Moneyball Baseball League Chat

Here's a list of pitchers with experience before 2020 but no regular card in 2019 and at least 30 IP in 2020. It's quite possible I missed some or made a mistake. Double check on anyone you make a bid on.
Aaron Civale
Alec Mills
Tyler Anderson
Dustin May
Justus Sheffield
Sean Manaea
Alex Cobb
Garrett Richards
Austin Voth
Randy Dobnak
Tony Gonsolin
Chad Kuhl
Josh Lindblom
Jordan Montgomery
Kyle Wright
Brent Suter
Jonathon Hernandez
Mike Mayers
Chris Mazza
Phillips Valdez
Jesus Luzardo
Justin Dunn
Tyler Glasnow

i THINK THEIR IS A RULE MISSING COVERING FA's

With my experience in on line baseball leagues many leagues have adopted a rule that if you release a player to FA you are not allowed to offer that player contract for the up coming season. This rule prevents "OWNERS" from "DUMPING" salary. It is presumed that while you had total control over that player and you refuse to offer that player a contract he(the player) has refused to talk to your team and will not accept any offer. HE WILL SIGN ELSWHERE

Thoughts and views
Paul

i THINK THEIR IS A RULE MISSING COVERING FA's

With my experience in on line baseball leagues many leagues have adopted a rule that if you release a player to FA you are not allowed to offer that player contract for the up coming season. This rule prevents "OWNERS" from "DUMPING" salary. It is presumed that while you had total control over that player and you refuse to offer that player a contract he(the player) has refused to talk to your team and will not accept any offer. HE WILL SIGN ELSWHERE

Thoughts and views
Paul

I could be missing something, but I don't see salary dumping to be an issue here, or at least not a huge one. Anyone recently released prior to the November 30 deadline is technically on waivers and under contract for the 2020 SOM card season (some are under contract for the 2021 SOM card season). Since no one seems to be clamoring to claim these players, I wouldn't even have a problem if the owner wanted to "revoke" waivers, and add them back to his roster, as they are still under the same contract.

For players that had contracts expire after the 2019 season, and are true FA's, if the previous owner wants to bid on him during the FA period, and wins the bid, I think that's fine, even if he's brought back at a lesser cost. The decision to allow them to become a FA was made prior to the 2020 MLB season without knowledge of performance. Anyone signing the player, including the former team, is paying fair market value based on the bidding process, using knowledge of past performance, a best guess on future performance, and any other factor that weighs into the bid.

Al

i THINK THEIR IS A RULE MISSING COVERING FA's

With my experience in on line baseball leagues many leagues have adopted a rule that if you release a player to FA you are not allowed to offer that player contract for the up coming season. This rule prevents "OWNERS" from "DUMPING" salary. It is presumed that while you had total control over that player and you refuse to offer that player a contract he(the player) has refused to talk to your team and will not accept any offer. HE WILL SIGN ELSWHERE

Thoughts and views
Paul

I could be missing something, but I don't see salary dumping to be an issue here, or at least not a huge one. Anyone recently released prior to the November 30 deadline is technically on waivers and under contract for the 2020 SOM card season (some are under contract for the 2021 SOM card season). Since no one seems to be clamoring to claim these players, I wouldn't even have a problem if the owner wanted to "revoke" waivers, and add them back to his roster, as they are still under the same contract.

For players that had contracts expire after the 2019 season, and are true FA's, if the previous owner wants to bid on him during the FA period, and wins the bid, I think that's fine, even if he's brought back at a lesser cost. The decision to allow them to become a FA was made prior to the 2020 MLB season without knowledge of performance. Anyone signing the player, including the former team, is paying fair market value based on the bidding process, using knowledge of past performance, a best guess on future performance, and any other factor that weighs into the bid.

