Financial issues I think we should address.

[Coop]

As I see it, there are three main financial issues that are causing dissatisfaction in the league.

Item 1.  There are very few quality free agents each year, with the result that the bidding for those few reach astronomical heights.

Item 2.  Offering a contract extension appears to be a totally random game of chance.

Item 3.  The way free agency unfolds each year is tedious and chaotic, and the results are sometimes downright crazy.

Let me explain how I see each of these problems.

Item 1 - lack of quality free agents.  Last season we discussed the lack of quality free agents and implemented a salary arbitration system as a first step toward solving the issue.  I think it was a good first step, and I'm not sure what the next step should be.  It's possible that we should just leave well enough alone and see how things develop over the next few seasons, but that's a matter for discussion, since the issue clearly hasn't gone away just yet.

Item 2 - contract extensions.  This is a real dissatisfier (the worst of the three items, in my opinion) because it can give one owner a huge advantage over another.  Say you've got two teams, Team A and Team B.  Both teams have a young stud who is eligible for free agency in a year.  Both GMs, fearful of losing their young studs, decide to offer five-year contract extensions.  The player on Team A accepts the extension (and often does so at a much lower figure than he could have gotten on the free-agent market), while the player on Team B says no thanks, I'm determined to become a free agent.  This is very, very unfair to the owner of Team B; he's not doing anything wrong, yet the baseball gods (or at least the OOTP gods) are going to punish him severely.  He's going to lose his valuable player while the owner of Team A is going to keep his valuable player for the next five years (at below-market cost, to boot).  And yes, I've seen this happen.  Multiple times.  It's blatantly unfair and we need to set up something better, probably some kind of tiered system that allows everyone a chance to keep their young players if they pay appropriately.  (Also, below-market contract extensions are part of the reason for the problem listed in Item 1 above.)

Item 3 - the annual free agency frenzy.  I realize that the chaotic nature of free agency in the WBA is nothing new; real-life free agency can also be chaotic.  However, real-life free agents seem to make decisions more quickly and more rationally than WBA free agents; in the vast majority of cases, real-life free agents take the highest dollar figure offered to them.  In the WBA, it seems like the top free agents vacillate for months and then choose an offer on a purely random basis.  For example, every offseason for the past three years I've chased a free agent only to see him sign with a different team for less money than I offered him.  First it was Jim McCann; I offered him X amount, but he signed with another team for less.  Then it was Serhat Karpat; I offered him X amount, but he signed with another team for less.  This year it was Kip Kemboi; I offered him X amount, but he signed with another team for less.  I know this isn't happening only to me; it's happening to everyone.  And it's both frustrating and unrealistic.  Free agents should not be making random choices; they should be taking top dollar.  I'm not sure how to fix it.  Maybe set up free agency as an open auction with a fixed date, rather than forcing us to make offer after offer after offer every sim for a period of months?  Anyway, some sort of change is needed, because the current system is tedious (okay, here you go, here's contract offer number 8, I await your response knowing that you'll turn it down like the last 7) and chaotic, and it seems to produce entirely random results.  (There's nothing more infuriating than spending hours making contract offer after contract offer to a player, only to see him sign elsewhere for less money.  And it's a huge time-waster too.)

If we can come up with solid solutions to these three issues, I think we'll see a huge improvement in our league's finances.

[JohnC]

Don't you think you item 1 & item 2 are contradicting? You want better quality free agents but then you want a way for teams to prevent their young stars from becoming free agents.

[Coop]

Not really.  The key points in Item 2 are that (a) the contract extension process should be fair to all, not totally random like it is now, and (b) there should be a tiered system that forces people to pay appropriate sums to keep players (unlike today, when they often sign players to extensions for WAY, WAY below market value).  If you force people to pay appropriately, they'll have to allocate their resources accordingly, with the result that they won't be able to keep ALL of their best players.  Right now we have a situation where some owners can keep all of their young studs (because those young studs are signing for a pittance) while other owners are willing to pay appropriately but their young studs are saying forget it, I'm leaving no matter what.  That's just not a good system in my opinion.

[Coop]

Something else I want to throw in ...

