New League Structure Discussion

[bschr682]

Stats only requires a collection of pretty fervent GMs.

With a lot of free time. In that setup, if you slip up because real life gets busy, you never catch up.

[RonCo]

To a degree, that's true... but not that much different than other kinds of leagues. Every time you have a life roll, it takes time to get back into things. And you can always catch up.

Having played stats only before, the biggest driver of time is that you have to pay attention to other teams more closely. You can't just look for blue bars or green bars.

[Ted]

I was part of an uncapped league with revenue sharing and it did help with international spending but the gap between big market vs small market was so large that revenue sharing did very little to equal the playing field.

As I said above, revenue sharing (outside Gate revenue) will never work to even the playing field in OOTP because it does not affect budgets. Budgets are hugely important.

I forgot about the impact of budgets.

What if I just manually set all the budgets once a year? Or what if I make gate revenue the only revenue?

I'm actually interested with the the idea of no cap. Lots of people here saying stuff that I think can be work around There will for example, be no big market versus small market. All markets will be max. The idea that one team will simply outspend another and turn into the early era mlb Yankees is a fear, but I really think it is one that can be mitigated if you're willing to put some work into the file each offseason. All you have to do is change some numbers. I could even wait until the current year budget is released, than make the lowest team's budget say 85 percent of that. Budget problem solved. In reality, I can revenue share however I want. As long as the method is stated and consistent, it works.

I'm curious as to why you think salary floors fall apart, Ron. No one ever does them, or sets up a financial structure where they work. Again, all you have to do is make sure the money is there. Maybe thats tough. My intention is to sim any structure I decide on for 20 or so seasons to see how it holds up.

I'm not anti cap per say, but it might be interesting to do something different. And also, I'm curious if the player demands work work differently in an uncapped league. Maybe they don't. I'm also really curious to what raising the min salary will do to player demands.

The thing I'm the most "excited about" is seeing what a "pay for present value" system would look like. I think it could be a lot of fun.

[Ted]

If you had 30 equal caliber gms some of these ideas would work. Uncapped leagues end up with 2-3 gms winning 90% of the titles. Because it’s impossible to get 30 equal caliber gms at once, a salary cap levels the playing field from my experience. Utilizing service time is just simply smart and done by mlb gms, so not sure why this is even an issue. Stats only is awesome and I wish that’s the way we was.

I hate real life service time manipulation as well. I think we are all so used to it, we're numb to its effects. We miss out on good, exciting baseball players because of it. It pushes teams to try to get better tomorrow, than right now. Sitting on players who could be playing right now because of salary concerns or draft pick position is just not fun from a competition standpoint.

Some of the theory behind this league is to make a league that is better than real life. We as owner/GMs, don't have to care about the real life bottom line. There's lots of ways you could make the game better if owner/player greed weren't real things.

This will also probably be a pretty small league. 16 teams or so at the start. I intend only to have highly competitive/involved GMs.

[Ted]

To a degree, that's true... but not that much different than other kinds of leagues. Every time you have a life roll, it takes time to get back into things. And you can always catch up.

Having played stats only before, the biggest driver of time is that you have to pay attention to other teams more closely. You can't just look for blue bars or green bars.

We all armchair GM our real life baseball teams. Real life is inherently stats only and most of us believe we could GM our favorite team as well or better than the dunderhead actually running it. The biggest issue is the draft. There are ways to work with that.

[RonCo]

What if I just manually set all the budgets once a year? Or what if I make gate revenue the only revenue?

The thing to do here--and I keep thinking we're going to do it in the BBA, but we never quite seem to decide to do--is to lock both National and local media contracts. These a big influencers of budget, and they are often a source of competitive imbalance. Do that, and market size influence goes to gate and merchandizing...which is what I think you're trying to do.

I'm actually interested with the the idea of no cap. Lots of people here saying stuff that I think can be work around There will for example, be no big market versus small market. All markets will be max. The idea that one team will simply outspend another and turn into the early era mlb Yankees is a fear, but I really think it is one that can be mitigated if you're willing to put some work into the file each offseason. All you have to do is change some numbers. I could even wait until the current year budget is released, than make the lowest team's budget say 85 percent of that. Budget problem solved. In reality, I can revenue share however I want. As long as the method is stated and consistent, it works.

