Rules Committee Discussion - Arbitration

[papps]

I don't have a cool acronym but sometimes simple is stupid. 

Personally, this will set my team up well because I have a ton of players in arbitration.  For the league it's going to be a bad thing though.  Here's why.  First, there'll be no such thing as a difficult decision in tendering a contract.  Those 5th and 6th year players that you don't want to pay millions to now won't get cut.  So this limits the free agent pool.  Second, extensions are based on the 6th year contract so now extensions will be incredibly cheap which limits the free agent pool.  Third, you're going to pump even more money into free agency because people will have it to spend since they're going to be saving it in arbitration.  So few free agents, more money to spend, and that's not hard to see where that goes. 

In addition, there's a reason why leagues have rules set date.  It's so people can plan a strategy for their teams with confidence in the rules being stable.  Right now there are teams that should be over the cap that have been allowed to continue bidding on free agents and acquiring players by restructuring contracts.  Part of what makes this game fun is dealing with the cap constraints.  The cap is meaningless if there are no consequences for going over.  By changing the rules in midstream you're dramatically affecting results in here and you're dramatically changing the values of players.  There's a ton of confusion in this league about the rules.

Lots of valid points here.  I think the biggest issue I see is that we don't use a ranking system for contract extension values.  We use a percentage of where a current contract is.  If we used a ranking system then when a player is out of his arbitration years then a decision must be made to sign him to an extension or not.  Very valid argument by chrisetc21.

[chrisetc21]

Also, can we get a confirmation on the restructuring rules?  I'd like to frontload contracts and pay money up front for some of my players.  I think if we're allowed to backload contracts to defer money to we should be allowed to frontload deals and pay up front in the form of a one time bonus. 

[_JL6]

We should use a ranking system for extensions.

[Jimbo3280]

im good with a flat rate even though im not in the rule committee but it will be less work an stress to figure out all the salaries

[Tarheels55]

I agree to points made by Jon about wanting to keep things simple and to cut out some of the work. The extra work that needs done is, I am sure, very tedious and time consuming.

I also agree with Chris on a lot of his points. I agree that changing things after the fact is usually not a good thing, but I don't see this as a deal breaker by any means as long as it makes the league better for ALL.

The cheap talent for so long though is problematic in my opinion. I think that if you want to go with a flat salary during arb years then you need to at least split it to go with years 1-3 and years 4-6 and average out the salaries that are in place now for those years. So years 1-3 would be worth 500K and years 4-6 would be worth 2.5M.

I think too that by stripping out the arb years salaries, as they stand, you take away some of the strategy to the league. I think that some owners who are better at prospects will have an advantage over those that are not as strong in that area. They will be able to run out a cheap competitive team for years and years while others spend in FA like there is no cap and get stuck with players that they can't move because of the high salary.

So again...understanding the issues, I say leave it as it is or split it up to two salary groups within the 6 year arb years.

Valid point here.

I like the 1-3 at .500 and 4-6 at 2.5m,but with that comes changing things.I'm fine with whatever comes about.

[frankbullsfan]

I am fine with a flat rate as well one problem like some has said is that some will try to load up on prospects that are cheaper talent for longer that will produce but am not sure you could really build a whole winning team this way I think it would be more trying to mix some of the more expensive contracts with the prospects and will make it interesting to see how teams might try to build them.

[gazw]

I see the benefit of going to flat rate but it's a difficult thing to suddenly have to decide when the rules have been set for months. People will have been working on their team in a specific way. This happened with some of the previous rule changes and it will have changed the way people put together their rosters.

If it were to be done there would need to be a scale. Years 1-3 at the lower rate say $0.5M with an increase over the next 3 years. For example;

Year 1 $0.5m
Year 2 $0.5m
Year 3 $0.5m
Year 4 $2.0m
Year 5 $3.5m
Year 6 $5.0m

We need to have a date for when some of these rules have to be set for the season as well. Maybe let the league know that everything will be done by an arbitrary date (maybe 1st Feb) and then stick to it. It needs to be a settled league otherwise the turnover in GM's will begin to take hold as people wont know what is happening.

[papps]

I know that in MLB the arbitration is 6 years.  I just wanted to throw this out there.  What if we shortened prospect contracts to only 3 years?  Service time can easily be tracked.  Maybe we do a spec tier system like starting at 500k and increasing by 500k each year.  After the initial three years they can be signed to a prospect extension for another three years but with a percentage increase based on performance.  Of course things can be tweaked to have it make sense.  What do you guys think?

[gazw]

If you are doing a tiered system based on performance then it may as well not change from what is there now. Still lots of work for John.

If you have a tiered system,where you can decline the arbitration at years 4,5 & 6, which is locked in at a set rate then it works in 2 ways;
1) If they are a very good player then you get the benefit of having taken a chance on them as a prospect and getting them at a reasonable salary.
2) The free agent pool will get re-stocked as teams will not want to pay over the odds on prospects/players that are not worth the increase.

[Mike]

I'm for whatever is fair, and easier for Jon to manage