Possible Rule Amendment - In season re-signings

[Dan Wood]

Our current rule in place states that once you sign a player to a said amount of money, the new total immediately counts towards your current years budget. I propose a rule where you can resign a player, and the salary would start the following year. This was the Brewers GM's idea, but I think it is a fantastic one, and would make a ton of sense for teams in this league.

I would like to take the topic further. We also currently in place a way to restructure absurd contracts. I think we should also have in place a way to resign a player at a lower value. The stipulations would be...
 - Players value, from the previous two scoring periods, would have to be lower than his current salary
 - Player is in the final year of his contract, cannot be still under contract for multiple years - that is what the restructure is for.
 - Prospect Extensions are different. If you choose to do it for a prospect, then the discount will be for the prospect following year of eligibility. This falls under the 40, 50, 60... see prospect extensions.
 - 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.
 - Contract must be no less than 2 years. 1 year deals would not be allowed. What FA would sign early, for less, for less years? No one I know.

The addition of this rule, I feel will make the RFA process no longer needed.

Please discuss further

[Canada8999]

I'm not sure I follow your proposal for a lower salary, early extension.

Going by the current extension salary rules, I think allowing teams to extend a player for future years at the higher rate without the higher rate affecting the current season is reasonable.

- If you want to extend a prospect early, you do it at the rate it would cost for the following season (ie: if you extend a prospect during their 20XX+2 year, you need to pay the 20XX+1 price as this is what it would cost if you did it after the season - you don't get a double bonus).
- Extensions must begin the following season, and cannot be for X+1 seasons in the future.  From this it follows that no player can have more than one extension looming at a given time.
- The admin staff needs to be willing to add an extra item to the roster tracking. 

[Colby]

Having extensions kick in the year after the contract expires involves tooling the spreadsheet for variable salaries.  One key rule in this league, to keep administration simple, is contracts with flat annual salaries.  However, it can be argued that we screwed this up with cash exchanges... and showing current year + the next four year's salaries, in a Cot's Contract manner, would give a lot more info (and easy to do in a spreadsheet).

[bravesfan4]

My vote is no on the first part. If you are going to resign a player in the season the salary should kick in immediately.

I would like to take the topic further. We also currently in place a way to restructure absurd contracts. I think we should also have in place a way to resign a player at a lower value. The stipulations would be...
 - Players value, from the previous two scoring periods, would have to be lower than his current salary
 - Player is in the final year of his contract, cannot be still under contract for multiple years - that is what the restructure is for.
 

I agree with this. But we should add that the current contract cannot be reduced by more than 50%   Meaning if Johan Santana 23m (2011) was set to be resigned for 7m ad 8m... the lowest i can resign him for is 11.5m........Something we should add to it.

[Dan Wood]

Corey, I knew I left something out. under our current rules you cannot sign someone for less than 50% of their former contract, and I agree wholeheartedly with that statement.

[bravesfan4]

Corey, I knew I left something out. under our current rules you cannot sign someone for less than 50% of their former contract, and I agree wholeheartedly with that statement.

In that case I agree with this change

[Canada8999]

My vote is no on the first part. If you are going to resign a player in the season the salary should kick in immediately.

But that's not how the books work in real life... extensions are for future years, not always the current year.

[Canada8999]

Having extensions kick in the year after the contract expires involves tooling the spreadsheet for variable salaries.  One key rule in this league, to keep administration simple, is contracts with flat annual salaries.  However, it can be argued that we screwed this up with cash exchanges... and showing current year + the next four year's salaries, in a Cot's Contract manner, would give a lot more info (and easy to do in a spreadsheet).

I still think we avoid the complexity of variable salaries, but we introduce a step change where after the current season their salary goes up.  All this does is allow owners to make their extensions official before the season ends, rather than within a 5 day window where owners may not have time.  In reality, most extensions happen this way anyway, and they don't wait until the last minute.  This lets teams that want to / can re-sign their players do so, and does not give them time to sign-and-trade (we could do away with the grace period completely).

[bravesfan4]

But that's not how the books work in real life... extensions are for future years, not always the current year.

in real life mlb there current contract is added to the extension and averaged out.... it does kick in immediately

[Canada8999]

Are you sure about that?  If you look at Cot's, players definitely have variable salaries throughout a contract, they are not averaged out...