Ratings Drops Through Whole Organization

[Juggernt]

I was casually scrolling through our 1 April Player Development Update, and I noticed a disturbing trend. Nearly no one at any level was improving. And it just kept getting worse the further down the report I got. I get that in the lower level minors, more players are going to fail than succeed, and I get that in the bigs players get older, but I went back and counted. Just in the players whose overall or potential ratings changed, 25 showed improvement and 137 went the other direction. Just at a glance (I didn't count every single player in the organization), it looks like even more players lost skills than that. My random is set to 100, if that matters. So either this is really bad, or it's just the same as it ever was, I just never noticed.

Is this normal and I just never looked hard enough at the report before or might there be some other factors at work here? My minor league teams at AAA and AA have both had quite a bit of a success the last few years. I'm just wondering if there are coaches I need to fire or what. Or is it that my scouting director finally got better (meaning more accurate) at his job?

[The Game]

Originally Posted by Juggernt

I was casually scrolling through our 1 April Player Development Update, and I noticed a disturbing trend. Nearly no one at any level was improving. And it just kept getting worse the further down the report I got. I get that in the lower level minors, more players are going to fail than succeed, and I get that in the bigs players get older, but I went back and counted. Just in the players whose overall or potential ratings changed, 25 showed improvement and 137 went the other direction. Just at a glance (I didn't count every single player in the organization), it looks like even more players lost skills than that. My random is set to 100, if that matters. So either this is really bad, or it's just the same as it ever was, I just never noticed.

Is this normal and I just never looked hard enough at the report before or might there be some other factors at work here? My minor league teams at AAA and AA have both had quite a bit of a success the last few years. I'm just wondering if there are coaches I need to fire or what. Or is it that my scouting director finally got better (meaning more accurate) at his job?

Whats your scouting budget?

[Juggernt]

600k; League average is 450k
Development budget is twice what the league average is.

[NoOne]

you can assume a large portion of small changes are either non-damaging or just scouting inaccuracy waffling around month-to-month.

spending over baseline should give you better than baseline %'s on the matter. it won't gaurantee improvement. i can say maximizing development budget and great coaches defintieyl help, but again not required. you can't see the important values on coaches so, it's 100% luck... there is no feedback beside results which could be caused by so many other factors you cannot say for sure in 99% of situations... all a guess on coach's teaching abilities... if they even matter anymore.

if they hide it and no possible indication, it's very possible it's deprecated code that was too messy to remove so it was left... or possibly for future revamping... very possible it's unused at the moment. (i won't go so far as asying "likely") .. just worry about what you can see with coaches and the feedback in their profile.

small changes -> i wouldn't be concerend... load up the player's profile, click on scouting reports. hopefully you keep more than 1 per year, but even that can help. the overall trend you see on this screen will tell you so much more about the current state of that prospects development and what to expect in the future relative to age.

a 1 time negative change is no big deal (a large tcr change is ofc).. a bunch of consecutive reports with a continual decline is clearly bad... where's the threshold of concern? your choice.

a large sudden change to potentials is tcr related. the small constant changing over time of current ability is development engine related. *** for the most part *** at lower minor league levels and even college kids in their first year a large sudden change is often scouting correction too. i'd wager that's more common than TCR changes in those specific contexts.

i can't say for sure that tcr cannot change current ability. i don't watch that closely nor take notes on accuracy-related fog of war. if it's a huge+suddent change, tcr is more likely than a development effect, i'd wager.

are these playrs well-developed for their minor league level?

e.g. if ~3/4 or 4/5ths (made up values, merely the 'gist' based on the sabermetric pcm of AAA) of potential is developed and at AAA you may start to see reductions to potential or current ability. they are 'too good' for that level and extended time there will hurt them... at any level, relative to how much they should be developed by then and even age to some extent is important to minor league level placement. if sinking and young, a lower level is better, i'd guess.