Free Agents

[salas]

Maybe it's just me, but does anyone else think the FA pool this year is a load of crap???

[indiansfan]

[TimB]

Yup me too although some of them are still good enough for the Sox!

[bigmike13]

+2

[cheekimonk]

Yar. The pools have fluctuated since I came on in 1997 season, but I haven't seen a class this anemic. It is kind of troubling that the 2nd weakest class, IMO, was last year. No way Ashton Fontenot should ever get $20 mil per in this league. And, just to confirm that lack of depth, when I punted on the bidding war for him, the next best option was Reginald Harnois.

[Fat Nige]

It's becoming a real feature now of ootp that mediocre FA's ask the earth. Then people tie their best players up for longer to prevent the FA greed and the pool of potential FA's gets smaller & crapier

[JimBob2232]

It's becoming a real feature now of ootp that mediocre FA's ask the earth. Then people tie their best players up for longer to prevent the FA greed and the pool of potential FA's gets smaller & crapier

I was thinking about this earlier today as a matter of fact. The real issue is that the AI is not smart enough to determine a players true value. I think most of us have been pretty diligent about locking up our players before they hit FA. Regalio Moralez should demand more than 10M per year. Same with Kengos (both of em) and Puckett. Keep going down the list, our Pending FAs are not asking for what the market would demand.

This results in few players of value hitting free agency. Further it results in a pretty dull trade deadline. It also results in a ridiculous bidding war for the few FAs that are out there because there is a lot of money to be spent (and unlike MLB, the extra doesn't buy you a nice Hawaiian island!)

I don't know if there is anything we can do settings-wise, but I would like to see players request a more realistic "market salary" when they are re-signed. The occasional "hometown discount" is fine. But right now, it's every player.

[indiansfan]

See Chris Coll thread regarding the danger of long term contracts. Looks like I am going to have to eat over $40 mil and he didn't earn the 7 mil he made last year. On the bright side I didn't have to pay him the $2.5 mil he would have been due if he had won a hitting award.

[cheekimonk]

I'm not sure how much the AI matters in a league with 100% human owners. The salaries demanded should be tied to league settings (check the Constitution for a link to current League Engine settings). But , if you look at those tiers, the highest profile FAs always end up going for double that or more. I don't think the engine recalibrates based on the outcome of each FA class and I'm not sure it would matter. Pure human nature drives offers up to what people are willing to pay and the AI would never be able to factor that in. This was the biggest reason I lobbied for smaller FA Sims. Having Sims that lasted a month at a time kept prices suppressed because there was less, almost no, time for a bidding war to be sustained. It also made signing FAs all about luck (10 GMs submit offers to a player and with a full month going by the player says which offer he prefers, tells other teams to beat it if they want him, and then signs with whomever submitted the highest bid). Of course, the GMs don't see all of this until they download the next Sim file when his request for more money is too late to do anything about.


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[7teen]

I'm not sure how much the AI matters in a league with 100% human owners. The salaries demanded should be tied to league settings (check the Constitution for a link to current League Engine settings). But , if you look at those tiers, the highest profile FAs always end up going for double that or more. I don't think the engine recalibrates based on the outcome of each FA class and I'm not sure it would matter. Pure human nature drives offers up to what people are willing to pay and the AI would never be able to factor that in. This was the biggest reason I lobbied for smaller FA Sims. Having Sims that lasted a month at a time kept prices suppressed because there was less, almost no, time for a bidding war to be sustained. It also made signing FAs all about luck (10 GMs submit offers to a player and with a full month going by the player says which offer he prefers, tells other teams to beat it if they want him, and then signs with whomever submitted the highest bid). Of course, the GMs don't see all of this until they download the next Sim file when his request for more money is too late to do anything about.


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Based on this years crop of FAs, we should have longer FA sims. The pros are it gets us to the season quicker, keeps bidding wars down, and gets us to the season quicker. The cons are it makes it tough for teams to execute a backup plan if plan A signs elsewhere.