Al

I see what you're saying Al and I agree that if it was just the occasional time this happened it wouldn't be a problem. But I wouldn't want to see people using this as a common strategy to avoid paying the multi year contracts for arb eligible players simply by releasing them and then going after the ones that do well in 2021 in next year's free agency with a whole lot of cap space because of all the released players. That wouldn't be very realistic and would be bad for the league I think. I guess we'll see when it comes time to do contracts. Paul Kiggins was telling me that in the OOTP leagues he's been in they recognized this as a potential problem and handled it by not allowing an owner to sign a player as a free agent the same year that he was released by that owner. Obviously we can't change the rule for this year's free agency and maybe it won't even be a problem.

I see what you're saying Al and I agree that if it was just the occasional time this happened it wouldn't be a problem. But I wouldn't want to see people using this as a common strategy to avoid paying the multi year contracts for arb eligible players simply by releasing them and then going after the ones that do well in 2021 in next year's free agency with a whole lot of cap space because of all the released players. That wouldn't be very realistic and would be bad for the league I think. I guess we'll see when it comes time to do contracts. Paul Kiggins was telling me that in the OOTP leagues he's been in they recognized this as a potential problem and handled it by not allowing an owner to sign a player as a free agent the same year that he was released by that owner. Obviously we can't change the rule for this year's free agency and maybe it won't even be a problem.

Yeah, I didn't consider the Arb situation you mention. But I'm still not seeing it as a problem. To me it could make good sense if it works, but there seems to be a risk factor involved. I can't speak to Paul's experience, as I'm not sure how similar the rules are between our league and his, but maybe our leagues rules prevent to some degree what he's experienced?

It is kind of realistic though, I think. Look how many guys in MLB in the last week were non-tendered to avoid Arb, then re-signed by the same team at a more reasonable cost. I'm open to look at changing the rule, but I'd like to see first if there's a wide-spread problem with it, which will likely take a couple FA cycles.

madal wrote:
paul j kiggins wrote:
i THINK THEIR IS A RULE MISSING COVERING FA's

With my experience in on line baseball leagues many leagues have adopted a rule that if you release a player to FA you are not allowed to offer that player contract for the up coming season. This rule prevents "OWNERS" from "DUMPING" salary. It is presumed that while you had total control over that player and you refuse to offer that player a contract he(the player) has refused to talk to your team and will not accept any offer. HE WILL SIGN ELSWHERE

Thoughts and views
Paul


I could be missing something, but I don't see salary dumping to be an issue here, or at least not a huge one. Anyone recently released prior to the November 30 deadline is technically on waivers and under contract for the 2020 SOM card season (some are under contract for the 2021 SOM card season). Since no one seems to be clamoring to claim these players, I wouldn't even have a problem if the owner wanted to "revoke" waivers, and add them back to his roster, as they are still under the same contract.

For players that had contracts expire after the 2019 season, and are true FA's, if the previous owner wants to bid on him during the FA period, and wins the bid, I think that's fine, even if he's brought back at a lesser cost. The decision to allow them to become a FA was made prior to the 2020 MLB season without knowledge of performance. Anyone signing the player, including the former team, is paying fair market value based on the bidding process, using knowledge of past performance, a best guess on future performance, and any other factor that weighs into the bid.

Al

I see what you're saying Al and I agree that if it was just the occasional time this happened it wouldn't be a problem. But I wouldn't want to see people using this as a common strategy to avoid paying the multi year contracts for arb eligible players simply by releasing them and then going after the ones that do well in 2021 in next year's free agency with a whole lot of cap space because of all the released players. That wouldn't be very realistic and would be bad for the league I think. I guess we'll see when it comes time to do contracts. Paul Kiggins was telling me that in the OOTP leagues he's been in they recognized this as a potential problem and handled it by not allowing an owner to sign a player as a free agent the same year that he was released by that owner. Obviously we can't change the rule for this year's free agency and maybe it won't even be a problem.

I don't really think this will be a problem. Players that were released by the November 30th deadline were waived and are still under contract for the 2020 season, even if they have ARB listed for the 2020 salary year. Their arbitration settlement will take place after the SOM cards are released when their contracts will be settled based on their card price for the 2020 SOM season. For example, I released Joe Ross who was in his ARB3 season when I took him to arbitration. I took him to arbitration on the assumption that he would play and that I would be happy to pay up for a good card if he produced one. If he produced a crap card, oh well. It wouldn't cost me that much to take the flyer on his recovery. COVID screwed me. What I didn't plan for is a COVID shortened season. He didn't play in 2020 so I will have to pay him $4 million in the 2020 season because of the ARB rule for players without a card.

