[FantasyDrafter]

Spent the last few days going through multiple seasons with the same team I had before, utilizing the same min/max strategy throughout the organization - at this point I’m pretty sure 75%+ of my club has the sliders adjusted (it may be 90+, I’m trying to lowball it). I just finished the 2027 season.

I won’t go into everyone individually, but some thoughts based on my experience:

- ratings changes from a successful lab (yes I ran a scouting report prior to the lab completing and checked the editor to get a true before/after) are not generally not particularly huge. Outstanding can maybe be up to a 10% increase under the hood it seems? Most common result is no improvement. If you have a disastrous lab it hurts in the short term, but players can recover.

- min/max seems to have very little effect. I have had success with maxing out a rating that was reported to have regressed in a scouting report, but that is likely RNG. I am thinking of it as encouraging the player to work on that, and maybe when they have an increase it is bigger the more you have invested, but i cant say anything for certain. It isn’t a broken mechanic where you can push a player +20 past their initial scouting potential from when they were acquired (assuming very high scouting). It feels like a requested focus, not a cheat code.

- personally I don’t find it more likely you will decrease a stat having nothing in the bar. It happens, don’t get me wrong, but it isn’t a death sentence for a stat. I will continue with my gut feeling from the beginning that you don’t need any points in defense, base running or stamina to have a successful player. Given what I have done with my org, if the bars were extremely powerful I would have expected at the end of the 2027 season to have a club full of relief pitchers who were pretty wild and a slow, defensively challenged group of everyday players at all levels. Simply hasn’t happened. Nor should it in my opinion. I am treating the bars as if zero is the baseline and any increase you give to a bar is a nudge in that direction (which is how I want it to work) and it has worked that way for me. Here is the big question: IS THE JUICE WORTH THE SQUEEZE? If I’m being honest, probably not.

- I had a big issue season 1 where my lower minors were TERRIBLE. I spent a little time on it (but honestly not very much) and at the end of the 2027 season they might be too good. AAA won 100 games, AA and A+ still under .500 but no longer a disaster, A - .561, FCL - .673, DSLs played .900 and .700 ball. I am not managing those teams, but I did spend more time organizing after the 2025 season. I did not have the AI cutting players and somehow I wound up with 69 players in the FCL at one point. I let the AI cut for a day and they got rid of the dead wood pretty effectively (I only signed back 2 players. I will do that during every offseason going forward I think.