I'm sure you can do some things to make it better. Adjusting market sizes is something a lot of leagues do. I can't say how great it works or doesn't.

I'm curious as to why you think salary floors fall apart, Ron. No one ever does them, or sets up a financial structure where they work. Again, all you have to do is make sure the money is there. Maybe thats tough. My intention is to sim any structure I decide on for 20 or so seasons to see how it holds up.

Example: one thing I often try to do just for fun it to win my division with minimum salary. I think I won the FOBL twice on very low payrolls, for example. And if my master plan works out here in the BBA I'll be competing to win my division on a payroll of $70M by 2042 or so. Why should I be forced to spend $100M when I win my division at $70M.

This becomes even bigger when you tell people they have to bring up all their minor leaguers based only on when thye are deemed to be "ready" rather than when the team needs them. This drives salaries down. Then you tell me Ihave to spend more?

I'm not anti cap per say, but it might be interesting to do something different. And also, I'm curious if the player demands work work differently in an uncapped league. Maybe they don't. I'm also really curious to what raising the min salary will do to player demands.

The thing I'm the most "excited about" is seeing what a "pay for present value" system would look like. I think it could be a lot of fun.

Your goal of getting rid of tear-downs and builds is interesting, but essentially rules out every real life small market team's only tool.

I have to think about the idea of paying for present value a little. By that, I need to think about what that really means here.

[RonCo]

To a degree, that's true... but not that much different than other kinds of leagues. Every time you have a life roll, it takes time to get back into things. And you can always catch up.

Having played stats only before, the biggest driver of time is that you have to pay attention to other teams more closely. You can't just look for blue bars or green bars.

We all armchair GM our real life baseball teams. Real life is inherently stats only and most of us believe we could GM our favorite team as well or better than the dunderhead actually running it. The biggest issue is the draft. There are ways to work with that.

Yes. The biggest structural issue is the draft. But speaking only for myself, the biggest time driver was trying to propose trades and whatnot, because that meant I needed to dig into other organizations with a ton more effort.

It tended to drive me toward internal player development more than trades and whatnot. That's just me, though. Other GMs might be different.

[bschr682]

Honest question here, do you even need financials turned on at all if the goal is a level playing field?

[RonCo]

I hate real life service time manipulation as well. I think we are all so used to it, we're numb to its effects. We miss out on good, exciting baseball players because of it. It pushes teams to try to get better tomorrow, than right now. Sitting on players who could be playing right now because of salary concerns or draft pick position is just not fun from a competition standpoint.

I don't think we miss out on good players. They generally just come up a few weeks later than they would anyway.

Again, though, the est way to remove this from your league would be to remove the whole CBA aspect of the league's financials. In that light, an interesting idea would be all players become Free Agents every year (call it the Charlie O. Finley method). That would drive "pay for present value" pretty solidly.

Some of the theory behind this league is to make a league that is better than real life. We as owner/GMs, don't have to care about the real life bottom line. There's lots of ways you could make the game better if owner/player greed weren't real things.

This will also probably be a pretty small league. 16 teams or so at the start. I intend only to have highly competitive/involved GMs.

The FOBL finances were so great because they were purely EBays version of top bid always wins. No owner greed, no player greed. Pure capitalism, essentially.

[Ted]

Thanks for the replies Ron. As you're noting, this will look very different from a money distribution standpoint. And I don't really know how it will end up. To be clear, I will never get rid of tear down and rebuild. I will just make it less powerful. It's always going to be the most surefire method unless you do something dramatic with draft position, which I'm not sure I'm ready to do.

Back to people's cap concerns, if I can get to the point where the "poorest" teams can spend a budget that is 85% of the top spender, I'm really not worried about runaway juggernauts. Teams with 90 mil payrolls win in the Brewster all the time. Look at New Orleans, Vegas, and Edmonton this year.

I'm not sure you're right about how the salary floor would work. With a 2-3 mil min contract, I'm not sure that bringing up the the kids will depress salaries at all. Especially when they arb for year 3, and are arbing to 4 and 6 mil right off the bat.

