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Post 07 Apr 2014, 9:50 am

I want to propose a rule . . . please understand it is in its gestation phase, so to speak.

I would call it "The Face of the Franchise Rule" or "The Mike Trout Rule" or "Owner's Choice" or something along those lines. Here's what I'm thinking:

Each team would be able to designate one player as its "Face." That player would receive a $25 salary for as long as the owner chooses to keep him.

- the player must have completed one full season with the team and be under contract at the time of his designation.
- the player's salary must have been less than $25 during the previous season.
-the owner pays a $10 "buyout" after releasing the player; a $20 buyout if he trades him.
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Post 07 Apr 2014, 10:03 am

And, not to appear contradictory, but I would like to see a change in the overall approach to long-term contracts. In my mind, unless you're willing to slap a "Trout" label on a player like, well, Mike Trout, you should not be able to keep him eternally under market value just because you got him first.

I would propose either limiting a player to two consecutive contracts or restructuring them so they accelerate in value faster. Another alternative: discouraging long-term contracts by making the buyout even worse than it is.

I have no problem with being able to keep a few players long-term, but there were too many players unavailable at this year's auction, imnsho.
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Post 07 Apr 2014, 1:49 pm

Naturally there were more players kept this year than any other - two more teams mean about 20 to 30 fewer players in the pool. We knew the league would get deeper because of expansion and this is one manifestation of that.

On the other hand, are more players being kept per team because of expansion? The greatest number of keepers/team was last year (ignoring the expansion teams since they had no one to keep), an unsurprising outcome. Expected inflation drove teams to lock in the lower 2012 prices. But this year's keepers/team, while not as high as last year, was higher than pre-expansion. Are we in a new era when there will be more keepers per team and is that a good or a bad thing?

Here are the numbers on keepers/team…

2014: 12.375
2013: 12.786
2012: 11.429
2011: 12.071
2010: 11.786
2009: 10.786

I didn't go any further back than 2009 since that was the first year that 3-year contracts were entering their final year. I think we need to see more data before making any judgement on it - although we probably are likely to see more keepers with the combination of a deeper league and the ability to retain rookies on the cheap.

Anyways, the proposals you're tossing out there would push that number down again, leaving a bigger pool at auction. The one I would be most likely to support would be to increase the contract inflation. The franchise label & non-renewable contracts just feel like too much record-keeping.

I'm not saying a shallower auction is a problem but if the overall ownership feels this way then we can do something about it.
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Post 07 Apr 2014, 2:30 pm

How about base plus $5 for 1st contract and base plus $10 for all succeeding contracts? I am satisfied with how things are right now, but if we want more players going back into the pool a simple form of contract inflation might do it.
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Post 07 Apr 2014, 4:09 pm

SLOTerp wrote:The franchise label & non-renewable contracts just feel like too much record-keeping.


I am not sure how the "Trout" rule would cause "too much" record keeping. It's one per team, max.
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Post 07 Apr 2014, 4:13 pm

freeman3 wrote:How about base plus $5 for 1st contract and base plus $10 for all succeeding contracts? I am satisfied with how things are right now, but if we want more players going back into the pool a simple form of contract inflation might do it.


That still could make a player relatively cheap for 7 years, right?

Using Trout, who would not keep him for 7 years?

Still, I think that would be a vast improvement on what we've got.

Assuming some of your guys pan out, you could be unbeatable for the two seasons after this--theoretically.
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Post 07 Apr 2014, 5:43 pm

I think just changing the inflation rate for our existing contract structure should suffice. It may not prevent a Mike Trout like situation but it sure will drive up the opportunity cost of keeping him long term.

That is, if we wish to do anything at all...
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Post 08 Apr 2014, 10:47 am

We've had similar discussions in the past (although not when Steve and Freeman were around), and I'll say now what I said then. It's very easy to overestimate the value of long-term contracts (or underestimate the cost of our current salary inflation) by looking at the Mike Trouts of the world.

The thing is, there aren't very many such players. The majority of player contracts don't go beyond the initial signing to a follow-up contract. In fact, the majority of contracts generally aren't as long as 3 years to begin with.