Looking at this from a big-picture point of view, I see online baseball as a game of skill and strategy.  It's complicated, building a winning team, but that's what makes it fun.  But now you've got a situation where Team A's owner gets to keep his top young studs (because OOTP has randomly decided that they'll sign extensions for pennies on the dollar), while Team B's owner loses his studs because OOTP has randomly decided that they want to test free agency.  Suddenly it's no longer a game of skill and strategy; it's a game of pure luck.  Who wants that?  Not me.

[CaseyBlakeDeWitt]

I'm 100% in agreement on item 2, though "fair" v "unfair" doesn't necessarily feel like the right way to frame it in my opinion. Sometimes a player might like where they are and sometimes a guy might just want to move on. That’s the nature of professional baseball. But players are universally stupid about extensions. They consistently sign for less than they would receive on the open market, and while that’s just about always going to happen with an extension, they’re going so far under-market that it’s laughable.

The biggest problem (to me, at least) is often the timing of extensions, which kind of folds into issue 1. People like Chris Boone, a top-5 MVP candidate last season, looked set to hit free agency this offseason, but before he got the opportunity he signed a contract for 3 years at only about $8.5M per year. I don’t even know what justification you could use in your head canon to make sense of that. He certainly would have made more than that on the market, and he assumes exactly zero risk by waiting two weeks to get to free agency. There’s no reason for him to feel any inclination to sign an extension unless it’s exorbitantly overpriced. And this has happened with several high-end players in the past (though I can’t remember exactly who).

The issue really seems to be in the OOTP game engine and how they interpret the financials of our league. I think maybe because something like arbitration is handled out-of-game, OOTP doesn’t really understand how to value players.

[Claybor]

Gonna play devils advocate here.

1.Pretty normal for ootp in my experience to have few of quality, and very normal for guys to get paid way too much in FA.

2. Everything about ootp is totally random. Prospects are a total crap shoot, as well as many other aspects.

3. Players don't always sign with the highest bidder. the issue I see is the randomness of when they sign. I tend to go from high bid one sim to beat the next, and I just end up hoping that the roulette wheel that decides it stops on me this time around.

I am not saying that there isn't an issue (again) but we just made changes last year and I don't know if it's a good idea to keep changing the rules every year.

[Claybor]

If all players base their signing extensions on what they can get in FA, then we will need a LOT more $$$$ across the board to keep teams intact. The game judges their values based on the league input the we (the commish) puts in. There is no way for the PC to know that real life GM's are going to bid crazy numbers on guys who are not really worth it based on the scale we set up.

[Huckleberry]

I think this message should be visited by everyone on this topic:

http://www.worldbaseballassociation.com/forum/index.php?topic=312.msg2820#msg2820

Let me know what y'all think. I think that plays into what Claybor is talking about. I think if we edit those numbers then extension demands may be higher. From what I can tell, OOTP takes several things into consideration when determining what a player's extension demand should be. One of those is current salary and one is the table discussed in that post. There are others, plus the roulette wheel, but this is one we can control.

[Coop]

I read the info on Huck's link and I like it; I think we should pursue it before the upcoming season.

While I'm writing, I also want to respond to Claybor's "devil's advocate" points.

1.Pretty normal for ootp in my experience to have few of quality, and very normal for guys to get paid way too much in FA.  This is my first OOTP league so I wouldn't know what's normal.  I feel like things would be better if more good players went to free agency but frankly I don't consider it a huge issue.  Mostly I prefer to build via the draft anyway.

2. Everything about ootp is totally random. Prospects are a total crap shoot, as well as many other aspects.  I agree that there's a lot of randomness but I'd like to phase out as much of it as we can, and try to make it a strategy game.  If it's really just all totally random, we're not running baseball teams, we're just rolling dice, and that's not much fun.

3. Players don't always sign with the highest bidder. the issue I see is the randomness of when they sign. I tend to go from high bid one sim to beat the next, and I just end up hoping that the roulette wheel that decides it stops on me this time around.  That's the problem, the free agency process right now involves spinning a roulette wheel (and we've got to spin it over and over, every sim).  We need to develop a better process than that.  If OOTP doesn't provide a good process, can't we just bypass it and run our own via this website?

[Claybor]

1. I also like to build through the draft, which I think is evident. :}

2. I do go a bit too far sometimes in my comments, and I don't think it's quite as bad as I perhaps made it sound, but yes there is a bit too much randomness for my tastes as well.

