WBA Salary Arbitration

[Huckleberry]

Over in the 2107-08 Offseason Thread there has been a lot of discussion about improving the financials system, driving up payrolls and therefore lowering cash on hand for all our teams. I was going to quote a whole bunch of posts from that thread but there are too many, so it might be a good idea to read through the whole thing. Here is the latest info I put up there:

Okay, the website appears to be looking good so I'm about to run the last offseason sim.

That being said, please take a look at this page:

http://www.worldbaseballassociation.com/arbitrationsalaries.php

(HTML link in case the change to the 2108 regular season messes up the output - http://www.worldbaseballassociation.com/WBA%20Arbitration%20Salaries.html)

This page shows what arbitration would be for the 2108 season if the following rules were implemented:

1. Minimum salary for all players with less than 2 years accumulated major league service time.
2. Players with at least 5 years of service time go into free agency as always.
3. For players with at least 2 years of major league service time but fewer than 5 years receive an arbitrated salary calculated as follows:

$200,000 + $700,000 * (Maximum WAR in any of the last 3 seasons)

For the maximum WAR calculation negative values are of course treated as zero as no player can have a salary below $200K.

Any thoughts? While I think this may be a good solution, I also think we may need to phase it in. This would add an average of $16.3M in salary per team in the WBA for the 2108 season. It would also increase the overall average WBA payroll from $41.5M to $57.8M, keeping in mind that the target is around $50M.

At the same time, though, most of our teams are cash-heavy and additionally some of the free cash has caused a few exorbitant contracts during our first 8 seasons. So maybe it wouldn't be that bad in the long run. Anyway, I imagine the process to end up being something like this:

• First day of the offseason the arbitration salaries script page is copied to HTML format. Everyone then sees how much their arbitration eligible players would receive in salary for the next season.
• Each team posts any players they wish to release (which should be at no financial penalty to the team I believe but we will need to investigate this) instead of paying their arbitration salary. The deadline for this will be determined by OOTP's rules. It could be anywhere from the first offseason sim to the sim when free agents announce.
• Players released by teams then become free agents like normal. It's possible that you could release a player instead of paying his arbitration salary and then sign him for less than that amount during free agency, that would be the risk each owner would run. This is the part we would have to monitor as a league to see if we need to adjust the arbitration salary calculation.
• Players who are not announced as releases by their owner are then assigned the stated salary for the following season.

Just as a thought exercise, on my list of players I know I would release Dave Mendoza and would have to consider releasing Sancho Cervantes and maybe even former prospect Bambang Ananas.

[Havana_Jake]

In a previous league of mine, arbitration was handled in game. You submit a figure, the player submits a figure and the game decides who wins. You can choose not to go to arbitration and allow the player to walk to free agency, but if you submit a figure and agree to go to arbitration, you have to go with the arbitor's decision.

Do we not trust the game to handle stuff like that? We never had any problems with unrealistic arb decisions that I recall.

Also, I think it would be best to shoot for a contract set up/economic set up that is as close to the current MLB CBA as possible. That way newcomers don't need to spend a lot of time learning new rules. If they're familiar with the MLB game, which I think most of us baseball nerds likely are, then they can pick it up quickly. Also, it would mirror real life more closely.

[Echo127]

I don't think letting the game handle it would be a good idea simply because we're already using a custom financial model. I expect it would end up unbalanced. But I'm no expert.

[Huckleberry]

Letting OOTP handle it is a possibility. Now that I've set the salary guidelines more in line with what they should be in the WBA it might work. Perhaps it's worth some testing.

[claphamsa]

I don't think letting the game handle it would be a good idea simply because we're already using a custom financial model. I expect it would end up unbalanced. But I'm no expert.

I agree here...we ditched the finacials OOTP is going to do something waccy if we use part of them.

[Huckleberry]

Good point, and it's not really that much work for me as long as the roster import test works. It should be an automated export/paste/import situation now that I've written the code.

Are there any issues with the specific formula and calculation I used? I was thinking that maybe we could make it a graduated process, too? We know that the overall value of a WAR in the WBA should be $1.4M, that's why I set the arbitration calculation at $700K just to make it halfway. But what about allowing younger players to slowly earn more money?

2 years MLB service --> $200K + ($500K times highest WAR)
3 years MLB service --> $200K + ($750K times highest WAR)
4 years MLB service --> $200K + ($1M times highest WAR)

Any interest for or against a system like that?

[Bob_Meteors]

I think instead of highest WAR, it should be an average of the last 3 WARs, with more recent ones weighted higher.

