Not enough to cash to make trade when I'm including less than the player's salary

Alaric410 · 09-09-2015, 08:49 AM

It's currently spring training of my first season and I'm trying to make a trade and being told I don't have enough cash.

In the trade window:

Budget space available is $5.0M
Cash Available is $3.2M
Total Available is $8.2M

The trade I want to propose involves me trading a player who has one year at $9.8M remaining on his contract for a young player who will be on the minimum. The guy I'm trying to trade is a two-star guy coming off a great season, but a little overpaid at $9.8M.

My thinking was to trade him along with cash amounting to most of his salary, in the hope of getting a decent young player back. However the game insists that the most cash I can include in the trade is $3.2M. Any more and it says I don't have enough cash.

This doesn't seem right to me as if I was to include $9M in the trade, I'm simultaneously reducing my payroll by $9.3M ($9.8M minus $0.5M to pay the new guy) and so am improving my full-year cash position.

And it's not a timing issue. From my Accounting page, the $3.2M that shows up in the trade screen as my Cash Available is just my starting balance for the year. YTD I've actually received my media revnue and not paid any salaries yet, so it's not as if the check would bounce if I need to pay the $9M now and only recoup the $9.3M in salary savings over the course of the year.

Is this just the way it works? That to trade a guy with cash, you actually need to have that cash in your opening balance? Even if it improves your full-year position?

saturn2187 · 09-09-2015, 09:53 AM

Yes, unfortunately you can't assume the cost of the departing players contract over the course of the season; instead you must pay the entire amount in cash up front.

Dyzalot · 09-09-2015, 11:47 AM

I think the point is that just about any owner would be glad to pay, for example, 7 million today to unload a 10 million dollar contract and thus OOTP shouldn't constrain you in such a way that you can't do that just because there isn't currently enough cash showing on the books.

Cinnamon J. Scudworth · 09-09-2015, 12:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dyzalot

I think the point is that just about any owner would be glad to pay, for example, 7 million today to unload a 10 million dollar contract and thus OOTP shouldn't constrain you in such a way that you can't do that just because there isn't currently enough cash showing on the books.

Right. What happens in real life is that a team will literally pay a portion of the continuing salary of a player they've traded away, every two weeks, just as if he was still on their team. OOTP doesn't have that ability. It's either cash on hand or nothing.

MikeS21 · 09-09-2015, 05:00 PM

What gets me is that I think the "not enough cash" feature has way too much power in the game. Real life teams seem to be more flexible.

And what I really don't understand is that I add cash in order to pay ALL a pending free agent's remaining contract in order to get a better player in return in a trade, and the AI will refuse because the team won't be able to afford the FA's contract two or three years in the future. I'm giving you a free short-term rental, and you cannot afford him two years in the future, when he will probably be signed with another team? How can you not afford "free"?

As I said, it needs to be more flexible.

Alaric410 · 09-10-2015, 02:58 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cinnamon J. Scudworth

Right. What happens in real life is that a team will literally pay a portion of the continuing salary of a player they've traded away, every two weeks, just as if he was still on their team. OOTP doesn't have that ability. It's either cash on hand or nothing.

The worse thing is that it doesn't even to be cash on hand that is the constraint. The figure that shows up as "cash" in the trade screen appears to be opening cash and that appears to be the constraint. On a YTD basis, I actually do have sufficient cash because I've received media revenue.

One possible workaround may be to take on a bad contract from the other team rather than handing them cash. That was it's salary vs salary and they do offset. However not every team has a useless player with a big one-year contract that can be used this way.

Friendly_Beaver · 09-10-2015, 03:58 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by MikeS21

What gets me is that I think the "not enough cash" feature has way too much power in the game. Real life teams seem to be more flexible.

And what I really don't understand is that I add cash in order to pay ALL a pending free agent's remaining contract in order to get a better player in return in a trade, and the AI will refuse because the team won't be able to afford the FA's contract two or three years in the future. I'm giving you a free short-term rental, and you cannot afford him two years in the future, when he will probably be signed with another team? How can you not afford "free"?

As I said, it needs to be more flexible.

