Wild Free Agency Contracts

[Cadieux39]

Hi everyone, i`ve got a question in regards to Free Agency. Contracts. Finances. Salaries.


I am in the free agency period of 1951, financial settings suggest super star players baseline should be 55k and good players 37k entry level guys only get paid 6k.


So the hunt begins this season for me to get a Pitcher... There are 2 guys with 5 star quality skill. Both pitchers in early 30`s with lots of wins and solid +5 W.A.R. stats.


Jackson and Thompson are both coming off 80k a year contracts. In negotiations with Thompson i offer what i find is a very generous 95k a year aveage. A few days pass and with other teams offering Thompson now was asking for 105k per year. Yikes... so i jump to Jackson, he`s only asking for 73k per year, so i offer 85k per year, on average. Once again a week or two passes other clubs offer Jackson now wants 105k... I start working over both pitchers offering now on both hoping to get just one...


Thompson now wants 4 years @ 125k avg.
Jackson now is asking 4 years @ 119k avg.




Reminder this is 1951. St.Louis has a team budget of 680k and player payroll of 302k. St.Louis is one of the teams bidding on Jackson!


Nashville`s payroll in 1950 was 275k and New York at the highest was 660k.


These starting pitchers are asking for nearly 1/5 of the wealthiest teams payroll... This doesn`t seem to make sense! Reminder the financial league set up, suggests 54k for a super star player. these guys are asking for double that amount.


I had 145k for free agents this year, which i figured would be more than enough to aquire a super star arm. But crippling my financials for 4 years makes no sense.


To add to this, a 38 y/o pitcher opped out of his last year with my club. He is a 3 star pitcher, very run of the mill. His salary was 38k. This offseason im offering him 2 years with 44k average. Since its free agency other offers have bumped in so now he wants 55k. 55k would make him the second highest salary on my club... I feel like i should not be spending 55k on a 3 start arm when he is 38.


This has happened to me multiple times, in a previous fictional league, set in the late 70`s i signed a 4 star pitcher to a million dollars a year average. Way over priced for a late 30`s arm. Meanwhile an early 30`s 5 star quality pitcher signed for 700k a year. 300k less, which in 1978 is astronomical. I never made an offer on this guy, i never thought i could afford him.


What are your experiences? When you try and sign a F.A. are other clubs driving up the price? Is it double or more than the league settings suggest? Do you find players you make an offer on always get into bidding wars, while those you dont sign for normal contracts?


I'm pretty rattled by this. If someone can tell me which MLB players were making 125k+ in 1951 please tell me so i can feel better. This seems wrong.


**By the way im only talking about Starting Pitchers here, Not relievers or closers, all players mentioned are starters**

[Charley575]

This is happening because there is unspent money in your league. During the free agency period, the game adjusts players' demands to try to eat up the available money. Whether it SHOULD do that (no) is a matter of debate, but nevertheless...

Personally, I would prefer that the game just let the owners pocket the extra profit and keep player salaries roughly in line with the user's chosen settings, but such is not the case. Some small deviation and gradual inflation would be tolerable, but I've got guys asking for 40 mil a year and it's only the third year of my league.

[RchW]

Originally Posted by Charley575

This is happening because there is unspent money in your league. During the free agency period, the game adjusts players' demands to try to eat up the available money. Whether it SHOULD do that (no) is a matter of debate, but nevertheless...

Personally, I would prefer that the game just let the owners pocket the extra profit and keep player salaries roughly in line with the user's chosen settings, but such is not the case. Some small deviation and gradual inflation would be tolerable, but I've got guys asking for 40 mil a year and it's only the third year of my league.

You can manage the amount of money available. I'd explain but don't have the game available right now.

[Cadieux39]

If someone could explain how there is too much money in the league i would love to hear how i can correct or adjust this.


Im using the historical settings so every year my game loads the financial and game settings that match that year.


I know there is a setting which allows managers the full budget as opposed to having the budget set by the owner. I figure having the owner set the budget prevents some teams from blowing up the league with the huge money available.


