Feature Request: Pitching Coaches should be ex-Pitchers

[uruguru]

This is how it is in real life, and so pitching coaches had certain pitches they threw as a professional. This should give them an advantage when developing pitchers. They can only teach "new" pitches that they knew as a player, and perhaps pitchers with those pitches develop more reliably.

This means suddenly there's a potentially significant impact on which pitching coach you hire.

This would a great enhancement to coaching.

[Sweed]

I wouldn't object and probably wouldn't notice if they made all pitching coaches former pitchers. But I'd rather they leave a very small possibility that catchers could also be a PC. Anyone from another position? Yeah, doesn't look quite right.

In regard to teaching pitches. What do you mean by "pitches they knew"? If by that you mean threw, then I don't think that would be right. In OOTP we're only going to know about pitches they threw, that could be limiting in an unrealistic way IMHO. The guys that go into coaching may have thrown or tried a lot of pitches we never knew about, just never used them in a game, or did for a very short time as a test. I don't think that means they didn't understand the mechanics, it just means it didn't work for them and their arm. In OOTP we'd never know who these guys were or what pitches they "know" but never used in competition. Even for pitches they never knew, I think ex-professional pitchers (of course not all) are expert enough to learn the mechanics of a new pitch and relay that to their players. Look at Roger Craig, he learned the split-finger fastball from Bruce Sutter long after his playing days were over.

Then there are P's that seek out former P's, former coaches they played for, or gurus that are known for teaching pitches to add to their game, or maybe resurrect their career.

If you were to say "better chance of teaching" rather than "can only teach" I'd probably not object at all.

My 2 cents.

edit to add:

This means suddenly there's a potentially significant impact on which pitching coach you hire.

I think this was the goal of having coaches that specialized in power, finesse, groundball, or neutral. Is it as powerful as it should be? IDK. Is a power coach already more likely to teach a fastball and a groundball coach sinkers? Again IDK, but I'd like to think under the hood it works that way. All the manual says is..

Hitting and Pitching Coaches
Coaches are mainly guided by their focus: Hitting coaches may be focused on power, contact, patience, or neutral; pitching coaches focuses are power, finesse, groundball, or neutral. They will emphasize development and improvements based on their tendency, power hitting coaches will tend to help all players' power ratings increase, for example.

The focus also defines players who the coach will work best with - a power hitter will tend to get a better overall improvement from a power focused hitting coach. The Relationships tab indicates which players are classified as belonging to the same style as the coach.

Should coaches be more powerful in getting results? IDK. Like anything I'm sure it could be improved.

[zappa1]

I could never understand why the game asks the bench coach for pitching staff and bullpen. Doesn't the pitching coach have a say?

[ChrisG]

Isn't this how it typically goes? I didn't know that anyone else generated into pitching coaches. As Sweed said though there is the possibility that former catchers become PCs.

That said, I see a lot of ex-pitchers wind up as base coaches. Not sure how you'd code that out though, seeing as ex-pitchers can definitely, albeit not commonly, become managers and bench coaches.

[Sweed]

Originally Posted by ChrisG

Isn't this how it typically goes? I didn't know that anyone else generated into pitching coaches. As Sweed said though there is the possibility that former catchers become PCs.

That said, I see a lot of ex-pitchers wind up as base coaches. Not sure how you'd code that out though, seeing as ex-pitchers can definitely, albeit not commonly, become managers and bench coaches.

Yeah, my first thought was the game already pretty much limited it to old pitchers. But the topic was started and knowing uruguru is serious about his game I had to believe that wasn't the case.

I went through 5 teams in my game on the personnel screen and clicked on pitching coaches at all levels. Out of the 25 coaches I looked at 2 were not previously pitchers, one played 1b the other 2b. I stopped here as it answered the question on if this happened. FWIW both of the position players were the pitching coach of a minor league club.

Dave Duncan of course comes instantly to mind. After that a google on the subject returns very little. From that quick search I think I'd be fine if former C's had a very small chance. IDK, perhaps as low as .5 to 1%?

[ChrisG]

Originally Posted by Sweed

Yeah, my first thought was the game already pretty much limited it to old pitchers. But the topic was started and knowing uruguru is serious about his game I had to believe that wasn't the case.

I went through 5 teams in my game on the personnel screen and clicked on pitching coaches at all levels. Out of the 25 coaches I looked at 2 were not previously pitchers, one played 1b the other 2b. I stopped here as it answered the question on if this happened. FWIW both of the position players were the pitching coach of a minor league club.

Dave Duncan of course comes instantly to mind. After that a google on the subject returns very little. From that quick search I think I'd be fine if former C's had a very small chance. IDK, perhaps as low as .5 to 1%?

