Good coach, good player=bad fit?????

Seems each coach probably has a certain style and philosophy which may or may not resonate with a particular player. This might be why it's good to visit a school you are serious about in order to attend practice or camp with that coach just to get a real-life feel for his approach and demeanor and communication style.

One things for sure. No matter where you go to play college baseball the player will have to adjust to the coaching style not the other way around. I do believe it is very important to meet the coaches not just the guy recruiting you. The coach that is going to have the most contact with you is your posistion coach. That is the guy that you want to get a good feel for.

Sometimes players underperform. At first glance, just by what was written, I would say that is the case. A coach, especially a proven veteran coach, should not be expected to change for one good player. The thirty players or so on the roster should be expected to get on the same page as the coaching staff, though. It is virtually impossible for a coach to try to get on the same page as every player.

.
Would agree..

IMO...A "good" coach for one player is not necessarily a "good" coach for another. When we looked at college coaches I saw lots of coaches who were very successful...and who I know would have been be terrible fits for my sons. Autocrats, and thsoe who were obviously so impressed with their own success that they could no longer see why they had been successful in the first place.

For me communication is so key and there is an emotional and style fit to take into major consideration. The wrong fit can shut down the communication process particularly when challeneges are encountered, as they always are.

44
.

Recently saw an interesting case. Several players had done well under Coach X. Coach X leaves the university, Coach Y takes over. The same players do poorly under Coach Y during his first season. The players transfer to Coach X's school the following year. They are now performing well again.

Correlation is not the same as causality, but it is interesting.

quote:

A coach, especially a proven veteran coach, should not be expected to change for one good player.

Interesting point. Why not????
I run a business employing very talented professionals and I treat every one differently trying to maximize their strengths. The talents of each person in my business are different and I want each to succeed, maximally. Why would that be different for a coach. BTW, I am not limiting this to college. I am including minor league ball also.

You see this all the time in professional sports as well. Look at Kobe Bryant and Phil Jackson during their first time together.

The one flaw I see in alot of coaches is that they don;t coach the talent, they coach the system and sometimes that just does not work. They'll try and force a square peg into a round hole. I don't notice it as much in baseball, but it is very prevalent (sp?) in other sports.

quote:

Originally posted by Coach May:
One things for sure. No matter where you go to play college baseball the player will have to adjust to the coaching style not the other way around. I do believe it is very important to meet the coaches not just the guy recruiting you. The coach that is going to have the most contact with you is your posistion coach. That is the guy that you want to get a good feel for.

Good point. It is very important to meet and build a relationship with the coach you will be spending 90% of your time with while at school. That coach may not be the coach who is recruiting you.

JMO, I think that a really good coach is one that is able to make adjustments for his players. A really good player is one who can make adjusts for his coaches.

quote:

Originally posted by infielddad:

quote:

A coach, especially a proven veteran coach, should not be expected to change for one good player.

Interesting point. Why not????
I run a business employing very talented professionals and I treat every one differently trying to maximize their strengths. The talents of each person in my business are different and I want each to succeed, maximally. Why would that be different for a coach. BTW, I am not limiting this to college. I am including minor league ball also.

What I said was that the coach shouldn't change for one player. I do agree with you that a good coach should treat each player differently. Those are two different things, I believe.

THis is no different from getting a first job. You can really never be certain from the interviews if the situation will work out to you highest expectations, you can only guesstimate---

Once you work the job you find out what is really important to your managers/supervisors, yourself and whether or not you really fit into their system.

btw any manager that doesn't adjust to his/her employees/players will never maximize the performance of his/her team. Change or get runover.

The key for a player in college is to be in a program where his talents are utilized to the fullest---in other words if you are a fleet outfielder with gap power you want to be in a program that likes those kind of players---if you are speedy on the bases do they play a running and stealing game ?

This is the toughest thing to explain to players and parents---a coach may not have interest in you simply because you do not fit into his manner of game plan You can be a very fine player but you don't fit the team mold of players

On our own team for example we look for speed---all three of our outfielders had below 7.0 footspeed as did both our middle infielders

It again comes down to a matter of doing your homework

TR,
That was a really good post.

quote:

Originally posted by CollegeParent:
btw any manager that doesn't adjust to his/her employees/players will never maximize the performance of his/her team. Change or get runover.

Perhaps some of us are not percieving the use of the word 'change' in the same way. A coach/manager/leader can not possibly change who he is, what he values, etc., every time he has a change in personnel.

Gordie Gillespie hasn't changed, Mike Krzyzewski hasn't changed, etc. They treat each player as an individual, though. They don't get run over.

An employee, an athlete.....they must buy into the value system of their coaches, leaders, employers, or they will be the ones getting run over by their peers who do buy into it.

Maybe I'm missing something??