New contracts by length (1, 2, 3 years)
2007: 72, 19, 46
2008: 40, 9, 25
2009: 39, 9, 34
2010: 62, 6, 40
2011: 58, 7, 35
2012: 63, 5, 29
2013: 85, 8, 26
2014: 78, 8, 31

Total new contracts by length:
1 year: 497
2 years: 71
3 years: 266

3 year contracts are a shade under 32% of total contracts signed. While it's a lot harder to track down players being resigned to second contracts and beyond (compared to the 20 mins it took me to compile this data), I'm confident that the vast majority of those 3 year contracts were to new players.
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Post 08 Apr 2014, 11:03 am

So having presented that data, here are my 'design' thoughts:

1. Our salary inflation is low for a Trout-like player, sure. But for the majority of players, it's quite high. The more that you increase the inflation, the more that no one can keep any but the absolute best players. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it's something to keep in mind. I would guess that most owners like being able to keep more 'marginal' players because they like the specific player. For example, I just signed Shelby Miller and Trevor Rosenthal to 3-year contracts. Significantly higher salary inflation would probably have kept me from doing so... even though their base year prices were $1 and $3 respectively.

(Before you tell me Rosenthal isn't 'marginal', keep in mind that we're going to SV+HLD next year)

2. A fixed price point (per Steve's suggestion), no matter what it is, is going to run into trouble. If it's $25, then Trout will be kept forever and be an incredible bargain in the process. Not to mention what I'd have done with Miguel Cabrera. However, if it's (say) $50 to address this problem, then only the absolute best handful of players would be worth bothering to franchise.

3. One thing that the data does indicate is that 2-year contracts are pretty useless. I think the only one I've ever signed was with Cabrera, because I thought he'd only stick at 3B for a year (and of course he stuck for 2, so I should have gone 3 years anyway). One thing we could consider is whether the max contract length should just be 2 years, since 3 years is so much more common than 2 anyway. Keeping the exact same salary structure, that would increase contract-to-contract inflation without any need for additional special rules.

4. Part of the fun of keeper leagues is getting to keep your favorites, per what I mentioned above. But another part of the fun is identifying the 'big wins', like Trout (though he's an incredibly extreme case, it should be noted). If we push too hard against that sort of thing, it kind of defeats the purpose of having keepers.

5. It might make sense to *slightly* increase salary inflation because of expansion. Expansion results in higher player valuations, so people should be willing to pay a bit more for the same expected keeper performance. If we don't increase inflation at all, we should expect to see more players kept, so if we liked where we were before we should increase inflation a bit. But it is admittedly hard to say by how much we need to inflate only to counteract expansion. It could be as little as a dollar in the first year (which of course would also effectively increase the year 2 and 3 prices).
Last edited by Sharur on 08 Apr 2014, 1:12 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post 08 Apr 2014, 1:06 pm

I decided to find them. Here are all of the multi-3-year-contract players. Note that I'm ignoring, e.g., 3s following a rookie contract, 3s following 1s and 2s, and 1s and 2s following 3s. Seems to me that sort of thing is not really the issue at hand.

Also, I'm using the current team names to make the ownership chain clear (in case that matters).

Prince Fielder (2007 King's Men, 2010 King's Men, 2013 King's Men)
Ian Kinsler (2007 King's Men, 2010 King's Men)
Adrian Gonzalez (2007 vall Bangers, 2010 vall Bangers)
Justin Verlander (2007 E's, 2010 vall Bangers, 2013 vall Bangers)
Jon Lester (2007 E-Claires, 2010 E-Claires)
Ryan Zimmerman (2007 Lumberjacks, 2010 Longgui)

Dustin Pedroia (2008 Lumberjacks, 2011 Lumberjacks)
Yovani Gallardo (2008 E's, 2011 E's)
Tim Lincecum (2008 E's, 2011 E's)

Justin Upton (2009 Ducklings, 2012 Lumberjacks)
Cliff Lee (2009 Ducklings, 2012 Lumberjacks)
Clayton Kershaw (2009 E's, 2012 E's)
Jacoby Ellsbury (2009 E-Claires, 2012 E-Claires)
Evan Longoria (2009 Sauce, 2012 Sauce)

Ryan Braun (2010 Cougars, 2013 Lumberjacks)
Joey Votto (2010 vall Bangers, 2013 vall Bangers)
Andrew McCutchen (2010 Longgui, 2013 E-Claires)
Billy Butler (2010 E-Claires, 2013 Longgui)

Jason Heyward (2011 Longgui, 2014 vall Bangers)
Giancarlo Stanton (2011 Ducklings, 2014 Sauce)
Stephen Strasburg (2011 Longgui, 2014 Longgui)
Jordan Zimmerman (2011 Soup, 2014 E's)
Madison Bumgarner (2011 E's, 2014 E's)
Buster Posey (2011 Foes, 2014 Foes)

There are, so far, only two players in league history with 3 consecutive 3-year contracts (come on down, Justin Verlander and Prince Fielder). Granted, we've only had two years worth of players (2007-2008) with the opportunity, but it's worth noting that:

*There were only 9 players who even had a double contract coming out of those years
*Both of the triple contracts are reasonably likely to bust
*Several of that original set of 9 double contracts busted in the second contract (hello 10K pitchers)

More generally, even if we ignore the success rate of such contracts, the fact is that we're only seeing a handful of them per year. We look to be averaging around 15 active renewed contracts at a given point in time. That's about one per team- or in other words, not much different from the intended outcome of Steve's proposal, save that it's not artificially restricted in terms of which teams benefit.

