I'm about to go into my first hiring phase and wanted to get a consensus on hiring coaches? Where does this rank in importance and what am I looking for in a pitching/hitting/fielding coach other than pitching/hitting/fielding IQ?

Also, what makes a good manager? Should he be balanced or be focused mostly on hitting and strategy or is strategy left to the bench coaches? 

So many FNG questions, apologies in advance.

1) There is no manager. You hire a bench coach.

2) Focus on only hitting for hitting coach/1B coach, pitching for PC/BU, baserunning for 3B, fielding for FI, strategy for bench at all levels

3) By far the single most important is fielding instructor. He impact development of defense for all players at all levels

4) the other ratings to watch are patience and loyaly. Do not hire a minor legue coach with patience under 50. Loyalty impacts whether your coaches will return next year, and can be a good tiebreaker between otherwise similar guys.

5) Don't sweat the entire process too much. It mostly matters at the margins. In the long run your HiA hitters will develop basically the same with a 63 HC and a 60 HC. A point or 3 doesn't really matter. What will really hurt a lot is getting your guys stuck with a putrid guy way down in the 20s or 30s in the key rating. This will stunt long term growth.

+1 to what gjello said, though I would nuance #4 a bit.  Patience seems to be a very important attribute for coaches who work with young guys (above all in the minors).  I believe "Discipline" is equally important, for all levels, and above that it is what helps seasoned big-leaguers get better in their mature years.

In my world, a good fielding instructor is the hardest thing to find.  They typically cost $4-5mil to sign, but only about $750k in subsequent seasons.  So the loyalty rating to which gjello alludes is important in keeping your budget down.  I believe WIS has said, at some point, that a coach with a 50 loyalty rating will re-sign 75% of the time.

Interesting.  I hope to hear more about coaching thoughts.  I can tell they definitely make a difference.  I just haven't put my finger on how yet.  Even though I only have about 15 seasons under my belt, I can say that twice I lost out on good coaches after cutting my coaching budget and the teams really underperformed.  However, in 2 seasons, I went heavy on coaches (15-16M) and the players overperformed.  Now, it wasn't like it made up for my lack of quality ballplayers but there was definitely some help (maybe .010 or .015 in hitting and .05 to .10 in pitching ERA).  

I know some guys here have played so many seasons, they can probably break down some more specific numbers as to their impacts.

I will say I never realized about the fielding instructor.

There is some school of thought that coaches affect the progression or slow regression on players and that is all, i.e., they do not affect in game, in season performance.  I am not so sure....I don't have any hard data to prove or disprove this theory, but from experience I swear that having a highly rated pitching coach helps season long performance in that category.  Maybe it's just superstition, but seems to work.

Deano's patience rating . . . 12

It's safe to assume that all ratings do something.

Posted by tecwrg on 12/1/2011 1:00:00 PM (view original):
It's safe to assume that all ratings do something.

It's also safe to assume that some ratings do nothing.

I use the later rounds of the Am Draft to get players with high patience ratings so that when they retire a few can become good coaches.