3. I have been in leagues that have setup their own FA process, and some worked better then others, but I can't recall any specifically working all that well long term. I am sure that a process could be created, but it will likely be quite a bit of work, and Huck already seems to devote quite a bit of time to the league. That being said, if we were to come up with something that took some work I would be willing to assist in whatever way needed, and there are probably others who could as well.

[CaseyBlakeDeWitt]

I do go a bit too far sometimes in my comments

I'd just like to say that even when I disagree with your comments Claybor it's nice to have a dissenting opinion. You've always put some thought into your extreme anti-spending stance

[Bob_Meteors]

A few points.

1. I am generally in agreement about the lack of FAs, but frankly, I don't think it's a huge problem.  That makes the bidding more competitive.

2. Absolutely agree about the extensions. (Totally not biased here) It is ridiculous. OOTP logic seems to dictate "Well, I can have 14mil/5years in my hometown, or I could move to South America for less money and less time." Now, of course, there should be some people who reject the offers. But it happens way too frequently.

3. I'm not sure if this would work, but here's a suggestion. If a player declines an offer that they definitely should have accepted, they can be forced to accept it by Huck editing it onto them. "Definitely should have accepted" can be decided by Huck, or if he's not sure, by a committee of unbiased judges (for example, to decide on a Melbourne extension, the judges should all be from the ABL).

4. Players who straight-up refuse to negotiate should be forced to do something. My suggestion would be, a one-year contract at 30% higher than the previous year can be manually added if the GM agrees.

5. I would be willing to put some time in helping if necessary.

6. Maybe these suggestions should be retroactive? Not because of Stone, though. Definitely not.

[Txhorns]

I will start this by saying that I don't feel like any changes should be made right now.  We just implemented the arbitration system and it will take awhile to really see all of the changes from that.  I suspect players will start demanding more money from extensions than they do now.

Baseball is a game of luck.  Every aspect of baseball requires some degree of luck.  Let's look at real life...there are many players who sign long term deals with their hometown team that are considered a steal.  Dustin Pedroia comes to mind on this.  There are also many players like Bryce Harper who seemed determined to hit free agency for the highest dollar amount.  Both situations happen every year in baseball. 

As frustrating as it is, our free agency is actually pretty close to MLB free agency.  I was watching football last winter with a friend who is a starting pitcher in the MLB.  Before the game started he got a call from his agent about an offer from team A.  An hour later the agent calls with a counter offer from team B.  Friend tells agent to call team A back, team A then submits a new offer.  The big difference is that we can only offer contracts once a week unlike real life where contracts are discussed 24/7.  I feel like this leads to some of the random signings in our league.

Real life players don't always take the higher offer.  Very few players would sign with Oakland, Tampa Bay, San Diego at $18m/year over Boston, New York or Los Angeles at $15m a year.  Players want to play for a winner in real life, it seems to be the same in the WBA.  Also don't forget that not all equal dollar offers are the same.  Players value player options to the point where they will take less money for that option.  I don't know why Kemboi signed with my team over Mumbai, Northwest, Melbourne or others but it doesn't sound like the dollar figures were way off.  Maybe my 97 wins last year outweighed the loss of a couple million dollars.  It wasn't some crazy random signing though.

[Huckleberry]

I am open to all kinds of options, particularly if I could get help as noted above. I did want to point one thing out, though.

2107 WBA Total Payroll - $828,698,261
2108 WBA Total Payroll - $827,982,505
2109 WBA Total Payroll - $966,502,970

All of these figures are from the last day of the regular season. Total cash on hand hasn't been affected yet, but I really do believe that the arbitration system may have an impact moving forward on free agency. I just don't think it's been around long enough for the effects to be seen yet. Maybe that's just being optimistic but I believe that's the case.

So my first instinct would be to hold the status quo for a while on that, but the lowball extensions remain an issue that I think needs to be discussed openly as a league. For now I'm pretty sure I'm going to change the salary baseline figures as mentioned above.

[philip-whiskeyjacks]

As a newbie to the league, I'm not going to venture much of an opinion except to say:

1.  It is very heartening to see GMs as involved in their league as we see here.  No matter which direction is chosen, it's got to be better with all the passionate input.