Also of interest is that noted scourge Matt has relied exclusively on trades to acquire his contract renewal candidates. Not only does this apply to Upton, Lee, and Braun, it also applies to Pedroia (he signed the first contract but acquired him from me for James Shields as a rookie) and to Joey Bats, who doesn't show up here because he was renewed off back-to-back 1 year contracts. Obviously Trout and Goldschmidt are likely to be exceptions (although I don't know for sure that he didn't trade for them as rookies).

----

Below are the number of 3 year contracts each year that were within the range where you can't be renewing a contract (BY < $6, so up to $10/$13/$14). Combined with the above, this should give an idea of how frequently the 3 year contracts are being used to lock someone up once at low prices and then be done with them:
2007: 27/46 (59%)
2008: 15/25 (60%)
2009: 28/34 (82%)
2010: 22/40 (55%)
2011: 27/35 (77%)
2012: 18/29 (62%)
2013: 16/26 (62%)
2014: 19/31 (61%)
Total: 182/266 (68%)
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Post 08 Apr 2014, 2:30 pm

Whether we not want more players available in the auction is more or less a subjective thing that if we want to do it we can probably make some slight changes to the rules.
The elephant in the room is the dominance of the league by Matt. I think the issue is whether or not under the existing salary structure an owner who collects a certain group of star keepers can dominate the league by more or less coasting for several years. I am not saying that has happened but that would be the major concern, I think.
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Post 09 Apr 2014, 9:37 am

Part of what I'm trying to show with all this data is that Matt isn't just coasting on a set core of players.

Keep in mind- when Matt won in 2010, and was the second best team in 2011 (though he didn't make the championship), he didn't have Trout or Goldschmidt (well, Goldschmidt played some in 2011 but you get the point). In 2012, he didn't have the best team - George did. But George stumbled in a big way, against yours truly in fact, in the semis, allowing Matt's second-best team to take the title. And had I beaten him out in that championship game (which was won on a tiebreaker), given my performance the previous year we might have had a different target for suggestions of dominance.

Last year, yeah, Matt had a juggernaut. But history suggests that even his current advantageous position won't be sustained without a lot of active work on his part. And I don't know that it's unreasonable that he should be rewarded for skillful, successful play in any case.
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Post 09 Apr 2014, 12:35 pm

You guys have been in the league, so I accept your argument that it has been a competitive league the past four years (even last year Steve tied Matt in the play-offs). I think the changes to the pitching rules are helpful in keeping things competitive, as well.
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Post 09 Apr 2014, 4:17 pm

Sharur wrote:2. A fixed price point (per Steve's suggestion), no matter what it is, is going to run into trouble. If it's $25, then Trout will be kept forever and be an incredible bargain in the process. Not to mention what I'd have done with Miguel Cabrera. However, if it's (say) $50 to address this problem, then only the absolute best handful of players would be worth bothering to franchise.


I don't want to argue numbers--not only because it's a losing proposition, but because it's outside the purpose of this proposal.

Trout is being kept forever now--and at an incredible bargain.

My thought is to find some reasonable way to allow a team to keep ONE player "forever." That's it. At $50, no thanks.

Think of it as the "Derek Jeter" rule--a guy stays with one team his whole career.

One player.
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Post 10 Apr 2014, 8:43 am

Doctor Fate wrote:Think of it as the "Derek Jeter" rule--a guy stays with one team his whole career.

One player.


I'd say that this already happens, as Jeter's been on my team for most (all?) of the past 11 years. If you want a guy, draft him and keep him. Or not, and then redraft him. That's what I do. Even though I don't do long-term contracts, I probably have some of the largest long-term overlap of anyone in the league. I recall looking at my team last year and comparing it to a team from 2003 or 04 which was still stored on Yahoo and I had several guys from those old teams on my team 10 years later. Granted I probably have more aging vets than most of you, but there is a relatively small group of guys who are on my radar, which means I get Derek Jeter for his career, but I wouldn't have paid 50 bucks for that privilege.