Resurrecting Financials
When I first starting thinking about this project, one thing that I was afraid of was doing another half assed rebuild. A lot of teams make the playoffs under the current structure. Not all of them are that good. Take the 2032 Robins for example. That team finished .500 and fell one game shy of the playoffs. It was really a horrible team with no pitching what-so-ever. I want this project to be grandiose. I want to build a farm system with the top tier talent that Edmonton/Rockville have had in recent years, the depth of California, and the financial infrastructure of Yellow Springs. I felt one way to help me keep that discipline was to destroy my current financials so I had no choice but do a longer rebuild.
Now, as the season is about to come to a close, a little document will be released to the league soon. That document is called the bonus funds/stadium dues spreadsheet. This will be the "Holy Crap" moment where my destruction of this team comes to light to those who have not taken notice.
The Brooklyn Robins have lost $50 million dollars this season.
That is not a typo, I didn't misplace a decimal. And No. We do not have any bonus funds. We did have $10 million-ish in cash. So our balance is now around -$40 million. That number wasn't meant to be that extreme. 2036 has not gone as planned. I thought we'd be more competetive and compete for a Landis. But two mind blowing months destroyed that. June and July we were wrecked by injuries and underperformance. During the other 4 months we played close to .600 baseball. We also added a lot of salary with the additions of Mauro Flores and Alfredo Martinez. This was done purposely as we intend to tear the team down very soon and do much more sustainable rebuild.
My biggest fear is being kicked out of the league because of this debt. I am not new to online leagues and have seen new GM's come in, ignore finances, then leave when they become frustrated. That kind of behavior is not good for the league and there should be measures in place to avoid it. How does one really know if I'm going to stick around to see this through? That's was a primary reason for this dynasty thread. If I had stayed quiet. Nobody would see my plan and no one would see my passion for wanting to do this. I would just look like a terrible GM(maybe half true) who had no regard for the future.
So without further rambling. Let me start laying down some ideas on how to rebuild my financials and potential timelines for this. Also, keep in mind that we are still going to be all in for at least one more season, maybe two. When all is said and done our debt could be closer to $100 mil.
Step One: Slash Payroll
2037 was the original line in the sand. Brooklyn has just 5 players signed past then. So first things frist, let's break down the plan with those 5...
Ken Bates-He'll be at just one year, $6 million at that point. For a left handed starter, That should be very tradeable in the great firesale. If not $6 million isn't lot to carry.
Alfredo Martinez-A-Mart actually has an opt out after next season. So he might not be under contract in 2038. Or maybe he will. You can debate it either way. Its not a cut a dry opt out. I think he is tradeable even if he doesn't opt out. It may require Brooklyn to take some money back.
Fernando Cruz -Even though he is a right handed hitting DH that will be making $60+ over four years, I think he will be very much tradeable. Cruz will have just turned 29 at that point and is one of the best hitters in the game. The haul might not be ginourmous as you may expect for that kind of offensive production. But push comes to shove, Brooklyn can easily market him as a free agent alternative to teams who need a big bat.
Mario Balderas- As a recent podcast suggested. Balderas contract is going to look a lot worse over time. I, like I'm sure most of you expect his production to errode fairly soon. Maybe he has one, two, three if hes lucky... solid seasons left as he slowly declines. Maybe I can find a sucker if he has a hot season next year. But more likely then not he will be bound to us in the early stages of this rebuild. He does have an opt out after the 2038 season but I feel it's too early to make any predictions about that. I'm just going to plan it safe here and assume the 4 years and $50 mil he will be due after 2037 will be my burden.
Cisco Guerrero-Like Balderas, I signed Nightmare to define my window. When they lump we are tearing it down. Thus I fully expect not to be able to move his contract. After 2037 he'll have 2 more seasons with an annual average of $19 million.
So my gauranteed payroll for 2038 looks to include Balderas and Nightmare(combined $30.2 million) and maybe Bates($6 mil). Filling put the rest of our roster with league minimum players would bump the total to about $50-60 million range. Possibly up to $70 if Martinez opts in and is unable to be traded or is traded with bad contracts coming back. I'm going to have to stay as low as I can with payroll for year one and maybe even year two. My motto is generally "you have to spend money to make money". But for this specific set of circumstances I feel I need to adapt to achieve a specific goal.
