03 Sep 2014, 5:01 pm
If we increase price inflation/decrease surplus keeper value, naturally we should see more players available at auction. I think that should by a byproduct of any successful method of dealing with the problem.
On the assumption (hopefully wrong) that people don't like the idea of eliminating long-term contracts, here's another idea. First, we move to +4/+7/+9. There's still a discount for longer contracts, but it's not as steep, so hopefully we get a better contract distribution. However, we also need some additional inflation to offset the decreased short term prices, so we do RFA as follows:
1. ALL players are eligible. Players in mid-contract have their BY price adjusted to reflect whatever happens with the bids.
My reasoning here is that we won't see enough impact from RFA if we actually restrict it to contract expiration; admittedly, this makes 'restricted free agency' something of a misnomer. However, if we did decide it should only apply to expiring contracts, Freeman's point about delaying a player's RFA would help offset the increased value of single-year contracts relative to 3-year from the switch to +4/+7/+9. Another alternative would be to say that players that players currently under contract or coming off contracts are eligible, but not those who have yet to be signed to an initial contract.
2. Bids can be up to +6; in addition to the baseline contract inflation rate. This represents up to a 200% increase on normal inflation. Owning teams match at a discount of -3, so they are matching at up to a 100% increase on normal inflation, allowing them to keep some of the advantage generated by identifying the valuable player, even if they're paying more than they would sans bidding. Obviously, this means bids can't be less than +4.
3. Each team can only bid on 3 players, and can bid on at most 1 player per team.
3a. Teams can only bid on players within their division
OR
3b. Teams can only be subject to 3 bids total. Subject to the adjudication order (see below), once a team has resolved its 3rd incoming offer (whether by matching or declining to do so), all other bids on that team's players are voided.
4. Teams must leave room in their budget for both matching AND bidding. When submitting keepers, each team must leave $9 available in their budget for matching (or less if they have fewer than 3 keepers). When submitting bids, teams must leave room for both matching money AND for all bids they submit. In other words, no one can ever, as part of this process, bust their salary cap, or have a bid or match invalidated as a result of doing so. This should help keep the process simple, and it's unlikely that people will have to worry about these limitations in practice (owners rarely spend enough money pre-auction for this to matter).
5. After keepers are submitted, there is an offer sheet period. Teams submit offers per the above rules, and rank them by priority. Following the offer sheet period is the matching period, in which teams match, or decline to match, the highest bids on their players. The matches are team-blind- that is, when you're matching, you don't know who the bidder is, only the price.
Tie bids are broken (AFTER matching, so teams aren't winning pointless ties) as follows: teams are ranked from lowest finisher to highest finisher from the previous season. Starting with the team at the top of that list, each team each of their bids evaluated for ties in priority order. As soon as a tie is found, that team wins that tie and moves to the bottom of the team list. The process then continues with the new top team on the list.
In the case of 3b (in which teams can only be subject to 3 offer sheets but can receive more)...
5a. A team receiving 4+ offer sheets choose which to respond to
OR
5b. Determining which offer sheets go through is subject to the same tiebreaking procedure as described above
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Here's how the inflation looks for a repeatedly kept player with a starting BY of $1.
Current system:
01, [06, 09, 10], [15, 18, 19], [24, 27, 28], [33, 36, 37]
This system, with no offer sheets:
01, [04, 08, 10], [14, 17, 19], [23, 26, 28], [32, 35, 37]
This system, with full +3 matching every year:
01, [07, 14, 19], [26, 32, 37], [44, 50, 55], [62, 68, 73]
Notably, even in that worst-case scenario of yearly matching, there's still a lot of surplus value to be gained from a $30-$40 player (to say nothing of Trout, who still gets kept for a decade or so if nothing goes wrong). But as you can see, it doubles the inflation rate, and so it compresses the value from ~4 contracts into ~2 contracts.