FA bidding

[Lucas Lima #52]

Colby...

Your proposal of 90% / 130% looks good, but there are some flaws...

On bigger contracts it works fine, I tried it out, even tough I would change 130% for 110%, in order to keep things more 'linear', or there could be some jumps when you go down and up in numbers of years... Like, per example:

1 year 20 mi...
2 year 20*0.9 = 18 + 0.5 = 18.5mi
1 year again 18.5*1.3 = 24.05 = 24.5 + 0.5 = 25mi

Do you see? Almost consecutely deals jumping 5 millons... If it were 110%, the turn back would be: 18.5*1.1 = 20.35 = 20.5 + 0.5 = 21mi... One million from the original proposal, what would be the exact same value if the deal were raised twice at the same year level... Thats the 'linear' I was talking about...

With those values, the rounding up and adding at least 0.5m in each new bid, it would be guaranteed from 0.5m to 59.5mi that getting a deal, adding one year and consecutively reducing one year in order to be at the same level of the original deal, would make the new deal add at least 1mi from the original deal...

Mathematicaly speaking, add one year and reduce one consecutively, with 90% and 110%, would make cause this formula: x*0.99 + 1.05... What would guarantee at least the 1mi for deals of at max 54.5mi, rounding up.... With the rounding in the middle, from the reducing year, that value goes up to 59.5mi...

However, the big flaw I noticed is that for smaller contracts, this rates doesn't really look good...

Example...

1 year 5mi
2 years: 5*0.9= 4.5 + 0.5 = 5mi

This way, to add one year, it would be basicly keeping the same sallary... And if you use smaller values, like 2mi, there would be a need to pay 2.5m to add a year...

My suggestions would be something like allowing to teams to make the new deal at least 0.5mi smaller (with the exceptions of 1mi deals, or the guy would recieve 0.5 per year, or less the same or less money in more years)... So in the case of 5mi, the new deal would be 4.5mi...

Also, you could use the same rule from extensions in order to limit the number of years acordinly to the yearly sallary... It would help to minimize the difference while changing from 4 to 5 years instead of 1 to 2 years, and also with smaller deals... Because to raise go down from 1.5m in 4 years (6mi total) to 1mi in 5 years (5mi total) would be wrong... But with the same limit of extensions, we wouldn't get to this point...

That's it... Sorry for the big elaboration... I understand we must keep things simple, but I believe we can't just ignore the math side of it...

So, my point is... To add years, 90%... To reduce, 110%... Always round up after multiplying and then add at least 0.5mi to make the new bid... Unless the value ends up being the same of the original deal, so it would be allowed to reduce 0.5mi (except from 1 year deals)...

[Colby]

My personal preference is discounting using a time-value of money formula.  If we've decided not to go in that direction because we want to keep it simple, which I understand, then I'd personally prefer to keep it really simple and go with something like this (total value, no discounting schema).

Ben, you know as I know that this league is designed to be a simple representation of MLB as it stands today.  I think we are very close to getting to a point in which the base set of rules can be established for years to come.

With Ben un-offically voting for Roy's proposal, I will do the same in hopes of getting something passed.  That is 3 out of 6 so far...

[Canada8999]

Ben, you know as I know that this league is designed to be a simple representation of MLB as it stands today.  I think we are very close to getting to a point in which the base set of rules can be established for years to come.

With Ben un-offically voting for Roy's proposal, I will do the same in hopes of getting something passed.  That is 3 out of 6 so far...

Count my vote as official.  I think this is a reasonable approach that is simple and should not result in any major loopholes.  That said, it would be worth revisiting this after we've gone through free agency for consideration in future years (having a real experience under our belts).

[ChinMusic]

Count my vote as official.  I think this is a reasonable approach that is simple and should not result in any major loopholes.  That said, it would be worth revisiting this after we've gone through free agency for consideration in future years (having a real experience under our belts).