[JimBob2232]

I'm not sure how much the AI matters in a league with 100% human owners. The salaries demanded should be tied to league settings (check the Constitution for a link to current League Engine settings). But , if you look at those tiers, the highest profile FAs always end up going for double that or more. I don't think the engine recalibrates based on the outcome of each FA class and I'm not sure it would matter. Pure human nature drives offers up to what people are willing to pay and the AI would never be able to factor that in. This was the biggest reason I lobbied for smaller FA Sims. Having Sims that lasted a month at a time kept prices suppressed because there was less, almost no, time for a bidding war to be sustained. It also made signing FAs all about luck (10 GMs submit offers to a player and with a full month going by the player says which offer he prefers, tells other teams to beat it if they want him, and then signs with whomever submitted the highest bid). Of course, the GMs don't see all of this until they download the next Sim file when his request for more money is too late to do anything about.


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I hear what you are saying...but in real life most of these guys would decide to test the market rather than take the deal they are getting. My guess is morales could have gotten a 6/120m contract (instead of 10/100m). If he demanded 20M/year I might have had to think twice About it. If I was out of the playoff hunt, I might have traded him.

Right now, almost anyone worth a darn is re-signed. And they are re-signed well below market value.

Just my .02

Oh, and I love the smaller fa sims!

[Al-Hoot]

I agree. I was thinking the same: that GMs strategically (and wisely) re-sign their own players for long term contracts and keep them off the free agent market.

Exceptions to this include when a player is asking waaaaaay too much to be resigned, such as Tim McGraw when I didn't resign him and his price went way down once he hit free agency. Also, I guess a similar case was Jake Kestle, whose asking price was too much for the Mounties to resign him.

Here's an idea or two:

1 increase the number of international free agents and then some if them may actually be worth signing

2 allow EBA players to become free agents earlier in their career, so we could get some quality imports from there.

3 postpone the free agency declaration to like a month before the season: they might demand less mulah then.



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[recte44]

This league has always been slanted towards trade and draft/development. FA is a crutch. Don't rely on it....

[Al-Hoot]

Im for one am not. Ive learned from experience.

Which is another reason im not interested in 95 percent of the free agents out there. Besides that, they are all too old, or require a draft pick compensation. Maybe we could switch to reserve clause rules.

Are we using the new draft pick comp rules available in v13?

[recte44]

Not yet, it was too quick to spring on the league. We can discuss....but at some point too I'd just like people to play within the rules of the game and not always try to change them.

[salas]

I'm not sure how much the AI matters in a league with 100% human owners. The salaries demanded should be tied to league settings (check the Constitution for a link to current League Engine settings). But , if you look at those tiers, the highest profile FAs always end up going for double that or more. I don't think the engine recalibrates based on the outcome of each FA class and I'm not sure it would matter. Pure human nature drives offers up to what people are willing to pay and the AI would never be able to factor that in. This was the biggest reason I lobbied for smaller FA Sims. Having Sims that lasted a month at a time kept prices suppressed because there was less, almost no, time for a bidding war to be sustained. It also made signing FAs all about luck (10 GMs submit offers to a player and with a full month going by the player says which offer he prefers, tells other teams to beat it if they want him, and then signs with whomever submitted the highest bid). Of course, the GMs don't see all of this until they download the next Sim file when his request for more money is too late to do anything about.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

Based on this years crop of FAs, we should have longer FA sims. The pros are it gets us to the season quicker, keeps bidding wars down, and gets us to the season quicker. The cons are it makes it tough for teams to execute a backup plan if plan A signs elsewhere.

Is there really a con? I don' t think this pool is deep enough for teams to have backup plans!

[recte44]

See a couple years ago, I was getting my chops busted for FA sims being too long. Now, they're too short.

Can I win?

[salas]

This league has always been slanted towards trade and draft/development. FA is a crutch. Don't rely on it....

Unle$$ you lke to $pend lot$ of $$$$$$$ on guy$ like Loui$ville doe$$$$$$.

[salas]

See a couple years ago, I was getting my chops busted for FA sims being too long. Now, they're too short.

Can I win?

No

[recte44]

No kidding.