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Syd Thrift · 07-14-2007, 06:22 AM

Suggestion
----------------
Base scouting almost entirely on player performance.

Reason
----------------
How do scouts IRL figure out whether a player is good or not? By watching him play, of course. Occasionally you hear guys talk about "the good face" but the fact is, unlike football prospects are not rated on how many bench presses they can do or how they scored on the Wonderlic test. They are scored based on how well they hit, field and throw.

This is how I think this should be implemented: say, for example, that you send your scout out to watch your AAA team for a week and come back with the results. During that time, Scrubby McFeely takes over for your stud 2B prospect who has the flu and hits .450 with 4 home runs. That scout should come back saying that he's an 80 out of 80 hitter. No, seriously. You want less noise like this? Send your scouts around more often. Eventually, after they've watched guys a few different times, the sum of their scouting reports will make sense - unless, of course, Scrubby McFeely keeps playing over his head all season long, in which case you've got to find out for yourself whether he really has it or if he just has the good luck to hit whenever your scouts are present. Perhaps a really, really good scout could help you tell for sure... but he'd have to be the best of the best to pick out a bad player who is putting up good numbers (and vice versa).

Admittedly, I am not entirely sure how you'd implement this for high school and college ball. One idea is to have scouts "watch" each player "play" against simulated high school and college level competition for several games. That would probably make scouting the draft pool take a lot longer than it takes now and although I would be more than happy with the trade-off I imagine that's a decision that's not in my hands. Once players are in the league, I don't think that generating a scouting report based on a given scout's length on an assignment would take that much longer to perform than looking at the player's actual ratings and assigning error.

Additionally, it would add another wrinkle to the game that we see in real life: teams always seem to salivate over players who do well against them, even when they don't do so well against the rest of the league. Since you're liable to be scouting your own teams more frequently than the league as a whole, your scouts are going to overrate these guys. Also, thanks to your advance scout you're going to have more accurate pictures of the players in your division if your league plays an unbalanced schedule.

Priority
-------------
As high as high can be. This IMO would go a long way towards solving the scouting and boom/bust in the draft pool issues.

07-14-2007, 06:22 AM	#22 (permalink)
Syd Thrift Banned Join Date: May 2004 Posts: 3,113	Suggestion ---------------- Base scouting almost entirely on player performance. Reason ---------------- How do scouts IRL figure out whether a player is good or not? By watching him play, of course. Occasionally you hear guys talk about "the good face" but the fact is, unlike football prospects are not rated on how many bench presses they can do or how they scored on the Wonderlic test. They are scored based on how well they hit, field and throw. This is how I think this should be implemented: say, for example, that you send your scout out to watch your AAA team for a week and come back with the results. During that time, Scrubby McFeely takes over for your stud 2B prospect who has the flu and hits .450 with 4 home runs. That scout should come back saying that he's an 80 out of 80 hitter. No, seriously. You want less noise like this? Send your scouts around more often. Eventually, after they've watched guys a few different times, the sum of their scouting reports will make sense - unless, of course, Scrubby McFeely keeps playing over his head all season long, in which case you've got to find out for yourself whether he really has it or if he just has the good luck to hit whenever your scouts are present. Perhaps a really, really good scout could help you tell for sure... but he'd have to be the best of the best to pick out a bad player who is putting up good numbers (and vice versa). Admittedly, I am not entirely sure how you'd implement this for high school and college ball. One idea is to have scouts "watch" each player "play" against simulated high school and college level competition for several games. That would probably make scouting the draft pool take a lot longer than it takes now and although I would be more than happy with the trade-off I imagine that's a decision that's not in my hands. Once players are in the league, I don't think that generating a scouting report based on a given scout's length on an assignment would take that much longer to perform than looking at the player's actual ratings and assigning error. Additionally, it would add another wrinkle to the game that we see in real life: teams always seem to salivate over players who do well against them, even when they don't do so well against the rest of the league. Since you're liable to be scouting your own teams more frequently than the league as a whole, your scouts are going to overrate these guys. Also, thanks to your advance scout you're going to have more accurate pictures of the players in your division if your league plays an unbalanced schedule. Priority ------------- As high as high can be. This IMO would go a long way towards solving the scouting and boom/bust in the draft pool issues.