Monday, March 10, 2008

Coach hiring or just shooting in the dark?

One of these days, I'll figure out coach hiring. Just when I think I'm getting there and hire my entire staff, I learn something new that causes me to wish I could do it over again. Lessons I think I've learned so far. Bench coaches - I'm clueless as to what constitutes a good bench coach, but probably discipline, strategy, and ratings to reflect your team emphasis. Hitting - hitting, running, and discipline needed. Pitching and bullpen - pitching and discipline, plus probably some strategy thrown in. 1B - I like a good hitting rating. 3B - discipline and running, with some hitting thrown in for good measure. Fielding - high fielding, discipline, and patience. Of course, my coaches don't reflect this thinking at all since I didn't come to this conclusion until after hiring. Anyone have some different thoughts, suggestions, or observations?

2 comments:

Dave McClain said...

BENCH COACHES
I look at the strategy number first (duh) then patience and/or dicipline, but I can't tell you the exact effect this has. At the minor league level I look at hitting and pitching ratings for my bench coaches and try to alternate levels... LoA bench coach with a good hitting rating, HiA bench coach with a good pitching rating, and so on.

FIELDING
From what I understand the biggest impact on fielding ratings at ALL levels comes from your ML fielding coach. So I don't really look at fielding numbers on any of my minor league coaches.

BASERUNNING
Same as fielding. It trickles down from the ML level so I try to get a 1B coach who has solid baserunning AND hitting numbers. My 3B coach has to have a very good baserunning number.

Hitting and pitching coaches are pretty obvious. I've heard people make the argument for patience and/or dicipline ratings for ML coaches who have young teams, but I haven't seen any HBD data to support it.

There's my 2 cents (ok, so it was more like 2 bucks...) worth.

nfritsch said...

I agree for the most part with bierk. As far as Bench coaches in the Minor's, if I have a draft where my first 4 picks were all pitchers and they are in High A now, then I will try to find a Bench coach for High A with a very high pitching rating. I mold my Minor League coaches to the players they will be coaching, which players I want to develope, etc.

The Fielding coach is very important to me b/c he affects every level, not just the Major league level. Fielding is a position that I will definitely overspend for.

I don't worry much about strategy except for my Major league Bench coach and maybe a little on my 1B and 3B coach, but not much. I don't care about strategy for my Minor league Bench coaches, I am more worried about player development at the Minor league level then I am actually winning.

That's about it I guess, I value discipline quite a bit along with patience at the Minor League level, not so much at the Major league level.

That's my couple cents worth....