Top Prospects with Low Ratings
 

Can anyone explain why often times there are top prospects that have low potential ratings but are still “top prospects?” For example, I have a prospect who’s the #31 ranked prospect, but his overall potential is only 2.5 stars. Additionally there are many other prospects who aren’t on the top 100 list who have higher potential ratings. This isn’t a scout issue either because out of curiosity I turned all scouting to 100% and there are still many guys ranked highly but don’t have great potential ratings. I have run into this in other seasons too. Has anyone else? And what’s the deal with that?

there's so many reasons why.

bad scouts,
low PCMs,
high PCMs,
draft pool size,
correction for a surplus of great players already,
bad database,
prospect list not being updated dynamically,

to name a few

Is it normal for example for Todd Helton (future HOF’er) to be a 2.5 start potential upon starting up a historical season (with 100% scouting)?

He is still ranked highly as a prospect but ratings just aren’t great. That seems to happen often with me on historical leagues with other players too which is strange.

It could just be that there's an abundance of great prospects. It's all relative. It's honestly almost impossible to give a good answer without seeing your save files

I don’t change anything from the default that would affect any drafting or prospects.

The strange thing is, there are guys whose potential is higher than a 2.5 (in the example above, with Helton), but are ranked lower than him.

Do you run into that? Is it strange? Or are there usually guys who have higher rated star potentials that are somehow lower on the BSN top 100 than lower rated potential guys?

Like I said, it’s really hard to say without seeing you file. 1B do tend to be lower on the list so there’s that. I will say this, I wouldn’t put much thought into overall ratings. They are notoriously misleading sometimes, though I feel that it has gotten better. Place more importance on individual ratings.