bah, I won a championship with a team that was all pissed off about one thing or another.

truth is, micromanaging it can cause as many issues as it solves. work on personality diversity when you are setting up your team in the off-season, then let the chips fall where they may.

I've got players sending me mail about bad morale in the clubhouse now... and I've only got like 4 players that are angry. Most of my players have normal - high leadership... we won almost 100 games last season, playing 500 ball this year which isn't helping matters. I have no idea what to do about this, as I purposely signed players with decent attributes :/

I just cheated by using commissioner mode ot check the player profiles for their "type" and I only have two outspoken players who both have excellent morale and are among the best players on the team right now. So if they're not unhappy, and everybody else is normal, and most people have normal - high leadership, what the heck do I do to fix it?

Jazzrack has the right idea....I once traded a late developing prospect (27yrs) that my scout said was going to be a superstar....he was rated a selfish douche....I got a decent starter back for him....I thought I was clever.... 5 MVPs and 8 all star appearances later the joke was on me

While I don't ignore personality traits they certainly don't trump talent....your team's nosedive would probably be pretty frustrating in real life testing the mettle of all your players....nothing a 10 game winning streak couldn't fix!

A loose team is a winning team most of the time.:p

Totally agree with this especially the bold.

Find the worst culprit
 

You don't have to replace all the problem guys necessarily. Just see if you can find one who might be triggering the others. If not, at least get rid of the scrubs who are bad apples. When I draft I take more of the personality into consideration than I would later on. In the 12th round you aren't getting a gem so better if he is a hard worker.

Very good to know and thank you for this post. My question is... When you shop a player, does that impact their morale? I am not sure if shopping a player is a mangement thing behind the scenes or if players know they are being shopped.

I ask this because JJ HArdy of the Orioles I was shopping and he seemed to get angry. I dont feel it SHOULD impact a player as shopping someone is a management action.

Thanks in advance if you know the answer. If not ill keep playing with it. I just dont want to shop players and piss off my lineup! lol :D

It does indeed effect morale.

I understand your argument....but I believe the game treats your shopping him to the other teams as something that would get back to the player being shopped ie: MLB Trade Rumors, teammates, management etc....it is an attempt by the game to simulate this common scenario....all just my opinion!

My lowest level Single A team surprised me this year with horrible morale. First time I've had this in my system. I've traded/released what I hope are the bad apples. Does anyone know if this bad morale is contagious to my other minor league teams?

I take it you should turn on Personality during the off season? I did it during the season and every player on every team had a horrible work ethic.

Giving this post a bump as I struggled with the same issue. Started out with a historic league as the 1980's Mets. Team was a mess. No matter what I tried, morale was always garbage and came out dead last. It was isolated to my pitchers at one point so I tried a new pitching coach. Helped for 7 or 8 games but all went downhill quickly. Became so frustrated I let AI manage a whole season. Players still had bad morale. By the 4th season, a few of my early drafted players started to peak and I grabbed a very young Roger Clemens. What do you know, went on a 10 game winning streak and morale couldn't be better.

In short; Winning Matters!

Funny how most other poster here say how perfect FM is.:crying:

soccer manager... c'mon, get it right :p and you gotta let your wrist flop around limply as you say it, too... it's a formality so that the write message is communicated.

-----------------

prelude: lol written after "first,..." so, i just want to mention you can turn this feature off. same with personalities. basically everyone will have "100's" for each of these traits and morale would be "normal" so, you lose the negative effects, but also any positive ones as well. it's all neutral.

first, put things in proper perspective... those angry red faces aren't nearly as bad as they look. you are not being admonished, and no one is voting you worst gm ever.

morale is not likely haveing as severe an effect as you are attributing to it. so, if they are lingering in unhappy times... it's not too big of a deal for a better team... and if you are a worse team it doesn't really matter if you win 70 or 75 games, because you still miss the playoffs.

(totally guessing on a 5 game swing, but i doubt it's that large - 5/162 is pretty large percentage for a small thing.. even in a terrible environment, players still play for their next contract, so i hope the ddidn't rationalize too large of an effect)

a middling team it can be a concern... if you are on the edge of making hte playoffs, it may be worth your effort to do something - but smaller is better than bigger still, because morale isn't a switch that turns on and off. imo limping into the playoffs to play decidedly better teams is worse than losing a few more games and getting a better draft pick next year... worry about morale after the season in that situation.

the "current" state of morale a calculated value that changes dynamically over time due to numerous factors that you can easily guess through the ui and what metrics are availiable and displayed to you. so, it takes time for it to +1 or +2 it's way back upto "normal" (=0) or "happy" (greater than some value higher than 0 but less than 5000 because ecstatic is another tier above happy)

if the net effect on the team is negative, it will never recover in that instance, but you shouldn't assume that after just a few months of a previous change. if moral is "-5000" (scale isn't important, made up number) and your 'improvement(s)' are only adding up slowly per calculation (daily? weekly? not sure when it does these computations, but it's continuous and predictable as to when), then it could take a very long time to "fix" it.

only way to know if your cahnge has an effect is to simulate ahead then restore... bit like cheating though... i'm willing to do something like that if it's only during the learning process... i've never bothered with this specifically, but i have learned a thing or two about how the game works by doing similar things.

e.g. i'd suggest everyone plays at least one 100% accurate scouting league at least a few years - fictional or real, but if real yo uneed to know how things change after real players are replaced, too. so that takes more seasons to learn. you start to see how things muddle things up - even turn off the side stuff like personality, coaches, etc... only on-field modeled stuff. you start to understand how innacuracy is applied, how much morale and personality actually effects development etc ... if you see roughly the same results.. guess how much those tihngs are really changing things - i'm not saying ignore them, just put in proper perspective relative to the importance of actual talent (the real skill ratings, like contact, power etc).

bottom line: do not give away good talent unless you have a suitable / equivalent replacment... it is likely better for you to deal with a bit of a morale problem than reducing talent by any noticeable amount even in only one everyday player.

accumulating enough good players for a 3-5+ year window of success is the most difficult and most important task. casting off good talent is very rarely the right thing to do.

Did you have the groundskeeper check the water for contaminents? I find if they drink contaminated water eventually one of them turns into the Thing and kills everyone else in the clubhouse :)

i bet he can hit the ball out of the park, though.

what're his slash numbers? might still be worth it.