Moneyball Baseball League Chat

Yes...it would be a time commitment, no doubt about that...maybe would need to be split up over 3 dates...all depends on the mix of owners...the big advantage is that you don't have to develop an online bidding process that "accommodates special requests" of some or all owners. All you need are mutually convenient date(s) and time(s)...which admittedly can sometimes be a tall order. If we do the free agent auctions online, owners making bids on multiple players should set a priority rank with each bid. They must also be responsible for their own salary cap management and make responsible bids, accordingly. All that said, I am prepared to go with the flow.

hey Phil...pm sent

"Before we proceed any further, I brought up the issue of penalties for going over the salary cap on the chat thread. I think we need to settle this question before going on with the salary contracts. The reason is there is a great risk of going over the cap through arbitration losses if you are not very careful to budget for bad outcomes. Paul has given us a good example with his contract proposals. He has five players up for arbitration if we include Flaherty: three are arb 1 and two are arb 2. If Paul wins all five he will have to pay $12 million (3 x $2 mil, 2 x $3 mil) for all five players. If he should lose any he would have to pay much more than $12 million. Let's assume he takes Flaherty to arb (unlikely to produce another $8.3 mil card, right?) and loses because the guy produces a $10 card, and on top of that loss Trey Mancini helps get the O's to the playoffs by producing a $9 card. Carantini, Candelario, and Margot produce a $2, $4 and $5 card. Now Paul will need to pay $30 mil in arbitration.

These arbitration decisions are settled AFTER the free agency period, so where as Paul thought he had $35 million to spend on 6 free agents, he might only have $5 million in a worse case scenario! If he spends $20 million in free agent signings and then gets stung with $30 million in arbitration decisions, he will be around $15 million over the salary cap.

This brings me back to my original question. What should the penalty be? You can see how going over may become a problem if we all don't manage our caps very conservatively.

Please take your thoughts on this back to the chat thread and let's see if we can hash it out."

Phil
One thing about this, it's not like anyone should be totally shocked by how much their arbitrated players will end up costing. We'll know how they did and with all the strat experience in this league we should be able to come up with a reasonable estimate for each team regarding how much cap they are going to have to save for their arbitrated players. I'd rather see us help each other out a little bit this first year and try to avoid people going over the salary cap. With that in mind, I agree with others who have said the penalty for going over should be harsh.

all good points its just too bad that because of how strat operates we have to wait til Feb/March to see the arbitration results. I guess we could do Free Agency AFTER that and not play the first season of each year until May. That would be different as most leagues want to play as soon as the cards come out. but it would fix the problem.

cut/pasted this from our individual salary pages on the website:

club option / player option / mutual option / vesting option / buyout

can someone help exlain those things to me.

thanks in advance

all good points its just too bad that because of how strat operates we have to wait til Feb/March to see the arbitration results. I guess we could do Free Agency AFTER that and not play the first season of each year until May. That would be different as most leagues want to play as soon as the cards come out. but it would fix the problem.

Assuming everyone is in at least 1 other keeper league, maybe a later start wouldn't be so bad in order to spread the different leagues out over the course of the year?

cut/pasted this from our individual salary pages on the website:

club option / player option / mutual option / vesting option / buyout

can someone help exlain those things to me.

thanks in advance

Ignore. They were in the spreadsheet I borrowed. I'll delete them.

I guess we could do Free Agency AFTER that and not play the first season of each year until May.

We would be bidding on cards with known values.

is that a problem? it's free agency, we'd be setting the salary anyway. The SOM price wouldn't matter. As it is, we'd be doing free agency in Nov-Jan which would be after the real MLB season so we'd know how well they played anyway.

posted this on the Prospect draft as well.

I am looking to trade my 1st round pick in next year's prospect draft for a 2nd round pick in this year's prospect draft. Pm me if interested.

Paul