Quote:
Originally Posted by RummyPirate
Hey,
After toying around a bit and starting over a few times, I finally finished my first season and I'm hooked!
And why wouldn't I be? Turning the Pirates in a superforce ready to clinch the title in the first months, only to have them become an injury plagued team barely clinching the last play-off ticket in the last 6 weeks. And then losing the wild card game.
The big problem I had is that I traded away nearly all decent prospects/back-ups at the start to get me 4 good new pitchers and a new catcher, so I virtually had no squad depth to deal with injuries. So in the offseason i'm looking to building some squad depth while trying to keep my stars. So now the questions:
1) Any pointers on how to approach arbitration/free agency etc? I plan on withdrawing arbitration offers on a few older guys in decline, for which I think I can find better free agents. Good idea, or better to give them a contract and try and trade them?
2) Is it necessary to keep the arbitration offers as high as they start off, or can I cut these back a bit?
3) Am I better of signing the guys I wanna keep for a while to long-term deals?
4) Any other tips on this?
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#3 is a key point and remember OOTP leagues have inflation ie., contracts typically only get higher as the league unfolds so signing long term deals at today's money is always your best bet for young, great players. Some players won't accept long term deals and I have found those that don't are usually the ones you want to keep. Also keep in mind you have your teams financial report which will give you a pretty good indication of what the player will accept (usually the figure is in italics). I have found you can knock down about 20% and be somewhat successful on those figures but, sometimes due to a players greed he will be set on that number or even higher. The best way to learn in this game is to play and with that experience you will notice patterns.