Outlaws Lead Early Signings

[RonCo]

Leagues control financial fairness and strategy more than OOTP in my experience. I've been in many leagues with no cap and was basically able to ignore the existence of finances because I could keep my stars locked up in perpetuity due to absurd revenue generation disparity. If this league didn't have a salary cap, you'd see the same thing here.

Yes. Before joining the BBA, I actually did a wide scan of leagues out there (because I wanted to join the most competitive league with GMs who showed they knew what they were doing). I created a series of metrics to compare leagues, and through those it was very clear to me that, while you never want to drive out all forms of disparity, the BBA's base structure (with bonus cash and stadium fees and MOSTLY it's very tight salary cap) is fantastic regarding its competitive environment.

In reality, under an engaged and active GM, no team is more than 2-3 seasons out from competing for a division title.

[RonCo]

As an aside and for what it’s worth, I just went back and found part of my assessment work. At the time I looked at the previous 20 years of established leagues and compared things like:

• Average “Games Back” of the league over time
• Histograms of wins/season (broken into 5-win blocks)
• Number of teams that made the playoffs the last 5, 10, and 20 years
• Number of teams that won the World Series the last 20 years
• Maximum 1-team profits the last year
• How expansion teams had done (if they existed)
• Payroll to WAR calculations (though I think these were a little wonky)

There was no question in my mind after looking at some of these across several leagues, that the BBA’s environment was the most competitive (meaning more teams were able to win and the systemic gap between the have and the have-nots was smaller than in other leagues). Some of this is because our GMs are very good, but it was also fairly clear that the enactment of a fairly stringent salary cap is a big part of it (as players ask for more money with that cap, too, the environment can be expected to become even more competitive).

If I get some time, maybe I’ll clean it up and post…but I don’t want to do that as is because I don’t want specific league-to-league comparisons floating around now.

[GoldenOne]

(Also, I type really poorly. While typing this, I misspelled "believe" so badly it got correct to "blivet", whatever that is.)

I think Blivet now needs to become part of the BBA's lexicon.

I take it as being short for "believe it."

[Ted]

Ron, it's clear we disagree on this. That's fine. I really doesn't matter. I guess we've nearly exhausted this line of discourse, because I don't even feel like we are talking about the same things really. You seemed to be more focused on the validity of economics of the model. I'm more concerned in how they will affect us. I suppose it's unfair for me to say I'd like to make a few final points, and not respond to anything you might say, so maybe this is my penultimate post on the subject.

1) I feel like these always turn into arguments about you arguing about the validity of the OOTP model, and I just want OOTP to resemble the thing we all love (MLB) with the only exception being more competitive. I could sell a little "realism" or realistic market forces for a level playing field we all understood.

2) I think, if you look around the league at the truly successful franchises (ones that have made the playoffs 2/3 years or better) you will see that they do not pay these kinds of deals in free agency. When they do, it's almost always because they have a limited window of extra cap space, but it is not their operating norm.

3) The demands may be slightly incrementally increasing, but since say 17, they are up dramatically, maybe 35-40%. In '17, Chang would have been asking for 16-18 mil per year initially, not 22-25. I paid near top FA dollar for Fernando Moreno four years and one version ago. He made 20 mil in his highest paid year. The median year I think was around 15 or 16. The top FA's were getting 20-22 per year. That was in '18. In '17, Biddle paid 25+ million for two pitchers and we all lost our minds, because it was SO much higher than the going rate. Now that is the normal ask for top players. This is the definition of moving goalposts. Maybe they are always moving the same direction, but they are moving, and 3-4 seasons (less than one contract cycle) is not long enough for things to stabalize.

4) Other GM's complain about it every year, just read the FA sim chatter threads again. Off the top of my head, Jim Roberts just did this year.