2.  A huge thank you to Huck for all the work he does to make this league great.  Doesn't take very long to figure that one out.  And thanks to all those who volunteered to help with any potential fix.

3.  Letting things play out after a major change is probably always a good idea.  League's been going for enough seasons, it doesn't look like it's going to collapse around this issue.  So, you can always change after a season or two.

4.  I am a small-time player in the FA market, though I am looking simply to plug some holes while guys lower in the minors develop.  I'll confess that I almost asked on slack the other day, "Is there an FU button in contract negotiations?"   

[Huckleberry]

Also, for the record, I would not be totally against moving extensions and free agency outside of OOTP. It would affect our offseason schedule and simulation, but there are ways to do it without jacking everything up.

I think.

[Echo127]

2107 WBA Total Payroll - $828,698,261
2108 WBA Total Payroll - $827,982,505
2109 WBA Total Payroll - $966,502,970

All of these figures are from the last day of the regular season. Total cash on hand hasn't been affected yet, but I really do believe that the arbitration system may have an impact moving forward on free agency. I just don't think it's been around long enough for the effects to be seen yet. Maybe that's just being optimistic but I believe that's the case.

I am a little bit concerned that since we now have a fully-active league, the cost of Arbitration might be offset by the fact that as human owners (contrary to CPU-run teams) we all realize that we're getting fantastic deals on extensions compared to free agents. I know I've already adjusted my strategy in that regard, compared to when I first jointed--It doesn't make sense for me to let any decent player hit free agency, when I can sign them on a cheap deal and trade them away instead. I could see this becoming a pseudo-reserve-clause league, where you only acquire players via draft and trade, except that there are arbitrary dollar amounts attached to everything.

My first thought as a solution was to set a WAR based limit on contract extension minimum values, similar to what we're doing for arbitration. But that would be *extremely* messy and would require a lot more work on Huck's behalf.

I think upping the baseline values (as others have suggested) is probably the best and simplest solution, but I haven't experimented enough with OOTP financials to know what to expect as a result. My current vote would be to do that, and see what happens with arbitration for one or two more seasons.

The randomness in which free agent offers are accepted doesn't really bother me at all. I expect that when higher value offers are accepted it is for 3 possible reasons (I can't confirm any of these--just my working theories):

1. As previously suggested, option years may be muddying the waters. I know that when I've had my offers beat by a lower value I had always included a team option year that the player didn't ask for.

2. I expect that the first team to get their offer in has a small advantage. i.e., if offer Andy Stone (the real life one) $1.00 to play on my fake baseball team, and then next sim Huck offers him $1.01, he might still stick with my offer, because the difference is minimal.

3. I think the smiley face you see in the bottom right of the player negotiations message will have an impact on how the player views your offer. So if you low-ball a player once and he starts to become just *a little* bit dissatisfied with you, you then need to pay an extra % more than the teams that he is fully happy with. For example, when I originally offered Kemboi $13M to start things off, it was more than he had asked for. HOWEVER, someone else offered like $15M at the *exact same instant*, meaning he may have become slightly dissatisfied with me for "low-balling" him ("I have a family to feed, yadda yadda yadda"). And I don't have a problem with that, it's just something to consider.

End ramble.

[Echo127]

4.  I am a small-time player in the FA market, though I am looking simply to plug some holes while guys lower in the minors develop.  I'll confess that I almost asked on slack the other day, "Is there an FU button in contract negotiations?"   

I believe you're looking for the "Offer Minor League Contract" button.

[Huckleberry]

Question that may be relevant/important: Does anyone have any examples of players who were already on a signed contract (i.e., not their starting minimum salary or arbitrated salary) agreeing to a lowball extension? If those are the only players signing the ridiculously low extensions then this may be as simple as tweaking the arbitration salary factors. I know that John Pottle wouldn't budge from what I signed him to. I had to haggle that whole season to get him down to $53.5M over 5 years for his second extension.

Take Carlos Vargas for example. He lowballed himself with a 5 year $40M deal his first time around. The second time he signed for $34.5M over 3 years. Still lower than he could have gotten on the market but better. So perhaps if the arbitrated salaries were higher then that first extension would be higher. Which would then, of course, make the second extension higher in turn. Just a thought and I may do some testing with this. If I do then I will post all the results here so everyone has the same information and data.

