Moneyball Baseball Contract Thread

9.6 only renders arb moot for the low salary players. For the middle to higher salary players arb remains an interesting option that carries both up and downside risk . As long as the inaugural salary is over the salary minimums

Year 4: Prior to the start of the 2019 season Anderson will have 3.1 years of service, rounded up to 4 years. He is eligible for arbitration so the owning team is confronted with two choices: offer Anderson a contract extension or go to arbitration.
Based on the rule in Section 9.10 Anderson could be offered a four year extension at a salary of $5,500,000 which (hypothetically) is the 2018 average salary of all shortstops on league 40-man rosters.
Alternatively the owning team can seek salary arbitration, in which case the team would have to pay the year four salary of $2,000,000 or the player’s 2019 SOMO price, whichever is higher. Let’s assume the team chooses arbitration and Anderson is awarded a SOMO salary of $1,850,000, the team will be deemed to have won arbitration and will pay $1,850,000 for 2019. If Anderson’s 2019 SOMO came in at $6,000,000 the owning team would have lost the arbitration case and will have to pay the higher $6,000,000 for 2019.

This is taken from section IX.13. It says "the owning team is confronted with two choices: offer Anderson a contract extension or go to arbitration." Nothing about a 3rd option of renewing him at his current salary.

Phil I'll look up the posts but I know that at least one time and maybe more I laid out all the possibilities for contracts for each category of player as I understood them. You said at the time that I was correct. The possibility of renewing 1-2 yr players at their current salary was mentioned. The ability to do the same for 3-5 yr guys was not. You never said wait Randy don't forget about renewing the arb eligible players at their current salary. And why during that whole discussion about how bad the 5 year guys were didn't you say well boys you know you can always just renew them at their current salary. Would have made the lower priced 5 years a lot more draftable. I drafted one 5 yr guy and I currently have him as being dropped. I'd love to know if anyone including yourself Phil was aware of this option during the draft. I certainly wasn't. It would be one thing if we hadn't had all the discussions and it was just me not reading the rules well enough. That would be my bad. But with all that's been said about this topic and doing the inaugural draft under those assumptions and now after the draft is over this is brought up is a deal breaker for me I think.

Frankly, I forgot about 9.6 during our discussions even as it was sitting there staring at us the whole time. You'll have to forgive me as during the time of the discussions I was also dealing with the rapid transition of our institution to online learning, the corona related illness of a family member, and the psychic turmoil of isolation.

The only significant impact of this rule is that it allows you to re-sign a 5 year player for one year at their current salary or $4 mil, whichever is higher, rather than taking them to arbitration. You still get to use them for two years. You still have to extend them at the 25% rate if you want to extend them. It just makes arbitration useless unless we change the arbitration rule.

I don't see how this rule suddenly makes five year players "a lot more draftable". Does it make Mike Foltynewicz attractive at $1.17 mil? You still have to pay $4 mil for him next year if you chose to re-sign him. Certainly you wouldn't draft him for his outstanding 2019 card. Who is suddenly more attractive, and why? I just don't see this as a deal breaker.

This is taken from section IX.13. It says "the owning team is confronted with two choices: offer Anderson a contract extension or go to arbitration." Nothing about a 3rd option of renewing him at his current salary.

Yes, you are correct. As a lawyer, I have failed. The contract example clearly failed to include rule 9.6 in the list of options. What would be the most favorable application of the rules to everyone?

Phil

Phil I'll look up the posts but I know that at least one time and maybe more I laid out all the possibilities for contracts for each category of player as I understood them. You said at the time that I was correct. The possibility of renewing 1-2 yr players at their current salary was mentioned. The ability to do the same for 3-5 yr guys was not. You never said wait Randy don't forget about renewing the arb eligible players at their current salary. And why during that whole discussion about how bad the 5 year guys were didn't you say well boys you know you can always just renew them at their current salary. Would have made the lower priced 5 years a lot more draftable. I drafted one 5 yr guy and I currently have him as being dropped. I'd love to know if anyone including yourself Phil was aware of this option during the draft. I certainly wasn't. It would be one thing if we hadn't had all the discussions and it was just me not reading the rules well enough. That would be my bad. But with all that's been said about this topic and doing the inaugural draft under those assumptions and now after the draft is over this is brought up is a deal breaker for me I think.

