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Team Personnel
After the trade deadline passed, Luhnow turned his attention internally to his personnel. Mike Elias replaced Heck as the scouting director on August 11. Brad Mills was fired as manager one week later, along with the hitting coach.
I accomplished the scouting change in the game by hiring a fictional scout. I changed his name using the editor but I left the ratings alone, because I had hired someone that matched what I thought the Luhnow/Elias team might have. The ratings are Majors and Minors = Good, International = Excellent, and Amateurs = Outstanding. The focus is “Favor Ability”. Immediately after hiring Elias, I ran the “OSA and human re-scout” function to see what the “ability” scout had to say vs. the “highly favor tools” scout. There were some changes in star ratings, and Elias seems to favor players with a high floor instead of a high ceiling. I like this viewpoint better for my philosophy in this game. I want to accumulate a lot of good MLB prospects and then let the cream rise to the top.
Since it makes no difference to the scenario, I decided not to fire Brad Mills in the game until the end of the season. I will have a lot of positions to fill in the organization during the off-season, so this will be a major focus for me in September and October. I don’t find a lot of candidates in the pool right now. The new Astros manager will be a surprise. I will have to craft this person in the game to match the qualities that Luhnow wants, but I don’t think it will be a stretch at all. I haven’t decided about the bench coach yet, but I may replace Pettini with a highly-rated fielding coach. The hitting coach, Mike Barnett, will definitely be replaced but pitching coach Doug Brocail will be retained somewhere.
I will post the August summary next, and then I will go into my analysis of the Astros roster and farm system. It may not seem like it, but the dynasty really starts there. The information posted so far is just the background for the story.
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