[RonCo]

Yeah, I'm saying you can't separate the economics of the league and its GMs from the model--at least not until the process is over. Part of our problem I suppose is that I don't even think we're arguing so much as discussing the environment and trying to figure out how the changes will affect us...so, yes...

(1) I, like you, am very interested in how it will affect us--which I think is turning out to be good, but the jury is out, but which is obviously shifting the equilibrium point. This is perhaps the only thing we really disagree about. I like the way this change is influencing teams, you don't. I think the dynamic is more realistic. Clearly you don't.

(2) You're correct that successful teams have not had to pay these kinds of deals in the past. But primarily because they've been able to sign big stars to deals that are more than a bit unrealistic relative to our economy. The people complaining were the ones who thought my needing to pay Lucas McNeill $9M last year was unfair--and really, they were right. McNeill should have gone to the market earlier.

(3) Joshua was on the early adopter program. The fact that he made it work suggests that some of us...me completely included...overstated the problems we anticipated. I'm fully capable of saying I was wrong about my initial views.

(4) It's completely fair to complain about having to pay full market value when we haven't in the past. Heck, my team is almost being forced into a rebuild because of these changes...so I get it. But ... we also complained heavily about the dearth of players not making it to free agency. There are extremes that should be avoided, but at present I don't see the process as being extreme, and with only a few exceptions (*), the fact that players are getting contracts that are within shouting distances to their asks say the asks are reasonable.

(*) There are some odd exceptions. Carlos Garcia asking $14M at this point is a bit insane. Hopefully no one will give Fernando Moreno 6 years...but I can see the $14M for a short deal. Same kind of thoughts on Sandcastle. But these are mostly exceptions right now.

I also think the negotiaion process on my guys, anyway, has been pretty good. LaLoosh, McNeill, and De Castillo (while he was on the market), slowly adjusted their demands down over each cycle until they got the best deal they could. This is a really realistic process to my way of thinking. Start high, slide down until you get market value--whatever that is. If that's not realistic, I admit I'm not sure what is.

[Ted]

Yeah, I'm saying you can't separate the economics of the league and its GMs from the model--at least not until the process is over. Part of our problem I suppose is that I don't even think we're arguing so much as discussing the environment and trying to figure out how the changes will affect us...so, yes...


(2) You're correct that successful teams have not had to pay these kinds of deals in the past. But primarily because they've been able to sign big stars to deals that are more than a bit unrealistic relative to our economy. The people complaining were the ones who thought my needing to pay Lucas McNeill $9M last year was unfair--and really, they were right. McNeill should have gone to the market earlier.

I think you are completely wrong about this, at least in terms to how it affects parity. Previously, everyone had the option to sign players to team friendly extensions. Everyone did. Regardless of whether or not they were realistic and good. In fact, being bad for a bit should help, because then you can sign players like mcneil and laloosh and co to team friendly extensions. So what is the difference between good GMs and bad ones? Discipline in salary structure. The good GM's planned around those extensions. The bad GMs spent money in FA as fast as they could on overpriced players and couldn't extend their own talent. I'm not saying team friendly extensions are good, I'm arguing that you position that the lack of them, and more players going to free agency with higher demands being good for competition is a specious one.

I played in a league with no extensions. You had 3 min years, i think four arb yaers, and that was it. I was in that league for 25+ years of its 40 year existence. Everyone went to FA. It was a bloodbath every year. Entertaining, but ultimately terrible for the league. Why? Let's look at the league structure. It was a 30 team, 25 man roster, cap league. Sound familiar? The stars got overpaid, and the teams that paid them couldn't afford to put a team together. Adjusting to our 110 mil cap, they got 30 mil per year. The same ten teams dominated, endlessly, because they just gave up on having any stars after their controlled period. Never signed any of them. Just waited until the other 20 teams had blown their cash on the top 10-15% of the players in the league, and filled out their rosters with 3-5 mil deals for second and third tier talent. And absolutely dominated. On top of that, there was rampant tanking. No one ever played a young kid to start his clock because there was no possibility of extending him. He was going to FA. So the bad teams stayed bad. Hoarded prospects, played them all at the same time and had maybe one to two eyars of competition with top heavy/ thin rosters (which a much less realistic injury environment than we have), and then couldn't even afford their arbs because they spent so much in FA. Back to the bottom of the tank. Five years of suck, two years at most to compete, endless repetition. Those ten teams at teh top? Never won fewer than 85 games unless they chose to tank for a year or two to get another top player.

