A thought on everyone's favorite topic...Coaches.

I would recommend that an adjustment be made to the way Coaches are available to each level. A coach can aggressively move up the chain, but not necessarily down the chain. As a result, as the coach hiring period neared completion in one of my worlds the number of surplus coaches by level appeared as follows: RL =13, LoA = 37. HiA = 7. AA = 2, AAA = 8 and ML = 130. In addition, only 25 of the 130 at the ML are age 50 or greater and only 17 in the ML population had more than 15 year of coaching experience. This leaves us with a large number of fairly young coaches stuck at the ML level and not available for other roles.

This leads me to believe that the model makes it easier for coaches to be be moved up the chain versus down the chain (e.g. either they demand for higher levels moving to the next season or are hired into higher levels). I have noticed, that on occasion, near the end of the hiring period one or two coaches may be willing to move down a level...but there is no guarantee. I would suggest the downward movement needs to be adjusted to become more aggressive: 1) before the hiring period starts and 2) during the hiring period.

Thoughts:
- Before the season, coaches not hired in season x be bumped down before the start of the season x+1 hiring. The number of levels bumped down would be based on age and years of service to align with the pool of coaches available at a given level. This will allow for a better balance of coaches available at each level versus the skewing that happens today.
- During the hiring period, younger coaches not offered a role midway thru the hiring period should be allowed to bump down at least one level. Again, this will allow for a better balance of coaches available at each level versus the skewing that happens today.

They move down because all jobs are filled at the higher level.

The simplest solution, I've suggested it numerous times over the years, is for coaches to not demand levels. The market will decide what level they coach. It's fine to have minimum salaries but it's dumb to have 57 pitching coaches over 75 all waiting for that BL job. There are 32 of them.

There's a disconnect between how important coaches are supposed to be, and how owners want to play the game.

Eventually, no matter your experience, you start wanting or needing to allocate more budget to player talent. You compromise, do I really need to compete for a 70 rated coach at AA or is it just as good to move my 60 rated coach up from High A, who knows if it really matters, and when I promote my own coaches I skip over the headache of coach hiring. Everyone gets pushed up the ladder, then you get a pile of 75-ish coaches at the majors who no one wants to hire when they can choose from the pile of 85s instead.

So yeah, Mike's suggestion makes a lot of sense.

I could live with Mike's recommendation...it lets the market sort things out