Assign a player to Boot Camp

[cheekimonk]

First, it would be beyond awesome if we could assign players to Winter League play. But that's actually an active discussion on the OOTP forums and it would definitely have to be implemented in the code...I have no idea how one would manually calculate progress (or regression, career-ending injury, being kidnapped for ransom, etc.) of a prospect who plays Winter ball.

With that out of the way, this has always frustrated the hell out of me: Here's pitcher Herman Mitchell. At 12/12/10 (12/12/12 potential) he's borderline useless as it is, but he's not completely useless. When you have two starters go down with torn rotator cuffs - one for 4 months and the other for 9 months - Mitchell is the kind of guy just hanging around dominating AAA hitters and drinking beer. What kills me is that with a FB, CRV, and CNG at 13/14/13 he can be effective for stretches...at least moreso than his base ratings would indicate. But then he has a Slider rated at 5 (that's raw 5, not 5/10). In real life, someone in AA would have run and/or fined that pitch out of his system. No player would make it to AAA, much less ML, with one pitch rated that low.

So what if I could send a guy like Mitchell to offseason Boot Camp? Basically I'm calling up an old-school pitching coach who's going to spend a month with Herman fine tuning his mechanics but mostly beating him with a cane every time he throws a slider, grips the ball like a slider, or even says the word slider. He'll even beat him for eating sliders at Krystal's/White Castle. Mitchell comes back with no more slider and some other random effects (maybe his Loyalty dropped two levels out of resentment and his movement dropped 2 points). This would obviously be VERY expensive for me (in terms of $$'s in real life, in terms of PP in MBWBA).

We could also implement something similar for hitters, but I can't think of an example of what you would want to send a hitter to boot camp to fix. Maybe increase his Eye talent with electroshock every time he swings at a ball out of the zone?

[blake]

He has high intelligence so maybe he learned that slider at some point. There are a lot of players in real life that can throw a certain pitch but they're not good at it. They may throw one or two a game. Mike Pelfrey, for example, tried to throw a curveball last season a couple times in a game I remember.

I don't think it hurts performance in OOTP to have a low rated pitch like the slider that Mitchell has. I think the game treats it like it doesn't exist. And over time it might get better just like in real life when they work on it.

I've noticed a fourth or fifth pitch really makes a difference too. Thats why I think players like Bobby Robertson that have 6 or more pitches are really valuable. Especially if theyre all 5 or higher. Ive been keeping my eye on Robertson because if he gets a boost anywhere he could be a good starter some day with 6 pitches like that.

[cheekimonk]

Hmmm...my thought was that it would hurt depending on how often he throws the slider. A guy like him doesn't have a lot of room for error. But I guess you're right in that he could use it wisely...throwing it on an 0-2 or 1-2 count when he wasting a pitch anyway. My 4-seam curve was a knee-buckler, but my 2-seam curve was meat. I would still throw the 2-seamer 6 or 7 times to let the best hitters see it and maybe start looking for it (glory days...). No way to tell how often Mitchell tries that slider unless it's in game logs.

[blake]

Yeah theres no telling what they throw. It doesn't get that detailed. I don't think he would program it to punish a pitcher for having bad pitches though. It would be assumed he wouldn't throw it if it was still a bad pitch. But it's something he works on on the side.

And maybe if the pitching coach is good to legendary theres a better chance of improving the pitch. Things that would make sense in real life are usually programmed in I've noticed.