Player wants to change positions?

[YachtRocker]

So I have a MR Pitcher who keeps emailing me saying I'm not using him where he should be which he thinks is closer.

The email has the ! mark next to it in read, how do you go about dealing with this?

Thanks

[Sweed]

If he's not good enough to be a closer, ignore it. There's no canned response in a menu so you can tell him the what and whys.

If he's good enough and you have an opening, make him the closer.

If you don't make him a closer he may get mad and it could affect your ability to resign him. If your team is good and winning lot's of games, even though he's mad he might still resign.

I've had good/great batters that want to hit cleanup. I've hit them third because that's what I needed them to do. As long as we're winning division titles and making the playoffs it's not been an issue.

[SirMichaelJordan]

His expected role or promised role is most likely closer. If its promised in his contract, then you either have to play him there or trade him or just ignore him which will probably lower his morale.

[YachtRocker]

I'm just playing GM, my Manager has the lineups, I'm unable to change to set lineups.

[jksander]

Originally Posted by YachtRocker

I'm just playing GM, my Manager has the lineups, I'm unable to change to set lineups.

You are the GM so you can take over all of that under manager settings.

[snepp]

I likely have 3 or 4 relievers at a time that have had closer promised to them and they can pound sand. Winning cures all.

[Mr. Marlin]

I wish we could respond to players when they send us e-mails. I have a guy, high paid FA acquisition. He's awful at the plate. An absolute hole in the lineup. I have him batting 7th because the 8th is worse and the 9th is the pitcher (because the DH is evil and never will be allowed in MY game). He pesters me with emails saying he wants to bat cleanup and thinks I don't value him. He wants to be traded too. I which I could respond:

Dear Player,

I had you hitting 4th almost all last season and the first month of this one. You were awful. You didn't even break .200 in over 400 AB. Your OPB couldn't even boil water. You were second in the league in strikeouts, and you led the league in runners left on base.

You want to be traded? You are two years in to a six year deal and the OOTP guys did not make the AI so stupid that any other team would trade for you unless it was for another equally useless and even more expensive radioactive disaster of a player.

If the fictional owner of this fictional team had any sense, he would fire me and then have Lukas ban me from playing OOTP for ever signing you in the first place. I'd have sent you to AAA but you are out of options and occasionally you catch a fly ball in right field, so you are not entirely useless.

If you ever get a crooked number to the right of the dot on your BA maybe I'll move you up in the lineup. Maybe.

Love,

The GM

[micropterus58]

Mr. Marlin, your post made my day. I'll bet a lot of real MLB GMs would like to respond like that.

[Syd Thrift]

I will say that I feel like a lot of this is accurate. A guy signs with a new team, is bad on offense, and from his perspective the only thing he changed is the place where he plays. Sometimes those guys are like "oh no I suck now I should be quiet" but an awful lot of the time they're like "keep playing me at cleanup because I am a cleanup hitter and on top of that you're making me hit poorly!". That is reflected in that separate morale component for "player performance".

I also don't think GMs like eeeeeeever respond like that. One, that's a manager's job, not theirs, and two, in that respect the GM is kind of like a front-facing job when it comes to player gripes. I remember working in customer service, which I was kind of bad at because I gave into this too often, but you get a loooooad of idiots demanding dumb things just as a regular thing and you are very much not supposed to tell them the truth because that will just make them even madder.

That said, people are right; if you win games then that will cure pretty much any other issue you have with chemistry. You rarely have to worry about clubhouse cancers on a good team, players tend to be happy with playing time even if they're pinch-hitting instead of starting if you're winning 95 games, and when there are are angry boys it's one or two of them you have to deal with instead of 15.

[omg_pwnasaurus]

Did you try setting his secondary role in the pen to "closer"? that might satisfy the requirement while not necessarily marking him as the favorite to close (if simming). If you aren't simming, just put him in the closer role in the pen and use someone else to close games?

[Syd Thrift]

I could be wrong about this but I am 99% positive that if a player wants to close, they get happy only if they're placed in actual save situations. If you're simming and set them as a secondary closer and they actually get several save opportunities when the regular guy is tired, that could be enough to placate them...