Suggestion Add a 'volatility' rating for players, increase the default starting talents of pre-draft rookies, then use the 'volatility' rating as a way for users to gauge how accurate the talent ratings might be. A high volatility rating means the players chances of fulfilling that talent promise is much riskier. Then again, if the players talents are low and the volatility rating is high there is a chance for a true rookie draft steal. First round picks would generally be players with low volatility ratings combined with high talents, but those risky high talent/high volatility players would become more tempting as the draft proceeds, and just because the chances of the player becoming great is reduced does not mean he can't become great. Of course, even with higher starting talents for rookies, the numbers of players that become good or great should be similar to the odds in real life, so during the players first 1-5 seasons you would expect many talent drops. In fact, you might expect a 'reality check' talent drop immediately after the player is drafted.
Reason In real life nearly every drafted rookie is a prospect that the team and it's fans are expecting big things from. In OOTP only a tiny fraction of the drafted rookies look like true prospects when drafted, most look like players that should not even be drafted in real life, and the lower half of the draft lists look like players that would not be good enough to play in your local mixed, aged 65+ softball team. Look at all the websites and books/mags devoted to baseball prospects - some real life fans even follow a teams prospects more than the MLB team. The reason they do it is simple, that hope for tomorrow, regardless of how unlikely that hope might be, is gosh darn-it,
fun. I think changing the way we look at prospects in OOTP would make this process more fun as well, and definitely increase the immersion factor for users. The volatility rating will increase the user strategy involved in drafting and dealing with young players and though randomness would still have a large impact, this rating would at least make some of the inevitable drops in perceived talent less frustrating for a user (you'd draft a high volatility player with the expectation the risk is high versus the current OOTP dev that relies only on a dice roll).
Note 1: The 'volatility' idea is flat out stolen from a brilliant sports sim, Front Office Football, so if this idea is ever used you might want to change the term to something like 'risk assessment'
.
Note 2: You can increase the talent % of rookies now, but then you get stuck with a completely unrealistic amount of superstars everywhere (tried it in test leagues).
Note 3: I realize this steps on the toes of the games scouting design, but many OOTP users will never use scouting in the game unless it's completely overhauled from what it has been in OOTP versions 1-8 (sorry for the bluntness but I believe that's accurate).
Priority It's a big change so I think the chances this actually happening is low, but the priority of the
concept of OOTP prospects looking like real life baseball prospects is high.