For example New york, made 2.6 million dollars in 1950, their budget was 1.7 so they made about 1m in profit.


Nashville made 1.2 million, its budget was 600k. So they made 600k in profit.


Those are the two clubs at each extreme.


I also find it odd that the 3 pitchers i was bidding on, Jackson, Thompson and Sanchez are the only ones to have gotten inflated deals. Almost as if the Ai plays nice amongst itself, but tried to max me out financially on the players i made offers to.


The average teams budget has grown from 600k to 1.2 million in 6 seasons. Are the budgets just growing too fast even with the OOTP settings?

[Wingedlion14]

Random thought - can it simply be a case of supply and demand? What were the other pitchers on the market that year like? I've had cases where a 3-star 35-year-old pitcher got a 7-year $140 million contract simply because he was the only competent starting pitcher on the market that year and a *lot* of win-now teams needed pitching.

[Cadieux39]

Supply and demand certainly makes sense to a certain point. Both these pitchers were early to mid 30`s both top talents.

They were they only 5 star starters. there was a couple 4 star arms, but they were veterans 38 years old, they still signed for between 60-80k. Its over the 55k financial league setting for a super star, but least it’s reasonable. There were 3 or 4 veteran 3 star pitchers available as well, none went for a huge contract other than Sanchez who i was in a bidding war for but gave up. He signed at 57k per year.

The two comments explaining there is too much unspent money in the league has me very intrigued. I would feel a little disappointed if the OOTP historical settings don't function properly. But i would like to know how to curve the financials so that the biggest markets aren`t spending three times more on a free agent than what his value should be.

I also find it a strange coincidence that the 3 pitchers I made a move for, all got into bidding wars and saw huge contracts awarded. If you look at the list Sanchez Thompson and Jacksons contracts are wildly inflated to everyone else.

For example Robles is a 5 star talent 38 year old RF'er. I never made an offer, not sure what that bidding war was like, but his signed 68k. A perfectly realistic contract considering the set up and era I’m playing in.

New York, Chicago and Los Angeles have budgets around 1.8 million, while Vancouver, Nashville and Detroit have budgets around 880k.

Is the budget disparity destroying the realism of the league? The top budget teams inflating player contracts?

In 1946 the original budgets were Detroit @ 440k at the bottom and New York @ 900k at the top.

[sprague]

In a reserve clause set up (which 1951 is supposed to be) the revenue will far exceed the player contracts. The game reflects this with much higher revenues.

If you choose to play a historical year prior to the 1970's with free agency but don't change the financials this will happen real quick- again as mentioned there will be a massive surplus of money and the players want it.

For historical over time and free agency I tend to have to pick one financial setting from the start and play it through without allowing it to change over time. The game itself does not compensate to make the player salaries right if you play FA in a what is supposed to be a non FA world

[NoOne]

if it's something wonky in the settings, it looks like sprague has the best info for you.

....

if it's a cash supply problem, go to financials and one of the options is to limit how much cash on hand a team can have. i'd look through some teams to make sure it's a problem before you dink around with it.

as far as the rich teams ruining things... are they involved in the contracts that get astronomical? if so, i'd say no, that's how it is supposed to work. if the contracts get crazy regardless of a rich team being involved in the bidding process, definitely consider changes.

like others said, it's a complicated thing. cash supply, who is bidding, what is available, and i'm sure there are more factors to consider.

[Cadieux39]

Originally Posted by sprague

In a reserve clause set up (which 1951 is supposed to be) the revenue will far exceed the player contracts. The game reflects this with much higher revenues.

If you choose to play a historical year prior to the 1970's with free agency but don't change the financials this will happen real quick- again as mentioned there will be a massive surplus of money and the players want it.

For historical over time and free agency I tend to have to pick one financial setting from the start and play it through without allowing it to change over time. The game itself does not compensate to make the player salaries right if you play FA in a what is supposed to be a non FA world

Would a good solution to my problem then be, turn off the automatic adjuster for league salaries? Then from there scale the over revenue of the league and grow the revenues and attendance year by year how i want to try and make it more realistic?


