Coaches/scouts Thoughts

c-man · 02-08-2002, 10:55 AM

I have noticed recently that some CPU teams in my solo fictional league will keep coaches and scouts rated "terrible or weak" when there are better scouts/coaches available and unsigned for similar $. It seems that this area of the game is suffering a bit--human teams will always (i think) go for better scouts/coaches than the CPU is willing to settle for, no matter the price.

In general it seems that in order for the game to really be competitive, the CPU and humans have to be on the same terms relative to what they value, that is, if there is never a case when a human would use a terrible or weak scout, then the CPU shouldnt either...with players, the salary limitations keep things more equal between the CPU and humans, but there isnt enough of a salary gap btwn great and terrible coaches scouts for this to be a factor, I don't think there ever will be because the game would get unrealistic quickly if you have to pay $10million for a great scout...

I'm not sure what the solution is--perhaps coaching ratings could be totally or at least more concealed, and you would have to figure out through trial and error the merit of your coaches/scouts, more like real life? (and more like the new hidden player ratings option)

but it seems to me that the coaches and scouts can't be treated like players for this aspect of the game to work---my willingness to use a below average or young position player for a year or two because of salary reasons does not mean i'm willing to use a below average scout for salary reasons... I don't think they can be treated the same. not sure if i'm making sense--just some thoughts, back to work!

Scott Vibert · 02-08-2002, 11:26 AM

I like the idea of sort of hiding the coaches / scout rating... but how about this:

Instead of giving out the abilities of the coach / scout, try giving out their reputation.

In real life some people are thought to be a great coach, when really they may not be... but their reputation preceeds them and they get the big jobs.

Where as some people might be fairly unknown.

The way I would see it working is that all/rookie young coaches/scouts/managers would have reputation ratings of "unknown" all veteran coaches/scouts/managers have their reputations stretching between poor to great (maybe 4 steps).

The coaches reputation would then fluctuate depending on the teams performance. If the team wins the World Series the scouts reputation would increase and he'd ask for more money the next season. If the team leads the league in hitting the hitting coaches reputation increases, similar for the pitching coach. Now you'll never know their actual ability until they coach your players, but you will know something about their track record. Of course you could be hiring a coach who stinks, but was fortunate enough to work with established stars, or you could hire a good coach, who was stuck with young scrubs, therefore they have a poor reputation. It would all be up to you to decide how big a "name" you would want for your scout/coach.

Minor league managers could be rated similarly... but, I'm not sure at this time how to rate them objectively. (If minor league standings were kept then these standings could be used to adjust the reputation).

In this way the reputations would be dynamic, but you'd never know the true abilities of the coach, you'd have to go by their reputation, which is similar to how it works in real life. (Really how can you measure teaching... you don't, but if a team does well, their coaches reputation goes up, Joe Torre wasn't recognized as a great manager in the early 80's, why?, because the Mets teams he managed weren't very good, but he gets to the Yankees and his repuatation grows, why?, because the Yankees win, does this mean that he's a better coach than he was in the 80's? or he just has better players?, we don't know, because you can't track statistics for coaching/teaching).

Any thoughts on this idea?

Mets Man · 02-08-2002, 11:56 AM

I agree with Scott,

I don't think coaches/scouts should have actual abilities shown. I mean the players' actual ratings aren't shown, why should a coach/scout's be.

This is a problem I saw in many Text Based Sports Sims. The fact that we have absolute knowledge that the scout we're using is an excellent one or a terrible one. Think of the possibilities if our supposably "Brilliant Scout", is really not as Brilliant as we might think. With the current system, we can pretty much know whether we should believe our scouts or to completely ignore them (or just ignore them on their weak category).

However, I do think that the "reputation" (supposed ability of the scout) of the scout should be more right on, than not. After all the "reputation" has to mean something, it can't be just a false label with no meaning whatsoever.

c-man · 02-08-2002, 12:00 PM

I think that's a great idea, as long as it is you suggest-- the "reputation" is based on recent performance, fluctuates season to season based on performance, and is not just another type of set rating. i also like the idea of "unknown" for young coaches/scouts...

Another way or an additional aspect of this that your idea brings up -- would be including a "coaching/scouting performance" stat line to coaches and scouts. perhaps to keep it smaller just the previous' season's or couple of seasons team performance is included, so maybe instead of a reputation rating, you could just see for yourself, the past performance at different levels. that way, as you say you wouldnt know if it was the team or the coach, mirroring reality.

maybe "unknown" younger coaches would generally seek single A jobs, then once they prove themselves they ask for a promotion and/or more money. older coaches could refuse jobs in the lower ranks of the minors. that way you would always have some uncertainty about your coaches, especially in the lower ranks? and your hiring/firing is based on performance only...? coaches in the low minors would go to other teams for a chance to coach at a higher level...but perhaps some outstanding coaches at A would only be mediocre at AA. and you would always have that uncertainty.

mtw · 02-09-2002, 01:48 PM

[quote]Originally posted by ScottVib:

Instead of giving out the abilities of the coach / scout, try giving out their reputation.<hr></blockquote>

This is an excellent suggestion, and I think it would work well for coaches, scouts, and minor league managers (in the absence of minor league standings, as you also noted.)

Player performance should be the way to judge a scout/coach/minor manager performance, and this would be done as follows:

Scouts: Look at frequency of draftees making major leagues and their performance in the majors.

Minor managers: Look at rate of player improvement in ratings and time player spends at each minor league level.

Coaches: Look at players performance compared to that under previous coaches and compared to the ratings given by the scout.

Like real life. none of this would be an exact science. But for those who want an even more "real life" feel from their game, at least having the option to have the coaches/scouts/minor league manager ratings hidden with reports on their abilities would be one more big step in that direction.

Redbird · 02-09-2002, 05:02 PM

Good post!

Mets Man · 02-09-2002, 05:56 PM

[quote]Originally posted by c-man:
I think that's a great idea, as long as it is you suggest-- the "reputation" is based on recent performance, fluctuates season to season based on performance, and is not just another type of set rating. i also like the idea of "unknown" for young coaches/scouts....<hr></blockquote>

This is something I wanted to see in Front Office Football. I always liked the idea of scouts, but I was always wondering how we could relate it to real life. I mean how do we know how good somebody is at judging the ability of players? And you just answered that question........by performance.

I think there should be a "true hidden ability" for every scout. But we should never know about it. The only way we can find out is by keeping track of a scout's performance. Even still, this won't give you the "exact true ability", because you never know if a scout's performance could've been lucky or just based on some other factor. So the real abilities should never be shown, but you'll have a better idea of who the good scouts/coaches are by their past performance. That way you'll never really "know" for sure how good they are, but you may have a general better idea.

It always puzzled me in these games how a player's talents were always hidden, while a scout's/coaches talents were never hidden. Using an example, just because speculation is that "Felipe Alou is a Brilliant manager", it doesn't mean that he really is. But we should be able to find out the hard way, by hiring him for big bucks, but then finding out that putting him in another situation he just wasn't as good as we had thought. Sometimes the speculation can be right, but it should never be an exact science.

hellfrozeover · 02-09-2002, 07:49 PM

I like the idea of the reputation, and it would have to be dynamic (changing over time). A guy like Oscar Acosta (Cub's former pitching coach) had his reputation increase dramatically after taking the worst staff in the NL in 2000 and making it one of the best in the NL 2001 and having it break the team K record set by the Braves in the 90s.

I suppose there should also be a chance for the hidden coach ratings to improve perhaps with more experience. Some people get better with experience, some don't. Also, it might be interesting if the manager and the hitting coach or someone don't get along, and it could lead to disagreements, much like Acosta and eventually someone would be replaced. Another thing, if a guy has always been a good hitting coach, but takes a chance at being a head coach or a minor league manager and fails, then his reputation as a hitting coach should not drop, or at least the effect should be minimal. The Cubs new pitching coach Larry Rothschild is still a respected pitching coach because of the 1996(?) WS Marlins, in spite of the horrendousness of the Devil Rays.

Edit - I originally tried to post this a day or so ago, but there was an error in the message boards, so I'm a bit late.

[ February 10, 2002: Message edited by: hellfrozeover ]

mtw · 02-09-2002, 08:46 PM

[quote]Originally posted by hellfrozeover:
I like the idea of the reputation, and it would have to be dynamic (changing over time). A guy like Oscar Acosta (Cub's former pitching coach) had his reputation increase dramatically after taking the worst staff in the NL in 2000 and making it one of the best in the NL 2001 and having it break the team K record set by the Braves in the 90s.
<hr></blockquote>

Can't resist here--of course, after doing such a fantastic job and having the full support of his pitching staff, Acosta is fired by Baylor because of "personality conflicts". Instead of doing the thing that a winning team would do, i.e. firing the inept Baylor, the worst manager I have ever seen, they fire the person who was probably the biggest reason for the Cubs remarkable turnaround.

Mets Man · 02-10-2002, 05:18 AM

Trying to get back on topic,

I think that players should also have "reputation" rating for each one of their abilities. This is on top of the standard scout's opinion of that player. This "reputation" could be the total accumulated average opinion of all the scouts in the league, with recent and past performance factored in as well. What this would be like in real life is, the general knowledge an every day fan has about certain players. For example, most of us have an idea or opinion of how good Alex Rodriguez is. However, a scout's opinion could deviate far from that. Nevertheless, we would still be aware of what the "consensus" out there is, even though our scout's opinion is far from this "consensus". This will give us an idea of who our scout's think the overrated & underrated players are. The players who have high consensus ratings, but your scout gives low ratings to, would be considered overrated by your scout (your scout doesn't think he's as good as most people think he is).

For younger guys (prospects), this consensus would be more far off, since we really don't have much performance to base our opinions on. Nevertheless even prospects have a "consensus" opinion about them (how high they rank on the Top 50 prospect list). This is generally acquired by getting all the scouts' opinions and finding an average.

But before adding something like this, its important that we don't know the true ability of each scout. That way, if we knew the scout was "Terrible" then we'd much rather go with the "consensus" opinion (it would be too easy to ignore your scout's opinion and just go with the consensus). But if we weren't sure about how good our scout was, then we may trust him, rather than go with the "consensus", but at least we'd have something to use as extra reference when evaluating players (adds more strategy; do you go with the norm opinion or trust the farfetched opinion of your scout?).

02-08-2002, 10:55 AM	#1
c-man Minors (Double A) Join Date: Dec 2001 Posts: 130	Coaches/scouts Thoughts I have noticed recently that some CPU teams in my solo fictional league will keep coaches and scouts rated "terrible or weak" when there are better scouts/coaches available and unsigned for similar $. It seems that this area of the game is suffering a bit--human teams will always (i think) go for better scouts/coaches than the CPU is willing to settle for, no matter the price. In general it seems that in order for the game to really be competitive, the CPU and humans have to be on the same terms relative to what they value, that is, if there is never a case when a human would use a terrible or weak scout, then the CPU shouldnt either...with players, the salary limitations keep things more equal between the CPU and humans, but there isnt enough of a salary gap btwn great and terrible coaches scouts for this to be a factor, I don't think there ever will be because the game would get unrealistic quickly if you have to pay $10million for a great scout... I'm not sure what the solution is--perhaps coaching ratings could be totally or at least more concealed, and you would have to figure out through trial and error the merit of your coaches/scouts, more like real life? (and more like the new hidden player ratings option) but it seems to me that the coaches and scouts can't be treated like players for this aspect of the game to work---my willingness to use a below average or young position player for a year or two because of salary reasons does not mean i'm willing to use a below average scout for salary reasons... I don't think they can be treated the same. not sure if i'm making sense--just some thoughts, back to work!

02-09-2002, 01:48 PM	#5
mtw All Star Reserve Join Date: Dec 2001 Posts: 653	[quote]Originally posted by ScottVib: <strong> Instead of giving out the abilities of the coach / scout, try giving out their reputation.</strong><hr></blockquote> This is an excellent suggestion, and I think it would work well for coaches, scouts, and minor league managers (in the absence of minor league standings, as you also noted.) Player performance should be the way to judge a scout/coach/minor manager performance, and this would be done as follows: Scouts: Look at frequency of draftees making major leagues and their performance in the majors. Minor managers: Look at rate of player improvement in ratings and time player spends at each minor league level. Coaches: Look at players performance compared to that under previous coaches and compared to the ratings given by the scout. Like real life. none of this would be an exact science. But for those who want an even more "real life" feel from their game, at least having the option to have the coaches/scouts/minor league manager ratings hidden with reports on their abilities would be one more big step in that direction. __________________ Over-Zealous Apologist

02-09-2002, 05:56 PM	#7
Mets Man Major Leagues Join Date: Jan 2002 Posts: 336	[quote]Originally posted by c-man: <strong>I think that's a great idea, as long as it is you suggest-- the "reputation" is based on recent performance, fluctuates season to season based on performance, and is not just another type of set rating. i also like the idea of "unknown" for young coaches/scouts....</strong><hr></blockquote> This is something I wanted to see in Front Office Football. I always liked the idea of scouts, but I was always wondering how we could relate it to real life. I mean how do we know how good somebody is at judging the ability of players? And you just answered that question........by performance. I think there should be a "true hidden ability" for every scout. But we should never know about it. The only way we can find out is by keeping track of a scout's performance. Even still, this won't give you the "exact true ability", because you never know if a scout's performance could've been lucky or just based on some other factor. So the real abilities should never be shown, but you'll have a better idea of who the good scouts/coaches are by their past performance. That way you'll never really "know" for sure how good they are, but you may have a general better idea. It always puzzled me in these games how a player's talents were always hidden, while a scout's/coaches talents were never hidden. Using an example, just because speculation is that "Felipe Alou is a Brilliant manager", it doesn't mean that he really is. But we should be able to find out the hard way, by hiring him for big bucks, but then finding out that putting him in another situation he just wasn't as good as we had thought. Sometimes the speculation can be right, but it should never be an exact science.

02-09-2002, 07:49 PM	#8
hellfrozeover All Star Starter Join Date: Dec 2001 Location: Chicago Posts: 1,130	I like the idea of the reputation, and it would have to be dynamic (changing over time). A guy like Oscar Acosta (Cub's former pitching coach) had his reputation increase dramatically after taking the worst staff in the NL in 2000 and making it one of the best in the NL 2001 and having it break the team K record set by the Braves in the 90s. I suppose there should also be a chance for the hidden coach ratings to improve perhaps with more experience. Some people get better with experience, some don't. Also, it might be interesting if the manager and the hitting coach or someone don't get along, and it could lead to disagreements, much like Acosta and eventually someone would be replaced. Another thing, if a guy has always been a good hitting coach, but takes a chance at being a head coach or a minor league manager and fails, then his reputation as a hitting coach should not drop, or at least the effect should be minimal. The Cubs new pitching coach Larry Rothschild is still a respected pitching coach because of the 1996(?) WS Marlins, in spite of the horrendousness of the Devil Rays. Edit - I originally tried to post this a day or so ago, but there was an error in the message boards, so I'm a bit late. [ February 10, 2002: Message edited by: hellfrozeover ]</p> __________________ FBA Chicago Syndicate Former Owner: WBL Minnesota Twins 2004 - 2007 AL Central Division Champs OOL Chicago Whales 2006, 2009 UL East Champs; 2006, 2009 United League Champs IBA Lehigh Valley Diamonds 2006 Governor's Cup Champions VSLB New York Yankees 2001, 2002 AL East Division Champs ILBL Commissioner/Chicago Cubs 2002 NL Central Division Champs; 2002 National League Champs ASBL New York Yankees 2006 AL East Division Champs

02-09-2002, 08:46 PM	#9
mtw All Star Reserve Join Date: Dec 2001 Posts: 653	[quote]Originally posted by hellfrozeover: <strong>I like the idea of the reputation, and it would have to be dynamic (changing over time). A guy like Oscar Acosta (Cub's former pitching coach) had his reputation increase dramatically after taking the worst staff in the NL in 2000 and making it one of the best in the NL 2001 and having it break the team K record set by the Braves in the 90s. </strong><hr></blockquote> Can't resist here--of course, after doing such a fantastic job and having the full support of his pitching staff, Acosta is fired by Baylor because of "personality conflicts". Instead of doing the thing that a winning team would do, i.e. firing the inept Baylor, the worst manager I have ever seen, they fire the person who was probably the biggest reason for the Cubs remarkable turnaround. __________________ Over-Zealous Apologist

02-08-2002, 11:26 AM	#2
Scott Vibert Hall Of Famer Join Date: Dec 2001 Location: My Computer Posts: 8,182	I like the idea of sort of hiding the coaches / scout rating... but how about this: Instead of giving out the abilities of the coach / scout, try giving out their reputation. In real life some people are thought to be a great coach, when really they may not be... but their reputation preceeds them and they get the big jobs. Where as some people might be fairly unknown. The way I would see it working is that all/rookie young coaches/scouts/managers would have reputation ratings of "unknown" all veteran coaches/scouts/managers have their reputations stretching between poor to great (maybe 4 steps). The coaches reputation would then fluctuate depending on the teams performance. If the team wins the World Series the scouts reputation would increase and he'd ask for more money the next season. If the team leads the league in hitting the hitting coaches reputation increases, similar for the pitching coach. Now you'll never know their actual ability until they coach your players, but you will know something about their track record. Of course you could be hiring a coach who stinks, but was fortunate enough to work with established stars, or you could hire a good coach, who was stuck with young scrubs, therefore they have a poor reputation. It would all be up to you to decide how big a "name" you would want for your scout/coach. Minor league managers could be rated similarly... but, I'm not sure at this time how to rate them objectively. (If minor league standings were kept then these standings could be used to adjust the reputation). In this way the reputations would be dynamic, but you'd never know the true abilities of the coach, you'd have to go by their reputation, which is similar to how it works in real life. (Really how can you measure teaching... you don't, but if a team does well, their coaches reputation goes up, Joe Torre wasn't recognized as a great manager in the early 80's, why?, because the Mets teams he managed weren't very good, but he gets to the Yankees and his repuatation grows, why?, because the Yankees win, does this mean that he's a better coach than he was in the 80's? or he just has better players?, we don't know, because you can't track statistics for coaching/teaching). Any thoughts on this idea?

02-08-2002, 11:56 AM	#3
Mets Man Major Leagues Join Date: Jan 2002 Posts: 336	I agree with Scott, I don't think coaches/scouts should have actual abilities shown. I mean the players' actual ratings aren't shown, why should a coach/scout's be. This is a problem I saw in many Text Based Sports Sims. The fact that we have absolute knowledge that the scout we're using is an excellent one or a terrible one. Think of the possibilities if our supposably "Brilliant Scout", is really not as Brilliant as we might think. With the current system, we can pretty much know whether we should believe our scouts or to completely ignore them (or just ignore them on their weak category). However, I do think that the "reputation" (supposed ability of the scout) of the scout should be more right on, than not. After all the "reputation" has to mean something, it can't be just a false label with no meaning whatsoever.

02-08-2002, 12:00 PM	#4
c-man Minors (Double A) Join Date: Dec 2001 Posts: 130	I think that's a great idea, as long as it is you suggest-- the "reputation" is based on recent performance, fluctuates season to season based on performance, and is not just another type of set rating. i also like the idea of "unknown" for young coaches/scouts... Another way or an additional aspect of this that your idea brings up -- would be including a "coaching/scouting performance" stat line to coaches and scouts. perhaps to keep it smaller just the previous' season's or couple of seasons team performance is included, so maybe instead of a reputation rating, you could just see for yourself, the past performance at different levels. that way, as you say you wouldnt know if it was the team or the coach, mirroring reality. maybe "unknown" younger coaches would generally seek single A jobs, then once they prove themselves they ask for a promotion and/or more money. older coaches could refuse jobs in the lower ranks of the minors. that way you would always have some uncertainty about your coaches, especially in the lower ranks? and your hiring/firing is based on performance only...? coaches in the low minors would go to other teams for a chance to coach at a higher level...but perhaps some outstanding coaches at A would only be mediocre at AA. and you would always have that uncertainty.

02-09-2002, 05:02 PM	#6
Redbird Minors (Rookie Ball) Join Date: Jan 2002 Posts: 38	Good post!

02-10-2002, 05:18 AM	#10
Mets Man Major Leagues Join Date: Jan 2002 Posts: 336	Trying to get back on topic, I think that players should also have "reputation" rating for each one of their abilities. This is on top of the standard scout's opinion of that player. This "reputation" could be the total accumulated average opinion of all the scouts in the league, with recent and past performance factored in as well. What this would be like in real life is, the general knowledge an every day fan has about certain players. For example, most of us have an idea or opinion of how good Alex Rodriguez is. However, a scout's opinion could deviate far from that. Nevertheless, we would still be aware of what the "consensus" out there is, even though our scout's opinion is far from this "consensus". This will give us an idea of who our scout's think the overrated & underrated players are. The players who have high consensus ratings, but your scout gives low ratings to, would be considered overrated by your scout (your scout doesn't think he's as good as most people think he is). For younger guys (prospects), this consensus would be more far off, since we really don't have much performance to base our opinions on. Nevertheless even prospects have a "consensus" opinion about them (how high they rank on the Top 50 prospect list). This is generally acquired by getting all the scouts' opinions and finding an average. But before adding something like this, its important that we don't know the true ability of each scout. That way, if we knew the scout was "Terrible" then we'd much rather go with the "consensus" opinion (it would be too easy to ignore your scout's opinion and just go with the consensus). But if we weren't sure about how good our scout was, then we may trust him, rather than go with the "consensus", but at least we'd have something to use as extra reference when evaluating players (adds more strategy; do you go with the norm opinion or trust the farfetched opinion of your scout?).