While it is important to initially understand a coaches makeup, I feel a player/coach relationship are not built on a couple of meetings, it is built with time, player concessions, and a players ability to make adjustments to a coach. A coach has too much on his plate, and as players move in and out of a program he cannot make adjustments for every players moods and/or needs. Team building is based upon coaching leadership and it is up to the player to adjust or move on. A coach can adjust to a teams needs but not a specific players whims. Results will dictate whether or not a coach has done his job, but this is a business and the business is building one team. If a coach has to adjust to a player he is cheating the rest of the team.

At the same time a coach is not the only person a student/athlete has to build relationships with. Every semester there are 4-5 new professors and T/A's that relationships have to be established with. They are the ones that are punching your ticket. While it may appear to some that a players day is be consumed with baseball thoughts, the reality is that you are there for school and that at least 60% your day is dealing with "other than" baseball people. While the coach is an important factor he is not the only factor. That "bad fit" may expand in the other direction also. A student/athlete needs to adjust to the environment not the environment adjusting to the student/athlete.

If the player is good and could be a difference I am sure the coach will do some changes in his style, not to please the player, but to win games.
A good coach is the one that gets the maximum of the team he has.

I don’t know if anyone remembers this, but its only a few years ago.

JP Howell came out of HS as perhaps the best HS pitcher in Ca history, and certainly one of the most sought after. After taking a ride to USC and performing extremely well in his first fall, when it came time to pitch in the spring, everything went south. Things he was told would happened and did in the fall, didn’t happen in the spring, and although he didn’t exactly stink, he certainly didn’t look like the P he’d been.

He lost his ship to USC, but Augie gave him a ride at UT, and the rest is pretty much history. Was he the best college pitcher ever? No. But for someone who could only get the ball up there at 88 on his best day, he sure got a lot of acclaim his 2 years at UT, plus it got him a 7 figure signing bonus.

Anyone can think what they like, but I sure read a lot of what USC fans were saying during those 2 years about the USC coach, and not much of it was good! What it boiled down to was it was the coach’s way or the highway, and he chose the highway where he got a coach who was much more flexible.

Does that mean the USC coach sucks? Not even a little bit! But, it does show that there are some players who do not perform as good as they can in an autocratic system. But it should also be said that there are certainly some players who perform better in that situation because they need the strict discipline.

But IMHO, coaches at schools like that are the exception. USC was gonna get 5 more great Ps who may not have been as good, but they certainly weren’t bad either. And UT was gonna win whether they had him or not. They might not have won as much, but the program was gonna still be very strong because they’d get more than their share of studs too.

So, coaches in those kinds of programs can get away without making concessions to players. But coaches in lesser programs have to learn how to be a bit more adaptable, or they’ll find they can’t keep all the players they could.

I’ve been told by one of LaRussa’s favorite players, that the one thing he did really well, was treat his players the way he knew they wanted to be treated better than most other managers, without allowing it to affect the way he treated other players. IOW, he could kiss one player’s butt while jumping down another’s throat, but he didn’t do it where everyone else knew what he was doing.

A coach and player fit. Son is a Freshman this year. We did all of the "right" things, visited the school, met with the coach (established), went to a practice, spoke with the coach on the phone. Son decided this was the program and coach he wanted to play with and took their offer. At the end of July we went up for Orientation and there was a note from the AD that we needed to see him ASAP upon registration. He tells us that the coach was no longer with the program and that they were in the process of hiring a new coach. New coach is hired in September. Nice guy I guess but son says it's a weird fit. Told him it was up to him to adjust to the new coach. Honestly he is a freshman already getting playing time but sometimes you don't get what you plan for.

An analogy. Years ago I could go out and buy a pair of pants and they fit, at least I thought they did. I'd get home wear them for a while, put them in the washer/dryer and all of a sudden I didn't like the fit anymore. I had to go buy another. Soon I was spending more time trying to find that perfect fit than doing what I should be doing and that was enjoying the ones I had. Today I buy a lot of elastic waist bands because it allows me to enjoy the fit regardless of the changes.

Some may be scratching their head or wondering if rz1 fell on his, but, I truly believe that the college career is too short to second guess yourself at every corner. Yes there are those instances that change has to be made. But, through life we have to learn to adapt and at least attempt to adjust. I feel that a majority of players that do not and feel good about their fit will look back when they get older and say they did not make much effort to make it work.

The other rz1 sticks his head out this Sybil personality and says.

I remember my first girlfriend, she said all the right things, made me feel like a king. We hit it off right then and there, it was great, it was us forever, there couldn't be a better couple, my parents liked her, it was the perfect fit.... Then we "really" got to know each other and what each other "really" wanted .