This is a great suggestion (total dollar value) in my opinion which keeps the intent of the original discussions and simplifies them to a huge extent which is a good development.

Total dollar value would also work better with RFA tagging. The total value would need to be matched but the retaining GM could choose the years.

It also keeps an element of confidentiality to the teams own plans - the dollar value will be out there in the public domain but the years offered would be in their own head.

May I suggest that the same contract tenures might be added to free agency, though. This would avoid offering say $2m to win an average player and then locking him up for 4 years at $0.5m. The contract tenure limits would avoid this.

Chris

[clidwin]

makes it simple i agree

[Colby]

Chris, the term limits apply to both extensions and FA contracts.

With Chad agreeing to this, I think we can push this one through just in time! 

[Daniel]

I have to say I don't like the total dollars reasoning. This way short term offers are almost impossible to pass and it becomes a bit unrealistic. A player will always go for a 1 year 21 million offer over a 5 year offer at 4.5mil per year. It's 4 years more of work and only 1.5 mil more guaranteed. Total dollars only makes sense when offers are of a similar value, but sometimes someone is willing to overpay big in the present to avoid burdening the team in the future.

 I would prefer to keep it as it is than to do this change, but what would be even better is the  valuation scale. Maybe 90% against 130% was too steep when going up and down but 90% against 120% should fix that.

[Colby]

I have to say I don't like the total dollars reasoning. This way short term offers are almost impossible to pass and it becomes a bit unrealistic. A player will always go for a 1 year 21 million offer over a 5 year offer at 4.5mil per year. It's 4 years more of work and only 1.5 mil more guaranteed. Total dollars only makes sense when offers are of a similar value, but sometimes someone is willing to overpay big in the present to avoid burdening the team in the future.

 I would prefer to keep it as it is than to do this change, but what would be even better is the  valuation scale. Maybe 90% against 130% was too steep when going up and down but 90% against 120% should fix that.

This is what I originally wanted, but in order to come to an agreement before the deadline, some ends of the RC had to make sacrifices in order to get the votes just like real legislation.  We have had the four votes to make this official already.

What we will see is longer and more expensive contracts.  The term limits will restrict giving far too little money over more years.

      

[Daniel]

Ok I understand, could I propose a small add-on to this rule? Any contract of a higher length has to be worth more than 50 percent the per annum value of the shorter contract. This will not influence a jump on years from 1 to 2, 2 to 3, 3 to 4 or 4 to 5. But it will limit the damage when increasing 3 or 4 years length at once.

Example

 x team proposes a 2 year at 20mil per year.
 y team proposes a 5 year at 8.5 mil per year.

The first bid would prevail over the second one even when total dollar value of the second is slightly over the first offer.

y team would have to bid at least a 4 year 10.5 mil  to get the best bargain.

I know this only takes us a tad closer to reality and I would prefer to set the bar a bit higher maybe 70 percent instead of 50 percent, but for simplicity's sake 50 should do the trick.

[Colby]

Ok I understand, could I propose a small add-on to this rule? Any contract of a higher length has to be worth more than 50 percent the per annum value of the shorter contract. This will not influence a jump on years from 1 to 2, 2 to 3, 3 to 4 or 4 to 5. But it will limit the damage when increasing 3 or 4 years length at once.

Example

 x team proposes a 2 year at 20mil per year.
 y team proposes a 5 year at 8.5 mil per year.

The first bid would prevail over the second one even when total dollar value of the second is slightly over the first offer.

y team would have to bid at least a 4 year 10.5 mil  to get the best bargain.

I know this only takes us a tad closer to reality and I would prefer to set the bar a bit higher maybe 70 percent instead of 50 percent, but for simplicity's sake 50 should do the trick.

<= $1m, 2 years
$1.5m - $5m, 3 years
$5.5m - $10m, 4 years
> $10m, 5 years (the overall limit)

The term limits prevent your 5 year $8.5m bid... the bid would be $42.5m, and it would have to be a 5-year contract if it was won.