Also, with stats only, it become less clear when a minor leaguer is "ready". Basically, I'd be looking only at players who are repeating a high level on the minors after putting up 6 WAR in the previous 600 or so PA there. Or someone who is having a 14 WAR season in A ball, or something like that. This isn't about trying to find guys who are "ready". Its about trying to find guys who are clearly better than the level they are at. I really just want to know off the waiting until mid season to promote a kid.

Right now, for example, I found one player in the top 100 batters who I thought should definitely be above the level he's at, based on stats alone. In April, there were 5 or 6 (and that was using a combination of last year's stats). I suppose then, that rather than release players, I could just force teams to promote them if the player wins their "arbitration case" and retroactively give them the service time.

[Ted]

I hate real life service time manipulation as well. I think we are all so used to it, we're numb to its effects. We miss out on good, exciting baseball players because of it. It pushes teams to try to get better tomorrow, than right now. Sitting on players who could be playing right now because of salary concerns or draft pick position is just not fun from a competition standpoint.

I don't think we miss out on good players. They generally just come up a few weeks later than they would anyway.

Again, though, the est way to remove this from your league would be to remove the whole CBA aspect of the league's financials. In that light, an interesting idea would be all players become Free Agents every year (call it the Charlie O. Finley method). That would drive "pay for present value" pretty solidly.

Some of the theory behind this league is to make a league that is better than real life. We as owner/GMs, don't have to care about the real life bottom line. There's lots of ways you could make the game better if owner/player greed weren't real things.

This will also probably be a pretty small league. 16 teams or so at the start. I intend only to have highly competitive/involved GMs.

The FOBL finances were so great because they were purely EBays version of top bid always wins. No owner greed, no player greed. Pure capitalism, essentially.

Yeah but people want to keep their own players. Very few people will want to sign a team every year.

[RonCo]

Yes, teams will want to keep their own players, but that's actually counter to the goal of paying for current value rather than past performance.

One issue with the idea of achieving Pay for Current Value by extending Arbitration years is that I don't think salaries ever go down in arbitration. So I'm still struggling to get my head around how a league would go about actually doing that. I could see a sliding salary forced each year based on last season's WAR--adjusted by position?

I mean, the entire idea of signing a guy to a long term contract--especially if he's not a superstar--is generally to lock in an advantageous deal, or, in other words, to pay a guy less than he's actually worth...which, again, is counter to paying for current value.

[RonCo]

Back to people's cap concerns, if I can get to the point where the "poorest" teams can spend a budget that is 85% of the top spender, I'm really not worried about runaway juggernauts. Teams with 90 mil payrolls win in the Brewster all the time. Look at New Orleans, Vegas, and Edmonton this year.

1. Lock all media contracts
2. Make Gate Sharing 50%

That will limit revenue variance, which will then limit budget variance.

3. Limit cash on hand to, say, $5M.

That will reduce the difference in what teams can spend in the current year.

I'm not sure you're right about how the salary floor would work. With a 2-3 mil min contract, I'm not sure that bringing up the the kids will depress salaries at all. Especially when they arb for year 3, and are arbing to 4 and 6 mil right off the bat.

Well, everything is relative. Low payroll teams in a high-minsal league will still be low payroll teams. They'll just be spending more on less than they would have spent if that minsal was lower.

[Ted]

Yes, teams will want to keep their own players, but that's actually counter to the goal of paying for current value rather than past performance.

One issue with the idea of achieving Pay for Current Value by extending Arbitration years is that I don't think salaries ever go down in arbitration. So I'm still struggling to get my head around how a league would go about actually doing that. I could see a sliding salary forced each year based on last season's WAR--adjusted by position?

I mean, the entire idea of signing a guy to a long term contract--especially if he's not a superstar--is generally to lock in an advantageous deal, or, in other words, to pay a guy less than he's actually worth...which, again, is counter to paying for current value.

I think we're starting to argue over the meanings of words again. I suppose I don't mean pay exactly for current value, rather pay players more money earlier in their careers. With the way the Brewster is set up, early long term deals are very team friendly. Almost exclusively so, which is why they are banned. I'd like to aggressively raise early player salaries through arb so that long term deals to young players are feasible, and even risky at times. By and large, they will still be somewhat team friendly, but hopefully not egregiously so. It will take some trial and error, but I want a greater share of salaries going to under 30 players than over 30 players.

