Draft Rules and Regulations

[PitchingWinsGames]

For some additional draft info, the draft will be in two parts:
The Majors Draft and the Minors Draft.

For the Majors draft, anybody with more than 2 years of major league service time is eligible. This draft will be 25 players deep, giving managers a full team of their making to choose from.

The minors draft will include, but not be limited to players UNDER 2 years of major league service time. This is so teams can flesh out their top 10 prospects list, or give them a deeper ML system to draw from.

I will also have the CPU sim contracts for all players. For the draft, you MAY exceed the 75M salary cap, and trade players to get under the cap in the week following. This is because the player's contracts won't be revealed until after the draft, but, player contracts should go along the following lines:

Superstar player: 16m
Star: 12m
Good: 7m
Above Average: 3.5m
Average: 1.5m
Below Average: 1m
Fair: 600k
Poor: 400k

However, all teams must be under the salary cap by the start of spring training.

Teams that are NOT under the salary cap will have a player whose salary matches the overage cut, and be penalized a draft pick. If, during the season, a team goes over the salary cap, they will have one sim to get back under it.

Teams may also trade money from their salary cap to another team for ONE season, limited to 5M. There will be a thread reflecting salary caps posted. An example would be, Sin City trades me a player and 5M to cover the salary that season. Their salary cap would adjust to 70M while mine would inflate to 80M for that season, and that season only. If that player has a multiyear contract, I will be obligated to trade him or otherwise make room in my cap for him.

Questions/Comments/Concerns?
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**NOTE: The salary estimates above are for players who are already past arbitration. Players in their first 3 years receive the ML minimum (350K) and the following 3 years receives arbitration

[Bobbob1313]

My only concern with this, as we discussed yesterday, is it penalizes you for drafting older established players vs. young guys.

In the TBBC draft, older guys with less potential were being severely undervalued, but this takes away even more of the benefit of drafting a guy like, say Lance Berkman. You're going to be saddled with a huge contract and the potential for him to just completely drop off as he ages.

Por ejemplo, in TBBC I drafted Jim Thome and got a 50 HR season at a reasonable rate and with a fairly low pick because he was being severely undervalued because he was 38 and had 1 star for potential. Now, if I draft him, I'm going to be saddled with a huge contract when he may not have more than one season left.

And what if I draft a 38 year old and he gets 3 year contract at the rate he's at as a 38 year old (still a productive player with a huge potential to fall off the face of the earth.) How will contract lengths be decided?

[Mainge]

This. I prefer the old way.

[PitchingWinsGames]

Well, I have to say this, part of any draft is actually signing the players you drafted, and that holds true in any sport.

Well, like I also said over IM, in my test sim, the best team drafted an 80ishM team and they were pretty much a juggernaut. Also, lowering the salary cap by 25M lowers the likelihood (because there's no way to outright prevent) a David Ortiz 35M contract or something.

But part of what you're arguing is, you want there to be undervalued guys and this just makes them appropriately valued. But, just for the sake of curiosity, I'll give you some examples of the higher contracts vs older players in a test sim, and I'll use some players you mentioned...

Jim Thome 1 yr/13M
Lance Berkman 4 yrs/15.6M
Frank Thomas 1 yr/5.5M

A-Rod 4 yrs/18.3M
Johan Santana 1 yr/13.4M
Carlos Beltran 4 yrs/16M

Albert Pujols 1 yr/6.9M (arbitration)
Josh Beckett 1 yr/5.6M (arbitration)
CC Sabathia 1 yr/5.5M (arbitration)

Barry Bonds 2 yrs/14M
Roger Clemens 2 yrs/12.8M

And those contracts are based on age/skill/talent/potential, so, what I'm getting at is they're likely to be replicated after the official draft with a VERY low margin of difference.

And realistically, the OOTP financials really were somewhat broken. The average ML team doesn't have a 100M payroll and then have only a handful of players on their team making no more than 4M dollars. You had teams with 50M, 60M, even 90M for the expansion teams in cap room. This led to broken contracts and generally un-trade-able assets.

However, I would be willing to do something like the original TBBC. "Franchise Players" so you can give a player a contract matching his real one in length and value OR you can nix a player down to a 1 year/500k contract. You could mix and match or do neither or whatever, but you're limited to two total? And you can re-negotiate with a 500k player throughout the season.

This would be a band-aid for the Eric Byrnes-type contracts (4 yrs/11M)

[PitchingWinsGames]

Additionally, by having stricter financials, it forces teams to make tough decisions... like Swift had said to me last night, when the best FA is some MR, the lower teams are never going to improve.

This forces teams to have real contracts, and real salary cap restraints, which, if I'm not mistaken, is the point of having a salary cap, to make sure teams can't just keep talent forever. You could literally just sign a Miguel Cabrera to a 5 year/25M contract and still have an incredibly high margin for error in the rest of your payroll. Basically, you could afford to make a mistake.

By pushing teams against the wall, you have to be more careful about who you sign, so signing a Kevin Brown or a Mike Hampton type deal will provide a huge hit to your franchise.

And, like I said, I can off two "Franchise" tags to fix any egregious errors, or to give someone a chance to make a creative move via the 500k deal.

[PitchingWinsGames]

c/o Swift, sort of a compromise in my previous suggestion:

all players with under 6 full seasons of service time are subject to the existing arbitration schedule, the teams are at the mercy or arbitration, or, if they so choose, whatever new extension they negotiate with the player
players over 6 years of service time are drafted and subject to the sim value, a team may choose 3 of these "veteran" players to have their real contract's average value added as part of a 3 year contract

and teams may choose 1 of those "veteran" players to play on a one year $5 million deal

at no time are the arbitration players subject to special contract allowances (real contract/5M contract)

[Swifty]

I like this system because it creates a happy medium and still requires shrewd moves to keep a competitive edge.

What I didn't like about the TBBC was that there were 4 or 5 teams that did very well on draft day and those same 4 or 5 teams kept winning and winning. That sure is a lot of fun for those owners, but the goal of the league, at least out of the gate, should be parity. I'll be the first to say we missed the boat on that in the TBBC and I think that this system will likely create stronger free agent classes and more roster turnover, which in turn should spread the talent around.

[PitchingWinsGames]

Ok, well, since there's been no negative responses since Bobbob's first response, and he hasn't followed it up, I guess we're going to roll with Swift's "Hybrid Theory" here..

[Bobbob1313]

I'm happy with the compromise.

[PitchingWinsGames]

Excellent

[Blackout Pact]

When is this party getting going?

[PitchingWinsGames]

When is this party getting going?

I just found Flum's replacement, so Im shooting for Wednesday night

[penis34]

Hello Everybody,
Can't wait to get my feet wet!

[KnuckleBalls]

Are we allowing any special instances for "forcing" a player to sign with the team that drafted them? It is the first sim of spring training and there are players that are already refusing contract extensions. It'd be a real shame to have wasted a draft pick on someone that you will not be able to have on your squad for more than 1 season.

[PitchingWinsGames]

Are we allowing any special instances for "forcing" a player to sign with the team that drafted them? It is the first sim of spring training and there are players that are already refusing contract extensions. It'd be a real shame to have wasted a draft pick on someone that you will not be able to have on your squad for more than 1 season.

Nope, that's just the way it is, sorry.

I have several guys like that too, definitely would hate to lose them but c'est la vie.