LONGish... ideas for better implimentation of coaching staff and scouts

[KaiFuller]

I put a lot of thought into this, so hope this spurs discussion and some condtructive criticism. I tried to combine what makes sense to me with what many players take issue with. Let it be known that I don't think I'm smarter than the developers or anything, this is merely what I would suggest if I were an employee of ootp developments.

While the really great feature of having a coaching staff has been around since version 3, it's been rarely used in on-line leagues for very good reasons. So I set down to think about how the current system doesn't really work, and to try and replace it with a system more like reality.

First I decided it would be best to replace the cold hard ratings with tendencies, characteristics, and reputation.

REPUTATION \ AKA HIDDEN ABILITIES
One of the complaints for online leagues was "it's hard enough to develop good players without having to deal with a bad staff." So Qualified staff will be readily available, and you will quickly find out if someone isn't working so you can replace them with someone who most likely will work. Coaches who clearly can't do a certain job right will be quickly gain the reputation that they are "unqualified" for that position, if things are going well they will be considered qualified, a few guys will become known as Better than average, great, legendary, and will be highly sought after, but generally speaking most will be merely qualified. GM's will likely choose which coaches they want based more on their Tendencies and Characteristics (or do you go with the high reputation guy despite having a different philosophy than yours??). It should be noted that a generated league would come with a ton of guys with a built in reputation already, with some younger promising types who you might try out at a lower level to see where they might excel. Again, as noted above you won't be stuck with a "BAD" staff like you can now, there will be freely available guys who will at least not hurt your organization.

TENDENCIES:
These are the Manager tendencies you have complete control over in the current game. These are all important for managers, as you probably want a guy who uses a system that matches your ball club. You will however still have some control over this, especially for individual players, but how much the manager listens will depend on his "flexibility" characteristic. Also if you change things around too much the manager may accuse you of medalling too much. I know some guys would rather have complete control over this stuff, so they can be manager \ GM if they want (obviously in addition to the manager mode we have now.) Allowing GM \ manager combos would be up to the league of course.

CHARACTERISTICS:
How flexible is the guy? Is he fiery or calm? Does he work well with youth, veterans or both? Does he work well with Pitchers, batters or both? Does he have a position that he really wants to fill? What kind of leadership skills does he have??

POSITIONS:
What would be key indicators for certain positions?

Manager:
- Tendencies that match your style of baseball and his willingness to be flexible would be important
- Working well with all sorts of players would be important
- A demeanor that matches your players needs
- Overall Leadership (Motivating groups) and Communication (communicating ideas and teaching individuals)
- Good coaching and player assessment skills while a bonus, can be masked by other staff.

Bench Coach:
- Might not have the intangibles to be a Manager yet, or you might not yet be sure of his abilities?
- Might be "anti-manager" who softens weak spots of the manager filling in where he is weak. A calm bench coach for a fiery manager might be a good choice.

Pitching Coach:
- Working well with pitchers, and at least qualified knowledge of pitching.
- Works well with young and old

Hitting Coach:
- Same as pitching coach

Minors coaching staff:
- Must work well with youngsters
- Judging player potential

Base coaches

How bout maybe even a head trainer??


"SCOUTING":
Player "ratings" will come from a variety of sources. You will have more than just the one big scout from which all your ratings are supplied. Firstly, players from your own organization can be judged by anyone on the entire staff. You assign who you want the most input from in the areas of pitching, fielding, baserunning, and hitting. You can further adjust this for who you want to provide you information on each minor league team, other teams prospects, and also who will be your fore-scout to get good numbers for teams you will soon play. As in real life you will lean on certain individuals more or less for certain information. You'll want to choose guys who not only have good judgment, but also spend adequate time with said players.

Additionally, staff will follow different "scouting philosophies" will they mostly focus on "tools"? Or perhaps statistical analysis? Different systems will have their strength and weaknesses. And perhaps a stat-head isn't the best guy for judging who to draft out of high school??

Possible Scouting related assignments:
You're the GM and the director of player development, so no "head scout" per se:

Prospects Scout: scours minor leagues and provides general knowledge on all other teams minor leaguers as well as your won if you wish, he can be sent to scout individual teams and players at your discretion.

Draft Scout: Scours the country to provide information on players available for the draft.

Foreign scouts: send them around the world looking for Ichiro.

Free Agent scout: search independent leagues for possible prospects.

