Let’s get romantic about baseball: eHarmony for players and coaches.
With reports surfacing in the past couple days about an MLB season taking place in their actual cities with a possible minor league “developmental league” being held at the spring training complexes, I thought it would be a good idea to expand on my Player Development HQ post.
If this developmental league is an actual thing, it presents a few opportunities. I’m not sure exactly what it would look like in terms of how many players would be at the complex. But if financially feasible, all teams would like to be able to pay their minor league staff members, while at the same time not paying them to do nothing.
However many players would get sent to this league, it would give teams the opportunity to create a player-coach compatibility system: eHarmony. With all of the minor leaguers in one place, coaches would be paired with players based on various traits rather than a traditional year where a player is forced to work with a coach depending on the level they are playing in. For example, say that Player A was on track to play in AA this year, but this matching system finds that the coach he would work with best is on the High-A staff. With everyone at the complex for a year, this becomes feasible.
The System
The matching criteria would take various things into consideration:
-Native language
-The player’s needs: Is the focus more skill-specific or approach-based?
-Personality traits between the player and coach
-Previous relationship and results w/ that coach (good or bad?)
-VAK Learning Type (player’s type and coach’s primary method)
-Player preference examples:
-“I need to improve my skills” or “I have the skills and just need to put them to use”
-“I desire a coach who uses more data” or “I desire a coach who uses less data”
-“I want to increase my velocity” and/or “I want to improve my command”
Both players and coaches would take a test to determine the answers to those questions to pair the player’s preferred teaching methods and styles with the coach who best fits them. The Likert Scale (1=Strongly Disagree, 5=Strongly Agree) would be useful for the “Player Preferences” portion.
Below is an example questionnaire from a study conducted at Linfield College of what players could be given. The questions they used for their study are primarily geared toward in-game events, but could easily be tailored to more of a development focus
Importance
While there’s a lack of research specific to matching coaches and players specifically to what my goal is, there are some useful sources out there.
Here is an excerpt from research conducted by the Journal of Sport Behavior:
"If the athletes' goals, personality, and beliefs are consistent with those of their coach, the interaction of the individuals will likely be satisfactory to both parties producing a positive interpersonal atmosphere. Conversely, if the athlete is incompatible with the coach (i.e., the athlete's goals, personality and beliefs are inconsistent with those of the coach), certain psychological needs for the athlete may not be met. This could lead to frustration and loss of self-confidence on the part of the athlete. These feelings may then impact on the athletes' perception and recall of coaching behaviors. An interesting discovery in this study was that as athletes' self-confidence increased, so too did coach-athlete compatibility."
That is one example of how impactful a compatibility system could be in similar sports. Below is part of a conclusion from a study on person-supervisor research in non-sport organizations.
"Highly conscientious employees suffer if they are assigned to work with leaders who are not similarly high in conscientiousness, providing even more reasons to take personality characteristics into account during hiring, placement, and promotion decision processes for both employees and supervisors."
Even the wording makes connections to baseball such as “placement” and “promotion.” Tests can be administered to help determine levels of conscientiousness of both players and coaches.
Recap
One of the downfalls to a system like this would be that it would prevent players from getting out of their comfort zones. While I do think that is an important part of growth, I think optimizing the relationship between player and coach would be more beneficial. Additionally, some coaches would have more eHarmony matches than others. The team would have to make their own judgement on if they want to evenly disperse the players, or not.
All in all, I think creating a system like this would help teams validate continuing to pay their minor league staffs in an abnormal year and potentially benefit the players more than a traditional season would have.
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