2024-25, EBA Rights Draft (Rule 6)

[trmmilwwi]

Are front loaded contracts allowed? Doesnt seem kosher..

[bschr682]

Are front loaded contracts allowed? Doesnt seem kosher..

Why?

[agrudez]

I'm having De ja vu, lol. Front-loaded is better (and more realistic) than backloaded. That said, if someone had offered a contract like Baca's (52M year 1 to 21M year 2 is almost a 250% drop, lol) to one of his own home grown players I might've raised an eyebrow, but that's just the nature of the Rule 6, imo.

[7teen]

I'm having De ja vu, lol. Front-loaded is better (and more realistic) than backloaded. That said, if someone had offered a contract like Baca's (52M year 1 to 21M year 2 is almost a 250% drop, lol) to one of his own home grown players I might've raised an eyebrow, but that's just the nature of the Rule 6, imo.

I honestly thought YS may have recognized this and not selected Salazar. Not bashing Ron for his pick, as Salazar was clearly the #1 pick. But I've been plotting, and obviously so has Brett, for quite some time on how to poach Salazar from the Nine. I think, maybe moreso in hindsight now, YS could have made a better move by skipping Salazar and going with someone they may have been able to match their contract and made their team better.

I guess that all remains to be seen as to how it plays out. Maybe YS has an ace up their sleeve on how to keep Savage....

[trmmilwwi]

Are front loaded contracts allowed? Doesnt seem kosher..

Why?

Show me 1 example of a Baca contract in any real life sport. And this years version could be worse.

[Chey]

I looked at it as a signing bonus. For instance, Lester had a $15MM signing bonus on his latest MLB deal paid out on the first year. Baca's is... more... but the same principle.

[agrudez]

I probably win the Landis in 2011 if Chicago didn't poach Sanguinacco from me the year prior (my biggest weakness was in the 'pen!). The Rule 6 isn't meant to simply be a handing out of the best talent - it was purposefully set up this way and Baca's contract (while a bit crazy) was the process working as intended as far as I'm concerned. I mean, how often do we get a Baca and Salazar type talent? The last one I can think of is Adie and that was over a decade ago. More often than not the #1 pick is a pretty solid starting pitching or something.

[RonCo]

I'm having De ja vu, lol. Front-loaded is better (and more realistic) than backloaded. That said, if someone had offered a contract like Baca's (52M year 1 to 21M year 2 is almost a 250% drop, lol) to one of his own home grown players I might've raised an eyebrow, but that's just the nature of the Rule 6, imo.

I assume this was discussed heavily last season.

It seems relatively simple, though...

Front loaded contracts are still pretty rare in real life, but they happen. I would say having a lot of front-loaded contracts is not particularly realistic, but a few is completely expected. Whether this is because the players won't accept them or because the team's don't want to shell out the money today vs. tomorrow is a philosophical construction at best, and is probably due to a mix of several different forces awakening (*) during the negotiations.

* I must reference something skiffy-like in 10% of my posts or I get thrown out of the guild.

Front-loaded contracts do, however, generally match $/production, though a flat contract does to (when you include for inflation ... which the MBBA doesn't have). So if you can get them, they can be helpful. Front loaded contracts to the degree where year one is huge, then the following years drop off to nothing, do not seem to be particularly realistic. That said, this is the MBBA, the wild west of baseball leagues, so what do I know?

The only real issue I have in this is that I stand to lose 10 PP and a player to Rule 7 merely for giving someone else the ability to add a mega-loaded contract to their team. But it's a minor nit.

[Chey]

To be fair, Luis Baca's contract didn't drop down to nothing; his Year 2 salary is still among the league's highest.

[Chey]

Do these guys enter the FA pool at the same time as everyone else? For some reason I thought they dropped in early.

[aaronweiner]

Are front loaded contracts allowed? Doesnt seem kosher..

Why?

Show me 1 example of a Baca contract in any real life sport. And this years version could be worse.

Omer Asik and Jeremy Lin, especially the latter. Lin's was backloaded, but it was backloaded such that it would have cost the Knicks an enormous amount of luxury tax and hamstrung their franchise.

[RonCo]

Omer Asik and Jeremy Lin, especially the latter. Lin's was backloaded, but it was backloaded such that it would have cost the Knicks an enormous amount of luxury tax and hamstrung their franchise.

