Taking time out from election coverage to chime in...
I, too, am against releasing all the coaches. That would be disastrously inflationary and unnecessarily punish those teams without big wads of loose cash at this point.
However, I also see the point about the change in talent base on coaches. I, myself, not a tools guy, ends up with one. Ugh.
Allow me to propose this alternative. Allow each team to release ONE member of their staff for this year and next. That should cut down on the inflationary pressure and move things forward in as best a way as we can.
I posted this here instead of in the last post because I think, like Mack does, that this requires more debate than it would get there.
I do not think that is a bad idea. We do now have many many more managers, coaches and trainers (hitting and pitching for all minor leagues), we might want to make that number higher than one a season.
ReplyDeleteI am in favor of releasing all of the coaches/managers/scouts/trainers.
ReplyDeleteSimply put, to have these staff members assigned randomly isn't good for a league continuing from 10+ seasons. I, for one, signed coaches and minor league managers in 6.5 to contracts I intended to honor, and I paid well for those talented coaches.
To be stuck with mediocre (at best) staff members without any recourse isn't fair.
Yes, it may be inflationary, but so is free agency every season, and that hasn't killed the league yet.
Maybe it would be helpful if Mack/Nate could explain in greater detail what they are concerned about.
ReplyDeleteNate: The problem with your proposal is that just dropping one coach isn't really solving the problem. If your hitting coach is the guy I want (or need), then I have no recourse if you dropped your bench coach.
ReplyDeletePerhaps we could have an infusion of cash for all teams to fund this "inflationary" time, but I think we should release them all, or release none and live with it.
I obviously vote to release all.
I'm not going to go into, entirely, your reply, Nate, but I would be willing to discuss re-doing Free Agency and the draft from this past offseason. (AKA, replay everything that was done after 1/1/2013.)
ReplyDeleteYour comment about players on the roster (Thomas Cohen) doesn't really work because, by and large, they're the same as they were before. Sure, there are a few discrepancies (Hello, John Stalvey! Ugh, Marvin Heilman!), but at least they're the same players! The coaches/scouts bear no resemblance at all to the staff any of us had before the switch-over.
And, the cash balance is enough for each team to sign coaches. I may or may not outlay $5m on a pitching coach (especially when there are managers and bench coaches who seem to have equal pull in the making of a pitching staff), but each team has the money to do so. I may want to spend $5m on a coach instead of a free agent, other teams might choose otherwise.
What I meant by "you have the guy I want" is that if we only can dump one coach/scout, we'll end up with a crappy pool of available staff, much like how the expansion draft way-back-when was full of unwanted castoffs.
My objections against the coaching free agency free-for-all that has been proposed are essentially the same reasons that sports owners have had against suggestions that every player be a free agent every year. The accepted understanding of what occurs in such a situation is that it is very inflationary, Salaries rise dramatically out of control as all owners bid against everyone else for all of their coaches at once.
ReplyDeleteCombined with the basic financial imbalances noted by Nate, I think the suggestion is far more unfair and destructive than accepting the new status quo.
If necessary, I could try to find some further discussion of the inflationary results of this proposal.
I understand Michael's feelings on this, that he unfairly lost a competitive advantage. On the other hand, I also think his coaching cadre resulted from the extraordinarily high merchandising income that he was gifted with since the league began, an advantage no one else has had. So, I don't feel extraordinarily heartbroken over it either.
Lots of strange things happen during version changes, some good and some bad. I regard the coaching as just part of the breaks of the game, which need to be dealt with and overcome.
P.S. If you look at Sherman Wheeler before and after the switch to version 6 in 2007, it's apparent that he was not the same pitcher before and after the version change. He had the same name, but he became dramatically better for no observable or justifiable reason. I had one pitcher who went the other direction. They're not necessarily the same players at all. We'll all see if the same random effects occur with this switch.
Some good points raised on both sides. I don't know if it is even possible to do this, but would a coaching salary cap help achieve some middle ground?
ReplyDeleteI don't think the issue is the amount a player might wish to spend on coaches, though as an aside I'll say the days of paying $5MM for one seems gone. The game seems to give individual coaches less impact and TEAMS of coaches more.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, the issue here is talent distribution of coaches. I offered a compromise, Michael countered, and now Matt has offered a third way. I have doubts about a salary cap because it would have to be, in my understanding, manually administered and the point of OOTP9 seems to be LESS manual administration and more player empowerment. I don't want to denigrate your suggestion, Matt, but I see the headache factor raising its head on this one.
I find myself also concurring with Mack about player talent growth and loss during the switch. It would have been great had everything gone evenhandedly during the swap but apparently that's not the case (though knowing that is now more complicated). I gained with Frank Wooster, yay for me, but I lost awesomely with Mark Deschamp. This went to such an extreme that a moderately talented but slipped relief pitcher was a such a liability that I elected to release him and eat $4.5MM in salary hit rather than keep him around. I also lost a bit with Gregorio Marzano. He's no longer a dominant power hitting 1B. He's moved into the very-good-but-not-great level. It's just one of those things that we're going to have to live with.
Nate: My point about the players is that it tends to even out. At least on my own roster, a few players (mostly prospects) aren't as talented as they were, but a few players made a Wheeler-esque leap and -- if my scout is to be believed -- ready for prime time.
ReplyDeleteMatt's idea for a salary cap isn't a bad idea for the first cycle. I'd certainly be willing to play along with it to keep things somewhat fair. The argument isn't to get the best coaches on my team, it's to get the coaches we want on our teams. We selected our players, they weren't randomly assigned like the coaches were, and are, by my estimation, 95% unchanged.
If we want to discuss something about the changed players, we should have a discussion about that, too. But, this thread (and my original suggestion) was solely about the coaches and scouts, trainers, etc. The fact that Mark Deschamp isn't the elite reliever he was has nothing to do with the fact that your pitching coach (and everyone else's) were invented out of whole cloth and aren't 95% the same as before, but closer to 0%.