The way i see it, at this growth rate the New York team would have a 250million budget and probably a 175 million pay roll by the late 90`s meanwhile the weak teams will have a 100million budget... if that.

[RchW]

Originally Posted by sprague

In a reserve clause set up (which 1951 is supposed to be) the revenue will far exceed the player contracts. The game reflects this with much higher revenues.

If you choose to play a historical year prior to the 1970's with free agency but don't change the financials this will happen real quick- again as mentioned there will be a massive surplus of money and the players want it.

For historical over time and free agency I tend to have to pick one financial setting from the start and play it through without allowing it to change over time. The game itself does not compensate to make the player salaries right if you play FA in a what is supposed to be a non FA world

Of course. I'm embarrassed to say that I missed this completely. FA in a non FA era requires limiting revenue and/or strict salary caps.

[Raidergoo]

Originally Posted by Cadieux39

The way i see it, at this growth rate the New York team would have a 250million budget and probably a 175 million pay roll by the late 90`s meanwhile the weak teams will have a 100million budget... if that.

That's pretty close to what happened in MLB.

[Cadieux39]

So seeing that my league has way to much money, and that is throwing off my Free Agency.

How can i start to curve my leagues financials to temper the free agency demands and at the same time help the lame ducks of the league.

Seeing that New York has a 2 million budget and Nashville a 800k Budget. What can i do to help teams like Nashville?

I've turned off the automatic adjust league financials yearly, hoping it will stall the growth of the league.

Should i be fixing and forcing ticket prices? Make the luxury tax more severe? Should teams control the entire revenue?

With teams controlling the entire revenue i worry New York will continue to run away in growth as they still make nearly a million in profit with a 2 million dollar budget and Nashville makes 600k in profit with their 800k budget.

What would happen if i adjust fan loyalty and interest with the lame duck clubs? The bad teams average 9000-10000 fans per game while New York gets 22000-23000. If i can force an increase of attendance with the bad clubs it would increase the profit and hopefully its budget.

The champions in my league have gone like this. New York, Brooklyn, Brooklyn, New York, New York... and in my 6th season New York has a .733 win percentage, leading the league. Looks like they should win it again.

[Matt Arnold]

If you want things to be more equal, I would suggest lowering the average ticket prices and raising the national media contract, and assigning that as a fixed contract for every team. Since the national media contract should be a larger pct of their income, that should help even out the overall finances.

[TGH-Adfabre]

Lock all national media contracts to the same value.
Set local contracts to the same value.
Set cash maximum to ??? You will have to play with this, a basic guess to me is 1/10 or 1/20 either average payroll or top payroll.
You can manually set ticket prices to close or the same and then there is an option that teams cannot change ticket prices. I cannot remember if that is online only. I think it applies to the AI too.

The result will be the top performing teams will still out earn the poor teams because of increased attendance and merchandising but it will not be so extreme. If a bottom team drafts well and makes decent FA signings they can keep up with the big boys.
Market size, fan interest and fan loyalty will also be important because they play a role in attendance and merchandising revenue.

I have been in a capped online league since 2007. We do not raise or lower our cap. We adjust finances globally to keep financial balance. I would get it all set up and SAVE IT as a template or quick start or just copy the .lg. For the first 3-5 years check finances yearly. Just run through and make sure teams are making money.

I do a yearly financial report for our online league.
I check teams profitable and losing money.
Cash in hand and how many teams had money taken by cash max.
Top player contracts.
Ticket prices. Make sure you go back and check the media contracts.
You will not have to do this permanently, just the first few season and maybe every 5-10 seasons once you get rolling. After you know where all of the screens are and know what you are looking for it takes less than 5 minutes.

Our online league became cash rich and we were seeing demands that were 1/3 of the cap ($30mil demand and $80 mil cap). Over 4 season we lowered cash in the league through the methods above and we are now where we want to be.

God luck,
Tom

[Spritze]

You can also give the visiting team 50% of the attendence revenue for every game rather than the default 20%.