Spring Training

[jrm1976]

What have you found to be effective ways of doing springtraining to get the best development of your players?
Examples: With hitters you have Contact/Power/Strikezone/Defense, Pitchers have Stuff/Velocity/Control/Stamina. With the 20 points what have you found to be the easiest one of these ratings to sacrifice to get development in others. Also which ratings develop the quickest typically? For hitters, i've seen that power and eye tend to develop slowest. Control for pitchers. What level do you need to assign to maintain the ratings, what to increase them and what levels cause loss/the best gains in your experiences?
Just trying to get some clarification on this, as almost everyone I know simply lets the computer run spring training.
Jerry

[dbacks]

I'd suggest that you let the computer run spring training. ST is one of the weaker parts of the game, and needs to be reworked quite a bit. I personally only use it to change a pitcher's role, or to try and make a player learn a new position. ST won't help with a player's development much at all, regardless of how many points you spend to improve a certain area, so I just basically leave it alone.

[tomolak]

Originally Posted by jrm1976

Also which ratings develop the quickest typically? For hitters, i've seen that power and eye tend to develop slowest. Control for pitchers.

One thing I'm curious about the spring training is which one (among stuff/velocity/control/stamina) can improve a pitcher's movement. My pitchers gave up too many homeruns and I want to address that problem a little more in the spring training but don't know how.

As for developing the skills, my experience is a little different. For hitters, the batting eye is one of the easiest area for me to develop. Even a 30-year-old veteran can have a significant improvement as long as his talent level allows it. I don't know it's because of the minor league managers (I stay with the same minor league managers for years) or it's an organization issue (my team always finishes in the top 3 of walks per year). On the other hand, power is definitely the hardest for me to develop. The hardest to the easiest skills for me to develop are probably like this: power > gap power > contact > eye > avoid K. But it's just how I "feel", so I might be wrong. For pitchers, I don't feel much difference among stuff/control/movement areas. That says, I don't feel it particularly hard to develop the control skill for pitchers, either. However, it does seem that the control skill require a "click". I have many pitchers stuck with a control skill of 1 (in 1-100 scale) and never developed. But once it gets away from 1, it seems the skill grows normally.

I also think it's wasting time if one pays too much attention to the spring training. It's easier to gain or lose much more skill points during the season than in the spring training. So I usually let the coaches make suggestions and then manually change some working projects that I've had in mind. Besides learning new positions, I sometimes use the spring training to enhance certain pitchers' stamina and hitter's defense because they happen less frequently to me during the season.

[Dan Theman]

What I've personally found is that if you change from the even spread during spring training, it's much easier to lose substantial skills than it is to gain. Of course, this is only in my experience - your mileage may vary

[Cooker]

I never use my coaches' suggestions in spring training anymore. I always just leave every category at "5" for every player. I agree with others who've found it's far easier to lose talent and ratings than to gain them in ST.

One exception. If I have position players who have really lousy power talents (and ratings), I sometimes reduce their ST power points from 5 to zero and then add the extra points into contact. If I have a shortstop with no power I allocate all his power points to improving his contact.

It's hard to tell if it helps because it's never automatic either way. But it makes me feel better. Subject to that one exception I leave everything at "5" for every player in ST.

[DiMaggio5CF]

Originally Posted by Cooker

I never use my coaches' suggestions in spring training anymore. I always just leave every category at "5" for every player. I agree with others who've found it's far easier to lose talent and ratings than to gain them in ST.

One exception. If I have position players who have really lousy power talents (and ratings), I sometimes reduce their ST power points from 5 to zero and then add the extra points into contact. If I have a shortstop with no power I allocate all his power points to improving his contact.

It's hard to tell if it helps because it's never automatic either way. But it makes me feel better. Subject to that one exception I leave everything at "5" for every player in ST.

I COMPLETELY agree with this. This is EXACTLY the way that I run ST.

Keep everyone at 5 so that way you don't lose anything. I've also found that it's much easier to lose than to gain.

But if I have a middle infielder with a 1 power rating and poor power talent, I'll take away his power and allocate it to contact -- or sometimes a little to defense too, if his role is going to be as a late-inning defensive replacement.

The only reason that I do that is because it's a low-risk gamble. Even if adding the points to contact does nothing (and I'm almost convinced that this is the case), who cares if he loses power? His role is going to be as a contact hitter or defensive replacement, so put all the eggs in that basket.

Even if does develop power, it's not going to be enough to make an impact.

The only time that I do something other than that is if I have a low-contact power-hitting veteran stuck in the minor leagues. Then I'll drain all of his contact hitting and defense skills and put it all into power. My hope is that maybe he'll become a big HR hitter who I can use off the bench if I'm down two or three runs in a game. But for me to use this, becoming a huge power hitter has to be that player's only way of making it to the big leagues.

But other than that, I keep everything at five. Even if they don't develop at all, at least they won't go down. Basically, that way I know pretty much what I have going into ST and I won't have to make any big trades or anything after ST due to a large drop in skills.

[DonD]

For online leagues, do ST exports still need to be e-mailed to the commish and manually imported, or has this been automated in a manner similar to other team exports for V6?

- Don

[Joshv02]

Great sets of posts. I do the same. This is especailly effective for certain attributes:

velocity for nuckleballers
defense for 1b (in ver. 5)
defense for c ( not sure re: v. 6; C arm was never changed by ST anyway, I believe)
duration for certain relievers
power for just about any non-power hitter

But, I tweak just about anything anyway; just don't think it does much except appeal to my control freak nature.

Originally Posted by DiMaggio5CF

I COMPLETELY agree with this. This is EXACTLY the way that I run ST.

Keep everyone at 5 so that way you don't lose anything. I've also found that it's much easier to lose than to gain.

But if I have a middle infielder with a 1 power rating and poor power talent, I'll take away his power and allocate it to contact -- or sometimes a little to defense too, if his role is going to be as a late-inning defensive replacement.

The only reason that I do that is because it's a low-risk gamble. Even if adding the points to contact does nothing (and I'm almost convinced that this is the case), who cares if he loses power? His role is going to be as a contact hitter or defensive replacement, so put all the eggs in that basket.

Even if does develop power, it's not going to be enough to make an impact.

The only time that I do something other than that is if I have a low-contact power-hitting veteran stuck in the minor leagues. Then I'll drain all of his contact hitting and defense skills and put it all into power. My hope is that maybe he'll become a big HR hitter who I can use off the bench if I'm down two or three runs in a game. But for me to use this, becoming a huge power hitter has to be that player's only way of making it to the big leagues.

But other than that, I keep everything at five. Even if they don't develop at all, at least they won't go down. Basically, that way I know pretty much what I have going into ST and I won't have to make any big trades or anything after ST due to a large drop in skills.

[DonD]

*Bump*

Anyone have an answer to my question 2 posts above?

- Don