Spring Training

[Erik]

I have been playing OOTP for a long while now (since OOTP 4) and I've completed many a seasons but never really thought to ask everyone's opinion on this issue.

during Spring Training there is a button that says something like "Ask the Coach" or something that will adjust the players Spring Training ratings as to however your coaches see fit. I usually push this button for both the hitters and pitchers, and then go through and adjust the ratings more so how I see fit. Sometimes they will change a players rating significantly.

What do you all suggest doing during Spring Training? Do you use this coaching evaluator to run your spring training or do you leave everyone at 5 for each column. Or do you just go through and rate them how you want?

Also, if one of my players is a good contact hitter, and I change his "contact" column to like a 2 or 3 and increase his power and defense numbers for example, will his contact suffer by a lot the next year? It always seems like the "ask the coach" button does this, but I always add a point or two back into the column so as not to take away the players contact ability completely. Thoughts?

[endgame]

The vast majority of the responses are generally comprised of "leave everything at 5's and don't Ask Coaches." Personally, I think if it's your style to micro-manage, then do so. Your approach might be one, especially if you value the quality of the coaches you've hired - although I don't know which actually come into play with the evaluation. Another might be to leave all of them at 5's and then look back at any concerns you've had over the course of the season or with new players you've recently acquired and make changes to those players specifically as you deem fit. It's often said, your mileage may vary. But more importantly, enjoy the ride.

[DiMaggio5CF]

Originally Posted by endgame

The vast majority of the responses are generally comprised of "leave everything at 5's and don't Ask Coaches."

That's the way I do it.

I sometimes change point allocations, but in exactly the opposite way of what the original post suggested.

If I have a good contact hitter who's a poor power hitter, I take all of his points away from power and give them to contact.

To me, if a guy doesn't hit for power, he doesn't hit for power. That's it. Who cares? What's the difference between one HR a year and five HRs a year? (I know . . . 4 homeruns a year . . . hardy har har)

So to me, I'd rather take the points away from power and give them to contact to turn him into a great contact hitter.

Basically a great contact hitter with no power is better than a good contact hitter with very little power.

Likewise, if a guy is a bad defender, I'll take the points away from D and give them to the hitting categories . . . if he's nothing special now, maybe I can make him a good DH.

The only other thing I'll try is if I have a guy who's a career minor leaguer or a has-been with no talent left, I'll set all categories to 0 and give literally all the points to one category; I figure my only shot to get him to the bigs is to do something drastic. And if it fails, who cares? He was never going to make it anyway.

EDIT:

The reason for this is because, I feel, that ignoring an area hurts more than paying attention to an area helps. So to me, if you take away from a strong category to focus on a weak category, you get an average ballplayer.

So like I said, I'll tinker with certain guys, but on the whole, I just leave them all at 5s so they come out the same as they went in. I never, ever ask the coaches, no matter how good the coaches are.

[Comedian2004]

I changed a RP guy to a starter during last spring training and in his only start, he did quite well, getting the win, allowing just 4 or 5 hits in 8 innings. I generally leave it alone, but one guy that was rated 90 at contact, but just hit .265, I put zero towards contact and put that 5 to defense. He is still a 90 contact and hit .313 that year. This year, he is once again at .265 early on. I guess he is just a slow starter.

[bp_]

In online leagues I generally don't mess too much with prospects until they are getting old and not developing. If I have minor league vets I definitely mess around with the allocations.

I've used Ask Coaches on everyone in my solo leagues since I bought the game and have no complaints with the results.

[battists]

I do know that if you lower one statistic to under 3 points, you can definitely see a significant drop. In other words, 0 does not mean "maintain your current level".

So, if you have a player with 60 contact rating, and you set his Contact to 2, you may well see his contact drop to 55. Sometimes, the drops can be quite severe if you set a value to 2 or less.

[james17]

I use the 'ask coaches' button to see what they would do then I adjust based on my own judgement. I'd say about half the time I'll overrule what the coaches suggest.

[ibdb]

Depends on the player (and how much time I'm willing to spend on Spring Training).

If a player is near or at his talent for one area, but lagging behind in another area, I'll shift points from the developed skill to the underdeveloped skill. It does seem to help them pick up those lagging areas, but it's awfully time consuming. Usually, I'll just do that on a couple of specific players that I've been watching closely. Everybody else gets a version of the coaches recommendation. OOTP makes it too difficult to easily identify and track this during the Spring Training period -- I'm hoping for improvements in the Spring.

[VoteQuimby]

I also put endurance for relief pitchers to 0 which gives me 5 points to put everywhere else. They are only going to pitch one inning or so anyways so why waste points on endurance.

[mgsports]

The new version wno't have this option! Will have the real Spring Training!