Frankly, I forgot about 9.6 during our discussions even as it was sitting there staring at us the whole time. You'll have to forgive me as during the time of the discussions I was also dealing with the rapid transition of our institution to online learning, the corona related illness of a family member, and the psychic turmoil of isolation.

The only significant impact of this rule is that it allows you to re-sign a 5 year player for one year at their current salary or $4 mil, whichever is higher, rather than taking them to arbitration. You still get to use them for two years. You still have to extend them at the 25% rate if you want to extend them. It just makes arbitration useless unless we change the arbitration rule.

I don't see how this rule suddenly makes five year players "a lot more draftable". Does it make Mike Foltynewicz attractive at $1.17 mil? You still have to pay $4 mil for him next year if you chose to re-sign him. Certainly you wouldn't draft him for his outstanding 2019 card. Who is suddenly more attractive, and why? I just don't see this as a deal breaker.

Yes I admit that I had forgotten about the minimum 4mil kicking in. Sorry about that. I need to think about this. One thing I do know is I only drafted one 5 year guy because like Paul Long I thought they were poison with the 2 options available to them at the time. With the option of renewing a 5yr player whose 2019 salary was say $4.01 at that same cost it would certainly have made a difference. I can't honestly say how much it would have affected my draft choices but it certainly would have been a factor. And you're saying that this renewal at current salary applies as well to the 3-4 year guys right? Could this have affected peoples draft choices with that group as well? It's not the rule itself that bothers me. It's how the draft might have been different. It's like when TN was adamant about not changing the rule on year 5 guys way back when. He said it wasn't fair to change the rule cause he would have drafted differently. I had to agree with him for that reason even though I agreed with Paul that the rule would have been better changed. I guess if I have a vote I would just scrap this new option in the interest of fairness. But I'll take back the deal breaker statement.

just get rid of 9.6 and we're all good.

I'm somewhat tempted to defer to the crowd on this. 9.6 was in there from the beginning but like the others, including Phil, I totally spaced/overlooked it for the most part during the 5th year player debate, although I did read it before the draft. If Phil's discussion about 5 years guys misled them, Im open to adjusting things.

I will say this though. If we get rid of the rule entirely, it does kind of distort things unlike real life. Meaning it dilutes the value of young players entering their arb years. If someone puts up a huge year 3, then you have to pay them like a FA at high market value. That seems wrong,, and seems to penalize teams like me that drafted cheap young guys to maximize control.

Compromise proposal: just junk the Rule's application for 5th/last year guys, but leave it in place for everyone else

That way Old/Paul's reliance on Phil's comments isn't to their detriment, but teams that drafted lots of cheap young players get the benefit of their strategy.

Going forward we can do full blown rule changes by voting before the next season. To mimic real life as this league seeks to do, you have to preserve a salary structure where , in general: year 1-3 guys are dirt dirt cheap, year 4-6 guys grow more expensive but remain below FA market value, then 6+ guys get paid FA premium value.

Junking 9.6 altogether means that you're paying star players in their 4-6 years like premium FA's.

that's not why I don't like it.. I don't like BECAUSE of it's impact on 3-4 year guys. The different scenarios were talked about many times and this never came up. so I believed only the 1-2 year guys would continue at their current price (if it was above league minimums) I believe Randy felt same from numerous talks with him. and we asked Phil about the options a couple times as well. The 3-4 year guys already have the big advantage of top50% vs the dreaded top25% so I don't think they need this rule as well. Especially since this rule was only discovered/talked about in this way after the draft when during the draft several discussions/ examples of pay options were brought up and this was never mentioned (some of these on chat post and some in conversations through pm or over the phone)