[squaredrive]

Doesn't exactly fit your question Huck, but I know that hashimoto wanted $20 / mil over 3 year extension and that was based off of his existing salary last season. He then initially asked for $6 mil as a free agent. So inflating the last season of arbitration value may help.

Also agree the baseline salaries should be adjusted right away.

[Huckleberry]

Yeah, the Hashimoto situation just completely put a spotlight on OOTP failings. However, in this case I think it can actually work to our advantage. With a full league of human owners we don't have to worry about the AI's opinion of free agent value. We actually have a market that will determine free agent salaries.

So the fact that the players fail to take their future free agent self-valuation into account when making extension demands is a good thing in an online league.

Arbitration salaries are currently $200K + $350K*MAXWAR for year 4 and $200K + $700K*MAXWAR for year 5. As noted many times here, the rule of thumb is approximately $1.4M/WAR if everything was a completely free market and every player was paid perfectly based on performance. It's something to think about. Perhaps the solution is as simple as increasing the salary baseline numbers and bumping up the arbitration formula. As noted above, we were still only at $966M in team payroll last year. The league is designed so there is $1.0B in revenue every year, so we're still a hair low on that.

[Bob_Meteors]

First of all, this is a great league with lots of active discussion, which I love. I'll just add a few points.

1. The contracts are a little ridiculous. If the rule is 1.4/1 WAR, Kemboi should have signed for 7m/year. Now obviously, you need to overpay a little. But 17.5/year is over 2x what he "deserved" based on WAR.

2. There are some pending FAs who take lowball offers. From my own experience, Magtanggol Baladad signed 6.2/year for 3, a few weeks before free agency. For a market that gave Falco Venema 12mil, he could have gotten much more.

3. Not exactly sure how I would do this, but the player personalities (or just plain stupidity) are sort of getting in the way a little. Maybe we could do something like: nah, none of my ideas work. I've started to write 3 or 4, but they never work.

4. Some really stupid ideas: We could let each team PM a bid for good FAs to Huck. He looks at everyone's and posts the highest bid on the site. Then each team has to bid again. Pros to this are that the players don't get to choose stupidly low offers. Cons are the same as pros, I get that players in the real MLB do that sometimes, but see point 5.

5. I've seen a few people cite "in the real MLB" as a reason for stuff, but I'm not sure that's valid. In some leagues, sure. But the point of the WBA is that it breaks from normal OOTP, which is just designed to simulate the MLB as exactly as possible. Custom financials, fewer teams, independent leagues with separate draft pools... we aren't like the real MLB, so that's not a good rationale for anything.

6. F*ck Andy Stone.

[Huckleberry]

Baladad was on an arbitration salary contract, though. That's the question, is would he have held out for more if he was already on a higher salary from an extension or other contract.

And we would not ever have a system where people send me their free agent bids, not even I am pure enough to have that sort of information. If free agency ever went outside of OOTP then there would be an auction system coded into the site somehow. There would be a leaguewide discussion on parameters for evaluating auction bids so everyone could understand the process.

[Bob_Meteors]

Hmm, ok. I guess you're not trustworthy enough. 

A website would be interesting. My thought was that there wouldn't be any criteria except for highest bid. That way we get rid of the "play for a winner" mentality. I think that helps, because if great FAs only ever go to the best teams, how is anyone supposed to get better?

[Huckleberry]

Well then our first disagreement is upon us. I think that we should include certain consideration factors such as team's record, whether they just won a division, made the playoffs, etc.

Of course I would also include things like an "I don't want to move" factor for staying with the same team. Maybe a team legend factor if they've played X number of years with a team. But I like to sign myself up for work, because then things like an "I want to go home" factor if it's a player from the same country as your team pop into my head. 

I do think it's reasonable for a free agent to agree to play for the defending champs for slightly less money than a team that won 45 games the year before. The factors wouldn't be insurmountable, of course, but would definitely be tiebreaker kind of values. Like I said, though, there would be a big discussion with everyone involved if we went that route.

