NML seems nervous....
It should be noted that I'm comparing OSA's 2053 ratings to OSA's 2050 ratings, so I would expect them to not change all that much. I think once we get a few more years down the road and this guys start to reach potential (or not) we'll have a better idea of the relative accuracy. that being said, with the one prospect who is far enough along with development to judge (Norman) OSA was more accurate than my scout.
My scout favors "ability" and I'm not sure what that means but he seems a lot lower almost across the board on all prospects than OSA. So while my scout's potential ratings are generally lower, the players often have very similar rankings relative to each other. OSA's top 10 and my Scouts top 10 batters that year were very similar, with players being up or down a slot or two at most relative to the other players. The only player where my scout differed GREATLY from OSA on the relative order of players was taken with the #12 pick, so we'll see how he's done when we get there!
Based on reading the OOTP shit about scouts, I think scouts that favor or heavily favor "tools" are going to be finding more players who have high potential but might bust completely. Then "ability" favored scouts are more realistic/pessimistic about potential, but highlight players who are very likely to develop into WBL (not likely to bust). This would explain why my scout is generally lower in opinion on the very high end players (especially high school players) while he has a slightly higher opinion on some prospects who OSA has rated really low but my scout thinks will be decent WBL role players.
Here is an example of a player my scout is higher on than OSA. OSA's opinions on him haven't changed much, but that doesn't mean OSA is spot on, it just means they haven't changed. My scout has always thought this guy is better than OSA does and his statistical performance in the minor leagues makes me think my scout is more accurate in his case, especially since he's already hitting HRs in AA and AAA at a rate (>5%) that is higher than expected. With a 40 power rating OSA has him listed at, you'd expect 2.5-4% HRs in my parks (for comparison, Vigil hit HRs at a 3.7% clip with 40 power). My scout thinks his power is 45/45 and that definitely matches up better with his statistical performance. Same thing with his eye too, where my scout has him at a 45/50. He gets more walks than you'd expect based on OSA's based on OSA's 35/40 eye projection
http://utopia.allsimbaseball9.com/game/lgreports//players/player_4960.html
Either way, this is why I also project my own ratings for minor/major league players based on statistics and this exercise convinces me that I should give more weight to those projections for minor league players (in the WBL I think OSA does a pretty good job)
Last edited:
