All coaches should be former players!

[dodgerblue88]

IRL, I'd say about 100% of all coaches and managers in Major/Minor League Baseball have had some sort of experience playing either in the majors or in the minors, so I think the same should go for OOTP! It's kinda weird to see coaches "created" each offseason with no prior pro baseball experience. Where did these guys come from??

The only obvious exception to this would be in the early years of a league with no history, but after say 10 years or so of starting a league every new coach that is created should be a former player of some sort, whether it be former minor league journeyman or big league star.

This would add much more fun and realism to the game, and I think i speak for all of us when i say that I love seeing former players go on to have some sort of coaching career, which is something we dont get enough of with the current OOTP version!

Also, can we get a "view coach/manager profile page" button added to their player page when they become coaches? we have it the other way around right now, it shouldn't be too hard to add it to a retired players profile would it?

[rutri01]

i'd love this with their playing career stats attached....

[Chicagofan76]

Originally Posted by dodgerblue88

IRL, I'd say about 100% of all coaches and managers in Major/Minor League Baseball have had some sort of experience playing either in the majors or in the minors, so I think the same should go for OOTP! It's kinda weird to see coaches "created" each offseason with no prior pro baseball experience. Where did these guys come from??

The only obvious exception to this would be in the early years of a league with no history, but after say 10 years or so of starting a league every new coach that is created should be a former player of some sort, whether it be former minor league journeyman or big league star.

This would add much more fun and realism to the game, and I think i speak for all of us when i say that I love seeing former players go on to have some sort of coaching career, which is something we dont get enough of with the current OOTP version!

Also, can we get a "view coach/manager profile page" button added to their player page when they become coaches? we have it the other way around right now, it shouldn't be too hard to add it to a retired players profile would it?

Yeah but how is the game supposed to figure that out? It would be nice if it would manually create a minor league career for the fictional coaches.
But you cant have this for GM's Scouts or trainers and most of them hardly played college ball. Trainers probably never played sports.

[urbanlife]

I do that now, I have a small league I put together for myself with a 18-28yr old age limit and after they are too old for the league, I go through and take the best ranked players and retire them and turn them into coaches, with some minor editing to their coaching numbers to give them a better shot at being hired.

[risp2out]

I think that's a cool idea. Mostly it should be players who had high leadership and/or intelligence.

In fact, what I'd like to see is a text description of coaches, like scouting reports. It would describe the management style and the player's perception of the guy. It would make it possible to play with coaches and managers like you do with players when you play with ratings off.

[DustinthePOWERHOUSE]

I'd like to build on this idea:

I would like there to be a contract option in which we can offer older players, players who are intelligent about the game or players who's career ends because of injury, the chance to coach.

You would have a drag down menu offering a spot on the team. For instance, using a real life example:

Jason Varitek retires, but because of his loyalty to the Red Sox they offer him a job as a manager of AA (or something else hitting coach whatever)

Now because his loyalty is obviously high and he's been with them forever hypothetically those could factor in to whether he asks for a high contract or not and whether he decides to sign in general.

This would be a neat feature because it allows for players who are team icons to continue with the teams. We could also have the potential to offer former players GM spots (for computer teams?) but that's a separate issue and I'm not sure how often that actually occurs (Nolan Ryan is the lone example I'm thinking of currently)

But to go back to what Dodgerblue said, I do think it's a great idea. Too often the game retires players and then they are no longer relevant when in real life that's not the case. Take Mark McGuire for instance, I wouldn't say he's a life saver for the Cardinals but they certainly improved hitting wise because of him. Wouldn't it be nice for the game to feature that as well?

Anyways I think Dodgerblue had a great idea and I'd love to see it implemented.

[rocknfire7]

More on this topic and a few things I'd like to see.
1. Option to set a percentage of "never played in this universe coaches. Most coaches come from the Major Leagues or minor affiliates but a few can still pop up who might have very little playing experience at a high level. You could set up the percentage of coaches that are former players somewhere in your universe or newly created. A few side notes on this is that the coaches must come from the same locations that your universe is located in. No Chinese or Ugandan coaches appearing out of thin air in my MLB based league. There could also be the option for player-managers based on level and era too.

2. Seperate rating for coaching ability tendencies. These ratings could be based on a number of factors:
a. The players position. Catchers tend to make good managers over other position players while former pitchers tend to become pitching coaches, etc.
b. The players career. This doesn't mean that the player has to have a successful career. perhaps he was just good enough to stick around and fill in whenever someone was injured. He might be a super star player but doesn't relate to coaching. On the other hand you might find a gem of a coach-manager out of a player who played 15 years in the minors, jumped around quite a bit and has a slew of contacts and connections.
c. The current personality ratings tweaked and modified as pertaining to a former players ability to be a coach. GM's or perhaps only the Commish could see the ratings and determine if he will possibly be coach material.

That's my two cents.