Deeper realism in Rookie Draft

[DiversionX]

I have pleaded about this before, but since it was all on the "other" message boards, I'll say it again here. I want to see more depth to the rookie draft.

As the draft is enabled right now, you get a list of rookies with talent ratings, then you pick them in order of reversed record. It's good, but it could be SO much better.

In the Playstation 2 game NCAA Football 2002, a huge part of the game is scouting, drafting and securing of your players. Each off-season you are presented with a map of the United States (limited, I know) and you get to select the states you want to focus on in the draft. You can view the various draftees and see what talent levels they have, vital stats (age, height, weight), and also see who they are leaning toward signing with. If you want to woo a player, you can make personal visits from the head coach or the assistant coach, make phone calls from either coach, or a combination of all four.

I'd like to see a scouting system where you spend various amounts of money on various parts of the world. In 'real' MLB the Dodgers are reknowned for spending more money on scouting in Latin America and it has paid off. The more money you spend on an area, the more accurate scouting reports you will get on players from that area, and the more chance you will have of uncovering a "diamond in the rough." I'd like to see you have to negotiate with your top draft picks in order to sign them. Stats on where your draftees played would be nice, and ratings on the system them played in. (Georgia tech and Florida State are reknowned for having great college baseball systems)

Finally, I'd like to see you be able to set how much of the realism you want. If you like the system the way it is, great, have the option of enabling the features I mentioned above.

[DiMaggio5CF]

The only problem with this is that, in real life, high school and college players enter the draft, where they are drafted by whatever team wants them.

It's not like college football where teams recruit and the players decide what team they want to play for.

Although, drafted players can refuse to sign with their MLB team.

Something along the lines of your idea would be to have, instead of different regions of the U.S., have different regions of the world.

Because currently, players outside the U.S. are exempt from the draft.

So you could have a world-wide scout and you could try to woo players from other regions.

For example, maybe there's a great player in the Japanese Pro Leagues.

He may be the next Ichiro, so you have to try to recruit him.

However, this could be solved by just making him a normal free agent.

But seeing that the MLB rookie draft is much different than college recruiting, I think it's better just to leave the game as it is.

[Fred]

Well I think that the rookie draft has no depth and is a weakpoint in the game. I think each player has to have his highschool stats (If he is coming out of High School) or college stats (if coming out of college). If they come from a 3rd world country you could have the stats of wherever they played or they would be unavalible. Also you could assign a scouting team (you should have to sign all of them) of 5 or so to a region and hae paided informants in different leagues to tell you if there is a player that could be a star. Then you could assign a scout to them and you could assign more scouts if you are touting more players thatn your assigned scouts can handle. You could try to buy out their contract or they could enter the draft. I know this sounds very complicated but hopefull a modified version could appear in the game.

[DiversionX]

I agree, where the player comes from, if he was in college or high school ball, and what his amateur stats were should definitaly be included. The drafting process would be a lot better if you could concentrate on scouting from different areas (high school, college, Latin America, other, etc . . . )

Right now the draft is so vanilla, yet so time-consuming that although I look forward to it in my games it ALWAYS seems like a letdown. Also, a greater discrepency of what players turn out to be stars would be nice. I think very few 1st round picks actually end up stars, and quite a few diamonds in the rough appear every draft crop (Mike Piazza being the greatest example)

[CaLíKrAzY]

Another thing about the draft is when your playing 1 player mode. Does the cpu ever go after a top pitcher or just top hitters? Seems like however many drafts I've had the cpu is programmed to go after the hitters and it basically forces you to choose pitching (which is alot better & makes the game 2 easy). Its predictable like crazy this definately needs to be looked at though and it needs stats like woa instead of just rookie ratings that mean jack comin from an average scout...

Johnny

[Dark Horse]

But the computer also seems to over value power ratings. And they place no value on defense. i have a solo league and i created some players and made them available for rookie draft. i made all the guys between 17 and 21. i created a couple of players that would have been ideal leadoff hitters. Brilliant Contact, Poor Power, Brilliant Discipline and great defense w/ A rating but the computer picks a guy with Average Contact and Brilliant power and no defense number 1. The computer picks for power first then contact and then SP.

[fluharty]

A simple way to add a little to the game would be to make a team spend money on scouting players for the draft. The more you spend the more acurate your scouting report on the players would be (up to your scouts ability level).

[DiversionX]

How about having tryout camps to find some really hidden talent?