Agreed. I have yet to read an MLB memoir where the star did not credit their success to one or more coaches that had them at a pivotal point in their career. Perhaps this was all fluff or perhaps they are all just wrong... but intuitively, it makes sense to me. That said, i guess the counter argument is that by the time they are in a professional league, proper coaching has far less of an effect. Again i would disagree.
I had the privilege of watching a coach work with a still youngish adam dunn and from what i observed, this coach (no I will not name him since I am not trying to dime out a coach with this... merely use him as an example) had a detrimental effect on Dunn's results because Dunn was so much in his head trying to do what that coach asked that he lost a lot of his confidence at the plate. I mention this to say, even if you disagree that a good coach can help development... you have to accept that a bad coach can hurt it.
westofyou (10-18-2022)
That is a very naive viewpoint. Do you think all white league ML players succeeded “on their own”? You must see that a lot of them would have been on the bench or not even in the league in favor of superior black and Latino players who were not allowed to play in the ML.
MLB has a long history of “helping” certain players at the expense of others.
All my posts are my opinion - just like yours are. If I forget to state it and you're too dense to see the obvious, look here!
Coaching, opportunity and athletic ability are all intertwined. Is your point is that good players are just naturally good, without any help, and players that show weaknesses early in their development cannot improve?
Josh Hamilton was born to play baseball, and yet he needed a ton of help to make the majors.
Last edited by Betterread; 10-18-2022 at 06:42 PM.
Kingspoint (10-18-2022)
My point is players mostly become what they are going to be based on their own ability and work ethic. Coaches assist in that process in a minor way by taking time with guys and arranging extra hitting or defense drills, but I don’t believe that hey have some magic skill that turns bad players into good ones. When players are crediting coaches, it’s because they are acknowledging the time taken to work with players not because they have some special techniques that turns Clark Kent into Superman. Any coach has the ability to take time to work with guys. The players are the ones creating the improvement, so I don’t think it matters that much who the coach is as long as he’s not derelict in his duties.
All my posts are my opinion - just like yours are. If I forget to state it and you're too dense to see the obvious, look here!
Honestly, I think bad coaching hurts a prospect more than good coaching helps.
Homer Bailey had horrible coaching … and everyone blamed him for being “uncoachable.” But by his own words, he had six different coaches telling him six different things - sometimes the exact opposite of what other coaches were telling him.
“I think I throw the ball as hard as anyone. The ball just doesn't get there as fast.” — Eddie Bane
“We know we're better than this ... but we can't prove it.” — Tony Gwynn
If we had the same coaching and training staff from 1997, we’d have a bunch of guys throwing up 88-92 and hoping for weak ground balls.
Maybe you could argue within the parameters of mlb employed coaches at any given moment in time, the differences from top to bottom are negligible, but I think it’s clear players don’t just exist and develop on their own little island.
Again, I don't think any athlete, coach, or sports professional would agree with this.
You need talent-- lots of it-- to get to the major leagues. You also need good coaching that can develop you into a quality player, help develop your pitches (or batting stance or defensive footwork or approach or any of the hundreds of little things that make you better) or just improve your approach. It's mental and physical too-- and 90% pitching and the other half hitting. You need to be really lucky as well. And largely healthy.
None of that stuff is mutially exclusive, of course.
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