Suggestion about coaches, managers and scouts

[Octavian7]

I like most things about the gameplay and interface. But some moments make me feel frustrated and powerless. And like in real life its perfectly normal, but i would like to have an opportunity to conpensate that frustration with some actions.

1)Pitching coach. Give to Pitching coach ability to focus on one or two players per season to teach them his "special thing". If he is groundballer, let it be sinker or splitter or two-seam fastball (yes, add two seamer). Or if he finesse let him try to teach some flame thrower how to control better. But obviously its not 100% chance to teach that player. It will depend on skill level of the coach and work ethic and Intelligence of the player.
For example Dan Warthen slider. Mets pitchers throw slider around 90 mph and get alot of whiffs.

2)Trainer

Give him option to do diagnosis of pitchers and batters body mechanics. Some injuries are accidental but some are just based on wrong arm angles or other ways to compensate low mph. Some guys don't use their legs properly to translate power and momentum(pitchers and batters). Some guys get hip injury by focusing only on legs. Basically some report like : "this guy throwing weird he might be Tommy John candidate trade him or let me try to teach him throw less weird "

For pitchers my suggestion is to make two New ratings: upper body mechanics and lower body mechanics like defensive ratings, without potential just actual numbers from 1 to 200.Wich will determine how hard they throw for their weight and hight and how high or low is injury possibility. If pitcher have poor lower body mechanics, but still throws hard he's doing it by overcompensating with his upper body (strong hands and trunk rotation) but he is becoming much more injury prone.



3) Make scouting interesting. Like in FHM more than one scout in your scouting department, where each scout responsible for some region. And results depend on scouting budget and scouts ability.
Also I would like scouting discovery players not to be random events, but something interactive, using "scout tasks". GM would have the ability to send scouts to regional tournaments, so it will be multiple choice of players with some dilemmas, for example good stats, and talent potential, but low desire to win and low work ethic, or good work ethic and mediocre stats and some talent potential. Why would scouting discovery would be all around bad player at least they must have some upsisde at the begining when they discovered

4) Give GM/manager ability to affect morale of the team. Let me have some impact on confidence and desire to win of my players. Joe Maddon uses some slogans, other people negotiate. Let me negotiate roles with players. If somebody wants to be closer or in the top of the lineup, but i need him to do setup or be in the middle of lineup let me talk to him and explain why that important, and how he will benefit from that.
But limit that ability to results/score of my last season. So manager can't hypnotize all teal, but can negotiate with key players.

[zappa1]

In manager only mode, I would like to be able to talk to my GM. Send HIM an e-mail. Something like, Yo, Joe, I could really use another lefty in the pen, man. Or, I really could use a big name starter and I don't mean Wehrmeister. hahaha

[Octavian7]

And Joe would reply: "If you go we go! brian duensing to your service and some minor leaguers, we fine"

[Leo_The_Lip]

On your point 3 concerning multiple scouts, OOTP had that many versions ago. Doing away with it was a major upgrade to a tedious process.

[Octavian7]

I agree, not the brightest idea. Too many scouts, too many coocks. But if scout would have option to choose between two players(scouting discovery), at least with mediocre potential that's more satisfying. Why would MLB organization pay some scout to discover players, who by his own estimation cannot throw the ball, or run?

[slugger922cubs]

Originally Posted by Leo_The_Lip

On your point 3 concerning multiple scouts, OOTP had that many versions ago. Doing away with it was a major upgrade to a tedious process.

Theres a balance here between having an extensive, tedious process and something simple and intuitive. Right now I have a huge issue with the scouting system. Other than tools vs. ability and the varying skill levels of the scout there is not much I feel like I can do to change the outcome of my scouting other than just throw money towards it. That to me is a big problem. Changing things other than the scout himself should yield different results. Maybe individual tasks is too granular But there are other things that could be done. For example, Id also really appreciate the ability to query multiple scouts for different opinions on a player. Maybe Scout A thinks Player X is a good defensive player with an average bat but Scout B things hes a great defensive player with a bad bat. Then a manager needs to figure out the discrepancy.

[slugger922cubs]

Maybe a solution is to have different settings based on how different people like to play the game.
1) Full scouting system: Multiples scouts with tasks and regions
2) Partial scouting system: Just one head scout or a small team of scouts to query, no tasks
3) No scouting system. OSA scouting only

[Octavian7]

Right now it feels like coaches, managers are not necessary for game process. They just like modifiers to player development. Numbers that affect numbers. Which is fine all games work like that , but for perception would be better if player (me) makes decisions and feels involved in process. And managers coaches and scouts can be used to create that perception.

[Leo_The_Lip]

"throw money towards it" = hiring more scouts.

I view the scouting report as an Executive Summary of all my scouts' judgement.

[BBGiovanni]

Originally Posted by Octavian7

Why would MLB organization pay some scout to discover players, who by his own estimation cannot throw the ball, or run?

"Good news! Your scout in Slovenia has discovered relief pitcher Drago Gladimir. He's uttterly hopeless now, and projects to be totally worthless in the majors! He has been signed to a minor league contract and assigned to your international complex."

[Leo_The_Lip]

Originally Posted by BBGiovanni

"Good news! Your scout in Slovenia has discovered relief pitcher Drago Gladimir. He's uttterly hopeless now, and projects to be totally worthless in the majors! He has been signed to a minor league contract and assigned to your international complex."

This only happens if YOU choose to have Slovenia in your game world.