Yes there's needs to be the option to go to the owner or board to request more funds. When you do this you could maybe increase the owners goals from being respectable to reaching the playoffs or reaching the playoffs to winning the LCS etc etc. So that's there's a risk reward to doing this, also depending on the owner they could flat out refuse your request.

this would be more realistic in my opinion.

NoOne · 09-11-2015, 04:22 AM

an owner's generosity is already incorporated into their personality. that will affect how large a budget is based on projected income. a win above all else owner will give you a budget large enough to potentially lose money every year once you have a consistently successful team. cheap owners will not. so, it would be double dipping if they also were willing to add money during the season. also, upping a budget midseason will not fix the problem, either. cash on hand is a different animal.

as far as ytd cash and starting cash, you may not be able to use the info from the game to make this assumption. do teams get the entire media contracts income on day one? in the game it does. if not, a team is likely in the red until the later portions of the season, if they even get out of the red. so your ytd cash may be quite innacurate, if this were realistic - which is an admirable threshold to use, but not always possible or easy to implement.

just because you paid the first year of the contract for the other club does not alleviate them from the responsibility of the rest of the contract. so, of course that needs to be considered. they cannot ignore this aspect of a trade.

above all esle, these trades aren't realistic. don't get me wrong i do it too. however, i understand i am to some extent taking advantage of the limitations of the AI in order to circimvent salary caps and budget constraints. i dump vets when i have replacements ready for just about anything in return unless i think a potential FA compansation draft pick offers more value.

sure there are salary dumps in real life, but the big salaries never go to a small or mid market team. they would never accept the trade. they cannot afford to do such things.

to get this type of stuff into the game would require a massive overhaul of the financial and trading systems. that is certainly doable, but do you think an average person can handle the finer points of economics and accounting necessary to enable trades like real-life? (rhetorical question) i see posts of people having problems understanding the current simplified system.

you don't seem to like the limitations imposed on your gameplay by these financial options... so change them, if you are unhappy. you can even just add 1,000,000,000 to your cash on hand and call it square (stay well under 2^32 cash to avoid issues). changing these settings is not much different than an 'ask the owner for more cash' option during the year. either way you are just circumventing the restrictions those settings are supposed to impose on you.

MikeS21 · 09-11-2015, 08:08 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by NoOne

just because you paid the first year of the contract for the other club does not alleviate them from the responsibility of the rest of the contract. so, of course that needs to be considered. they cannot ignore this aspect of a trade.

Can't speak for others, but in my case, there was no second or third year the new team had to pay for for. It was a pending FA that I offered cash to pay remainder of salary so I could get a better player in return. In other words, they were getting a FREE player for the rest of the year.

I can't figure out how they cannot afford a FREE player who won't return the the following season unless they negotiate with him. If you don't like the trade, fine, but don't say you can't afford him when he's not going to cost you anything.

NoOne · 09-11-2015, 06:50 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by MikeS21

Can't speak for others, but in my case, there was no second or third year the new team had to pay for for.

you said,

"...because the team won't be able to afford the FA's contract two or three years in the future."

i see it said free agent.. but how is that influencing a trade? i've had no problems adding cash to make a trade fit a team's cap, but that's a limited sample. so, that's definitely an odd reason for sure.

but....

beside the point, unless the team was in contention and had a deficiency at that player's position, no team is trading a prospect for half a year or even 1 year of a middling or even above average veteran.

that type of player has little to no value to almost all teams in any given year. that player isn't 'free.' they are losing a potential MLB player that they would have 6-7 years of control and therefore a bargain salary. that is worth way more than 1 year for 1 player. opportunity costs are just as important in deciding a trade as cash.

they might be able to afford it, but they definitely shouldn't accept that trade. maybe the game just pooped out a message/given reason that didn't actually fit...

