FanPost

Player development strategies

I am very interested in the Pirates new player development strategies.  It is definitely a great idea to have system-wide level concepts and consistent instruction as players move up the system.  For example, a pitcher should not be told to change his arm angle every other season.  One concern that I have about this is exactly how much leeway individual coaches are given to come up with and implement their own ideas and generally use their own initiative.  I feel that anytime you have a large centrally-run system where everyone follows the prescribed "rule book", you potentially lose a major edge - namely the creative brilliance of your employees, in this case the creative brilliance of our coaches.  Obviously, this probably doesn't apply to our existing player development personnel.  However, I think it's one reason why Jewett isn't coming back, basically his unwillingness to become an automaton.  Such a centralized, we have established protocols for everything from batting stance to how many sunflower seeds a player can eat in a game, system is a good idea when your coaches are completely incompetent, as many of ours likely are.  However, I feel like the ideal scenario is one in which we hire excellent coaches, instruct the coaches on how we want to do things, and let them use their creativity and initiative to help us attain excellence in player development.  Anybody got thoughts on this, in particular, how do good developmental
systems operate?

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