Offseason Day 1

[PitchingWinsGames]

Simmed halfway to the Arbitration hearings, next sim will take us to/through them. So the offers you put in should have been replied to one way or another.

Also, this is your opportunity to sign impending FAs to extensions, too, if that's your cup of tea. If you've signed a FA to a contract with an option year that is up, check your Manager's Inbox to use the option or cancel it.

Update in my plans for the Contraction Draft:

Since I absolutely cannot find an option for OOTP to outright handle it, what I plan on doing is letting Arlington and Vancouver's FAs walk, and then we'll have a draft of everyone on their ML rosters and then everyone on their MilB rosters, based on last season's records, of course. This will be a straight draft, as opposed to a serpetine draft, so the successful teams should have some slim pickings.

Questions/Comments?

[Bobbob1313]

I like it.

[PitchingWinsGames]

I expect most people to. I really would LOVE Junior to IM me asking what happened to his team... despite the fact that, you know, I've IM'd/PM'd him several times about this.

[KnuckleBalls]

I'm not in favor of a straight drafts for both MLB and MiLB. I really think that we should combine them into one draft. The teams that pick first would be getting a pretty hefty advantage by being able to select the best young player on their MLB roster and then being able to select their best prospects. Let'e just combine the player pool and let the owners decide if they want a developing guy or an established guy.
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Also, how about increasing the cap for this upcoming year by 5M or so? It would ease the pain of taking on these existing deals. Actually, this kinda further supports my previous post. If we straight draft MLB abd then MiLB, the teams at the end of the draft could potentially get stuck with the only guys available being players that they cannot afford, going under the assumption that they spent some dough to finish in first. This would allow the teams that pick first to take affordable guys with their initital picks, and then have higher priced guys come back around to them that the higher teams passed on due to not being able to afford them. By combining the pools, it at least allows the successful teams to take something they can use at an affordable price.

[PitchingWinsGames]

I want this to be a shot in the arm for bad teams.

As for being "forced" to take anyone, in this sort of draft you can give up (but not trade) your pick. Nobody's forced to do anything... but at the same time, the SOLE purpose is to increase parity. It's not fair at all if I wind up with a 4-5 star player. At best, I should be refining depth or something.

I legitimately have ZERO interest in improving my own team through this, but rather the Clevelands and Bostons and such. Sorry if that's too hardline but that's honestly my goal here. That and to obviously eliminate having to ghost run a pair of teams.
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As for the salary cap, I originally planned on this amount of teams with the 75M... but I'll reserve the right to change as necessary when the time comes.

[AdamRavs]

see the milb draft should be a serp. not a straight.. i understand the mlb one being straight as its going to help the bad clubs right away. however the minors should just evenly distribute the talent.

[PitchingWinsGames]

Maybe, I'll sit down and more or less do a mock draft and see how things play out.

[nny]

I brought this up before with pwg but I think something that could be looked at is kind of a serpentine draft that instead helps the "middle" clubs more. So for the second round, something like

First pick in second round: 10th pick in first round
2nd: 11th
3rd: 9th
4th: 12th
...
17: 2nd
18: 19th
19: 1st
20: 20th

Then third round back to strait up worst records

[THE_REAL_MIBS]

Serpentining the draft kind of defeats the point, though. Looking at Arlington, there is not a lot of talent on his major league roster. He only has 7 guys that are not 1 star prospects on his team and only 4 of them have developed above 1 star. Combining that with the 16 above 1 star players from Vancover and we just bareley get through the 20 pick first round (only 3 left over). After that, everything is about even so it would work better to let the worst teams get the most help and try to balance the league some.
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Please refresh my memory, how does arbitration work? Do we have to offer our arbitration guys contracts?