I get frustrated with the balanced schedule coupled with having divisions. I get that this isn't "real life mlb" nor is it intended to be but... everyone plays the same schedule except for 12 interleague games. Why should a division winner with a losing record make the playoffs over a non division winner with significantly more wins?

Unbalance the schedule and play 18 games vs everyone in the division. That way at least the division winner has earned it for having the best record in the division, even if they are still under .500 overall.

Alternatively, do away with divisions, randomize the interleague and put the top 6 teams in the league in the playoffs.

Alternatively alternatively, require all division winners to have a winning record or they get replaced with the best remaining team (unless that team's record is worse, which I guess could happen).

How about being able to use excess cash on something at the end of the season. Even something less significant is better than just being left with a wheelbarrow of cash. How about something like paying for bumps to a player's patience rating so that it increases his chance to re-sign with your team? It could be $1 million for an extra point. So, if you have a player that has an 80 patience rating, and you have 5 million extra cash at the end of the season, you give it to him and his patience rating moves up to 85. Same with coaches and their loyalty rating. It's not game changing, but it's a little something.

i think extra cash should be able to be used as signing bonuses for contract extensions

I know they changed the percentage per year requirements of a contract years ago, but is there still a problem when you can offer a contract like this guy got in S64 then bail the next season? He’s an incredible reliever but he’s still a reliever and at 35 or 36 won’t be quite as incredible.

at least he got a mutual option for the 5th year.

https://www.whatifsports.com/hbd/Pages/Popups/PlayerContracts.aspx?pid=10701859

It's Time for the universal DH to be an option. If leagues still want their pitchers to hit, fine, but at least offer the option.

It's time for an update, in general. Plenty of ideas are communicated on this thread. Time to take some of them to the game. Injury recovery should be first on the list for obvious reasons.

The entire WIS is run by 2, maybe 3 staff people. My guess is they are not big baseball fans because it seems they put more time/effort into running the other games than they do into HBD. HBD would go from a good game to a great game if it was updated and enhanced but ownership of WIS has not be willing to provide the time/budget/people needed to do that for over a decade now.

Coaching:
Make a way to easily see the upcoming free agent coaches before budgets are submitted.

Currently, there is no way to see the free agent coaches before you submit your budget. It would be nice if we could see the list of free agent coaches before we set our budget so we can plan better. As of right now, you really don't know who will be available so if a certain type of coach retires or won't re-sign, you have to guess who will be available. It'd be nice to know who will be available and budget accordingly.

Posted by tlowster on 11/9/2024 6:22:00 AM (view original):
Coaching:
Make a way to easily see the upcoming free agent coaches before budgets are submitted.

Currently, there is no way to see the free agent coaches before you submit your budget. It would be nice if we could see the list of free agent coaches before we set our budget so we can plan better. As of right now, you really don't know who will be available so if a certain type of coach retires or won't re-sign, you have to guess who will be available. It'd be nice to know who will be available and budget accordingly.

But aside from the handful coaches who are "looking at all franchises", you have no way to know which owners will voluntarily decline to re-sign other coaches. For instance, I'm in a rollover right now with two incumbent big league coaches and two others who want the same jobs via role change and level promotion. I don't make those decisions until after I set my budget.

Posted by damag on 11/9/2024 9:22:00 AM (view original):

Posted by tlowster on 11/9/2024 6:22:00 AM (view original):
Coaching:
Make a way to easily see the upcoming free agent coaches before budgets are submitted.

Currently, there is no way to see the free agent coaches before you submit your budget. It would be nice if we could see the list of free agent coaches before we set our budget so we can plan better. As of right now, you really don't know who will be available so if a certain type of coach retires or won't re-sign, you have to guess who will be available. It'd be nice to know who will be available and budget accordingly.

But aside from the handful coaches who are "looking at all franchises", you have no way to know which owners will voluntarily decline to re-sign other coaches. For instance, I'm in a rollover right now with two incumbent big league coaches and two others who want the same jobs via role change and level promotion. I don't make those decisions until after I set my budget.

I'd like to see the coaches that are "looking at all franchises". There is no way to see them pre-budget.

Something I would love is an ability to instruct the minor league AI as to how to handle certain players (do not promote, do not deactivate, prioritize for starting role, etc). I've had the AI promote prospects from Low-A all the way to AAA to fill injury gaps, leaving me with a choice of letting them languish on the bench when the starter returns (which can be in as little as 7 in-game days) or risking a demotion penalty to send them back down to their proper level to get reps. The minor league AI is also indiscriminate about deactivating RP prospects when guys get tired, which if you're not carefully monitoring can result in their development stagnating. There needs to be a happy medium between micromanaging every single minor league level and risking letting the AI wreck prospects' futures, and this would be a relatively easy logic tweak that would save a number of headaches.

Hypothetical - and kind of out there thought about coaching (that I'm sure isn't a new idea). What if we just set budgets for coaching? If one thing people don't like about hiring coaches is the process that it takes, could it be cleaned up? Just using round $$ for conversation.

Each ML role could be a 500k to 3M range, with increments of 250k or 500k. Obliviously the $3M budget for that role would have positive effects while a 500k might have negative effects. 1.5M for example might be the middle break even point - where it's a neutral coach. Could this be abused for people who min/max their budgets? Maybe, but maybe not more than people already do. But I get that it's not limiting, everyone could budget $3M for Fielding and that's not very life-like.

At the minor league level, could you lump sum each level to one budget rather than Bench, Pitching, and Hitting? Would people max out one level and go min at another - moving all their ace prospects to that top level. Probably, but people do that now. For those that don't care about propspects and like the big budgets, they can still ignore coaching and set everything to minute - which is what happens when they let AI fill their needs.

All decent suggestions. Just simplify it. Whenever anyone rewrites this game, please just simplify coach hiring. I already do my best, in my own strategy, to simplify it as much as I can. I've said it before, the whole Coach Hiring concept in Hardball feels like, for those owners who aren't heavily into the free agent market, here's a make work project to keep busy with.

Posted by minihouston on 11/11/2024 1:43:00 PM (view original):
Hypothetical - and kind of out there thought about coaching (that I'm sure isn't a new idea). What if we just set budgets for coaching? If one thing people don't like about hiring coaches is the process that it takes, could it be cleaned up? Just using round $$ for conversation.

Each ML role could be a 500k to 3M range, with increments of 250k or 500k. Obliviously the $3M budget for that role would have positive effects while a 500k might have negative effects. 1.5M for example might be the middle break even point - where it's a neutral coach. Could this be abused for people who min/max their budgets? Maybe, but maybe not more than people already do. But I get that it's not limiting, everyone could budget $3M for Fielding and that's not very life-like.

At the minor league level, could you lump sum each level to one budget rather than Bench, Pitching, and Hitting? Would people max out one level and go min at another - moving all their ace prospects to that top level. Probably, but people do that now. For those that don't care about propspects and like the big budgets, they can still ignore coaching and set everything to minute - which is what happens when they let AI fill their needs.

I think i like this concept.

I think something has to be done with the Loyalty rating in coaching. It doesn't make sense that minor league coaches decide to return for about the same pay, but ML coaches are willing to return for twice or three times the base pay.