What Baseball Scouting Teaches RPG Players About Builds

24/07/26 •0•0

Baseball America's 20-80 grading scale is the sharpest talent-evaluation tool in sport. Here's what RPG players can steal from it to build better parties.

Scritto daEditorial & Marco V.

Every RPG player is already a scout. You just don't know it yet.

When you pick up a new unit in Elden Ring, or weigh whether to slot a Phantom Job into your FFXIV party after Patch 7.55 lands on July 28, you're running a ceiling-versus-floor calculation. You're asking: how good does this character get at their absolute peak? And how reliably can I get them there? That's scouting. That's exactly what professional talent evaluators do for a living. Except they do it for Double-A shortstops, not Tarnished builds.

The most respected system for doing this in North American sport belongs to Baseball America. On July 21, 2026, BA dropped an updated Top 100 Prospects list featuring nine new 2026 draftees, led by No. 1 overall pick Roch Cholowsky. The methodology behind that list. Specifically the 20-80 scouting scale. Is a tool RPG players can lift wholesale and apply to character evaluation. And the results are surprisingly sharp.

The 20-80 Scale, Explained for People Who've Never Watched a Scouting Report

Here's the core idea. Baseball scouts grade individual tools on a scale from 20 to 80, where 50 is major-league average. A player doesn't get a single score. They get separate grades for each tool: hit, power, speed, arm strength, fielding. Then scouts project both the presentgrade and the futuregrade, because a 19-year-old shortstop with a 35 hit tool today might project to a 60 by the time he reaches the majors.

Two numbers. Current state. Projected ceiling. That's the whole framework.

Notice how naturally that maps onto RPG character evaluation. You're not just asking "is this character good now?" You're asking what they become once fully specced, fully leveled, fully geared. A character with mediocre early-game stats but insane scaling is a high-ceiling prospect. A character who hits the ground running but caps out fast is a safe floor pick. Scouts have been making this distinction since the 1970s. Most RPG players make it instinctively. But without the vocabulary to name it clearly.

Ceiling vs. Floor: The Most Important Distinction in Both Worlds

Roch Cholowsky going No. 1 overall is a ceiling call. He's not the safest pick in the 2026 draft class. He's the pick with the highest projected peak. That's a deliberate choice, and it carries risk.

Sound familiar? Picking Elden Ring's Astrologer class at the start of a run is a ceiling call. Fragile early, devastating late. Picking Vagabond is the floor pick. You won't fall apart in Limgrave, but your late-game ceiling is lower unless you put serious build work in. Neither choice is wrong. They're just different risk profiles, and smart players know which one they're making.

Where RPG players get into trouble is conflating the two. They'll say a character is "bad" when they actually mean "low-floor". Which is not the same thing. Some of the most rewarding characters in FFXIV, God of War, or any JRPG are terrible until they aren't. The Astrologer dies to the Tree Sentinel three times in a row. Worth it, long term. Not worth it, if your actual goal is a chill first playthrough.

The 20-80 framework forces you to separate those questions. Grade the floor separately from the ceiling. Commit to which one matters more for your current run. Don't mix them up mid-scout.

Grading Individual Tools, Not Overall Power

This is where most tier lists fall apart.

Because tier lists are one-number summaries. S, A, B, C. One number collapses everything. And that's exactly where information dies.

A prospect graded 55/55 hit, 40/70 power, 50/50 speed, 30/55 field is a completely different player from one graded 45/55 hit, 55/55 power, 35/35 speed, 55/55 field. Even if both sum to roughly the same overall score. The first is a future table-setter with late power upside. The second is a corner bat right now. Deploying them identically is a roster mistake.

RPG parties work the same way. A healer with a 70-grade burst heal but a 30-grade sustained throughput is a boss-fight specialist, not a dungeon farmer. A tank with perfect 50-grade everything is your reliable workhorse who won't carry but won't collapse either. A damage dealer with a 30/70 scaling curve is someone you roster for endgame content, not early progression.

The question isn't "is this character an S tier?" It's: which specific tools are they grading, at what level, and what does my current party need?

umgamer.com's forum has a running thread on which RPG has the best villain. And the debate always comes down to tool-level analysis without anyone calling it that. Kefka's erratic unpredictability versus Sephiroth's cold precision versus Ganondorf's brute mythological weight. Those aren't overall power debates. Those are debates about specific tools. The scouting language makes the argument cleaner.

The Projection Problem: Why Present Grades Mislead You

Scouts who only watch a prospect's current performance get burned. Always.

BA's evaluators spend enormous effort projecting physical development. How a 17-year-old's frame fills out, how his bat speed improves with professional coaching, whether his breaking ball sharpens with repetition. A scout who sees a skinny shortstop hitting .240 in rookie ball and grades him as a 40 overall is ignoring projection entirely. That shortstop might be Corey Seager in four years.

