More and more I see the strategy of hiring a top coach from a lower level to the level above getting overused.

I'm talking about, say, hiring the top hitting coach from Low A as your High A coach. The whole point of this strategy is to save yourself the money you would normally have to pay a High A coach of similar abilities.

The problem I am seeing is that EVERYONE is trying to get that Low A coach to be their High A coach. Therefore the bids for these Low A coaches soon exceed the salaries of the High A coaches.

So am i taking advantage of this? Sure. The High A coaches (that aren't in a bidding war to become overpaid AA coaches) become cheaper so I snatch them up. And the Major League coaches become way cheaper, so I wait on them and snatch them up cheaply at the end of the hiring process. Why are they cheap? Because some owners "Hire up" AAA coaches that - with the flooded coaching pool at the top - are at best very average BL coaches. Every time this happens, that is one more above average BL coach available for me at the end at a minimum salary.

Problem in all this is that in some leagues I am in, the Rookie, Low A, and High A coaching pool has become pretty diluted. I have to assume that overall this reduces player development in these leagues. I didn't see this trend as much a year ago when i started.

Coach hiring sucks.  HBD would be a better game if there was one or more coaching budgets like the other development categories.

It takes too much time.  People who can check in every 4 hours have big advantage over people who do not.  That's not strategy.  It's brute force.

It's no fun. Nobody gives a **** who their coaches are.

People who have played a while and know how to game the algorithm have an advantage over new players and those who do not invest the time to figure out the quirks & flaws of HBD.

Nobody has any idea what the coach ratings do.  Is it better to have 80 Patience and 50 Disciple, or the other way around?  It would take thousands of seasons of complex testing to try to figure that out.  How is that fun?  Or fair?

Coach hiring is a massive waste of time.  Now that they are touching the code again, hopefully they take this on.

If for some reason the decision makers at HBD actually like hiring coaches, then they should fix the algorithm so the strategy sjpoker describes no longer works.  The current system results in all of the better MinL coaches moving up levels, leaving nothing but very bad coaching in Rookie or LowA.  I don't believe this was the intent of the folks who invented HBD.

@ sjpoker yes I've seen this trend happening.  Depends on the world you're in how much it happens.  If it happens too much, like anything else that happens too much, you can take advantage of it by going the other way.

@ tufft yep I agree, it moves poor coaches up the line, up the line, till you have 70 rated PCs in the majors and 89 rated PCs out of work.  And it is because many owners just want to hire the first coaches they can and get on with it.

Coaches need to quit demanding levels.   I don't care how much they demand but refusing to sign at a lower level creates the problem.

MikeT23's proposed solution is by far the best I've heard about this: eliminate coach level and position demands.  So a coach demands only a salary.  No hiring "up" or "down."  No nonsense about not being able to re-hire your fielding coach because he demands to be a bench coach.  If you need a better coach in Rookie, you just pay for it.  

EDIT:  apparently it took me too long to summarize Mike's position.

That makes the most sense. The sim gives the impression that it runs on 'cash over anything else'. So why not with coaches? Why did my High A hitting coach turn down 400,000 to coach AA at 150 000? It makes no sense.

I'd like to be able to hire BL coaches to term as well. Nothing crazy but 3 years? Maybe? Would be nice to lock some up.

Posted by hockey1984 on 1/23/2016 3:46:00 PM (view original):
That makes the most sense. The sim gives the impression that it runs on 'cash over anything else'. So why not with coaches? Why did my High A hitting coach turn down 400,000 to coach AA at 150 000? It makes no sense.

I'd like to be able to hire BL coaches to term as well. Nothing crazy but 3 years? Maybe? Would be nice to lock some up.

Maybe having former players stay with the organization or show more loyalty towards their former organization. I bet the great Jimmy Whatshisface would be a great pitching coach.

The Great Jimmy Powell is going to buy an island and drink fufu drinks at noon when he retires.

Coach hiring is a massive time suck. I get the intended use of coaches, but why not just hiring pitching and hitting coordinators for the minors instead of coaches at all levels? First and third base coaches also are a waste. The money in budgets (often around $12M) is better spent elsewhere.<br />
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I, too, like MikeT's idea of eliminating the demand of levels by coaches and coaches to be hired from higher levels down to lower levels.

Posted by MikeT23 on 1/23/2016 3:26:00 PM (view original):
Coaches need to quit demanding levels.   I don't care how much they demand but refusing to sign at a lower level creates the problem.

This has always been the best solution.  I stated so in that survey.  I hope I wasn't the only one.  The level-up thing is silly when there are so many qualified coaches left in the pool.

You weren't as I know I restated it to them.

If a coach demands 1.7m and I want to pay him that to coach HiA, it's stupid that he doesn't get a job.     Even with no level demands, a BL job would be more coveted.   Without getting into specifics, because they don't exist anyway, a coach could take 1.7m over 1.9m to coach in the bigs instead of AA.    The hotels and groupies are nicer in the bigs.

Posted by MikeT23 on 1/25/2016 9:41:00 AM (view original):
You weren't as I know I restated it to them.

If a coach demands 1.7m and I want to pay him that to coach HiA, it's stupid that he doesn't get a job.     Even with no level demands, a BL job would be more coveted.   Without getting into specifics, because they don't exist anyway, a coach could take 1.7m over 1.9m to coach in the bigs instead of AA.    The hotels and groupies are nicer in the bigs.

Coach groupies?

Somehow I'm having a hard time imagining Don Zimmer (RIP) walking into a bar, going up to some young thing, saying, "I'm the Yankees' bench coach, wanna come to my room?" and having that work.

Billy Martin did alright.   If you believe the stories/movies.

Posted by dedelman on 1/25/2016 3:00:00 PM (view original):

Posted by MikeT23 on 1/25/2016 9:41:00 AM (view original):
You weren't as I know I restated it to them.

If a coach demands 1.7m and I want to pay him that to coach HiA, it's stupid that he doesn't get a job.     Even with no level demands, a BL job would be more coveted.   Without getting into specifics, because they don't exist anyway, a coach could take 1.7m over 1.9m to coach in the bigs instead of AA.    The hotels and groupies are nicer in the bigs.

Coach groupies?

Somehow I'm having a hard time imagining Don Zimmer (RIP) walking into a bar, going up to some young thing, saying, "I'm the Yankees' bench coach, wanna come to my room?" and having that work.

It may be hard to picture, but if there are gold-digging lottery winner groupies, I'm sure Zimmer (RIP) had more opportunities than we would think.

I lost out on a guy I was grooming to be my long term pitching coach. He was at AAA last year. His pitching coach rating was still moving up 3 points, and he was at 82, so he will end up well into the 90s, with mid 70s patience, discipline, and loyalty. I'd have gladly promoted him to BL pitching coach this year, but for the first time in his career, he was determined to test the market. My mistake was that I didn't gamble and let my current pitching coach (who is also pretty good) walk away, thinking there could be a bidding war for him, and I couldn't afford a bidding war, what with my fielding instructor also walking. As it turns out, there was no war, and he signed as a BL pitching coach for the league minimum, rejecting my offer to man the bullpen coach spot.

I like the idea of coach hiring, especially when we can sign former players. But the execution of it is just bad.