09-09-2015, 08:49 AM	#1
Alaric410 Minors (Rookie Ball) Join Date: Mar 2012 Posts: 25	Not enough to cash to make trade when I'm including less than the player's salary It's currently spring training of my first season and I'm trying to make a trade and being told I don't have enough cash. In the trade window: Budget space available is $5.0M Cash Available is $3.2M Total Available is $8.2M The trade I want to propose involves me trading a player who has one year at $9.8M remaining on his contract for a young player who will be on the minimum. The guy I'm trying to trade is a two-star guy coming off a great season, but a little overpaid at $9.8M. My thinking was to trade him along with cash amounting to most of his salary, in the hope of getting a decent young player back. However the game insists that the most cash I can include in the trade is $3.2M. Any more and it says I don't have enough cash. This doesn't seem right to me as if I was to include $9M in the trade, I'm simultaneously reducing my payroll by $9.3M ($9.8M minus $0.5M to pay the new guy) and so am improving my full-year cash position. And it's not a timing issue. From my Accounting page, the $3.2M that shows up in the trade screen as my Cash Available is just my starting balance for the year. YTD I've actually received my media revnue and not paid any salaries yet, so it's not as if the check would bounce if I need to pay the $9M now and only recoup the $9.3M in salary savings over the course of the year. Is this just the way it works? That to trade a guy with cash, you actually need to have that cash in your opening balance? Even if it improves your full-year position?

09-09-2015, 05:00 PM	#5
MikeS21 Minors (Triple A) Join Date: Mar 2007 Posts: 276	What gets me is that I think the "not enough cash" feature has way too much power in the game. Real life teams seem to be more flexible. And what I really don't understand is that I add cash in order to pay ALL a pending free agent's remaining contract in order to get a better player in return in a trade, and the AI will refuse because the team won't be able to afford the FA's contract two or three years in the future. I'm giving you a free short-term rental, and you cannot afford him two years in the future, when he will probably be signed with another team? How can you not afford "free"? As I said, it needs to be more flexible. Last edited by MikeS21; 09-09-2015 at 05:02 PM.

09-11-2015, 04:22 AM	#8
NoOne Banned Join Date: Apr 2015 Posts: 7,273 Infractions: 0/1 (3)	an owner's generosity is already incorporated into their personality. that will affect how large a budget is based on projected income. a win above all else owner will give you a budget large enough to potentially lose money every year once you have a consistently successful team. cheap owners will not. so, it would be double dipping if they also were willing to add money during the season. also, upping a budget midseason will not fix the problem, either. cash on hand is a different animal. as far as ytd cash and starting cash, you may not be able to use the info from the game to make this assumption. do teams get the entire media contracts income on day one? in the game it does. if not, a team is likely in the red until the later portions of the season, if they even get out of the red. so your ytd cash may be quite innacurate, if this were realistic - which is an admirable threshold to use, but not always possible or easy to implement. just because you paid the first year of the contract for the other club does not alleviate them from the responsibility of the rest of the contract. so, of course that needs to be considered. they cannot ignore this aspect of a trade. above all esle, these trades aren't realistic. don't get me wrong i do it too. however, i understand i am to some extent taking advantage of the limitations of the AI in order to circimvent salary caps and budget constraints. i dump vets when i have replacements ready for just about anything in return unless i think a potential FA compansation draft pick offers more value. sure there are salary dumps in real life, but the big salaries never go to a small or mid market team. they would never accept the trade. they cannot afford to do such things. to get this type of stuff into the game would require a massive overhaul of the financial and trading systems. that is certainly doable, but do you think an average person can handle the finer points of economics and accounting necessary to enable trades like real-life? (rhetorical question) i see posts of people having problems understanding the current simplified system. you don't seem to like the limitations imposed on your gameplay by these financial options... so change them, if you are unhappy. you can even just add 1,000,000,000 to your cash on hand and call it square (stay well under 2^32 cash to avoid issues). changing these settings is not much different than an 'ask the owner for more cash' option during the year. either way you are just circumventing the restrictions those settings are supposed to impose on you. Last edited by NoOne; 09-11-2015 at 04:33 AM.

09-09-2015, 09:53 AM	#2
saturn2187 All Star Reserve Join Date: Nov 2012 Posts: 527	Yes, unfortunately you can't assume the cost of the departing players contract over the course of the season; instead you must pay the entire amount in cash up front.

09-09-2015, 11:47 AM	#3
Dyzalot All Star Starter Join Date: May 2008 Posts: 1,735	I think the point is that just about any owner would be glad to pay, for example, 7 million today to unload a 10 million dollar contract and thus OOTP shouldn't constrain you in such a way that you can't do that just because there isn't currently enough cash showing on the books.