[CaseyBlakeDeWitt]

Take Carlos Vargas for example. He lowballed himself with a 5 year $40M deal his first time around. The second time he signed for $34.5M over 3 years. Still lower than he could have gotten on the market but better. So perhaps if the arbitrated salaries were higher then that first extension would be higher. Which would then, of course, make the second extension higher in turn. Just a thought and I may do some testing with this. If I do then I will post all the results here so everyone has the same information and data.

Just to offer a little context on this, Vargas' first extension was signed with 2+ years of service and back before we had an arb system so I bought out 2 years of free agency while wildly improving his current salary. He then rejected talking extensions until he was in the final year of his deal (the upcoming season). I contacted him the moment the World Series ended and basically just gave him exactly what he wanted, which was clearly way under market value in terms of years and dollars. I have no real understanding of what Vargas based him asking price on. You'd think 4 MVPs in 5 years and a base salary of $8M would push OOTP to ask for a hell of a lot more.

I also extended Luis Hernandez last season mid-year in a kind of odd situation. He was a CY Young runner up as recently as 2107, and while he struggled in 2108 and dealt with injuries early in 2109, his ratings were still strong at 6/7/7. Working off of a salary of $4.2M he was still willing to accept a league minimum offer from me. Logically, I don't know what would compel someone to take that offer when you basically couldn't do worse on the open market.

I don't see an issue with players refusing to negotiate at times or choosing one org over another in free agency, but the asking prices in extensions is sort of problematic. I just don't really know what the solution is to make players smarter.

[Txhorns]

I will say that I think forcing a player to only sign with the highest bidder is a terrible way to go.  That completely negates any type of options and the fact that players truly do want to play for a winner.  That would mean that a player would sign with Singapore for $5,000,001 for 3 years over an offer Buenos Aires for $5,000,000 for 3 years with the 3rd year being a player option.  With the state of both teams right now that would be stupid.  (No offense Beadle)

We need to give the newly implemented arbitration system more time.  We haven't seen the full effect on the league.

Another worry of mine is future recruitment of owners.  At some point one of us will have to quit unfortunately.  If our leagues financials are really complicated it will make it tougher to recruit new owners.

[Bob_Meteors]

Well, that's true. But how would you program that? That gets really super intricate. And if we get into a "home" thing, do we extend it to cover, say, someone from Haiti wanting to play for SD? or someone from British Columbia preferring Northwest over Ottawa, since it's closer? What about enemy countries? Do players from Russia not want to play for Washington?

I'm a bit of a devil's advocate here, but I think they're important points to make. And if you would just want to do a home country bonus, fine. But then what about countries like Brazil or the US, with multiple teams?

[Huckleberry]

Just to offer a little context on this, Vargas' first extension was signed with 2+ years of service and back before we had an arb system so I bought out 2 years of free agency while wildly improving his current salary. He then rejected talking extensions until he was in the final year of his deal (the upcoming season). I contacted him the moment the World Series ended and basically just gave him exactly what he wanted, which was clearly way under market value in terms of years and dollars. I have no real understanding of what Vargas based him asking price on. You'd think 4 MVPs in 5 years and a base salary of $8M would push OOTP to ask for a hell of a lot more.

I also extended Luis Hernandez last season mid-year in a kind of odd situation. He was a CY Young runner up as recently as 2107, and while he struggled in 2108 and dealt with injuries early in 2109, his ratings were still strong at 6/7/7. Working off of a salary of $4.2M he was still willing to accept a league minimum offer from me. Logically, I don't know what would compel someone to take that offer when you basically couldn't do worse on the open market.

I don't see an issue with players refusing to negotiate at times or choosing one org over another in free agency, but the asking prices in extensions is sort of problematic. I just don't really know what the solution is to make players smarter.

Didn't know that story on Hernandez. That's crazy.

I just realized I can code something for extensions pretty easily. And also put the work on y'all instead of me. Let me think about this a bit. Basic idea is we work together as a league to determine an algorithm for acceptable extensions. Then there's a WBA Tools page that will tell you what you have to give a player for him to extend. If you agree then you post it. I double check then you're allowed to make that offer in game. Obviously there would be some kinks to work out.

[Txhorns]

I think one thing that would help with more realistic extensions is to limit extensions to only being offered in the last year of the contract.

[Echo127]

I think one thing that would help with more realistic extensions is to limit extensions to only being offered in the last year of the contract.

