Free Agency - Out of the Box

[Chris Rex]

My wife just asked if she had to wait until her final year to renegotiate.

Her prorated bonus per year cannot be greater than her base salary for said year.

[Chris Rex]

Another idea could be you cannot reneg until year 3 of a contract. That seems to be a good timeline that is similar to the NFL. Then you have a body of work for a player whether it is good or bad and can reneg accordingly.

While I am all for leaving things 'as is', this is the only rule I would vaguely vote yes on under duress.

[Pirates]

So am I but Torres himself came up with this idea. He wants to reneg in a year or two.

[Hell Atlantic]

what if we were to split FA1 into 3 stages (1-4, 5-8, 9-12)? this way you can't pussyfoot your offers. you kinda would have to make essentially your best offer and wouldn't have the luxury of knowing what offer you have to beat. i think this would take a chunk of guaranteed money off team's payroll. this way you have as much flexibility as you want with the actual contract, you just don't have several stages to incrementally increase your offer. i know i certainly would come correct right off the bat.

[iceman99]

OK I admit I have not done alot of reading on this thread, but I have read some and I think I kind of agree with Cringer here, and with Jave on some of his comments.

I think I would vote for the final year deal before this.

And I think Jave is right, we are looking for to many rules for us to actually fill the roles as the GMs of our teams. All these contract discussions rules are just mudding the water IMO.

As we have stated, I should be able to run my team as I want within the guidelines of the games designs and a few rules to limit certain activity that we have seen as abusive. I too was once trying to make rules and I realized that it was better to embrace the game as is and just move on. I will offer a big contract for a deserving player, but I am not shelling out 1st round money for a undrafted FA.

But even now with our 1/2 year bonus rule we are still seeing crazy contracts. IE... 7.5 Mil over 2 years for a rookie K? LOL

Now I will admit, AM I ACTUALLY SAYING THIS , I think HA may have a point. Run less FA stages. You run stage 1 since its the reneg stage, and then run 2-4, 5-8, 9-12 or something like that to make it harder to do as HA mentioned and try to trump another owner.

[Coder]

Without thinking too much about it, the one isse that might surface with HAs idea is that people will make humongous offers to avoid "Losing out" on a player, putting us in exactly the same spot as we are today.

[Hell Atlantic]

Without thinking too much about it, the one isse that might surface with HAs idea is that people will make humongous offers to avoid "Losing out" on a player, putting us in exactly the same spot as we are today.

this is exactly what we want. we want teams to offer huge sums of guaranteed money to players that will quickly start to shrink their cap room. right now we're in an environment where we have every opportunity to offer big contracts - but never more than what is absolutely required to land the guy. if i offered a player a $12million 5 year deal, you can land that player right now by offering $12million for a 4 year deal. or $12.1 over 4 years. that's not really throwing your organization into financial peril. but if you didn't know what i was gonna offer, you might not risk losing out on that player and you'd offer $20million over 5 years. you'd say "i really need this player, no way anyone would top this". and then you get him or you don't. even if you want to rengotiate his contact the following year you're gonna still have to pay him whatever huge guaranteed money you initially offered him. we all know guaranteed money is what seals the deal so any offer that has the best guaranteed money basically lands the player. we'd basically be having dutch auctions on players. quite frankly no one cares about the last 3 or so stages of FA anyway, there's only roster fodder to bid on.

[iceman99]

I mean the way I see it is, yeah players will go to a team and say so and so offered me this. So yeah its realistic in game... But to be honest know team really knows what a player is getting from another team most of the time until either A, he really wants to play for that team and he tells them, or B, they sign their contract and it gets out.

And factors like loyalty and want a winner may sway the decision for them to stay out in FA longer.

And to be honest, we have 11 true FA stages before the draft... So we run

Stage 1
Stage 2-3
Stage 4-5-6
Stage 7-8-9
Stage 10-11-12

That would not rule you out completely if you miss a stage... But it would reduce the number of bounce around offers

[JesterBlaze]

Would Torres have gotten as much if Kurt (Pirates) didn't see the competing offers?

I could see a lot of GMs putting in what they think is their highest offer only to realize when the player signs elsewhere that they would've paid more. I think a GM needs to be pushed to paying top dollar by seeing what the comp is offering stage after stage.

It's true what HA says that GM "A" will offer $12M/4yr and get outbid the next stage by GM "B" who bids $12.1M/4yr and when it happens it makes me wonder what the hell GM "A" was thinking??? Unless your offer is extremely higher than the next offer then you need to bump it. Even if it is the highest offer you have to recognize that you're now a target and bump it anyway to avoid "one uppers" if you really want the player.

[iceman99]

That is what HA is saying though.. Many FOF'ers low ball a player because they know they have the "chance" of seeing what the other teams are going to offer first.

With the mindset that HA has in place. Its going to force those GM's that REALLY want a guy to go get him, none of this I will raise you 100K or whatever.

Again I know this is not the real NFL, but that is how its done in the real world... You want a guy you blow him away with an offer. You do not nickel and dime him.

And even if we reduced the early stages to 2 stages at a time, it will not secure the right that someone will not be able to wait and see what he gets offered... If you REALLY want a guy you have to go get him...

I like the concept, not sure it would work. But it is a solid concept.

[iceman99]

And on the Torres Question... I think if more owners new they only had one shot to get him... Yeah I think that he would have gotten something similar. Maybe less salary but more bonus. JMO though

[JesterBlaze]

I don't agree that the current 1st offers are lowball offers. I believe GMs think they're legit offers until they see the competition and only then realize that they are actually willing to go much higher. They don't like the fact that they have to go higher but when push comes to shove they'll do it.

I don't mind trying out the proposal though since that'd be the only way to see factual results and it could go either way.

[Pirates]

In concept it is a good idea, but in practice I dont think it will do much except cause frustration. Personally I would never lowball a guy that I want just to see what other owners offer because there is the chance that he may be signed. By lumping stages it is more likely guys will go for less. When the Torres Situation of '08 happened it happened because he was offered a ton of money. I saw that we could take on the cap hit to get him so we went after him as high as we could go. If you put in the other system then Torres would have gone for a lot less.

Just my two cents.

[tarcone]

Why do we need a rule? Is it just to get a rule passed and then HA/DakotaGeorge jumps out and says "Gotcha" when we finally pass a rule for the sake of passing a rule because HA/Dakota put on the biggest drama ever on a message board.

[iceman99]

Not saying we need a rule. Just saying if we are going to discuss something I am more in favor of what HA mentioned then anything.

I prefer staying as is IMO... I got over the contracts and money thing longs ago ... I think LOL