Posted by a_ersberg on 8/22/2015 3:48:00 PM (view original):
Remember, the ratings are out of 100.  So if you're using guys with ratings of 60's, 50s... they are batting practice.

Go to the edit rosters page, and click on a position of a player.  It will give you the fielding recommendations.   Jim Minor would be an amazing BL shortstop- his bat sucks yes but sometimes you sacrifice hitting to get a SS with ratings like that.    

Omar Browning and Yank Mayne are decent hitters, and much better than who you're using in the ML's now.  

Higher ratings good.  Lower ratings bad.  

Browning batted the Mendoza line when I signed him as a cheap FA (his history is all terrible and he isn't performing that well at AAA either) and neither he nor Yank seem to have ratings to play any position.

I appreciate the thought on the SS.  I guess it makes sense to bring in a great glove at SS, but why would defense, at SS in particular, make that big a difference in this game when it doesn't in real life.  IRL that was a myth debunked 20 years ago.

Posted by bripat42 on 8/23/2015 12:04:00 PM (view original):
It wasn't your question, but the real "horror show" with Morrow is the contract you "battled" for. It's too late to do anything about it now, but there's no good reason I can think of to pay a pitcher like that more than $378K, and even then I'd only sign him to league minimum if the team was a renovation project and needed a short-term innings eater.

The reason is simple. Think about the old cliche about the first thing to do when you find yourself in a hole: Stop digging. Having to rely on a bad pitcher during a renovation project is bad enough, but paying him big money to be bad is insane.

Morrow's control and pitch ratings are solid, but they're not nearly enough to overcome the combination of being left-handed (and facing mostly right-handed batters) with a sub-60 vsR and sub-40 velocity. Using him will hurt your chances to win far more than it will help your chances, and you've dug yourself a deeper hole by agreeing to pay him an average of $6.7M per season over 5 seasons to hurt you.

This is the surprising thing to me.  He sucked.  I felt that way as I gave him the contract, but I wasn't aware until later that the game disfavors lefties.  You're probably right, but there was no one better available (under 34) and there was nothing on this team.   At least the last season is a team option...so there's that.

Posted by dedelman on 8/23/2015 4:36:00 PM (view original):
It's not a good team, but you knew that.  A few comments:

In general, you want better coaches than you are using.  Look at successful teams and see what their coaches' ratings are.  The patience rating is very important for coaches; a coach with a patience rating of zero is a real problem.

In general, you can get better value for your buck by emphasizing defense.  Your D is actually much better than the guy who preceded you in that franchise; keep that trend up and look for even more defense.  

Your SPs are scary bad; you're running a bunch of very marginal major league pitchers out there and your last SP is going to struggle at AAA.  The most important pitching ratings are VsR, control, VsL, P1; P2 and GB/FB are worth looking at.  For a major league pitcher, a rating of 70 is marginal, and 75 is average; a pitcher with control or VsR much less than 70 will need other ratings to be noticeably higher than 70 to be a good major league pitcher.  

Essentially all player development occurs in the first 3-4 seasons after draft or international signing.  Players who are more than 3 years from that point have little development left; more than 4 year very little.  Don't expect much development, no matter what your projected ratings say, if they have that many pro seasons behind them.

Hope this helps.

I appreciate it.   I actually jettisoned all, but the 1st & 3rd base coaches (where I didn't think it would matter), for bad patience and they're still awful?  LOL!

Posted by rogelio on 8/23/2015 8:17:00 PM (view original):

Posted by a_ersberg on 8/22/2015 3:48:00 PM (view original):
Remember, the ratings are out of 100.  So if you're using guys with ratings of 60's, 50s... they are batting practice.

Go to the edit rosters page, and click on a position of a player.  It will give you the fielding recommendations.   Jim Minor would be an amazing BL shortstop- his bat sucks yes but sometimes you sacrifice hitting to get a SS with ratings like that.    

Omar Browning and Yank Mayne are decent hitters, and much better than who you're using in the ML's now.  

Higher ratings good.  Lower ratings bad.  

Browning batted the Mendoza line when I signed him as a cheap FA (his history is all terrible and he isn't performing that well at AAA either) and neither he nor Yank seem to have ratings to play any position.

I appreciate the thought on the SS.  I guess it makes sense to bring in a great glove at SS, but why would defense, at SS in particular, make that big a difference in this game when it doesn't in real life.  IRL that was a myth debunked 20 years ago.

HBD gives you real numbers to work with that can't be disputed when compared to ratings.    MLB doesn't have real ratings that run the game.    Use the HBD numbers to figure things out.

Posted by rogelio on 8/23/2015 8:09:00 PM (view original):

Posted by dyoungquist on 8/22/2015 12:15:00 AM (view original):
Don't get bummed out about this season.  Use it as a learning experience.  Very few rookie owners have success their first season.

Advice:  Coach ratings and training budget play a roll in how much your young prospects develop.  For example, your fielding coach is only rated 64 which is below average.  Your position player prospects will only improve 1-3 points (per season) in glove and accuracy ratings with a fielding coach rating that low.  A better fielding coach would get you 3-5 point gains for the same player.  Next season get a better fielding coach although if you go for a top one, be prepared to pay $2-3M for him.  What is your training budget?  The higher the better for young player development and to slow down the decline of older players. If you left it at $10M, that would be a contributing factor to slow player development.

I'm glad for the comments, but the fielding coach is rated 90 with a 69 Patience.  Either you or I are mis-reading something.  I put training & medical up to $14, because that is the limit.  It seems to make no difference whatsoever.

Just learned something-- if you bring up a team's profile, not in your world, the default for the coaches tab is to the season that the world you last saw was in.  So when I click on your team when I've just been in Hot Stove I see your S31 coaches; when I've just been in Fingers I see your S33 coaches, and when I've just been in OCD I see a blank screen.

I retract my comment about your coaches; they're fine.  It was the guy before you who had terrible coaches.  Go with my other comments.