I personally don't think this needs to be implemented. The most lopsided deals I've gotten have been with players in the last year of their contract (see SP Bob Turner). And the majority of the time, my players don't want to negotiate until their last year, anyways. I think this is a little bit of OOTP-randomness that is OK.

[Havana_Jake]

Guys I just caught up on this talk. I know this thread is lengthy, so I'll make this brief. We need a players' union or else our economy will stay fucked. The union would be a heterogeneous 4 person panel of owners. They would be responsible for veto-ing un-realistic contract extension. CBW is right that Chris Boone should have made it to FA. He gave up like $50m to sign an extension. The union needs to veto that. Once we start veto-ing the really bad extensions, the ones that would *never* happen irl, we will have more FA. Supply will increase. Demand will stay the same. Prices will become way more reasonable. We can hammer out specifics on this, but he union would basically use historical precedents to veto extensions. If a guy is making a crazy decision to avoid FA, then we veto it, he becomes a FA and the market stabilizes. This is a labor market, and it is fucked because the "workers" are making horrifically irrational decisions. If we fix that, we fix the market.

[Havana_Jake]

Also I think free agents of a certain calibur should go to straight up auction if we have the ability to handle that on the website. I think it would be cumbersome to do it for everyone, but we should do it for anyone above like 4 WAR or something.

[Huckleberry]

I like the spirit of the union idea but don't like the execution in having a panel of GMs. Mainly because that can breed bad blood in the league and we've got a great group right now.

I think it can work with my idea above where we code an algorithm that can serve as the union. You can input extension offers and it will tell you if it's rejected or not. I would much rather have a formula that everyone knows and that is impartial so nobody can even question if there's favoritism involved, or under the table deals where "I'll vote to approve the extension if you include an extra draft pick in that trade we're working on" is a possibility.

[APMP]

I haven't thought hard enough about this yet to provide a meaningful suggestion, but I'll provide the following input because it's fresh in my mind.

I just extended Ninfa Sator, who is a 5-6 WAR center fielder and a true star.  All he wanted in his extension was his current arbitration salary ($4.9 million) every year for the next five years.  Naturally, I offered him that.  And he signed with a massive grin on his face.  Hell, he even said that he was happy to be taking below-market value (see attached).

[Txhorns]

I really think we will regret any changes we make right now.  Arbitration has been in place for 1 year.  Give it at least another 3 or 4 years before changing anything else.

[AndyHustle]

I was literally writing an article on this when this started happening. But I'll throw in my ideas...

Right now players are signing for pennies of what they should be. Any FA is on his downward spiral and makes way more than they should. It is a sellers market and always will be sense cash has no meaning.

1. Jake and I talked about the union idea last night. I like that or the idea of it.

2. All players go to free agency. No extensions. That would mean they get fair market value but then picks and prospects become obsolete in trades.

I think something needs to happen because people are able to build super teams on small payrolls and will never have to give up their players. I'm afraid it becomes the downfall of our league.

[claphamsa]

Yeah, the Hashimoto situation just completely put a spotlight on OOTP failings. However, in this case I think it can actually work to our advantage. With a full league of human owners we don't have to worry about the AI's opinion of free agent value. We actually have a market that will determine free agent salaries.

So the fact that the players fail to take their future free agent self-valuation into account when making extension demands is a good thing in an online league.

Arbitration salaries are currently $200K + $350K*MAXWAR for year 4 and $200K + $700K*MAXWAR for year 5. As noted many times here, the rule of thumb is approximately $1.4M/WAR if everything was a completely free market and every player was paid perfectly based on performance. It's something to think about. Perhaps the solution is as simple as increasing the salary baseline numbers and bumping up the arbitration formula. As noted above, we were still only at $966M in team payroll last year. The league is designed so there is $1.0B in revenue every year, so we're still a hair low on that.

FWIW, I think the hashimoto situation is the exact issue with this league...and its the exact oposite of what evetyone says. no one trades. he was offered 20 M a year...didnt sign, and then signed for less, was put up for sale...and nothing. people over value prospects that will never develop in this league. I have never seen such minor league depth...yet people are mega greedy when it comes to trade. THATS the problem but im drunk and love to trade.

[Huckleberry]

To be fair you love to trade when you're sober, too.