[Claybor]

I don't really have an opinion on this since I am not the fan of WAR that much of the baseball community is these days. I am still interested though to see where it goes, and very much like  the unique finances and such in the league.

[squaredrive]

Huck, I'm in favor of the self-managed Salary Arbitration system  - i like the graduated system especially on first implementation as that will temper the shock to the organizations a bit.

[Huckleberry]

Yeah, I by no means consider WAR the ultimate arbiter, but it's a handy one stop shop to figure out an arbitrated salary like this because OOTP calculates and reports it.

Bob, my issue with the average idea is when a young superstar is injured for a year his salary will drop like a rock. When a regular player gets hurt like that the team has to eat the salary, so I'm not certain we should make young players different in that respect.

[Bob_Meteors]

That's a good point, but "best in the last three seasons" has its issues. Like if there's a 30 year old who had a great season 2 years ago, then got hurt for a year and is terrible now. He would be earning way more than deserved.

[Huckleberry]

That's a fair point, and there will always be outliers, but a 30 year old will usually already be past 5 years of MLB service if he's a decent player who would have a large salary under this system.

Based on the most recent comments I am planning to put the latest system I posted to an amendment vote if there are no protests. Are there any particular concerns on when this change should take effect? I believe it should be immediate, i.e., with the 2108-09 offseason.

[claphamsa]

sooner the better

[Bob_Meteors]

Agreed. Should be for 2108 season.

[AndyHustle]

At first glance, looks like the ABL free agent pool is gonna be thin again. Stinks.

[claphamsa]

more trades!

[CaseyBlakeDeWitt]

Agreed. Probably need to wait a couple of years still to see the full effects of the arb system, but the next problem (which we might not even be able to correct) seems like extensions. Most of our players either have really low self-esteem or really bad representation. There's no reason someone like Zamorov should be taking $37.5 over 5 years when he's a year from free agency and coming off back to back triple crowns.

At first glance, looks like the ABL free agent pool is gonna be thin again. Stinks.

[AndyHustle]

I know there is a tool I messed around with in my personal sim that you can change how much the baseline salary is for types of players (superstar, role player etc.) Wonder if that is low for us?

[Huckleberry]

I know there is a tool I messed around with in my personal sim that you can change how much the baseline salary is for types of players (superstar, role player etc.) Wonder if that is low for us?

We talked about that last year but I don't recall that there was any final agreement. Definitely should have followed up on that. Here are the current settings:



I agree that we should change this. This may have a lot to do with why Subbarayudu and Zamorov signed those extensions. What are everyone's thoughts on appropriate settings? Salaries like Karpat's and Hashimoto's are outliers, of course. There are 5 players in the entire WBA at or above $15M per year. There are 9 at or above $10M per year. But we have to account for the fact that some players like Subbarayudu and Zamorov never hit free agency.

My initial thoughts:

Superstar - $12,000,000
Star - $9,000,000
Good - $6,500,000
Above Avg - $4,000,000
Average - $2,000,000
Below Avg - $1,000,000
Fair - $600,000
Poor - $400,000
Minimum - $200,000

I want to keep the average and below the same for one simple reason. Theoretically if everyone had exactly 25 players making money in their organization then the average salary should be $2,000,000 and so my mathematical OCD doesn't want to change that one.

[AndyHustle]

I would vote in favor of those numbers. They seem just about right

[claphamsa]

i think its about right where it is...

[squaredrive]

Looks good to me.

FYI - i was also able to resign Goulart at a discount extension. It was odd because at one point he was asking for over 10.5 on an extension, then i went to resign him after the trade deadline and his ask dropped to 7.5 or so...

[Huckleberry]

Okay, fairly important update that doesn't change the end result of our arbitration but does change the process. I am 99% sure that I will be turning on the arbitration switch in-game for the upcoming offseason. I will be doing this unless someone comes up with a really great reason not to do so in this thread. Reasoning:

• Players who are being released the manual way are almost always not negotiating AT ALL with their previous team. This was not the intent of our arbitration system.
• It takes some manual work away from me because if you don't want to pay the guy arbitration then you can withdraw your arbitration offer in-game.

Also, please note (and this is important) that we will still be using the arbitration salaries that we agreed on regardless of the salaries that OOTP assigns using the in-game arbitration engine. There is a small possibility that once the game assigns salaries that we all look at them and realize they are close enough to work and I can take all of this off my plate. But I certainly don't think we can just trust it without seeing some results first.

[Huckleberry]

Well son of a bitch, you can only change this setting in the preseason. So it will be manual for one more year and I hope I remember before 2111.