My point here is that relationships are not built on that first meeting when a coach sits in your living room and then calls you each week to make sure he's the one. It's built on time, soul searching, and the level of willingness to adjust. In this example those decisions many times have to made before all data is collected. In the end my advise would be take off those rose colored glasses that coaches try to sell and take a selfish look at what you want out of your college experience, be honest to yourself first, because that makes it much easier to accept the responsibility of your decisions.

Good fit? since when is the coach supposed to change because of a player?

Will
Do you think that a coach that like speed baseball, bunt, hit and run, will do it that way after learnning that his players are slow runners and power hitters. If the coach it is not able to change strategy according with his players ability it is not a good coach.

Recab,
I agree but I think Will may be talking of changing the way he has to adapt to a player/coach relationship different than the rest of the team. That's what I've gotten out this thread at least.

Most coaches bring in players to fit their style---at least that has been my experience

I am going to try and see if I can give a few illustrations to highlight, hopefully, a bit better, the point I am trying to make.
I will say there are a lot of great posts, even as general as I left this topic, which shows the quality of the posters on the HSBBW.
Many of us have posted about Oregon St. I, for one, post a lot about how I love their speed/pressure game. But, if I recall correctly, I first saw that when that team showed up in Sunken Diamond in 2005. They were electric. In 2003, they were none of those things. So, did the coach change his style or did the players he recruited change it for him? Does it matter? I guess it does if you were a guy recruited under the 2003 system and you get run right off the team.
A more subtle example is the son of a friend in minor league ball. I would say the young man is talented but certainly will never be the first or second guy you notice when watching a game. You might say he is solid.
Turns out the kid is a real grinder. Gets to the field early and takes extra BP/infield and is always in the cages late when everyone has gone home. Along the way, he has always had coaches who got there early and stay as late as he needs.
Gets a new assignment where the manager has been in baseball for years and been very successful. New manager does not get there anywhere near as early and does not stay late. If you are a grinder, you grind on your time, not his. End result, team still wins, the player who has been successful gets less reps and struggles with the bat and on the field. Player gets moved, new coaches are there early and stay late, player grinds and quality improves with the bat and with the glove.
In college, a player and his family may have some choices. I thought this topic and the illustrations might be of help. In minor league ball, you don't have choices. You learn what you need to get better, and you learn how to do that in every environment...or you fail, get released or get traded. Luckily, our friend ended up with a terrific manager and group of coaches who truly helped him learn how his grinding and extra work was a necessary part of his success. Also gave him guidance on how to get it done, when it didn't come directly through the coaching staff.

IMO - This is really a great topic with alot of very insightful posts - and a topic that could really help parents understand what they should try to look for - as best they can - in a college program and a head coach.

It strikes home with me - because of what my eldest son went through.

Fact is - we never considered this aspect of the recruiting process.

It is very important and should not be overlooked.

IMO

I think we would all be a bit ignorant to think that every player will mesh with every coach. Players are different; sometimes it's their personalities, sometimes it's simply the way in which they respond to positive and negative reinforcement. As a coach, I try to adjust the way I treat each kid - fairly, but in a way to best help that young man to succeed. However, some kids simply are "good" kids that can't (or won't) respond to coaching.
I had a young man in basketball this winter who was an honor student and a kid I really liked. Unfortunately, his arrogance and unwillingness to humble himself let him to not accept my coaching in a way that would have allowed him to be successful. I treated him with respect and still like him....but he simply had too big a head without the tools to match, and no amount of "coaching" on my part could change that.

This has been an excellent evolution of a topic that has been brought up before on the HSBBW in other, perhaps more restrictive, topics.

What are the qualities of a "good coach"? It probably varies with the age of the players being coached but there are some characteristics that are universal. A teacher, most certaintly. A role model, highly likely. Knowledge of the sport he/she coaches, extremely desirable. Someone who understands and respects his/her players, undoubtedly.

Then there are other characteristics that might be more questionable depending on the age of the players. A "winner"? Who really cares at the lower age levels if the kids are learning? A "disciplinarian"? What does this mean to you? Does it mean that his players are always focused and "in the game" when crunch time comes or does it mean that he screams and shouts during practice and games when someone makes a mental mistake or an error. Does it mean that the players are one for all and all for one and play like a team or does it mean that each player shows outward respect for each of his coaches by always saying no sir and yes sir and treating every practice in a business like manner?

This could go on and on [and someday I will]. But the question to ask yourself as a player *or a parent of a player* before you decide that THIS SCHOOL is the place/fit I want to [my son should] attend and play baseball for is, is this group of people that will be coaching me [my son] for the next very formative 4 or 5 years of my [my son's] life the type/kind of human beings I want (my son) to learn from; not only about baseball but about the much more complicated lessons of life? Do these people represent and espouse the virtues and values I *our family* hold most reverent?

If you cannot answer this question with the group of coaches you or your child is leaning towards, do not decide to go there until you can answer that question.