RPG players do this constantly. They bench a character after their first few levels because the early numbers look weak. They don't account for what happens at level 60, or after a specific ability unlocks, or once a certain gear threshold is crossed. They're grading present performance on a character whose design is built around future payoff.

Final Fantasy is full of this. The FFX 25th anniversary retrospectives hitting this month have sparked fresh debate about Yuna versus Lulu in the early game. And the honest answer is that Yuna's early grades are soft, but her projection once she inherits Bahamut and the top-tier summons makes her a completely different asset. Grading her at the Kilika temple is like grading a pitcher on his spring training velocity. Incomplete data.

According to a 2024 MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference paper on projection modeling in baseball scouting, even trained evaluators systematically overweight present performance versus projection when under time pressure. RPG players are always under some form of time pressure. New content drops, limited party slots, resource constraints. That makes the bias worse. Consciously grading present and future separately is the corrective.

Risk Grades: The Variable Every Tier List Ignores

BA's Top 100 doesn't just grade tools. It grades risk.

A prospect with a 60 future value grade but high risk is ranked below a prospect with a 55 future value grade but low risk. Because risk is real, and it adjusts the expected value of the pick. Injuries, plate discipline concerns, mechanical flaws that coaching might or might not fix. All of it factors in.

RPG character evaluation skips this almost entirely. But it shouldn't.

Risk in RPG characters looks like: RNG-dependent ability activation rates, builds that require specific gear that's hard to farm, party compositions that only work if you've mastered a specific mechanic, characters whose power is conditional on something breaking perfectly. A Elden Ring bleed build is high-ceiling, moderate risk. It falls apart against bleed-immune bosses and requires investment in specific infusions most players don't optimize correctly. A pure Strength build is lower ceiling, lower risk. The scouting grade would show that clearly.

When the Elden Ring endings guide walks through the Age of Stars ending, it's implicitly describing a high-risk, high-ceiling playthrough. Ranni's questline is long, missable at multiple points, and requires specific NPC sequencing. The payoff is worth it. But the risk grade is real and it deserves to be named.

How to Actually Use This Framework

Practical version, fast.

Before you commit to a character or build, grade six things separately:

• Hit (reliability): Does this character do their core job consistently, not just at peak?

• Power (burst ceiling): What's the best this build can do in ideal conditions?

• Speed (execution demand): How mechanically difficult is this to pilot well?

• Arm (utility range): How many different situations can this character contribute in?

• Field (survivability): How well does this character handle pressure, damage, or sustained fights?

• Risk: What breaks this build? How likely is that to happen in your actual run?

Then project each one forward to your expected endgame state. Not where they are now. Where they land after your investment.

Ba scouts get weeks of live looks, video review, and coaching staff interviews to make these calls. You get a wiki page and a community tier list that was written three patches ago. That's why building your own grading habit matters. The framework isn't complicated. The discipline to apply it is.

FAQ

What is the 20-80 scouting scale and where does it come from?

Originally developed in professional baseball, the 20-80 scale grades individual player tools from well below average (20) to elite (80), with 50 representing major-league average. Scouts grade each tool separately and project both present and future grades, giving a far more detailed picture than any single overall rating.

How does ceiling vs. Floor apply to RPG character selection?

Ceiling is how good a character gets at their absolute peak with full investment. Floor is how useful they are before that investment pays off. High-ceiling, low-floor characters reward patience and planning; high-floor characters are reliable from the start but rarely become the best option in the endgame. Knowing which profile you need changes the pick entirely.

Why do most RPG tier lists get character evaluation wrong?

Because they collapse everything into one grade. A single letter ranking loses all the tool-level information that makes a character actually useful or not for a specific context. Two characters with the same tier ranking can have completely different strengths, weaknesses, and optimal use cases. A fact that scouting-style multi-tool grading captures and tier lists don't.

Should I always pick the highest-ceiling character in an RPG?

No. Ceiling picks carry risk. If your goal is a low-stress playthrough, or you're farming content you've already cleared, a reliable floor pick is often the smarter choice. Scouts don't always take the highest-ceiling prospect either. Roster needs, timeline, and risk tolerance all factor into the decision.

Does this framework apply to live service games like FFXIV?

Yes, maybe more than anywhere else. In live service games, a character's tools and ceiling change with every patch. FFXIV's Patch 7.55, landing July 28, is already shifting Phantom Job valuations. Grading present versus projected future becomes especially important when the meta is actively moving under your feet.

The instinct to evaluate characters carefully is already there in every RPG player who's spent forty minutes on a wiki before committing to a class. Baseball America's framework just gives that instinct a sharper set of tools. Grade the individual skills, not the overall power. Separate present from projection. Name the risk. And pick for what your party actually needs right now, not for what looks impressive on a tier list.

Gambling involves risk. Please play responsibly and only wager what you can afford to lose. If you feel gambling is becoming a problem, visit BeGambleAware.org or call 1-800-GAMBLER.

By Marco V. | Gaming analyst and RPG enthusiast, 6 years covering character meta and build theory. Tested July 2026.