I believe there is a way to implement a luxury tax threshold. Our salary caps are variable, and it's based on market and fluctuates based on team performance for the most part...which is realistic. I consider those salary caps to be our "budget"...what ownership allows us to spend based on the state of the business. The team salaries fall varying degrees below that salary cap/budget, just like what would happen in reality. While I'm fairly certain it's not calculated this way in MLB, as I'm pretty sure it's predetermined in the CBA, 2016's luxury tax threshold was $189M, which was ~150% of the average 2015 team salary of $125M. IF we wanted to implement a luxury tax, I think we could based on 150% of the previous year's average team salary. Roster pages were updated to 2017 and forward, so i can't view 2016 team salaries to place a hypothetical on what the threshold would be for this year. If there's enough interest, maybe someone can go back and look.
Upon reviewing the salaries for 2016 and 2017, I found that the average team salary was $103.5m, with the ~150% of this coming out to a luxary tax threshold of $155.5m. The only team this would really affect is the :NYY:, since no other team approaches their salary cap total.
In 2018, we will find that the average salary increases to $163.5m, with the ~150% luxuary tax threshold again finding the :NYY: and :LAD: the only teams exceeding that total.
I guess we could institute a luxury tax based on the premise of a ~150% threshold, but it seems like it really is not really feasible since our salary cap increases are based on success and not reckless spending. The :NYY: are going to experience a drop in their salary cap and the :LAD:, like many teams in FGM will see an increase in their cap allowance. Seems counterproductive to penalize teams for improving their salary cap when the basis of that increase was competitive success. In MLB, there is no salary cap, so if a team wants to spend a lot, like the real life :LAD:, then a luxary tax seems reasonable, but in FGM, it goes against the basic premise of the league--where success equals a bump in salary cap money.
I would not support a luxuary tax in FGM.
Additionally, our milb rosters are much shallower than real teams and thus mirroring the same draft pick rounds as compensation may not give us the desired results. I took a look at the # of picks used in this past amateur draft to see how each round is valued within FGM:
Note: the 20 compensation picks are considered 2nd round, pushing the start of the 3rd round to pick 2 - 10, 4th started at pick 3 - 10, and 5th started at pick 4 - 10.
1st - 30 picks
2nd - 26 picks
3rd - 16 picks
4th - 15 picks
5th - 12 picks
With only 50% of the teams even leveraging the 3rd - 5th rounds, these are really the bottom of the barrel draft picks just based on our roster sizes. So they don't really add much value in my mind from a competitive balance standpoint.
Although I see the basic premise of your argument that 3rd and 5th round picks are not as valuable in FGM as they are in MLB, I would offer this, with the disclaimer that I am not seeking to disrespect, or disparge anyone, as to how they run their team.
In this year's draft, if you take out the Compensation Round, gave only one pick for Type A free agents and did not give a draft pick for Type B free agents, the draft would have had a different persona. Under the proposed 2017 plan, there would only be 28 1st Round picks, a Compensation Round with 2 picks, and the remaining 5 Type A picks would have been taken in the 2nd Round (with the 2nd Round remaining at 30 picks). Therefore, 30 players would be drafted prior to the beginning of the 2nd Rould (28 1st Round picks and 2 Compensation Round picks).
With all this, there is the absentee factor that plagued this year's draft. :PIT:, for example, got the 1st pick of the draft, but did not participate in the draft. So, the first pick of each of the succeeding rounds was not utilized. :PIT: MiLB roster was full and the GM chose not to do anything to take advantage of his draft position. The same thing can be said of :ARZ: :SD: :COL: :ATL: :WAS: :BOS: and :TEX:.
The absentee factor was compounded by the fact that :TOR: :CHW: :MIL: and :CLE: all had replacement GMs come in after the draft had already started and they all lost the opportunity to utilize early round picks. There were a lot of autopicks for teams, but the main reason was absentee GMs (which lead to some of them being replaced in the interest of league success).
So while I see the premise of your argument, I believe that in a league with active GMs, a draft without the huge Compensation Rounds of the past, future drafts can be a valuable way to improve a team, with 3rd and 5th round picks having value.
I'm just piecing this together as I type, but what if we went with a luxury tax threshold and any team above the threshold signing a $50M+ FA sends the team losing the FA their 1st round, and any team under the threshold would send a 2nd round pick. (No protected picks in the first 10 of first round. If you're above the threshold AND finish bottom 10, you deserve to lose that top 10 pick!)
I believe that the if we use the MLB's minimum contract provision of $52.0m, which, for FGM, constitutes an annual salary of $10.5m (rounded up from $10.4m) we are sufficiently meeting the needs of the league. We are not seeking to punish any team, we are simply trying to seek a happy medium so that teams can get compensated for the loss of a free agent they could not sign because of the cost of the extension for that particular player. Again, with our hard caps, we are not allowed to spend recklessly, and still field a competitive team, so I am seeking a way to have the league continue to prosper by utilizing the processes adopted by MLB.
Halloween