[RonCo]

Ok. To pump salary quicker, you might consider going the opposite way and see what happens. Two seasons of min-sal, 1 season of arbitration, then into Free Agency. Or 1 season of min-sal, 2 arbitration, then into Free Agency.

The idea of the market driving value is huge, IMHO.

[RonCo]

Just realize that the idea of teams keeping their players, and players being paid what they are worth very early in their careers are at counter-purposes, so a design that does both is going to be hard to figure out at the end of the day.

[Ted]

Just realize that the idea of teams keeping their players, and players being paid what they are worth very early in their careers are at counter-purposes, so a design that does both is going to be hard to figure out at the end of the day.

Yup, I get this, but it's still what I'm shooting for. When you start with the realization that the current MLB model and therefore what most of us are used to is absurd (Set up so that the most productive players make very little while they are producing, and the highest paid players are almost always bad deals), you have to make something really different if you want a different salary distribution.

The closest thing I can find is hockey. If you look at contract trends in recent years (last 3 to 4), teams are signing very big extensions to much younger players than they used to, because nearly every UFA deal has been ending up badly. They've realized that if I want to keep this guy during the back half of his prime, I'll have to pay for the front half. The shelf life on a hockey player is even more variable than baseball, and they "age" faster because skating is a "young" skill.

I'd like something similar, but with players reaching the extension sooner. Hence the reason for big arb increases, and high starting salaries.

You don't have to get to paying each player exactly what they are worth. You just have to drive up salaries rapidly if it is warranted by their play. So as a whole, you're paying younger guys more. I've noticed in recent versions of OOTP that it's very difficult to get a player to sign a deal during their arb years that pays less than the AAV of their highest arb value. If this is the case, I can see a situation where teams are forced to make pricey extensions to young talent. Still what may be eventually below free market costs, but by no means cheap. You could also put a min length on extensions to avoid the buying out next years arb cost controlling thing you and I do in the BBA. Or a GM can just let the guy arb for 6 seasons and risk a huge increase.

The part of this we haven't discussed is that I'd be extending the arb years. To like 5 or six. So you actually have more team control, but with a much higher price at the end of it.

Anyway, this may not work at all. I have an idea of what I want it to look like, but am not sure how to make it work. Which is why I started this thread. And I do appreciate the feedback.

[crobillard]

Cool ideas. Hard to implement. Even more difficult to find owners for a league that seems pretty unforgiving to me. 16 GMs though isn't much. It could work once you figure it out. I can't offer any broad concept ideas or any insights into how OOTP works. I'm just a guy who likes playing in these silly leagues. Once I start losing players due to mistakes I made, that gets unfun real quick. It's happened to me before in the BBA and in ORB2. It's crushing. I may not have the intellectual prowess you seek in GMs in your league lol, but the penalties would be too harsh for me. I fuck up too much.

I like the idea around stats only, but I don't have the time to invest. I know I couldn't hack it in a stats only league. I can barely keep up with stats only in my own organization. In the end, I just don't think I am the type of GM you would be looking for. I just wanted to add to the conversation and give you a different perspective than the technical one you're receiving for much of this post. Hopefully it helps. Missing you dude. Love the discussion.

[niles08]

Hi Ted, I hope you are doing well. As I mentioned last night when I got back in front of a computer and had some time to digest these I would respond. Take what you want and look at this as an open discussion because that is how I see it and I actually appreciate you bringing these ideas because I think any discussion as far as new ideas promotes an environment that can have change and such.

For what it is worth, I still play Playstation 4 as a 29 year old and I don’t see myself stopping anytime soon because I enjoy the competitive environment and the social aspect as well. I recently picked up the new NBA basketball game(I know basketball gross, don’t worry I don’t follow the NBA, I just play the game lol)…anyhow something that I found interesting is an evolving environment in their “franchise mode”. There were league votes on the CBA and other changes in the off-season I seen. Some things were simple like changing the shot clock time from 24 to 20 seconds but some were more in depth CBA stuff which I thought was a cool aspect. Anyhow, long story short, I think we should be willing to listen to ideas and if they make sense, vote on them as a group because we all do have a vested interest in this league whether we’ve been here 10 years or 40.

Anyhow…Onto your thoughts.

