Possible Rule Amendment - In season re-signings

[Colby]

I am bumping this based on recent PMs I have received about extensions.  There was no rule change made because of this thread.

[rcankosy]

I believe that there were a few prospect extensions processed this past off-season.  Justin Upton comes to mind.  Did any of them receive prospect discounts (60, 50, 40, 30%) AFTER their prospect contracts ran out?  I assumed that you could still receive the discount after the final year of the prospect contract, but now I am not sure after reading Dan's comments on the first page of this thread (see below).

- If a player is in his final year of prospect eligibility, then tough breaks, either take the hit this year, or you do not get to sign said player under a prospect extension.

[Dan Wood]

Upton did receive the 40% discount since he was in the final year of his prospect eligibility

[OUDAN]

how would i know if someone is in the final year of their spec elligibility?

[rcankosy]

So it sounds like we are saying that someone with a contract of $0.5m (P-2011) has to be re-signed PRIOR to the end of the season and the cap hit takes effect NOW in order to receive the 40% discount.  I'm not sure everybody interpreted the rule that way, because I did not.  Is that really how ALL of the prospects were treated in the off-season??? 

[bravesfan4]

So it sounds like we are saying that someone with a contract of $0.5m (P-2011) has to be re-signed PRIOR to the end of the season and the cap hit takes effect NOW in order to receive the 40% discount.  I'm not sure everybody interpreted the rule that way, because I did not.  Is that really how ALL of the prospects were treated in the off-season??? 

No. I think we made a mistake. In order to receive the prospect extension discount the player must be resigned before the end of the year of the final year. So P-2011 must be resigned before we complete this season. If we do it after the season then the discount goes away. I do not know what year Cargo's eligibility ran out but he was signed after the season. If he was a P-2011 then a mistake was made.

However, with that being said, I think we should leave the rule as is but pay better attention to it.

[Dan Wood]

Prospects should be treated the same as regular contracts, in that if they expire then you are out of luck. This is what the whole thread was started about. Since so many players were traded this off-season with expired contracts we decided to vote on if that should be allowed going forward since it seriously affected the free agent class.

The same should hold true with prospects. In season or pre season signings. For instance Colby Rasmus is P-2012 - if I signed him this year to a prospect contract I get the 50% discount. If I do it one day after this season ends, it should automatically go to the 40% that would be in effect for the entire 2012 season. If by the end of the 2012 season I have not offered him a prospect contract then I have to pay him the full market rate.

[Colby]

Correct, but we did not make a ruling on trading expiring contracts...

[Dan Wood]

This is true, but didn't we vote on something in this thread?

[Colby]

This is true, but didn't we vote on something in this thread?

The voting stalled... We even discussed having a couple weeks window to trade said players.  I think we should treat it realistically and not allow extensions on expiring contracts.  We could give a 10% discount for those teams, but I feel all of this is too late.