Off-Season FA bidding change

[Admin]

tired of seeing trout and stanton going for 20-34 mil for 1 yr. it will be like that until they retire.
i suggest we change to total salary to win the player.
ex: trout on a 1 yr contract worth 20mil LOSES
to a 4yr 5.1mil salary worth 20.4mil

what ssy you.

[Minnesota Twins]

I vote no.
_________________
We discussed a structure before

Players bidding over
$10 mil must give at least 2 yrs
15 mil must give at least 3 yrs
$20 mil must give at least 4 yrs
$25 mil must give 5 yrs at least


But that also did not pass.

[torontobluejays]

I vote no to any change in the FA bidding system.

[ex-Pittsburgh Pirates]

there is merit in the suggestion.

right now the league has devolved into 3 player types:

1. guys on rookie contracts
2. mid-year free agent signings (cheap contract of variable length)
3. end of the year free agents on high salary 1 year contracts

i dont think that was the intent of our system. does anybody know how many free agents over say, $5m were signed for multiple years last offseason? probably not many. i believe all these star players on 1 year contracts is leading to the system we have now where everybody starts dumping contracts in may and june if they are out of it. if instead you had your star on a long term deal, it would not only be harder to trade him but you might not WANT to trade him since you are playing for a future year. i actually think its too EASY to trade right now, leading to lack of competition and 1-2 super teams forming in may/june and running away with the title.

with that said, i see 3 potential solutions to the problem, presented in no particular order.

PLAN A
Free Agent bidding goes to a 'total salary' system. In other words, a bid of $6m over 5 years beats a bid of $5m over 1 year. (We can extend this to blind bids as well if we want...to be discussed later.)

PLAN B
We implement a structure so that bids over a certain dollar amount MUST be for at least a minimum number of years. The structure can be discussed later, but just to illustrate, it would be something like this: Under $10m - any years. $10m-15m - min 2 years. $15-$18m - min 3 years. $18-up - min 4 years.

PLAN C
This is a new idea I just came up with. Part of the problem with the long term contracts is that folks don't want to pay the cap penalty in future years for cutting a player. So to make long term contracts more attractive, let's change the formula for the cap penalty. Today, if you cut a player, you are penalized 1/2 salary in the year you cut and then 1/4 salary in all future years. Instead, how about if we say the penalty is 1/2 salary in the current year, 1/4 in the next year, 1/8 in the year after, 1/16 the year after, and so on. Again, the specific numbers are not important now because they can be worked out later, but it would go something like this... imagine you sign Player X for $10m for 5 years in 2017. You cut him in 2017. So the cap penalty TODAY would look like this:
2017 - $5m
2018/19/20/21 - $2.5m each year (ouch, right?)

In the new system, it would look like this:
2017 - $5m
2018 - $2.5m
2019 - $1.25m
2020 - $750k
2021 - $375k

That's not so bad, right? In fact it would encourage you to go longer on your contracts because there is less penalty each year.


I'll set up a poll to see what everyone thinks.

[Minnesota Twins]

A. No
B. Yes
C. He'll no! I've been very careful about not assigning or taking on crap contracts, I want these guy to suffer the consequences after they take advantage of the sweet start of the deal!

[Deleted]

imho. plan c. nobody will give a 34mil/3yr deal to any player. its still too much of a hit. ull still see big 1yr contracts. BUT a hybrid of b and c might be better. 20mil/min 4 yrs using plan c is 'swallowable'.
just thinking out loud.

[Deleted]

or is that idea the same as plan c? idk, help me out here.

[Deleted]

I think if anything the penalty for cutting players is already to cheap. My preference would be to go to option B. I believe when this was last brought up someone pointed out how many large contracts did go for multiple years last year. That being said I do have 70 mil in cash next year and if you give me the opportunity I will be bidding large amounts on one year contracts.

[torontobluejays]

No on all plans.

[Admin]

balt's honesty is appreciated. so here it is. balt can pay 25mil/1yr to both trout and stanton. only det and pitts can keep up with him under current rules. if he wins, fine. no guarantees.

[torontobluejays]

If too many trades is leading to a lack of competition in the league, we can create a rule to make trades more difficult. One rule would be like the MLB rule saying you can't trade draft picks. This would make it more difficult to trade. Currently, teams are offering up draft picks well into the future to acquire players without giving up anyone on their current roster or their start prospects. Without having draft picks as an option, I would expect less trades because an attempt to get a stud player would require a team to give up players with value. Teams want value for the players that they are trading. Trading a star player will require quality players coming back, rather than the potential talent of high draft picks.

We can also create a rule that says, any trade in the current year cannot result in a team exceeding salary caps in future years. This plan has been used in recent past. I am guilty of it this season.

See, we do not need to mess with the off season FA bidding. We can make the league more competitive by just making it more difficult to trade.

[torontobluejays]

Another potential anti-trade rule would be to say no more paying cash to future years.

[ex-Pittsburgh Pirates]

In Plan C, I attempted to make it more attractive to sign guys to long term deals. How about the other tack...we make it more punitive to sign guys to 1 year deals? Maybe guys on 1 year deals get a 'no trade clause'? Or maybe when you cut a guy on a 1 year deal you get no cap relief.

[torontobluejays]

If Balt wants to spend to pay $25m to Trout and Stanton on one year deals, go for it. He, along with Pitts and Det have managed their cap space to go after the high priced players. They should not be penalized because they put themselves into a position to outspend the rest of us. If anyone wants to competitively bid on the likes of Trout or Stanton but do not have cap space to do it, make the tough call and cut the high salaries that you are already paying. You built your team. Live with it.

[Deleted]

I do agree agree that trading and giving up on the year is more of an issue to me than fa bidding. My thought was removing some of the one year contracts may help both. Maybe it would be possible to limit the amount of cash that can be included in deals or a limit on the total for the season. I know the main issue is not having a playoffs and that is hard to change on a free league. What about opening it up to 4 or 6 teams make it to the playoffs / World series and go head to head in cats.