Those deals are created by the accounting practices of the NBA, though. The offering team can account for those salaries differently than the player's current team. And yes, they are back-loaded, rather than front-loaded.

[aaronweiner]

Yeah, but we've had frontloaded deals on restricted free agents in the NBA too. (I always think of the NBA as the closest match to our cap, even though theirs is "soft.") It's actually a common practice to dissuade teams from signing players.

[aaronweiner]

Oh, and I would say every player alive would prefer a frontloaded deal to a backloaded one. So there's that too.

[trmmilwwi]

I don't want this to be a drawn out complaint fest... I will just state that these contracts are a huge issue for me. Gaming the system in my eyes. Agree to disagree with those that think otherwise.

[aaronweiner]

Tim, this is another one of those "if we were willing to do ten times more work than we currently do, we could fix this problem" problems. I don't think there's a logical solution.

[RonCo]

Oh, and I would say every player alive would prefer a frontloaded deal to a backloaded one. So there's that too.

I think this is true of the smartest ones, at least.

Again, I have no major issues with big front-loading--it is "gaming the cap system" but that's normal business. You play within the constraints of the rules. I do tend to think the add of the Rule 7 draft should be altered in the future to cost the team who signs the player a guy from their Rule 5 Eligible players (rather than the guy who drafts them), rather than the drafting team, but again, that seem's minor in the overall picture.

[agrudez]

Do these guys enter the FA pool at the same time as everyone else? For some reason I thought they dropped in early.

I seem to recall the reverse, actually, that these guys usually enter after the first sim with FAs. That might've been an artifact of the draft being strung out for days on the forum, though - maybe Matt's switch to a single shot PM method was made in an attempt to get them released at the same time as everyone else.

[RonCo]

Oh, and I would say every player alive would prefer a frontloaded deal to a backloaded one. So there's that too.

I think this is true of the smartest ones, at least.

Again, I have no major issues with big front-loading--it is "gaming the cap system" but that's normal business. You play within the constraints of the rules. I do tend to think the add of the Rule 7 draft should be altered in the future to cost the team who signs the player a guy from their Rule 5 Eligible players (rather than the guy who drafts them), rather than the drafting team, but again, that seem's minor in the overall picture.

Quoting myself...what's the world coming to?

Actually, I was thinking about this at lunch. I think the goal of the Rule 6 draft is to give the drafting team an advantage--but in reality, that only happens if the drafting team has a lot of cash. And with Rule 7 as it is, it actually kind of puts a drafting team in a pretty ugly position. If you get your pick poached (which is completely fair), you lose both your PP, and a player to the EBA. That's all fine. But the guy who poaches the player with one of those mega-front-loaded deals is essentially getting away scott-free. They aren't going to compete this year, anyway, so why not drop $50M+ or whatever on a star that they can have for a semi-reasonable deal for the future (see Tuna)? I think that's probably the problem.

I love the idea of Rule 7, but I think it should be redirected and expanded. For example:

Rule 7:
Article A - The EBA team who loses a player to the Rule 6 draft will be able to draft a Rule 5 eligible player from the signing team immediately after Rule 5 (or after signing, whichever is later).
Article B - If a team other than the drafting team signs the player, the drafting team will also be able to draft a Rule 5 eligible player from the signing team immediately after Rule 5 (or signing, whichever is later). If this provision occurs, the MBBA team will draft after the EBA team drafts.

This way there is at least a tiny penalty for building an aggressive contract that would probably not happen if it were not for the Rule 6 structure. It still keeps a drafting team in the target sites, but says that if you're going to poach a guy, you're willing to lose two semi-prospects or at least some guys who could be cheap depth.

Thoughts?

[7teen]

I think there is a lot of concern that this rule 7 draft is going to result in the losing of high quality players. I see it as more of allowing the EBA guys to maybe grab a player that can help their team in return. The guy they take has to be Rule 5 eligible... How many of us are leaving talented players openly available in the Rule 5 draft? Looking at my own team, the guys I'd potentially lose are career AAA guys or possibly a AAAA guy at best. Maybe, maybe, I lose a fringe prospect that I didn't want to waste a spot on my 40-man roster on. While I don't think these guys really hurt us in the MBWBA, these guys could go to the EBA and be superstars and impact players. I think I have a handful of players in my minors that are Rule V eligible this season that will never see the light of day in the MBWBA but could put together solid EBA careers, an Otis Keys for example.