Player demands:

The Brewster is a capped league and the game file settings for demands are much lower than what the engine is making the players ask for. I'm not sure if this is an issue with the very specific settings the Brewster has for financials, or if OOTP simply doesn't do this well. But I simply don't have an interest in a system where players routinely ask for 35% plus of the cap space in AAV. That's bonkers in my mind. This is the reason I left, and until it's fixed, I won't be back in the Brewster. I'm just going to assume OOTP can't work with the Brewster cap settings and try to come up with a different idea.

I could be in the minority here, but I am one that doesn’t mind the player demands. I think that players should always ask for more than they usually wind up getting. You hear all the time of players who were asking for more, and the market for them simply drove that price down as the off-season went on. Bryce Harper last year is an excellent example. He was rumored to be seeking $40 million a year for 10 years and signed for much less than that as the off-season went on. The demand wasn’t there so his price dropped. As for MLB not being a cap environment, if you look at the NFL Matthew Stafford was about 16% of the salary cap last year for Detroit. I know 16^ and 35% are a huge difference, until you figure that the NFL has 53 man rosters and we have 27 so that 16% is more like 32% since our rosters are half the size.

Contract Manipulation:

This league, and every other, is rife with players in AAA who should be in the bigs, as teams wait for development or simply don't want to start an arb clock because they aren't currently competitive. I hate this.

This is the way the MLB works. Look at Vlad Guerrero Jr. Look at Kris Bryant back in the day. Look at all those others who were clearly manipulated with service time. I think when the new CBA is arranged in 2021 this rule is going to be changed, but right now it’s not a OOTP issue, this is a MLB real life problem.

I think the only way you really get away from this is if you knock down the Rule 5 requirements to make people place players on their 40 man sooner. Obviously, they could still send them down 3 years afterwards but that does knock some time down. I don’t think that’s even the solution now as I am typing this. I don’t think there is an easy one.

A Huge Ratings Spread:

Every person I know who has commished a long standing league notes that ratings creep happens. They also all note that there is a lot of pressure to "juice" the draft, as everyone wants a shiny new toy or two each season. Your last draft was abysmal and ideally wouldn't happen, but it's closer to reality than the ones you had been getting. There have been real life drafts where no one picked in the first round made it. They are exceedingly rare, but they happen. What's unrealistic about your last draft is that you will likely have very few of those pumpkins in your later rounds bump, because your ratings bloat creates little room for it. However, there have NEVER been real life drafts where the entire first round projects to be hall of famers, like the ones you'd been having. The Brewster drafts are a tricky animal due to the myriad of ways players enter the league, the overall ratings spread, which makes middling players look really unappetizing, and a ton of other factors. Regardless, I'd prefer a league with a more narrow band of talent at the top level, and only a few huge outliers if any (generational talents, etc.

I strive for the day when an average player in the league is truly a 50 overall/50 potential but I don’t think it will happen since relative ratings drive that number to average being 50 meaning 80 isn’t necessarily a hall of famer anymore, but are very good in that if 50 is average of course 80 would be the best in the league. At least that’s how I understand it.


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Okay, so with those key issues pointed out, I'll start with my league outline. I'd like to hear any responses pertaininng to the feasibility of implementing this in OOTP. First off, we'll tackle something most people will immediately have concerns with.

No Cap:

The idea here is to create a more natural supply and demand. Caps really force an artificial lowering of player salaries overall, but they also tend to make high end player salaries elevate. This is because it is way more valuable to get 8 wins out of one player than to get 8 wins out of 4 players. When you have a cap, and have to think about signing four guys or one guy, the market moves towards very expensive superstars and cheap middling talent.

But of course everyone wondering about the inherent fairness of big market versus small market in an uncapped league. Revenue tends to snowball, so uncapped leagues get out of hand fast. The solution? VERY AGGRESSIVE revenue sharing. I'd like a system where say if the top team spends 200 mil, the median team is at 185, and the bottom could spend 185 if they wanted. Being able to spend more is a team's reward for winning and keeping their FI and FL up. But I want everyone to be able to spend enough to compete. So you give everyone max market size, and make sure it stays there. I haven't messed with the revenue sharing settings ever, but this seems possible if you do the math right.

