A shorter look at Pitching Coaches. Same things apply, the great teachers are in the Majors. The averages for all levels:
Code:
No Job R A AA AAA ML
T Pit 6.87 7.55 7.63 7.7 7.76 15.79
H Vets 6.54 6.76 6.91 6.89 6.72 14.31
H Rook 6.73 6.68 6.68 6.93 6.72 14.55
H Play 6.53 6.76 6.95 6.89 6.72 14.34
Tot. Co. 70 38 57 28 25 29
Here, none of the numbers make sense. The best teachers of pitching are in the Majors, and it steadily goes down as they get to Rookie ball. Again, plenty of the worthless looking for jobs. Take a look at handling rookies... the worst handlers are in Rookie ball... the one place where you're sure to find a wealth of rookie players.
The total coaches don't add up to anything, just a figure. Obviously the AI has hired some staff away from other areas to fill in some roles... which is fine, if of course they put them in a role that makes sense (at least to the way the game is laid out now).
This is the same as managers. There should be another rating, and ML caliber coaches should be high in it. Something like noticing problems, tweaking delivery, problem solving.... right now all the greatest teachers of pitching are gravitating to the one place where people shouldn't need to be taught.
Unlike managers though, pitching coaches probably don't have anything to do with preferences.
I did find some silliness here. 15 of the ML coaches were 17 or higher in teaching pitching. Of these 7 are great (17+) at handling players, and 10 at handling rookies... 5 of them are great at handling anyone! 5 clubs have Leo Mazzone on the bench.
One team managed to sign a 14-11-14-11 pitching coach to their A ball team. And one 14-15-9-15 is on a AAA club.
Another problem is there just aren't enough mediocre coaches. There's only 29 that are at least rating 12 at teaching pitching. If "teaching pitching" is the rating that decides if they're useful for a major league club, there should be far more.
Same thing with managers, although I forgot to mention it. There are plenty of fringe, okay, coaches and managers waiting to take over. Tony Pena, Joe Girardi for management... I don't know many pitching or hitting coaches, but doubt that there's only 30 guys that could do at least a servicable job at it. And servicable at the ML level in this game looks to be around rating 12.
On another note, there's a AAA team and a ML team that has no pitching coach... since contracts don't run out, and they should have been there when I started the league... the AI GM seems to forget to hire people sometimes.