Better draft class with auto or menual scouting?

[Lovesports]

Do you guys prefer to auto scout or menual scout? I'm trying both out but I'd like to know which produces better results. Thanks

[Ghost Of The Year]

Re: Better draft class with auto or menual scouting?

I prefer to auto scout because I have other things I need to do in my spare time.
If you know exactly what you are doing & know what you want to do, then manual scouting is better. But if you don't know what you are doing, then you'd be better served with auto.
Think of it in terms of a car. If you know how to drive a stickshift, then you can get better performance versus a automatic. But if you don't know what you're doing you can burn out your clutch, & mess up your car i.e. your team.

[Sgexpat]

Re: Better draft class with auto or menual scouting?

Limited sample size but the best draft I've ever had - by far - was auto scouted

Do not plan on manually scouting again.

[Vtownwaves]

Re: Better draft class with auto or menual scouting?

Depends on how much time you have and how much you care about the prospects. For some people, drafting is just something you do to make trades for better, more developed mlb ready players. For others, especially if you have a team with a small budget, drafting determines whether you can win a world series or not. Also depends on if there are certain things you NEED in prospects.

So for instance, as the cubs, you dont NEED to be a good drafting team, auto scouting will do just fine, especially with a good set of scouts. But if you're on a majorly tight budget and cant afford free agency, it behooves you to seek talent that fits your desires. I tend to choose velocity over break in pitchers, and I like lefties more than righties. Theres a limited supply of left handed heaters in the world and I want to find them. So for me, manual scouting helps me narrow just who Im actually wasting time on. Otherwise the scouts will just scout whoever where ever.

I also seek speed and arm strength over batting skills as those can improve and many players with the first two can at least somewhat hit. They can bunt if need be and run the bases aggressively. So again, this is all personal preference. One last thing i do in ANY sports game is I only look at the YOUNGEST of the prospects in the draft. So if I left it on auto scout, they wouldnt focus on that. They would scout 22 year olds who are higher potential and floor(ovr), before looking at an 18 year old who may only be a c in potential but can become a solid b, at least over time.

As for quality of draft picks, I think that more depends on where you are in the order and how well you discover talent for later rounds. That makes having scouts with high discovery more important if you want to auto scout. Without it, they wont find many sleepers that other teams didnt see later in the draft. Auto scouting works just fine and will find plenty of good players for you. Manual scouting is for when you know what you want and need to look for it...

[KBLover]

Re: Better draft class with auto or menual scouting?

Limited sample size but the best draft I've ever had - by far - was auto scouted

Do not plan on manually scouting again.

Meanwhile, the best player I've EVER drafted was manual scouted (my ace in my carryover).

Also grabbed a 19-year-old stud-looking SP (already 82 H/9) and a nice stable of arms along the way in the same draft in the last on my fresh MLB16 franchise.

But, honestly, there's a lot of randomness. I don't think it particularly matters except to control exactly what you're looking for. For example, I heavily prioritized pitchers in that draft that produced the 82 H/9 kid. But, even though I scouted him, he had to enter the draft - that's a crapshoot and doesn't matter if manual or auto scouting. Plus, of course, randomness in who gets discovered (again, regardless of auto vs manual) and, of course, how the other teams pick.

So, if you want to emphasize/control what positions and such you want to add to your farm, manual is a good way to go, especially for the "discovery phase" (what I call the first month or so where 3/4 of my scout staff is discovering and 1 is scouting the discoveries).

For scouting out who you found - auto might go slower on that (it might keep discovering), but otherwise, it might not be too bad, especially if you don't mind risking being largely blind in the draft (and you probably will be anyway by round 3 unless you have scouted a lot of kids AND they entered the draft, then you might have scouted kids to consider in all rounds).

I think it's more preference (and randomness) than "this is better" in terms of the quality of the kids you discover.