I have fought before to eliminate the cap or at least make it a soft cap with money over the cap going back towards the lower budget teams. I think that revenue sharing doesn’t affect budgets however so you would have to go in and spruce up the budget’s each year to make them even. In my opinion, if you eliminate the cap and don’t offset the budget you will still wind up with teams that are vastly different in spending as budgets are different.

Salary Floor:
In the above scenario, I would set a salary floor at 170 mil. That may seem high, but the idea is to prevent tanking. Sure, a team could still sign players to one year bloated contracts to get to the floor. But they can't hoard cash. And people will probably tend to look for good ways to spend money if they know they have to spend it. If you don't spend to the floor you lose a pick for each 5 mil you are under, starting with rd1. Now, you may point out that for a bad team, and with min salaries so low, it may be hard to make the floor.

I think the only way you make the salary floor work would be if you raised minimum salaries as you mentioned. I would agree on a bad team or very young team, it may be hard to meet the floor and you wind up spending $50 million on one player just to meet the floor. I think this would allow for some odd contracts and manipulation to be honest.

Pay For Current Performance, Not Past:
My league will do what current baseball owners don't want, and what the greedy older players in charge of the union are too big of shitholes to demand. The min contract is going way up. Probably 2 or 3 mil. At 2 mil, you've got a min salary for a 26 man roster of 52 mil. At 3 mil it's 78. That's still around half the salary floor. These numbers are all fuzzy at this point, but you get the idea. Secondly, arbitration starts after any part of two seasons, full stop. You get more arb years, and I'd like to see top players making 8-10 mil by their second arb year. Say 6 years of arb total. Any player who is eligible for arbitration can sign a max length deal, which is probably 6 for FA's and 6 + (num arb years remaining - 3) for arb eligible players (so you can buy out all of arb plus some). The idea is to make people decide whether they want to gamble on a player maintaining a level of performance on a longer deal, or risk a 30 mil arb contract. Just like real life.

I like the fact that arbitration guys should be earning more as I think they should, at least the top guys. I also agree that in the 5th or 6th years of arbitration I should be much less willing to let a guy get there and rather sign him to a long term deal as the one-year arbitration deal maybe $20-25 million if he is any good. However, I would argue that those teams with lower budgets would have a hard time building a team if they had to pay a group of guys within 3 seasons or lose them and they are already in the basement with a low budget.

Minor Leaguers are in the Union:
All minor leaguers have the right to challenge for a promotion. If they believe they are having their service time manipulated, they can appeal to an independent arbitrator panel. If that panel finds that a player is toiling in AAA and there is no reason other than the big league club not wanting to win games or start and arb clock, the player immediately is granted free agency. (So yes, I will set up an anonymous snitching and review system).

There isn’t a good answer to this as I think it mimics real life. I am not a big fan of an arbitration panel just like I wouldn’t be a big fan of a trade panel because a lot of it is simply opinion based and everybody is wrong at some point. I think the only good answer to this is 2 or 3 seasons after being drafted, you have them immediately enter arbitration and eliminate the 6 years of MLB team control to simply being 6 years as a professional. You would have many be free agents for the first time by the age of 25-27 rather than 29-31.

Code: Select all

Some degree of fog of war on stats:
I'm really leaning towards stats only. You'll have the generic scouting descriptions about players, and their amateur stats to make decisions on drafting, but being able to see the ratings causes so many problems and headaches and influences contracts in unrealistic ways. I'd love to have potential ratings that disappear once a player plays x number of minor league games, but that's not an option. Potential only is an option, but I really don't want to see potential ratings on older players. I want decisions based on performance, and analysis of performance.

I would 100% support a motion for this whether it be in a league I am in or not. I hate looking at a players ratings, especially when I can see a clear split for platoons and such. I base quite a few of my decisions on stats before ratings anyhow. I would even entertain a 1-5 rating scale instead of a 1-10 rating scale to at least have a bit more unknown. I think a stats only would also be fun for amateur drafting and even when trading. I would leave scouting as is so that we can also have a bit of evaluation based on stats and then the handy scouting page for each player that sort of projects that player out.

[RonCo]

The 1-5 rating scheme turns the game somewhat toward stats only. Especially if overall ratings are turned off and relative ratings are turned on.