[AndyHustle]

FWIW, I think the hashimoto situation is the exact issue with this league...and its the exact oposite of what evetyone says. no one trades. he was offered 20 M a year...didnt sign, and then signed for less, was put up for sale...and nothing. people over value prospects that will never develop in this league. I have never seen such minor league depth...yet people are mega greedy when it comes to trade. THATS the problem but im drunk and love to trade.

Hashimoto is a 32 year old 3B who can't play defense and is on his decline into the 2 and under WAR. I don't think he has much value for trade.

[claphamsa]

I really think we will regret any changes we make right now.  Arbitration has been in place for 1 year.  Give it at least another 3 or 4 years before changing anything else.

this X100

[claphamsa]

Hashimoto is a 32 year old 3B who can't play defense and is on his decline into the 2 and under WAR. I don't think he has much value for trade.

and if there is so much cash hanging around that someone was just biddgin for the sake of it...then the cash is the issue.

people pay for FA because they can, no issues there.

[claphamsa]

To be fair you love to trade when you're sober, too.

[AndyHustle]

and if there is so much cash hanging around that someone was just biddgin for the sake of it...then the cash is the issue.

people pay for FA because they can, no issues there.

So Clap is saying everyone has the money so they should trade for him, correct? He's right. However, I think people value prospects to the point where that particular player has no value to trade for. Contract notwithstanding.

[Txhorns]

Hashimoto is just on a serious decline.  He's only worth 3-5 million a year now.  So no one wants to pay $18m plus give up prospects.  If I truly put Kemboi on the block at $17.5m for 5 years I would have multiple offers for him before the end of the night.

[rbeadle3]

I'm a little late to the party on this one, but in my opinion the largest issue is the inconsistency of all of this. Like everything that has been stated, theres no telling if one guy will sign for way less than he is worth or 2x what he is worth, I think we need to find a way to balance this out. Now obviously if we are trying to make it as realistic as possible it is not uncommon for players to give a "hometown" discount when signing extensions, but I agree this is a bit too much randomness in how players are valued, I would be for moving free agency out of the game if we could find an effective way to do so that wasn't extremely more work for Huck.

[Bob_Meteors]

Guys I just caught up on this talk. I know this thread is lengthy, so I'll make this brief. We need a players' union or else our economy will stay fucked. The union would be a heterogeneous 4 person panel of owners. They would be responsible for veto-ing un-realistic contract extension. CBW is right that Chris Boone should have made it to FA. He gave up like $50m to sign an extension. The union needs to veto that. Once we start veto-ing the really bad extensions, the ones that would *never* happen irl, we will have more FA. Supply will increase. Demand will stay the same. Prices will become way more reasonable. We can hammer out specifics on this, but he union would basically use historical precedents to veto extensions. If a guy is making a crazy decision to avoid FA, then we veto it, he becomes a FA and the market stabilizes. This is a labor market, and it is fucked because the "workers" are making horrifically irrational decisions. If we fix that, we fix the market.

I like the idea of the union a lot. But instead of 4, it should be 8- 2 per division, preferably GMs of bad teams. Maybe it could rotate every year, using the 2 teams per division with the worst projected records.

I like the spirit of the union idea but don't like the execution in having a panel of GMs. Mainly because that can breed bad blood in the league and we've got a great group right now.

I don't think it would breed bad blood. Maybe a little, but I really like this group of GMs. We seem very strong and focused, and willing to help make the league better. And there are potential conflicts of interest... Maybe instead of my idea from above, we can have a different union for each contract? Something like: Not every extension is automatically reviewed, but anyone can bring up one that they think is unfair and tell Huck, who will make a union. It will be 4-6 GMs, none in the same division and only 1-2 in the same league, to minimize conflicts of interest.

[Bob_Meteors]

I would absolutely volunteer to be on the union. It would probably make sense for me to only be part of the decisions on ABL teams, but whatever.

[Havana_Jake]

My plank:

1) a "union", either algorithm or gm committee with utmost punishment for kickbacks

2) free agents of a certain calibur go to auction if we have the tech to manage it

[Havana_Jake]

Also I want to say good for Hashimoto for finessing the league out of some $$. Dude's so rich his grandkids will play lacrosse.