OK, I'm not going to post this in suggestions, because it's been suggested a number of times.  Logical solutions have been presented, and any or all of them are better than the current coaching signing system in HBD.  I agree with all of them.  This is nothing but a rant.

I'm about to go into my third season.  I've been trying to watch and learn.  And this is THE ONE aspect of HBD I consider COMPLETELY stupid, wasteful, and unrealistic.

Four of my six hitting coaches want to test the market.  Three of my pitching coaches.  I don't really care about signing the best coaches in the world, all I want is these jerks under contract.  I would just re-sign everyone without looking if I had the option.

I could understand coaches retiring, but do 50 percent of the hitting coaches in the real life minors switch teams every season?  I suspect not.  Does any coach in the major leagues, with a signed contract and a manager who's happy with him, jump ship any or every season?  No way.

Does the highest-paid pitching coach in the majors, regardless of his team's status as a non-contender, try to quit on the team two seasons in a row?  No.

I'm not one to criticize the programming, I don't freak out about the budget restrictions, for example... but the Coaching seems like one part of the programming that's been written in simply to make extra work for the HBD player where none may be needed or desired.  It's a distraction, and an obstruction.

I don't mind coach hiring.  I have my routine down for it, and it doesn't take up too much time.  I'll trade chat you how I do it if you care to make it cheap and easy for yourself.

Its not fun or realistic.

Be thankful, you weren't playing, when there was no-rehiring of coaches, and you had to go through the process with all your coaches every season. Although it was fun that you could offer as many coaches jobs as you wanted. (not just 3 per job)

Sure bob, thanks, TC me if you wish, I learn from anyone I can.

But it isn't that I find it hard, or I've lost out on anything. I liked the coaches they had. They weren't the best, but they were good enough and I was satisfied. I don't think this should be necessary, especially when it's unrealistic to a certain degree.

so the solution is you just get to keep all your coaches every season untill they retire and if you have bad ones you are just out of luck?

Posted by crickett13 on 2/22/2013 6:41:00 PM (view original):
so the solution is you just get to keep all your coaches every season untill they retire and if you have bad ones you are just out of luck?

I don't think this is what he's suggesting at all.

I think he wants total control of coach rehiring.  Not an all-or-nothing deal, but on a coach by coach basis.

There has to be a drawback to what is essentially the old player reserve clause on your coaches.  Maybe if you want to retain them, there's an automatic 10% raise.  You get to keep them as long as you're willing to pay them.  Eventually, they'll price themselves out of a job and then go on the open market.

For minor league coaches, they'll need a promotion path . . . you can't keep rehiring the same RL hitting coach for 10 years straight.

damag - Losing 4 of 6 hitting coaches is probably a statistical fluke.  Not likely to happen again for a while.

And this lets you play/game the promotion system.  I'd much rather have an opening in the same coaching position in several consecutive levels than spread out openings that would pretty much prevent offing promotions.

I 100% agree with your main point. The current system sucks. Yeah, there ways to make is suck less, but they require being able to check in often during coaching hiring to make sure the plan is on track.

Coaching should be budget like scouting & medical. Maybe split it by level or role or whatever. Having an unrealistic algorithm that takes a lot of time, to maybe end up with a coach whose name you won't remember in 5 minutes, who has dubious impact the player develop compared to another coach, is all a lot of work for little payback and no fun.

The biggest "problem" that I see with coaches is that there is no tangible way to measure their effectiveness.

With players, you have statistics.  With coaches, you have player development, but there is no way to separate how much of player development is a by-product of coaches and how much is due to player's makeup, playing time, etc.

Perhaps if there was some way to measure the effectiveness of coaches, then the complaining about how the whole coaching system sucks might have less teeth.

I'm not sure what kind of measurement could be done.  Perhaps some sort of organizational "report card" for coaches towards the end of the year about how well (or poorly) they impacted development of prospects.

I'm brand-new to HBD, but in real life, baseball coaches are overrated. While good pitching and hitting coaches are useful, most real-life managers are so hide-bound in a baseball model that doesn't make statistical sense that teams often win in SPITE of their managers, not BECAUSE of them. The Texas Rangers are a prime example of this. Now, I assume that HBD will also overrate the importance of managers, so I know I'll have to find a decent once, but I just had to vent a bit about how the issue affects the real-world game of baseball.

Actually, you are the manager.  You set up your team's tendency to steal bases, double switch, argue more or less with umpires, etc.  It's all right there in "manager settings"

Most people make coach hiring a lot harder than it really is. Right now I need to hire a ML hitting coach and so do 8 other teams. There are 14 available rated 80 or higher at the ML level. Not really very stressful to know I do not even need to make an offer untill the 1st round of hiring is done.

The minors are a little harder but if you end up with 1 bad one at the minor league level take your hitting prospects out of that level. You can pretty easily ignore either the Low A, High A or Rookie and then either the AA or AAA and shuffle your prospects around.
 
Also be more patient most people want to have 3 coaches that they are #1 with and once they get a coach the other 2 still need a job.

Coach hiring used to suck, way back in the beginning.  It doesn't anymore.

Didn't expect this thread to keep going.  I figured it'd be an "******* has rant, let it die" thread.  However...

I suppose there's one semi-realistic thing about this situation.  (And I know, it's not a big deal and I'm not really stressing over it.)  I took over a team and became its third owner in three seasons.  I'm playing against other owners who've had their teams for over ten seasons in most cases.  It makes sense that they've locked up all the loyal coaches, and I have to pick from the leftover jerks.  It will take me time to build up a network of coaches loyal to my franchise, if I want to do so.

But tec makes a good point.  My attitude comes from the fact that I see no reason to improve my coaching.  All I want is those average guys crickett mentions, and to re-sign them.  The only thing I want from my coaching is to not get stuck with POOR coaching which will screw my players up.  I see no reason to go after a 95+ coach, there's no demonstrated incentive to do so.  One of the best teams in my world has about 120 million in players and about 8 million in coaching.  Obvious where he sees the more effective money is spent.