Official RC Vote on Clearing Extension Loopholes

[Dan Wood]

final year only...it has always been one of my stipulations

[Dan Wood]

plus the teams with the most amount of cap for free agency, don't have major league teams...kind of unreal if we are striving for realism. Just saying.

[h4cheng]

Just so I am clear

Current rule: expiring contract can be extended in their last year at MV, even if MV < current value

I dont see how Dan's suggestion is different?

[Colby]

Just so I am clear

Current rule: expiring contract can be extended in their last year at MV, even if MV < current value

I dont see how Dan's suggestion is different?

Current rule says that extension is equal to Max(Current Salary, Market Value).  With our proposed rule of having actual extensions kick in the following year after an expiring contract, we can now add language that eliminates the minimum threshold of current salary.

[Dan Wood]

under the current rule you can extend after the season at no less than 50% of players current contract. If extendin during the season you have to pay the player no less than he is already making. We are doing away with the offseason grace period, so either sign your guys at full price regardless of value or let them leave via FA.

[Colby]

under the current rule you can extend after the season at no less than 50% of players current contract. If extendin during the season you have to pay the player no less than he is already making. We are doing away with the offseason grace period, so either sign your guys at full price regardless of value or let them leave via FA.

You are confusing me Dan.  First you want to eliminate their constraint that they must make their previous salary and now you want it?  The current rule of 50% of contract for an expired contract will go out the door with our new rules as the two conflict.  The only type of situation in which we will allow an expired contract to stay on the books after the season is an expired prospect contract.

[Canada8999]

#2: I am for the allowance of prospect extension (at discounted value) in the offseason. This has always been my intepretation of the rules.

This has also been my interpretation, and I am in favor of this being confirmed explicitly in the new rules.

[Canada8999]

You guys are confusing me on the extensions for regular contracts.

LANGUAGE – Rule #7 proposed by Ben has been lumped into this ruling.  Everyone but Howe agrees with Ben that we should keep it simple and add a rule that says veteran players (non-prospect contract) with expiring contracts have a signing deadline of July 31st.  This coincides with the trade deadline for simplicity.

Why are we setting a deadline of July 31st?  Why not the last day of the MLB season?

Rule #1 - Future Cap Management inspired by the 2010 Angels: Management of salary caps for not just current year but future 5-6 years.  This is something we are doing in New Era and is much more realistic for a franchises' books.  It also prevents GMs from financially ruining future years with cash exchanges.

If we're allowing teams to sign extensions that only kick in for a future season, that needs to be a capped season (it can be 30%, but it needs to be something).  I still dont understand the argument for looking out further than one season ... can someone please elaborate?

Rule #2 – Signing window for expired prospect contracts: Should regular contract extensions for expired prospect contracts be the only type of extensions allowable for expired contracts in the offseason?  If so, should we adopt a short window to do this such as two weeks?

I think I must have misread this rule, and I believe Dan did as well (at least from what I've read of his discussions with Howe.  I think expiring prospect contracts should be the only type of extensions allowed in the offseason.  I do not think they should have to be regular contracts, as I still believe the prospect extension should apply (you would still be buying out the players remaining arbitration years, the purpose of a prospect extension).  Owners should be able to use either the regular or the prospect.

TIMING - Do we want to introduce this rule immediately?  It truly has very little effect.  A guy like CI Daric Barton, $0.5m (P-2011) would not be eligible for a prospect extension after the end of the season.  This rule simply keeps Barton on his team’s books and allows a regular extension.  The team has rights to signing the player, but said player cannot be traded thanks to the Prince Fielder rule.

I think it would have a significant effect, as I do not believe there is a consensus that Daric Barton would not be eligible for the prospect extension. 

It is possible there were cases handled like this in the past, but it is not in the rules.  Owners should not be required to keep tabs on all transactions to know what the rules are, and if a decision is made because the rules are ambiguous then the rules should have been amended to state the interpretation for future reference.  That did not happen, and I believe there are multiple RC members who believed that Barton would be eligible (at least myself and Howe). 

The prospect extension can have significant effect on a team's decisions and this certainly needs to be discussed.  I know I have a number of valuable P-2011 players (Smith, Soto, Cabrera, Masterson, ...) and made a conscious decision not to use my cap space on them during the offseason or early this season to re-sign any because I was under the impression that I could still use the prospect extension this coming offseason (although I would have to pay slightly more, since they would be a year further along the prospect discount calculator).  Assuming #3 passes and I can use the prospect extension today on next year's books then it's not as big of a deal, but we need to at least discuss this before it's assumed illegal.

[Canada8999]

Rule #3 – True Extensions: I am suggesting a rule change that says contract extensions can be done one of two ways.  The first is a traditional extension which is only allowable in the last year of the current contract.  The extension is added on in future years.  For example, a 2011 contract could get a three year extension starting in 2012 and ending in 2014.   The second is our current type of extensions which is essentially a new contract overwriting the old one.  We have minimum and maximum years protecting this new contract status.

YAY - Roy (any time), Colby (one year prior), Dan, Ben (only do actual extensions one year prior), Jake
NAY - Howe (wants to keep it simple, but allow 6-year deal)

My suggestion was that we only allow extensions that are added to the existing contract (begin as soon as the current one expires), and do away with contracts overriding the current one.  I suppose I agree with only signing in the last year, to prevent teams from abusing the total length (sign a player to a 4 year deal and then extend them 5 more for a total of 9 - obviously this would not be ok).

Rule #6 – Extending players less than MV: Dan's suggestion of allowing to extend players to salaries less than their current, effective after their current contract. 

I'll wait to hear you guys out on this one since it seems there is still some confusion as to what the proposed rule is.

[Dan Wood]

You are confusing me Dan.  First you want to eliminate their constraint that they must make their previous salary and now you want it?  The current rule of 50% of contract for an expired contract will go out the door with our new rules as the two conflict.  The only type of situation in which we will allow an expired contract to stay on the books after the season is an expired prospect contract.

Colb - the current rule states that if you re-sign a player during his contract you have match what he is making annually. If he is making 10 mil, then he has to be extended for 10 mil.

Also in the current rule we have a grace period after the season, prior to free agency, to sign our players at no less than 50% of what he is making, if his Fantrax value designates that.

What we are currently proposing is doing away with the grace period for re-signing veterans. Either sign them to a matched annual salary or let them go to free agency. At least that is what I am to understand. I am against that, because of my stated points in my prior posts.

What I am proposing is allowing an extension based on a payers value, to take hold after a players contract expires. I originally proposed 50% of the value, since that was what was already in the rules. Upon further discussion I realize that it is unrealistic to suggest a player would sign an extension at 50% of what he is currently making. I suggest we allow resigning players (veterans) that are in their final year of their contract, at 30% of their value, if that is what Fantrax determines their value is.

I realize that yes this is sort of unrealistic, but as I have stated before there are many different things at work in real life MLB that we will never be able to fully emulate. But, I do not think it is fair to lose a guy to free agency, when GMs have struggled to build their team. I am stated other reasons, but I really don't feel like rewriting them.