all-in or all-out