Step 2: Raise Fan Interest
As part of our firesale, one of the areas we are going to focus on is cheap players with high fan interest. We are also going to seek out as many minor league free agents that may be popular. The first season of our rebuild may have a very "Legends of the BBA" feel to it. Remember, I'm diging out of a $50-100 million holes here. We aren't going to be able to sign free agents till at least year 3. So our main goal is to get to 100 fan interest ASAP so we can start to make money. Those first two seasons will be almost independent to the rebuild. That stretch of the process will focus primarily on getting our shit together and creating a system in which we can excel moving forward.
Once our fan interest gets to 100, then we will deviate away from this a bit as we will be able to use more of our roster for showcasing players(a chapter for another day). Fan interest will continue to be a priority though. It's more important when you are a bad team, but is still an asset as you become better. My goal is to stay at 100 once we get there.
Step 3: Don't Tank
Throughout this whole process I am going to try my best to win at every single stage. This includes year one when I may have a total shit roster. When I talked about Popular players, they may be on my team but that doesn't mean they will get a bulk of the playing time. My roster will have a very different feel then what a typical Brooklyn roster consists of. With popular players filling out the bench and bullpen, I'll platoon a lot less and probably switch back to a traditional pitching staff.
Winning is far more important then draft position. Tanking will definitely kill your finances while a top draft pick doesn't guarantee anything. We've seen some good draft classes, some bad ones, and some just flat out ugly. You really don't know what the pool will look like from year to year. A #1 pick this year may equal a #10 pick next year. You just don't know.
To take that thought one step further. Let's say you dig deep into scouting feeder leagues and you do know that next years class is amazing. It still doesn't matter. Players lump all time. Someone could look like the next big thing today and be total garbage 6 months from now. The draft is a total crap shoot. Sure you're odds are better with higher picks, but tanking to try to move up what is essentially 3-4 spots is just dumb.
Step 4: Ebay-ing Ticket Prices
There are two elements I'm going to touch on here. The first I learned after the fact a couple of seasons ago. If you are a bad team and you know you are a bad team. Pump up your fan interest as high as you can in the offseason. Even if you have no use for a that extremely popular player and waive him/trade him away for absolutely nothing the day he is available to trade. Why you ask?
Season ticket sales only run during a specific time of the year. I don't have the span memorized but I want to say somewhere around the winter meetings to start of regular season. The higher your fan interest in those months, the more season tickets you will sell. Season tickets are hugely important for bad teams. Once they are sold, they can't be refunded. As the season goes on bad teams naturally lose attendance. You will not lose season ticket sales. So if you know your team is going to suck, which the 2038 Robins will. Do some creative things and sell as many season tickets as you can. If you can sell out the ballpark in January, it won't matter how many people show up in September.
The other aspect I want to touch on here was talked about on the forums. To make the maximum amount of money, you need to understand what brings fans to the games. Cause it's not solely fan interest or how good your team is. Weather, what day of the week the game is on and talent of the competition is also involved. There may be more factors here. Since I have no money for free agents this winter, I can focus on stuff like this to get a better grasp and hopefully come up with more sets of conditions.
So once we have all this data. We're going to map out our schedule and adjust ticket prices on a sim to sim basis. Raising prices when we feel we will draw a good crowd and lower them when it's unfavorable. I know what you are thinking. This must not work because you are $40 million in debt. Fact is, I haven't tried it yet. 2037 will be the beta run for me.
Step 5: Expand the Stadium
When Brooklyn built a new park several years ago it was mainly cause our old park was old and expensive to keep up. In moving to a new one I opted to use a smaller capacity cause we couldn't fill it up anyway. With this grand rebuild, we are going to need more seats. It's not really a priority yet. Our fan interest will still be low in 2037 and obviously won't be much better once we tear the team down. But at the same time we are building the team, we need to be building up the park. In order to make the most money, we need the most seats.
So I guess that's about it for this chapter. You may note that this plan does not include spending PP on cash or trading players for cash. Those are decent option to patch up holes I suppose. However we will be focusing on creating money more organically and building an infrastructure.