If the player does not have a SOM card to settle the arbitration decision, the player is awarded the league minimum salary based on years of service (i.e. $2 mil for arb1, $3 mil for arb 2, etc).

The reason I'm releasing him is to open a roster spot, not to save money. So there really is no way for a team to release an arb eligible player and then sign him as a free agent at a lower price.

Are people assuming that you do not have to pay for an ARB eligible player if you cut them? When I wrote the rule above I did so to avoid people being able to cut players they took to arbitration before their settlement, but the example for MLB above has me thinking that I may have made a mistake. For those of you who cut arb eligible players, did you assume that you were avoiding arbitration by doing so?

Philip

Are people assuming that you do not have to pay for an ARB eligible player if you cut them? When I wrote the rule above I did so to avoid people being able to cut players they took to arbitration before their settlement, but the example for MLB above has me thinking that I may have made a mistake. For those of you who cut arb eligible players, did you assume that you were avoiding arbitration by doing so?

I don't think you made a mistake Phillip, MLB was making decisions for Arb cases prior to the upcoming (2021) season. Our league Arb cases are being settled for the 2020 SOMO card season. We will be deciding whether to go to Arb for 2021 season cards after free agency, and before March 31.

I didn't release any Arb guys, but I sure would have expected them to be part of my 2020 payroll, as they would have been offered a 2020 contract, the dollars just haven't been decided yet.

Are people assuming that you do not have to pay for an ARB eligible player if you cut them? When I wrote the rule above I did so to avoid people being able to cut players they took to arbitration before their settlement, but the example for MLB above has me thinking that I may have made a mistake. For those of you who cut arb eligible players, did you assume that you were avoiding arbitration by doing so?

I don't think you made a mistake Phillip, MLB was making decisions for Arb cases prior to the upcoming (2021) season. Our league Arb cases are being settled for the 2020 SOMO card season. We will be deciding whether to go to Arb for 2021 season cards after free agency, and before March 31.

I didn't release any Arb guys, but I sure would have expected them to be part of my 2020 payroll, as they would have been offered a 2020 contract, the dollars just haven't been decided yet.

Not talking about players just dropped prior to this year's free agency. We're talking about releasing arb players in March as part of the 2021 contracts and then going after them in next year's free agency as a way of attempting to sign them to multi year deals at a much reduced cost. You might argue that you take the chance that someone else outbids you. That is true in theory but I'm betting that it won't happen in reality. Take Tim Anderson from my team. He is arb3 in 2021. I will have to sign him to at least 5 years at the top 25% for shortstops likely around 7-8 mil per season. Instead, what if I release him and go after him in next year's FA period. How much competition is there likely to be? I'm guessing 7 or 8 teams will have no interest cause they're already set at SS. How many of the others will be willing to go as high as it will take to stop me from getting him? I'm not sure, but even if it costs me 5 or 6mil per, I've come out ahead. And maybe I can sign him to a 3 yr deal instead of the 5 years I would have had to. Plus I'll know how he's done in 2021 to help in deciding how badly I want him back.
Maybe people don't see this as a problem. I just don't want to be the sucker that signs my arb guys to expensive multi year contracts and then have others do what I have outlined with theirs. Appreciate any feedback.

As our winter meeting gets underway the Bobcats would like all teams to know they are in the market for a LF/CF type,
leadoff type hitter that could steal a few bases. Someone along the lines of a Whit Merrifield. We are also in the market for starting pitching. Looking to shop Yuli Gurriel. May be willing to trade some power such as Eugenio Suarez or Josh Bell.
Also will to deal Liam Hendricks if someone is looking for relief help.
Mike
mykbr1@comcast.net

CF Manuel Margot is on the trade table .Looking for young prospect and/or relief pitchers