Moneyball Baseball League Chat

unless I missed it, it's also not stated how a free agent player is won. It says the ledger will be cleared out at the end of the night. Does that mean once a bid is made on a player, owners can only bid on him that day. If so, wouldn't you just bid on him right before midnight or whenever bidding time closes. I'd assume it's should be something like bidding remains open for 24 hours from the time of the initial bid

You missed nothing, Paul. I don't have a time frame in the rules. Yes, there should be a 24 hour window at least for bidding, especially since we are scattered across so many time zones. I think having 24 hours expire since the last bid would be the best policy as it would function as an auction last call. We could conceivable see an auction go on for weeks with some players though. It would be work for me to track the bidding and expiration process, but I'm up for it.

Anyone else want to way in on the mechanics for free agency bidding?

I think 24 hours sine the last bid makes the most sense. There's going to be so many FA's that I don't see a lot of bidding going on for most of them, other than the super stars. Add to that cap restraints, my gut feeling is free agency will go quicker than one might think.

Hey Boss:
Sandoval, Patrick SP should b on Paul long's team not mine...tks
Paul K

Thanks for your feedback on the free agent bidding process and the salary cap penalties. If any one else would like to contribute, I'd like to hear as many perspectives as possible. After everyone has a chance to contribute, I will propose rules to clarify both topics. Fortunately there is no rush to resolve these questions as free agency won't come up until after we play our first season.

On another topic, I'd like each of you to check your service time data against the Cot's page of the spreadsheet. I used the lookup function of Excel to merge the Cot's data with the available hitters and pitchers and, unfortunately, there are a few errors. Errors are most likely to occur where there are common last names.

Thanks,

Phil

3. the 24-hour last call way, which makes the most sense but could make you have to pass on other free agents while you wait for this one to drag out for fear of going over the cap. Doesn't happen in real life as teams contact agents and tell their clients that the offer is off the table as they've signed so-and-so.

I like this idea, but I think you'd also need to be able to rescind bids if you are bidding on multiple players at the same position, and I think you should be able to rescind them regardless of whether the 2nd player puts you over the cap or not. If a bid is rescinded, someone else might then be interested in that player. The 24 hour last call starts at the time of the rescinding being announced.

Exceeding the salary cap is where I'm struggling. Personally I'd like to see a monetary penalty on the order of say, if you exceed the cap by $2M, not only do you have to get below $140M, but a $2M penalty applies, and you have to get below $138M. What complicates it is a team being responsible for the contracts even upon a players release.

Released players appear to go on waivers (Sec. VIII.03), and my reading of the rule suggests the claiming team assumes the contract (not sure about the consequences for the releasing team?).

I think exceeding the cap due to arbitration deserves more than a slap on the wrist. It's also a good tool for facilitating trades, as one should have a general idea as to how arbitration will affect payroll, and be able to act accordingly without penalty, or take no action and potentially pay the price.

3. the 24-hour last call way, which makes the most sense but could make you have to pass on other free agents while you wait for this one to drag out for fear of going over the cap. Doesn't happen in real life as teams contact agents and tell their clients that the offer is off the table as they've signed so-and-so.

I like this idea, but I think you'd also need to be able to rescind bids if you are bidding on multiple players at the same position, and I think you should be able to rescind them regardless of whether the 2nd player puts you over the cap or not. If a bid is rescinded, someone else might then be interested in that player. The 24 hour last call starts at the time of the rescinding being announced.

Exceeding the salary cap is where I'm struggling. Personally I'd like to see a monetary penalty on the order of say, if you exceed the cap by $2M, not only do you have to get below $140M, but a $2M penalty applies, and you have to get below $138M. What complicates it is a team being responsible for the contracts even upon a players release.

Released players appear to go on waivers (Sec. VIII.03), and my reading of the rule suggests the claiming team assumes the contract (not sure about the consequences for the releasing team?).

I think exceeding the cap due to arbitration deserves more than a slap on the wrist. It's also a good tool for facilitating trades, as one should have a general idea as to how arbitration will affect payroll, and be able to act accordingly without penalty, or take no action and potentially pay the price.

