I have a very young MLB team (most under 27) and have a couple of big time pitching prospects in AAA ready to make their ML debut this year. During the coach hiring process, there weren't any good fielding instructors available, so I decided to offer the job to a pitching coach with 90 pitching score, figuring it would likely stunt the fielding growth of my team but really help the young arms. The opening day ratings boost just ran today and it looks like every guy under 27 through out all levels had glove and accuracy fielding decreases of 2-3 points across the board. I figured there would be ZERO increase this year, but I was not expecting massive decreases. Is there anything that could be done at this point? Will all my guys experience similar decreases for the next 4-5 regular season cycles? Wish I could fire this coach ASAP lol.

Fielding Instructor is the most important coach in your organization. Unfortunately, there is nothing you can do this season to correct your mistake. You are just going to have to endure the fielding regression all season.

Next season, if all of the good fielding instructors are gone, there are opportunities to get a decent one elsewhere. For example, if you look through bench coaches, some of them have pretty good fielding ratings. So just hire one of those bench coaches as your fielding instructor.

Ooff

Woah! I had never heard of that before but it makes sense. Thanks for dying for our sins.

Daaaamn. Way I see it, every season there are a few starter FIs who show up in the pool, guys with FI ratings around 50... they would logically at least just keep your players level. Just... daaaamn.

It sucks! I can even take the Opening Day drop, but during the regular season how much fielding practice to real ML players even do? It's all in-game basically.

That really is strange -- the older guys didn't get hit with it, but the younger guys did. I wonder if a bench coach with 40+ fielding would have made a difference at all. Both the bench coach and the FI had a rating of 5. The hitting coach, third base and first base coaches have some higher fielding ratings so you would think that they could help out a bit.

Wait till he teaches them the knuckle ball