TW344

quote:

Originally posted by TW344:
What are the qualities of a "good coach"? It probably varies with the age of the players being coached but there are some characteristics that are universal. A teacher, most certaintly. A role model, highly likely. Knowledge of the sport he/she coaches, extremely desirable. Someone who understands and respects his/her players, undoubtedly.

Oh if only everyone shared your view of what a “good coach” was. Although I’m pretty much in agreement with you, there are some folks who would take issue with you, and therein lies the problem. Everyone will never agree, except in the most general of ways.

quote:

Originally posted by TW344: A "winner"? Who really cares at the lower age levels if the kids are learning

Again, oh if that were only true for everyone. All anyone need do to see if people at lower levels “really care” about winning, is go to any discussion board where the main focus is on prepubescent players, and make the statement that winning doesn’t make any difference, and no one should care. I suspect it won’t take very long before you find yourself in a war.

There are a lot of folks who might say winning doesn’t make any difference, but when push comes to shove and they’re faced with watching Jr lose consistently, even though he may be learning a great deal, the tune will usually change.

At the College Level:

Good Player - Good/Winning Coach = Bad Fit???

If this seems to be the case -- and if the player is not receiving playing time ---should the player seek outside coaching/training on his own time???? What is your guess on how many College Players seek help from private coaches / trainers / advisors when confronted with the above.

quote:

Originally posted by HRDAD:
At the College Level:

Good Player - Good/Winning Coach = Bad Fit???

If this seems to be the case -- and if the player is not receiving playing time ---should the player seek outside coaching/training on his own time???? What is your guess on how many College Players seek help from private coaches / trainers / advisors when confronted with the above.

Judging by what I’ve seen of players seeking out their own private coaching, I’ve got to guess that every one of the top level players do it, or at least he vast majority, and that’s even if they are getting enough PT.

Baseball players are very reluctant to just quit using a PC they’ve used for years and have established a great relationship with, and why should they? Its darned tough to find someone like that!

Although it is possible to get in a position where a team coach/coaches are very good, IMHO, its just plain silly to stop seein’ someone who’s been helping you for a lot of years. the reason for that is, no one, and I mean NO ONE, has all the best answers for everyone!

quote:

I’ve got to guess that every one of the top level players do it, or at least he vast majority, and that’s even if they are getting enough PT."

Vast Majority? What about the player who is playing out of state? Seems they must be at a huge disadvantage - difficult to bring your PC along

quote:

Originally posted by HRDAD:
Vast Majority? What about the player who is playing out of state? Seems they must be at a huge disadvantage - difficult to bring your PC along

From what I’ve heard from some of the local PC’s, whenever the players come home to visit, the 1st thing they do is head back to the ol’ coach for a tune up. Other things that have happened in the past are, some pretty sizable phone bills, but with modern technology, its pretty easy to send video over the WWW, or at least a CD/DVD mailed. My son’s old PC now has a set up where his old students can hook up a web cam and fire him real time video!

Players don’t necessarily need to see PC’s every day to get help. If they’re in that dire of straights, they prolly dead meat anyway.

And sometimes PC’s don’t even need to see what’s going on! A few questions will very often get them in the ball park so to speak, where they can help the student get back on track. Often its something between the ears rather than a physical change that’s caused something to go haywire.

quote:

sometimes you don't get what you plan for

If I had known so many years ago to have a personal coach. On that note i remember one of my pitchers balking 2 times in an inning. I asked what the hell he was doing. He prefaced his remark with "my pitching instructor told me"

PC's / Trainers / Advisors

Lots of $$$ involved here. Should the poor player go pro out of HS rather than accepting the scholarship to attend college if unable to afford the extra help needed to compete at this level?

quote:

Originally posted by HRDAD:
PC's / Trainers / Advisors

Lots of $$$ involved here. Should the poor player go pro out of HS rather than accepting the scholarship to attend college if unable to afford the extra help needed to compete at this level?

Are you saying that a player who signs right out of HS couldn’t compete in any college program?

quote:

Are you saying that a player who signs right out of HS couldn’t compete in any college program?

The key word is "any". In some of the top College programs - many if not most of their top recruits were either drafed out of HS or could have been drafted out of HS if not for their large scholarship and commitment to attend college.

That being said ... is it possible that a college player in a top program is at a disadvantage if the player does not have access to a private coach or trainer that the "other" (vast majority) of top players have and use????

quote:

Originally posted by HRDAD:
That being said ... is it possible that a college player in a top program is at a disadvantage if the player does not have access to a private coach or trainer that the "other" (vast majority) of top players have and use????

IMHO, it is likely they’d be at a perceived disadvantage, but as to whether or not that is a real disadvantage in most situations, I seriously doubt it.

Most of the time, when you start talking about high end coaches, there’s always differences, but those differences are usually very minute, or else they’re so profound, its easy to accept the differences.