If a team releases a player who has a contract in place that team is responsible for the contract, unless a team claims him on waivers, in which case the claiming team assumes the full contract.
As far as free agency goes I still think the way that is most orderly and with the fewest problems is one at a time. Each team in turn puts a FA on the FA page with their offer and the bidding continues until 24 hours passes without a larger bid. I've already suggested having the FA period start in November, and having bids have to be higher than the $100,000 increase per year that is currently called for in the rules in order to beat the last bid, as ways to ease time constraints. If we go from Nov. to Jan. 31 this 1st year and that is still not enough time we could always adjust things and still have February to finish up. There is one other adjustment I think would have to be made in a one at a time system but I'll leave that for now till we get some feedback on my proposal.
One last thing about the rescinding issue if that's the way we end up going. Just want to make sure, are you talking about putting multiple bids on FAs that add up to more than you have in cap space, that is, having say $10mil to spend and putting $10mil bids on multiple players? I would be against that. If you're talking about putting a 6mil bid on one and a 4mil on another, then being awarded one of them and choosing to rescind the other, I don't see a problem with that.

One last thing about the rescinding issue if that's the way we end up going. Just want to make sure, are you talking about putting multiple bids on FAs that add up to more than you have in cap space, that is, having say $10mil to spend and putting $10mil bids on multiple players? I would be against that. If you're talking about putting a 6mil bid on one and a 4mil on another, then being awarded one of them and choosing to rescind the other, I don't see a problem with that.

Yes, I am talking about rescinding in the way you oppose. If I have $10M in cap space and make 2 $10M bids on guys I can live with, and get one and rescind the other, I'm still under (at) the cap. I'd be interested to know why you oppose this, as I'm probably missing something.

I think it would unfairly favor anyone who has a lot of cap space even more than they already have (rightly so) by having the most money to spend. Give you a scenario. Say I have 20mil to spend and everyone else has 10. Let's say each person puts up a FA for a total of 12. I put a bid on every FA that's 100k more than the current bid so I now have the winning bid for each. I wait for 24 hours and continue to beat everyone's successive bids until either everyone gives up or are going to be paying an artificially high cost for their choice. Then I select whichever one that works the best for me at that moment both cap space wise and team makeup wise and get all my other offers rescinded and have all that money available to start the process over again until I've got all the FAs I want. Compare that scenario to a 1 at a time method . let's say last place team gets to nominate first and puts up someone I've no interest in. Yes i've got the money to outbid everyone but this time I could easily get stuck with a player I don't want and have that much money less to bid on the ones I do want.

Good discussion on the merits of different free agency bidding rules. Let's continue this discussion, I'd like to get it right the first time around.

Paul has proposed a simultaneous bidding process with the option to withdraw a bid before the expiration period. This is necessary if you are bidding on more than one player, resulting in a possible breach of the salary cap should you win more than one. Randy has pointed out a potential problem with this approach:

I think it would unfairly favor anyone who has a lot of cap space even more than they already have (rightly so) by having the most money to spend.

How does it work in MLB? The advantage that Randy points to in a process that involves the option to rescind bids is, in fact, an advantage that teams like the Yankees and Dodgers have vis-a-vis small market clubs.They can and do step in and make higher offers, cutting in front of teams with budgetary constraints. The difference is that our league has a level playing field with the $140 mil salary cap. The disadvantage that Randy is pointing out could also be seen as a strategic part of general managing a team. You need to balance roster stability with cap space to be able to compete in the free agent market.

As far as free agency goes I still think the way that is most orderly and with the fewest problems is one at a time.

Randy has proposed a one at a time approach to free agency bidding. My primary concern with this is that I'm not sure I can handle managing two or more months of free agent bidding. Of course, the chaotic simultaneous bidding process will have it's own challenges. I'm more interested in discussing the strategic considerations of a one at a time versus a free market approach to the bidding process.

Released players appear to go on waivers (Sec. VIII.03), and my reading of the rule suggests the claiming team assumes the contract (not sure about the consequences for the releasing team?).

Teams are responsible for the contracts of released players unless they are picked up on waivers by another team. The rules Article VII Sect. 4 (d) and Article VIII Section 3 are the relevant parts of the rules.

Phil

I gave many proposals, not just the simultaneous one. just thought we needed to start talking about it. I like the one-at-a-time the best. Or 3 at a time, or some small amount.

In our format, rescinding bids can get ugly. You can purposefully bid up guys knowing that if you win one, you can rescind another. I think we just do a group at a time (or one).

the reason behind this being different than MLB is that they have no Cap and there is a player side as well. If you allow a guy to rescind a bid (like in real mlb) than you have to allow all players who have bid to then re-bid (as they would in real mlb) that could take a while and be a lot of extra work for the commish.

I was thinking more along the lines that if a bid is rescinded, it goes back to the previous high bid, with 24 hours from the rescinded bid for someone else to bit, and continuing on from there. Going through an entire rebidding process never crossed my mind.