The difference between competing and not competing has very little to do with how the economy of a league works. It has to do with understanding it, and taking advantage of the market inefficiency. It has to do with having a disciplined approach and only paying players what they are worth. Raising FA prices and extension demand, regardless of whether it puts more players in FA or not, will not change the tendencies of GMs to "go for the big strike" which more often than not is any overpay and doesn't work. In fact, the way OOTP is going makes mistakes less forgiving and harder to recover from.

[Ted]

We do have smarter GMs than that league, we can trade salary, and maybe things will work out differently. Also, I'm grateful to the Simpsons that the words "specious" and "reasoning" go together in my mind.

[RonCo]

I think we100% agree that the harsher the FA asks, the more important it is for GMs to be wise and/or to pick their spots.

I think we can agree that an inexperienced GM in a seat can cause damage to their teams with unwise big contracts. I also think we can agree this is more of a function of the GM than the system (meaning it happens in many leagues).

I think we can agree that we both are passionate about creating a great long-running world.

The beauty about projections of what the system will look like in 3 or 5 or whatever years is that they will eventually bear out in those 3 or 5 or whatever years. And then we'll know what's real. If I'm wrong, I'm wrong. I respect your experiences, so I can't argue with you. All I can say is that this isn't my first rodeo, either. I always figure the "solution" to most worries about GMs and our ability to shoot ourselves in the foot is to keep talking and sharing our experience about what the system is going to look like, thereby educating myself as well as helping the group-think.

Regardless, let me say, Ted that you are one of my favorite GMs to debate of all times. I admire your views even if I sometimes have different ones. I almost always agree with you--though sometimes I think you're missing parts of the system. Regardless, though, the thing I admire the most is that passion part from up earlier in that post, and it's focus on having the best/elite league in existence.

And, hell, you're the one with the Golden thing with the "2" in it. What do I know?

[Ted]

Ditto Ron. Just because I disagree, doesn't mean I think you're an idiot or mean or something else. I think our debates go this long because we do both have a good understanding, so dissecting the minutiae and making predictions becomes an exercise in attention to detail and projecting the unpredictable. It may turn out that I'm wrong. Who knows? I do like to argue. It's tremendously distracting to me though. After I typed that last post I went and made a PBJ sandwich, and peanut buttered both bread slices.

[RonCo]

Heh...

I'm not saying I've done that, but I've done that.

[recte44]

Leagues control financial fairness and strategy more than OOTP in my experience. I've been in many leagues with no cap and was basically able to ignore the existence of finances because I could keep my stars locked up in perpetuity due to absurd revenue generation disparity. If this league didn't have a salary cap, you'd see the same thing here.

Yes. Before joining the BBA, I actually did a wide scan of leagues out there (because I wanted to join the most competitive league with GMs who showed they knew what they were doing). I created a series of metrics to compare leagues, and through those it was very clear to me that, while you never want to drive out all forms of disparity, the BBA's base structure (with bonus cash and stadium fees and MOSTLY it's very tight salary cap) is fantastic regarding its competitive environment.

In reality, under an engaged and active GM, no team is more than 2-3 seasons out from competing for a division title.

Kyle and I are very happy to read this since we created the financial system overhaul about what, 15 seasons ago?

[recte44]

Pa the demands do seem higher... but only at the beginning of free agency...and only if someone is willing to meet said demands.

Recte says, “Be smart. Don’t be a Recte.”