What to Look for in Coaches?

[Skevich]

I have coaches in the minors that are "Excellent" with their respective roles, and are Excellent at Development, but have "Poor" reputations. The problem is I can't ever seem to find coaches with reputations better than "Ok." Which is more important? Their coaching abilities, or their reputations?

[kq76]

I, for the most part, ignore reputation. Check out this post.

[Shucker]

I too ignore the reputation and go with whether their skills are desirable. Sometimes I will take a flyer on guys that are inexperienced. I don't pay close attention to how they change over the years, whether their inexperience turns into a reputation, good or bad, but I am hoping that skills are more important than whether people like them or not.

[Skevich]

Thank you both!

[Bobfather]

Is there a simple way to add coaches. Most coaches in my league are 80+ years old. A second question is there anyway to group or filter years in which a player retired? So I can turn them into coaches. But I was looking more for something like the create players but for coaches.

[twins_34]

Originally Posted by Bobfather

Is there a simple way to add coaches. Most coaches in my league are 80+ years old. A second question is there anyway to group or filter years in which a player retired? So I can turn them into coaches. But I was looking more for something like the create players but for coaches.

Yeah, MLB>League History>Retire Players>Retire Players Tab.

Click on Filter and set an age limit.

Then you can use the tag control to select everyone and right click on them and use Turn into coach.

Then... to make coaches...

MLB>Transactions>Personnel>Click on the actions button and use create multiple and pick whatever type of coaches you want to make.

[eauhomme]

Reputation is useless.

Get a "Legendary" or "Outstanding" and look at the relationship with the players who they will coach.

By that, I mean if you're looking for a hitting coach, look only at where the hitters are in the relationship screen. Ignore the pitchers. Here's a great example. The hitters love him, the pitchers don't.

[twins_34]

Well, I will go through my steps for looking for coaches.

I do not use challenge mode because if you do, you can not do this kind of initial setup.

So, the very first thing I do is I release all coaches. I want to start fresh and if you go and fire coaches (and I do not know if this is 100% true) I feel like some coaches will not consider your team. So, I just go under League Settings and hit the "RELEASE ALL COACHES AND SCOUTS"

IF I am doing a historical or current league, I then go under retired players (Doing the step I posted a few posts above) and I filter all retired players that are 65 or younger and turn them into coaches. (Now not all of them will become coaches)

So, now I have a nice pool of coaches but I am still fighting against the CPU in hiring coaches.

Managers/Bench Coach - Development is #1. I try and get the best I can get with the best mechanics and aging. Now, with relationships with players, I try and find someone with GOOD relationship with the players but I have no idea, whatsoever, if it makes a difference or not. This goes for pitching and hitting coaches as well. I just try and get good relationships with players but relationships with other coaches are more important to me than player relationship when it comes to hitting, pitching, 1b and 3b coaches.

Now, for my Majors team, whatever this bench coach's personality and Works Well With, will determine the rest of the guys I hire. I want my coaches to get along. So I will find the best coaches with the best ratings to match my bench coach. Best development/mechanics with teaching their specialty.

Now when it comes to the minors, Manager is always about development then for hitting and pitching, I will usually start with contact and groundball coaches in the rookies through AA ball. At AAA and Majors I like doing Power for hitting and finesse in AAA and Power pitchers in the majors and power in AAA and Majors for hitting.

Now does this do anything? I have not really kept track and maybe some day I should. But I mainly focus on very high Development and Mechanics down in the minors, I just add the groundball and finesse and stuff for flavor hoping it does something. I do not worry about personalities of the coaches in the minors, I just get the best I can get.

However, that's how I setup my games when it comes to coaches. Now for fictional, only thing that is different is I do not bring in retired players as, there are no retired players.

I in no way think this is the best way to setup your managers and others probably do a WAY better job than I do lol.

[Pelican]

Agree with the above. I would note that I frequently use newly-retired players as rookie coaches, with good results. This is of course despite the fact they have no reputation and no experience and thus no ratings (or low default ratings). I don't know if OOTP takes into account their experience as players. Of course, not all former players can coach, and many excellent coaches never played.

[jpeters1734]

Originally Posted by kq76

I, for the most part, ignore reputation. Check out this post.

I personally disagree with your take on tools vs. ability scouts. Ability scouts are equally capable of identifying great players, but they won’t claim that every player in the first round of a draft has 5-star potential. In my opinion, this actually helps sort through the chaff, which makes it easier to build a great system.

[jpeters1734]

to echo what others have said, reputation is 100% pointless and should never be considered.

As for what to look for, it depends on the role.

Hitting coaches, obviously teach hitting is important. development is important for minor league coaches and less so for the ML coach. Same concept for handling aging, more important in the majors and not important at all for minor league coaches.

Pitching coaches, same concept as hitting coaches but obviously teach pitching is preferred.

3B coach has to have a great ability to handle in-game running. If you're going to use them as a fielding instructor, the development rating is also important.

1B coach should be a great fielding instructor with great development ratings.

The bench coach should be solid in all fielding drills with good ability to manage aging and development

Minor league managers should have good development ratings and fielding ratings as there's no bench or base coaches to help

That's about it, however I want to point out the influence mechanics rating. The tool tip says that it's "Talent Changes", which means TCR. If your league has a higher than default TCR setting, this influence mechanics rating is more important. If your league has a low TCR setting, the influence mechanics rating is not important at all.

Hope this helps

[kq76]

Well, it was in quotes with a link to the source so I didn't say it (TNCubsFan did), but given what the manual says, I do agree with it. I haven't compared whether favour ability scouts will identify the same players as favour tools scouts do, but if they do like you say, then I agree with you, that's a good point in favour of ability scouts.

That said, I don't care that much whether they favour tools or ability. What I do is convert their 4 scouting word ratings (majors, minors, intern'l, and amateurs) into # ratings and then I try to sign the guy with the best # overall. (If I cared more, I'd maybe assign each rating different weights, but I find them all useful at different times.) Now if the scout was listed as highly favour tools then I might shy away from them since I'm usually trying to maintain a contender, but if the rest of their ratings were far above the rest available, then I'd still go for them.

When I myself am deciding on which player to draft, I will often choose the player with better current ability if their potential ratings are very close and that would of course make me a favour ability scout, but I don't care so much whether my scout is too. In fact, I just checked and my scout is not, he favours tools, but according to his other ratings he's the second best scout overall in the (12 team) league. It just doesn't make sense to me to draft a guy who, all else fairly equal, still has a long way to develop over a guy who is already somewhat developed.