Manager Personalities

[Assos]

It happens!
Here is the last example of a guy never to have been paid to play pro ball

John Boles Managerial Record | Baseball-Reference.com

[Honorable_Pawn]

Originally Posted by The Wolf

Why would you have a crazy old guy managing the team in the first place? Are you a Dusty Baker fan?

I was actually thinking this guy:

[CobaltJays]

Originally Posted by SirMichaelJordan

With staff being revamp I wonder if players to coaches have been revamp as well. Players to coaches seem random and would often coach the opposite position that they actually played at. Pitchers usually become hitting coaches and position players become pitching coaches. I always thought this was bugged though.

I haven't really seen this, except where retired players who are designated as managers wind up becoming pitching coaches or hitting coaches. Sometimes an ex-pitcher will become a hitting coach if his Teach Hitting rating is decent. Ex-hitters also become pitching coaches in this manner.

That said, I've noticed some other weirdness:

• Manually turning a retired player into a coach always results in that retired player becoming a bench coach. Usually the retired player is assigned extremely low or non-existent coach ratings. I'd really like to see this addressed. A user-created coach should be assigned a role and attributes in the same way as a computer-created coach. I'd love to hire some of my ex-players as coaches, but I can't really do it without manually editing their coaching attributes.
• Scouts and team doctors are sometimes hired as coaches, despite their lack of coach ratings and other coaches being available. The AI also occasionally makes odd choices to fill the scouting director role, with one of my feeder league teams currently employing a team doctor as scouting director.
• AI teams never promote/demote coaches within their organization. Coaches only seem to switch teams when they're fired or their contracts aren't renewed. In real life, teams often move their minor league coaches around from year-to-year and often fill vacancies at the major league level with minor league coaches. I wonder if this may partially explain why the AI sometimes does not assign coaching roles properly (see second bullet).
• Part of the issue with respect to role assignment may be the fact that once a coach is hired as a feeder league coach, he will never become a professional league coach. The same is true with coaches that are hired by professional teams, as they will never be hired by feeder league teams. While this is realistic to a large extent, it may be impacting the AI's ability to hire suitable coaches. The game may need to create more coaches (particularly scouts) to compensate for this.
• Not enough ex-major leaguers seem to become coaches. While many real life coaches lack major league playing experience, I strongly suspect that ex-major leaguers are under-represented among OOTP coaches. When creating coaches, it would be nice if OOTP gave a preference to retired players who have some major league experience. Not only would it be more realistic, but seeing more recognizable names as coaches would be fun. My fictional league has been running so long that nearly every coach is a former player, but there are hardly any coaches that I remember from their playing days.
• I haven't checked to see if this was fixed in the last patch(es) for OOTP15, but coaches get two years of experience for every full season worked. They get a year of experience at the start of the preseason and the start of the offseason.

I'm looking forward to the changes to the coaching system that have been announced, but if Markus has the time, it would be great if he could take a look at a few of these issues.

Originally Posted by LloydLungs

Are basically ALL coaches former players? Because that is how it should work. In real life, there is basically no such thing as coaches/managers that never played pro baseball. A few might have only played in the minors but they all played.

Yes, but with a few exceptions. Team doctors aren't ex-players, and I believe that some scouts aren't, either (not sure). Also, when you first create a fictional league, none of your coaches will be ex-players (for obvious reasons), and expansion teams will not be staffed by ex-players. If your game has been running long enough, every coach will have a link to his profile as a player.

[Honorable_Pawn]

Originally Posted by CobaltJays

I haven't really seen this, except where retired players who are designated as managers wind up becoming pitching coaches or hitting coaches. Sometimes an ex-pitcher will become a hitting coach if his Teach Hitting rating is decent. Ex-hitters also become pitching coaches in this manner.


That said, I've noticed some other weirdness:

• Manually turning a retired player into a coach always results in that retired player becoming a bench coach. Usually the retired player is assigned extremely low or non-existent coach ratings. I'd really like to see this addressed. A user-created coach should be assigned a role and attributes in the same way as a computer-created coach. I'd love to hire some of my ex-players as coaches, but I can't really do it without manually editing their coaching attributes.
• Scouts and team doctors are sometimes hired as coaches, despite their lack of coach ratings and other coaches being available. The AI also occasionally makes odd choices to fill the scouting director role, with one of my feeder league teams currently employing a team doctor as scouting director.
• AI teams never promote/demote coaches within their organization. Coaches only seem to switch teams when they're fired or their contracts aren't renewed. In real life, teams often move their minor league coaches around from year-to-year and often fill vacancies at the major league level with minor league coaches. I wonder if this may partially explain why the AI sometimes does not assign coaching roles properly (see first bullet).
• Part of the issue with respect to role assignment may be the fact that once a coach is hired as a feeder league coach, he will never become a professional league coach. The same is true with coaches that are hired by professional teams, as they will never be hired by feeder league teams. While this is realistic to a large extent, it may be impacting the AI's ability to hire suitable coaches. The game may need to create more coaches (particularly scouts) to compensate for this.
• Not enough ex-major leaguers seem to become coaches. While many real life coaches lack major league playing experience, I strongly suspect that ex-major leaguers are under-represented among OOTP coaches. When creating coaches, it would be nice if OOTP gave a preference to retired players who have some major league experience. Not only would it be more realistic, but seeing more recognizable names as coaches would be fun. My fictional league has been running so long that nearly every coach is a former player, but there are hardly any coaches that I remember from their playing days.
• I haven't checked to see if this was fixed in the last patch(es) for OOTP15, but coaches get two years of experience for every full season worked. They get a year of experience at the start of the preseason and the start of the offseason.

I'm looking forward to the changes to the coaching system that have been announced, but if Markus has the time, it would be great if he could take a look at a few of these issues.


Yes, but with a few exceptions. Team doctors aren't ex-players, and I believe that some scouts aren't, either (not sure). Also, when you first create a fictional league, none of your coaches will be ex-players (for obvious reasons), and expansion teams will not be staffed by ex-players. If your game has been running long enough, every coach will have a link to his profile as a player.

Well said. I agree with you on each and every count. I would also like to see the corrections you suggest.

[The Wolf]

Originally Posted by Honorable_Pawn

I was actually thinking this guy

Can't argue with that. Especially after the retirement fiasco.

[cavebutter]

Originally Posted by CobaltJays

I'm looking forward to the changes to the coaching system that have been announced, but if Markus has the time, it would be great if he could take a look at a few of these issues.

Absolutely. Very excited about the changes to the coaching system, but these are definitely areas that could use attention.