My luck of having all of my coaching spots filled well before the last hiring cycle ran out after a run of several years.

I have no idea if anything happens the last cycle or two.

Years ago there was talk about having coaching accept offers down a level at the end, if they had 0 offers.

Did this get done?

Or is the only option to sign a terrible coach and them move any reasonable prospects away from that level?

Or go with my one of my not-well-tested HBD theories that the original coders never connected coach rates to development and the entire process is a waste of time.

Any and all input welcome. Including other half-baked theories, like mine, as they make for entertaining, if not factual, reading.

Thanks.

1. If all ML positions are filled at a coaching position, the remaining ML coaches will drop their demands to AAA. Otherwise their demands will stay at the ML level.
2. At any time, a coach will consider/accept an offer to drop down ONE level, if you offer him 1.5x his demands. So a bullpen coach that demands $500K will accept an AAA PC offer at $750K. If he gets an ML offer, even for less money, he will take the ML offer over the AAA offer.
3. I do not think a coach will ever drop TWO levels. No proof of this theory.
4. If you want to test whether coaching matters, hire a non-fielding coach at FC. Do not try this if you have any prospects at all in your system... glove ratings will plummet.

>> If you want to test whether coaching matters, hire a non-fielding coach at FC. Do not try this if you have any prospects at all in your system... glove ratings will plummet. <<

In the very early days of HBD, I did test poor fielding coaches. Based on that, I think HBD hooked up FC and gave them a ridiculous amount of power.

There as a lot of forum outrage back in the day as this was discovered because many worlds had very few 80+ FC. People were paying over 4-5MM for fielding coaches. HDB started creating more that started off in the 70s. Seemed to solve the issue and outrage.

For all other coaching, playing time seems to have such a bigger impact that coaching. So much better coaching doesn't seem to matter much, if at all.

This I've tested. Move good prospects to levels with better coaches. Leave one prospect with a bad coaching, move the other to a level with a better one. Been doing this for many seasons in different worlds. Outside of ML Fielding Coach, I don't see it making a lot of difference.

Yet, here I am asking about how to hire better than total crap coaches for 2 MinL roles. I've never hired a HiA PC with 15 pitch rating and put my #1 pitching prospect there. I have had HiA PC from 50-70+. Can't say that mattered.

And thanks for the rest of your points. Very helpful. Not sure I want to pay 1.5X for a coach, but now I know I can.

" There as a lot of forum outrage back in the day as this was discovered because many worlds had very few 80+ FC. People were paying over 4-5MM for fielding coaches. HDB started creating more that started off in the 70s. Seemed to solve the issue and outrage. "

There is still a shortage of good fielding coaches. In one of my worlds the worst ML pitching coach has a rating of 77. There are 10 fielding coaches with ratings lower than that (several in the 60s) because there was nobody better to hire. This is not necessarily a bad thing though as it adds another level of strategy to the game. Do you want to spend big $$$$ to have a good fielding team or do you think the money is better spent elsewhere?

I can’t find anything good to say about how coaching or coach hiring works in HBD.

Not the point of this post, so I’ll leave it at that.

Saw something today I’ve never seem before. Likely because I’m usually done with coach hiring 1-2 days before the last cycle and don’t see the page then.

Some (maybe all) of the ML bench coaches moved to HiA. Don’t know if it just happened in the last cycle. I don’t think I looked during the one before.

All of their demands are HiA priced.

No idea if HiA is where unhired ML wanna be coaches go to start again, or if all bench coach opens are filled in AAA and AA so they kept going down until there's at least one opening for the role they want.

There are not enough of them with even average HiA coach H or P ratings to make this a reliable strategy every season. More like a hail mary if plan A goes bad.