[Octavian7]

My scout travels mostly to Dominican Republic, but I get the impression that he's so scared or lazy to go outside of hotel room his scouting process might be screaming out of his window at boys on the street:"Hey boy! Baseball? No? What about your friend? Throw some stones at that bird! Good enough, let's sign some contracts."

[Mr. Marlin]

Originally Posted by Octavian7

My scout travels mostly to Dominican Republic, but I get the impression that he's so scared or lazy to go outside of hotel room his scouting process might be screaming out of his window at boys on the street:"Hey boy! Baseball? No? What about your friend? Throw some stones at that bird! Good enough, let's sign some contracts."

Ah, you're managing the Marlins I see.

[slugger922cubs]

Originally Posted by BBGiovanni

"Good news! Your scout in Slovenia has discovered relief pitcher Drago Gladimir. He's uttterly hopeless now, and projects to be totally worthless in the majors! He has been signed to a minor league contract and assigned to your international complex."

I believe a way to solve this is instead of giving you one guy at a time and randomly signing them to the complex GMs should get a list once a month of 15-20 guys your scouts discovered. 90% of these guys are likely terrible but then you get a choice of who to bring in to the organization. Don't like getting that much detail include an option to turn it over to the assistant and it operates much like it does now.

[Octavian7]

That would be perfect

[One Post Wonder]

All this is nice, but without using the editor, you can't even tell if your pitching and batting coaches are crap or not right now. Hopefully they're addressing that.

Maybe getting feedback from players, or having a list of 'proteges', players that said coach has influenced, and when they influenced them, that you can look at and see how effective they are. How did their stats change since the coach came in and changed them up?

Managers... I play as GM only and the right manager makes a huge difference. You can tell how good they are, and what style of play they'll bring. Managers are handled very well IMO. I spend a lot of time picking out the right ones.

I don't agree with the pitching mechanics idea, but I do agree big time that pitching needs fixing, or adjusting. The stuff/control/movement abilities were set up before we had pitch types and pitch quality. So much more could be done.

I'd:

1. Get rid of 'stuff'. It's just a composite of your different pitch types and velocity, and we already have that info.
2. Same with 'movement'. A '10' fastball, you'd assume would have great movement because velocity is already listed as another stat.
3. Add 'delivery'. OOTP is at the level of detail now where we can and should include this. An unorthodox delivery of some type makes pitches look more effective than they really are. Submariners have a higher platoon split. Other types of deliveries are easier to run on (think those huge wind-ups they had before 1970), or deliver more power or are more likely to cause injury.

I'm not sure about changing scouting... it sounds good in theory, but it sounds like something that a player can min/max and getting a bunch of quality players outside of the normal draft system would make the game too easy. It can also involve too much micromanagement if adding scouts is still on the table... I'm already forgetting to resign coaches and that sort of thing. Adding 15 scouts might be a drag. Personally I like it as is.

[Octavian7]

For starters would be good tracking BAA of individual pitch types. For example if we can see batting average against Andrew Miller's slider we can decide how good it is based on real number, not just head scout evaluation/osa rating.

[Octavian7]

And about scouting: in league settings default number is 12 scouting discoveries per year, per team. One or two of them are good, with decent potential. I don't need more good or great players out of 12.
12 new Mookie Betts's per season would be stupid. I'd like if 5 of remaining 10 players had some upside to them: defensive skills or something. Or ability to restrict scout from signing 0,5 overall/0,5 potential players.

[Octavian7]

Mechanics and delivery are affecting real life results in game and injury-wise, but these are complex things to code. Fangraphs don't track delivery or mechanics.
In MLB the show they have confidence rating for pitchers. It would be great in ootp. But how to utilize it's another question.

[Anyone]

Originally Posted by One Post Wonder

All this is nice, but without using the editor, you can't even tell if your pitching and batting coaches are crap or not right now. Hopefully they're addressing that.

Agreed here. I "cheat" and check them in the editor. I shouldn't have to. Without "cheating" I should be able to get a decent idea, with certainly some random noise distorting it.

If someone hasn't done the job before, then maybe it's almost all random noise (but he comes very cheap because of it). But if he's even done it for a couple of years, you should have a decent, though far from perfect, idea. Then I wouldn't "cheat," and I'd actually know less than I know now. But given the choice between the cheating and knowing too much and not cheating and knowing zilch, I'll cheat.

I don't agree with the pitching mechanics idea, but I do agree big time that pitching needs fixing, or adjusting. The stuff/control/movement abilities were set up before we had pitch types and pitch quality.

Those are still the three basic qualities, even more since fielders were shown to have much more impact on BABIP than pitchers have (though I wonder if the game allows pitchers any impact on BABIP now; they should have some, just not that much).

But those three qualities are: Power = Getting K's; Movement = Avoiding HR's; Control = Avoiding Walks. Because for the most part (this might be close to 100% in OOTP; it probably really is 70-80% in real life) all one can do to prevent non-HR hits is to get K's, "Getting K's" above could be read as "avoiding hits."

[LIST=1][*]Get rid of 'stuff'. It's just a composite of your different pitch types and velocity, and we already have that info.[*]Same with 'movement'. A '10' fastball, you'd assume would have great movement because velocity is already listed as another stat.

Not so much. Try the editor and you'll see that if you add to a fastball's non-velocity quality it's Stuff that will rise rather than Movement. And velocity rising will cause the fastball's rating to rise without its non-velocity rating rising.

Also, Stuff evaluates the combo of pitches as a group. That's a short cut, without which to evaluate the overall likelihood of a pitcher to get K's we'd have to figure out how the computer makes different combos of pitches work. That would be possible, but it would make the learning curve a lot steeper.