Is there any perceived or proven value in hiring coaches with strong ratings in cross attributes? For instance a 1B or 3B coach with a strong hitting iq or a bench coach with a strong pitching iq?

Is there value in grabbing a 3B coach with a strong hitting iq or do you mostly just focus on finding the 3B coach with the best possible base running rating with optimal patience/disciplines?

1B and 3B coaches also impact hitting.

Bench coaches help with all disciplines.

I don't believe any other coaching roles help out in anything other their primary discipline.

Sure - you can hire them for the other role much cheaper!

I used to go to bench coaches to pick up  1B-3B bargains all the time. Also, I almost always grabbed a lower tier 3B coach to be my 1B. 

Keep in mind that hitting is King in this game. So always try to get a baserunning coach with decent hitting ratings.

Picking up on this thread, I am brand new to HBD and trying to figure out the interaction between the various coaching attributes.   Since this thread is fairly recent,  I assume that there isn't a lot of knowledge or agreement about how this works.

I made an equation to evaluate the overall value of a coach, and a coaching staff.    Cuz I do nerdy crap like that.    Here is how I treated patience, discipline, and secondary traits . .

Patience - I used as a modifier, with a baseline of 50.   there is a SQRT in the formula so you get more movement in the mid-ranges than at the extremes.   A coach with a zero patience would be evaluated as being 21% less effective, 100 patience would make him 21% more effective.   To address Burnsy's hypothetical, a patience of 90 would give a 19% bump, making the 70/90 effectively and 83, a bit better than the 80/50.

I also wondered what is meant by 'younger players'.   I considered tapering the modifier by level, where it would work as described at rookie league and diminish through the higher levels.     For all we know the effect may be calculated individually with each player, taking into account that player's age, patience, & makeup.   But OTOH - they are all young  . .

Discipline - even more cryptically described than patience, HBD's text states that discipline both helps and hinders.     I am GUESSING GUESSING that what is optimal here is 'the even hand' with a middle discipline.   In my formula I again use 50 as the zero-modifier baseline but assign penalties for being either too lax or too strict.   In my current formula the possible impact of discipline is about  a third of patience; the maximum penalty is about 7%.

Another consideration as I built my staff was looking at the secondary attributes of the other coaches.     At one level I selected a bench coach with 70+ hitting; at another I got one with 70+ pitching.   How much impact do the other, non primary coaches have?

In am  guessing that in minor league systems, the hitting coach would have 82% of the coaching influence, the bench coach 12%, the pitching coach 6%.     I also considered that high discipline might actually hinder coaching synergy - the hitting coach with high discipline might be more likely to object if another coach came by and trying to help a player.


Anyway, this is all guesswork on my part.   But I had to have some means to rank the coaches to decide who to go after.    I would certainly like to know what Mike and the other vets think about my assumptions - and what might I be missing?  thanks

(PS: this is a repost, the original was tagged onto an older related post a week or two ago.   I don't know if it got no response because no one saw it, no one cares, or no one knows.    But as the OP here shows I am obviously not the only one wondering.)

People may not be responding because they don't spend a lot of time on coaches.  TBH, my #1 quality in a coach is loyalty because it stops me from having to find new ones every year.  If his loyalty is high, I'll go with him and move on to the fun stuff.

Are patience and discipline basically equal in terms of how coaches affect prospects? Or does one definitely affect players more?

Drummer I have no clue beyond what you learn by clicking the ? at the top of the page when you are looking at coaches.    What I took away is that patience is always good - the more, the better - while discipline can cause problems being too high or too low.

Hey everyone I found a CLUE!   since no one on the forums seems to understand secondary coaches impact, I have been reading old developer chats.

In a discussion about bad pitches - the developer said - "A low rated pitch won't get thrown that often (or at least not as often as his better pitches) but when he does throw it it could lead to undesirable results. Of course, the PC/BuC can influence the pitcher to drop the pitch."   So we know one thing a bullpen coach can do.

I'd bet $10 that Patience, Disciple, and Strategy don't do anything.

Anyone who's ever done commercial software knows that there are always features that seemed like a good idea on the drawing board, and then in the race to get the first version of the product out, are left for a future release.

Everything about coaching and coach hiring screams of this.

Playing time seems to impact player development.  I'm wouldn't bet that even coach hitting and pitching IQ matter at all.

I wouldn't bet that Loyalty has anything to do with coaches staying the following season.

The individual coaches and coach hiring are both a mess.  They should be taken out of the game.  Just like the other development categories, coaching should be one or more budgets. We should get what we pay for and not have to spend a week checking in every 4 hours and guessing if Patience is more important than Discipline.

Posted by tufft on 1/23/2016 3:22:00 PM (view original):
I'd bet $10 that Patience, Disciple, and Strategy don't do anything.

Anyone who's ever done commercial software knows that there are always features that seemed like a good idea on the drawing board, and then in the race to get the first version of the product out, are left for a future release.

Everything about coaching and coach hiring screams of this.

Playing time seems to impact player development.  I'm wouldn't bet that even coach hitting and pitching IQ matter at all.

I wouldn't bet that Loyalty has anything to do with coaches staying the following season.

The individual coaches and coach hiring are both a mess.  They should be taken out of the game.  Just like the other development categories, coaching should be one or more budgets. We should get what we pay for and not have to spend a week checking in every 4 hours and guessing if Patience is more important than Discipline.

While I agree with the underlying principle here-- that there are a lot of things in HBD that were supposed to be programmed in that aren't, including several in coaching-- after observing closely for 9 years and however many seasons, I'm pretty sure that coach patience is important in player development.  But I wouldn't take that $10 bet for discipline, and I completely ignore strategy.

To the larger point that coaching is broken-- agree, but think it can be fixed relatively easily and that that would be fun.  Also, once it was fixed, some vague suggestions of how it works, including things like telling us what the $*(& the base coaches actually do, would be helpful.

There is no question that the coaches' main rating is important.   If you need to test it, hire a FI with a fielding rating of 22.   Players regress under those circumstances.

I really like the coaching thing.  I think it's a neat concept and I don't mind spending time on it.   Just want to understand it better.