Odd that it's clearly programmed to heavily limit it to ex-pitchers but not totally. It must only be able to differentiate between pitchers and position players and not individual positions?


Interestingly, Sal Fasano is now an assistant pitching coach with the Angels.

[Sweed]

Originally Posted by ChrisG

Odd that it's clearly programmed to heavily limit it to ex-pitchers but not totally. It must only be able to differentiate between pitchers and position players and not individual positions?


Interestingly, Sal Fasano is now an assistant pitching coach with the Angels.

I had to google Fasano, . He didn't come up in my "catchers that became pitching coaches" google search. So yeah, totally comfortable limiting it to P and C with what I know right now. Maybe they can't/won't do a deep dive to improve this area of the game, but I would think going to P and C only wouldn't be a hard add. Of course with the caveat "I'm not a coder".

One thing I did when the position players came up was to look at their skills making sure they hadn't been potential two way players. Neither, in my very small sample size, had any pitching skills at all. 20/80 guys with IIRC one pitching skill in the thirties and the rest firmly rooted at 20.

[uruguru]

Originally Posted by Sweed

Yeah, my first thought was the game already pretty much limited it to old pitchers. But the topic was started and knowing uruguru is serious about his game I had to believe that wasn't the case.

Are you serious? I just started a new game with 26 and the first 5 pitching coaches I looked at were all fictional players. Even checked bbref to be sure they weren't milb pitchers. I'll look into this more to see if I'm doing something wrong.

Anyway, my main point was that not only should they be pitchers, but they should be able to leverage their skills as pitchers when it comes to training pitchers.

For example, a pitching coach who threw a splitter (Roger Craig) should be able to teach that pitch to new players (e.g. Mike Scott). He shouldn't be able to teach pitchers knuckleballs.

That doesn't mean that pitchers can't learn knuckleballs or splitters on their own, but that they are more likely to succeed if the pitching coach knows the pitch.

That would totally transform the way we look at pitching coaches. You got a high-stamina pitcher with only two good pitches? Instead of waiting for his crappy 12/600 changeup to develop, having your pitching coach Fernando Valenzuela try to teach him a screwball over the winter. He might come around faster.

[Cod]

What is classified as a former pitcher for this feature: MLB/MiLB? College?

[Sweed]

Originally Posted by uruguru

Are you serious? I just started a new game with 26 and the first 5 pitching coaches I looked at were all fictional players. Even checked bbref to be sure they weren't milb pitchers. I'll look into this more to see if I'm doing something wrong.

Anyway, my main point was that not only should they be pitchers, but they should be able to leverage their skills as pitchers when it comes to training pitchers.

For example, a pitching coach who threw a splitter (Roger Craig) should be able to teach that pitch to new players (e.g. Mike Scott). He shouldn't be able to teach pitchers knuckleballs.

That doesn't mean that pitchers can't learn knuckleballs or splitters on their own, but that they are more likely to succeed if the pitching coach knows the pitch.

That would totally transform the way we look at pitching coaches. You got a high-stamina pitcher with only two good pitches? Instead of waiting for his crappy 12/600 changeup to develop, having your pitching coach Fernando Valenzuela try to teach him a screwball over the winter. He might come around faster.

Yes, serious enough to read your post and have that be the reason I looked at several teams in my game to see the playing history of their pitching coaches. My game was started in v4 (2002) and imported to each following version. Meaning I have a large pool of former OOTP created players that could and did become pitching coaches. I had never looked at a possible hire that wasn't previously a pitcher leading me to believe the game was only making P's into PC's. Your post at least had me curious enough to actually look at my game, and I posted above what I found.

In the back of my mind I did wonder about a default v26 game, but without trying a test league I had nothing like that to look at. In my mind I would have guessed all pitching coaches coming from retired players would be former pitchers.

I get what you are saying but in the OP nothing was said about "learning on their own". My concern with your first post was this was going to be a hard limit based on your PC and his pitches thrown history, the phrase you used was, "as a player". Your clarification that P's can learn "on their own" takes away some of the problem.

That only leaves the PC that learns a pitch after his playing day, at least I think those coaches exist? The sweeper has become one of the new shiny toys that pitchers are using. I'm guessing there are pitching coaches going somewhere to learn it so they can teach it? How is that covered in your suggestion for OOTP, or is it covered at all? Is it a big enough thing that it should be accounted for? IKD. Maybe pitchers "learning on their own" covers this gap and maybe it doesn't? Or maybe coaches have the ability to learn a pitch "on their own" too?


I do think it's a good idea. I was concerned about teaching only pitches they used as a player being too limiting. That has for the most part been answered. It would be great if Matt took it, fleshed it out, and built a model that worked in the game.