Coach's guide to the TPL portal

1Who does what

You do not sign players yourself. You ask, your management approves, and the League Office does the paperwork. Every roster move follows the same three steps:

That is true for signing a player, releasing one, re-signing one whose contract ran out, and trading one. Nothing on your roster changes until the last step.

2The first time you sign in

Go to the portal, sign in with the email your contract was sent to, and you land on your account home.

1. Finish your profile first. The first time you sign in, a box opens asking you to complete your profile. It wants a headshot, a short bio and a quote. Marketing uses all three on the team website and on social, so the sooner it is in, the sooner you show up.
2. Photo quality matters. Use a clear, well-lit photo of just you, shoulders up, taken on a phone in good light. A cropped team picture will look bad blown up on the site.
3. The bio gets cleaned up. Write it in your own words. It gets tidied for grammar and length before it goes on the site — the facts stay yours.
4. Hit Submit. You get a green check and land back on your account home. Marketing picks it up from there; you do not have to send anything to anybody.
5. Open your team page. From your account home, open My Team. That is the page the rest of this guide is about.

3Your team page, column by column

Your team page is one long list, split into sections. A player sits in exactly one of them, and he moves down the page as things happen. Top of the page shows your team name and how many players you have under contract out of 40.

4Looking a player up

Click a player's name anywhere on the page and his full profile opens underneath the row. Click it again to close it. You get:

In the Available players pool the rows also carry short tags that tell you how interested he already is:

PICKED ONLY YOUR TEAM he named your team and nobody else.
PICKED YOUR TEAM your team is on his list.
LOCAL TO YOU he lives close enough to commute.
NEEDS HOUSING somebody has to put him up, and he cannot be signed until that is done. The line tells you which managed team is nearest him.

5Asking to sign a player

This is the one you will do most. It takes about fifteen seconds.

1. Scroll to Available players and find him — type a name, school or position into the search box.
2. Click his name first if you want to see his phone, his school and whether he needs housing. Talk to him before you ask for him.
3. Click Request to sign on his row.
4. Pick the contract length: Full Season, 1st Half, 2nd Half or 10-Day. A 10-Day also asks for a start date.
5. Click Send request. He disappears from the pool and turns up under Requested — waiting on management approval.

From there the Player Acquisition Manager either approves it, and the contract goes out to the player — he moves to Contract sent — or declines it, and you get told why.

Two things worth doing while you wait: keep talking to him, and check the Contract sent section. Once the contract is out, his phone and email sit right on the row and chasing him down is on you. A contract nobody signs is a roster spot you are not using.

6Release, re-sign and trade

These three buttons sit on every signed player. All three are requests — same chain as signing, nothing changes on your roster until Baseball Operations actions it.

Request release

Pick a reason — Injury, Shut down by coach, Quit (left for another team), Moved to another league by coach, or Other — and add a line or two in the box explaining it. The reason is what the League Office needs to handle his contract properly, so be straight about it. "Other" without an explanation gets sent back to you.

Request re-sign

Use this on a player under Contract ended. Pick the contract length you want him on — Full Season, 1st Half, 2nd Half or 10-Day — and send it. The new term is applied when it is approved; he keeps his number and his place on the roster, and he does not go through onboarding again.

Request trade

Pick the receiving team from the list and send it. The other coach sees the trade in his own queue and accepts or declines; the Player Acquisition Manager and Baseball Operations still have to sign off. You can cancel a trade you offered up until it is actioned.

7After a player signs

The second he signs, three things happen on their own: he is added to your roster, he gets his onboarding email, and he is added to the team GroupMe. You do not have to do any of that.

What is left is yours — four boxes on his row under Signed:

A row where all four are green is a player who is fully set up. A row with gaps is a job somebody still has to do.

Each signed player also carries a fee badge on his row, next to his school:

FEE NOT BILLED YET his invoice has not gone out.
FEE UNPAID billed, nothing paid.
PART PAID he is on installments or part way there — the badge shows what is still owed.
FEE PAID paid in full.

It updates itself as his payments land — there is nothing for you to mark off. Click his name for the exact amounts. Chasing a player's fee is not your job, but knowing where he stands before you talk to him usually is.

8Common questions

Still stuck? Anything about a contract, a release or a trade goes to the League Office. Anything about your photo, your bio or the team website goes to Marketing. Anything about GroupMe, gear or housing goes to Team Services.