Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Which Scouts Are Showing Me This Player Card?

Since we have a couple of relatively new HBD'ers, I thought I'd put up an explanation of one of the more confusing aspects of the game - the whole projected ratings from 4 different scouting departments thing. I've run into even veteran owners in other worlds who had some misconceptions around this, so maybe a review is in order here.

First things first: current ratings are the player's actual abilities right now. They are exact and everybody sees the same thing regardless of what they spend on scouting. This is important and frequently misunderstood - if I spend $20MM across the board in scouting and see a pitcher's control as 82, and you spend $0 across the board on scouting, you will see that pitcher's control as 82. You and I will see each current rating of every player as exactly the same number. Scouting has absolutely nothing to do with current ratings.

Projected ratings, on the other hand, are always estimates (from some scouting department or another) of what the player's ratings will be. They are never exact, because they can't be - a player's development is heavily affected by future events (namely, how good his coaching is, how much his team spends on training, and injuries or lack thereof. It's also affected by the player's makeup rating). Projected ratings are determined by the level spent on various scouting departments - higher spending yields more accurate estimates but they're still estimates.

Advance Scouting: When you're looking at a player card of a player on a roster (yours or another team's, majors or minors), the projected ratings you're seeing come from the advance scouting department.

High School and College Scouting: when the amateur draft players show up every year, and you're looking at them on the GM's Office >> Player Development >> Amateur Draft Prospects screen, the projected ratings you see there (and on the player card) come form the high school and college scouting departments. Until the player signs, the HS and Col projected ratings are also what show on the GM's Office >> Player Development >> Amateur Draft Results and the World Office >> Reports >> Draft History screens. Once the player signs, all the above (except one) change. When the player signs, wherever you look at him (except on the Amateur Draft Prospects screen), you're seeing the projected ratings from Advance Scouting.

The Amateur Draft Prospects screen is unique in that it retains the HS and Col projected ratings even after the players sign. It's the only place (that I know of) that you can get an idea of what different levels of scouting spending tell you. Example: you spent $20MM on Advance Scouting and $12MM on College. Your #1 draft pick is a college 2B that your scouts said had a projected CON of 97; once he signs your Adv says he projected CON is 88. You know your Adv is going to be fairly accurate in this case...by comparing the ratings on this screen against what Adv scouting yields, you can get a feel over time of how much "difference" different levels of spending make.

Note: the Amateur Draft Prospects screen goes away after the season, so (unless you copy them to a spreadsheet) you only have access to these ratings for the current season.

International Scouting: works the same way as the HS and Col scouting except that there's nothing (that I know of ) that retains the Int'l scouting ratings after the player signs. There obviously is an Int'l Prospects Page (analagous to the Amateur Draft Prospects page), but once the player signs he doesn't show up on that page anymore.

Hope this was at least a little helpful. Comments welcome.


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