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International Scouting: What You Get for the Money, Part 1 of 4

In an attempt to begin to make sense of the often frustrating relationshop between the International Scouting budget and the actual players your scouts bring to you as prospects, we will survey 4 owners with varying budgets this season to see who gets what for their money.

mnnorthstars is spending $20M on int'l scouting this season and will be our high-end budget rep. The other owners who will share what they see are myself(16M), sjstapleton(11M), and crickett13(7M).

It wouldn't be very accurate to report on these players based upon their overall projected ratings, since this always fluctuates based upon multiple scouting budgets(advance and international), so we will instead look at two very basic elements: total number of players seen and the player's initial asking bonus. The ladder is not a great determinant of actual projected value, but will at least give us a quality approximation of the players scouted.

The numbers listed below were reported at approximately the 7-8 game point of the season, which also includes all of the international players scouted during Spring Training. The four of us will attempt to update these numbers at the following approximate intervals as well: game 50, game 100, and game 150.


Listed as follows: Team, (int'l budget), total # of players seen, # of players asking for a bonus of greather than 3M, #of players asking between 1M and 3M, # players asking less than 1M.

Minnesota(20M) total=16, asking more than 3M=2, 1-3M=6, less than 1M=8

Anaheim(16M) total=15, asking more than 3M=3, 1-3M=5, less than 1M=7

Little Rock(11M) total=10 asking more than 3M=1, 1-3M=4, less than 1M=5

Scranton(7M) total=7 asking more than 3M=2, 1-3M=2, less than 1M=3

Initial Findings: Of players asking for less than 3M, there is perfect correlation to money devoted to international scouting; the more you spend the more of these players you see.

For players asking more than 3M, those who may be not only eventual big leaguers, but maybe even stars at the big league level, there is some inconsistency. The 7M budget has seen two of these guys, same as the 20M budget, and 1 more than the 11M budget. The 16M budget has seen the most of these guys at 3 thus far.

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