Organizational scouts: These would be additional "coaches" who will provide information on players within the organization.

Fore-scout: Getting better numbers on players playing in the next series.

Finally, you can use the "fans and media" as a sort of scout to see how the public perceives a player. This would work well for what would be exported to the web-site.

Here's a demonstration staff member:

Joe Smith
Age 40
(not Set on any one position)
(Works well with older players)

Manager Tendencies:
Runners in Motion: Often
Play for sacrifice: Not often
Willing to stay with Pitcher: Very Often
"Play the Odds:" Seldom
Avoids good hitters: Seldom

Personality:
Demeanor: Fiery
Flexibility: Very Little
Leadership: Very High
(Click button for relationships with players)

Coaching:
Hitting Knowledge: Unproven
Pitching Knowledge: Unproven
Fielding Knowledge: adequate
Base running knowledge: Adequate
Communication: Above Average
Base coaching: Qualified

Assessing abilities:
Assessment style: "Tools"
Judging potential: Unproven
Judging Current skills: adequate

[TRO]

I love the Assessment Style idea.

[gmo]

Lots of good ideas. Stuff gets bandied about all the time here, but it is also nice to see the long, planned-out suggestions. So here's some replies...


Coach reputations/abilities

Playing solo, my biggest issue with coaches/scouts has been I can just pay top dollar and get LEGENDARY guys almost whenever I want. I'm trying to house rule myself to a coaches salary cap, but suggestions aren't about workarounds. First, I'd like less certainty in coach/scout skill, so something like what you described sounds good. Coaches (not to mention GMs & owners, but that's a-whole-nother discussion ) having trackable careers in a way similar to players would be great. There are impressions or guesses, similar to scouting reports on young players, about how coaches will do at certain jobs, and then more may be learned from their actual performances. But you never know how good guys are with absolute certainty. If nothing else maybe really good coaches can have bad years because they just don't mesh with a given club, perhaps like you described where there is an organizational mismatch.

I don't know much about the career arcs coaches take, but these seem to often not be as straightforward as players who basically play at a position at the highest level they can. A coach may be a minors coach, then minors manager, then ML pitching coach, then ML manager, or maybe some other order/combination. I defer to someone who knows more about these paths when it comes to saying how they should go.


Tendencies

I'm all for (assuming it works right ) whoever you want to program in, coaches, scouts, owners, GMs, umpires, grounds-crews, etc. having varying personalities, specialties, philosphies, outlooks, etc.


Scouting

Here's more of a departure... I don't think there should necessarily be a variety of scouts for a variety of jobs, but I'm not sure about this - there are some intriguing aspects to it. As far as how much and how accurately your scouts can tell you about players, it seems there should be some sort of hierarchy. Something like long-time vets (are well-known throughout the league), younger big-leaguers (known, but not as well since their history is shorter), fringe guys & long-time minor leaguers, lower minors guys (know very little, but perhaps more if your minors teams have played against them)... For drafting or signing youngsters from home or abroad you know some amount, perhaps plus more if you devoted more resources checking out certain regions, positions, players, etc. Similarly you can put more than normal of your resources (your scouting budget?) toward finding out more about youngsters in other systems or vets on other teams you might like to deal for. Don't ask me how to specifically implement something like this though.

[KaiFuller]

I think you're right about there being a few less scouting tasks as some could basically be done on a general level.

The few "Master scouts" you hire will obviously have their own staff that you won't see or have to deal with. You can budget them higher or lower and split thier tasks as you like.

So...

Scout A: $1 million - 37% High school, 37% College, 25% Indipendant leagues (US)

Scout B: $.5 Million - 75% Central America, 15% Oceania, 5% Korea, 5% Japan (you can broadly focus on a region or focus on countries)

Scout C: $.25 Million - 90% Special Assignments (scout specific players or organizations), 10% Fore-scouting

Players in your own organization should be judged more by coaches than scouts (as in real life) though you can get a head scouts second oppinion on a player of course

I hear stories all the time like: "Pittsburgh scouts have been at the Seattle Compound all this week, adding heat to the Jason Kendall Trade speculation. It would definitly add an interesting level to the game when you find out another GM is scouting through your organization, esp. with the rule 5 draft!!!

Honestly, i'm sure Markus allready has this stuff in mind, as I think he's a Championship Manager Fan?? But none the less, I thought it might help to add my own thoughts to the discussion.