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Current RuleYou can structure your bids however you like but the contract amount per year must be constant. You cannot offer $20 million in the first season and $3 million in the second season or vice versa. There is no restructuring of deals at this point. Proposed Rule ChangeYou can structure your bids however you like; the contract amount per year does not have to be consistent. However, each subsequent year of the structured contract must be more than the previous years.For example: 3 years for 10m a yearCurrent rule:Year 1: 10mYear 2: 10m Year 3: 10mProposed Rule Change (example):Year 1: 6mYear 2: 10mYear 3: 14mNote: If this passes, we would only put into effect on opening day all offseason FA bidding will remain at current rule.
I love variable contracts, but I don't think the rule above is ideal. I wouldn't want to have to gradually pay someone more. If I want to front load a contract, I definitely should be able to do that. A league that I have been in for quite awhile that uses variable contracts has the following rule and it works really well. It allows front loading or backloading, but nothing extreme. No single year can deviate more than 40% from AAS. So a contract with 5 million dollars AAS can only range between 3 million and 7 million for any one year.
I would like this idea too but I think we have to make a decision about the direction of the league. Are we trying to get more realistic or just make convienent changes. Because contracts that are less money on the back end aren't realistic, it just allows for longer contracts with fewer penalities because you can front load the contract when they're actually worth that amount of money. I'm for variable contracts but realistic variable contracts where all the years are the same or escalating.
The reality of the rule is that neither are realistic because teams have no limitations in real baseball. So the rule of allowing variable contracts, no matter how they come out is making the league more realistic.