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Post 09 Feb 2017, 2:08 pm

Sharur wrote:I'll trade you $1 FA to mimic my votes.


Now we're gettin' somewhere. Do I hear 2?
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Post 13 Feb 2017, 7:24 am

Voting results:

Divisions will be re-allocated based upon Freeman's suggestion starting next year. The amendments to change our contract structure are dead in the water.
17 Votes.jpg
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Post 13 Feb 2017, 2:05 pm

Lame.
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Post 13 Feb 2017, 5:08 pm

I hope that we can continue the contract discussion into this season, and perhaps have another vote on it next offseason.

I do think that Steve's viewpoint (that Mike Trout and other elite players were keepable for too long) dominated our discussion on this topic for several years, and I think it may have distracted people from an issue that I think is more fundamental to how we could improve our contract system.

So I'd like to ask - details aside, how would people feel about a move to a one-year-only contract system? No limit on how many times you can re-up. Putting aside the question of how expensive the contracts are, do people like pre-committing for multiple years as a feature of our system, or do people just do it because the incentives require it?

The latter certainly describes me - the more I learn about baseball, the more convinced I become that trying to project several years out is a fool's errand more often than not. But maybe other disagree, or don't see that as a problem.
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Post 13 Feb 2017, 8:07 pm

I am not against changing the system--there are definite problems with being able to keep elite players at a cheap price for so long, I am not particularly thrilled with picking up players off of the waiver wire for a $1 and then retaining them for $6 the next year, and we're not getting enough players put back into the auction. But the core of the league is putting your team together, deciding who is good enough to get a 3 year contract with the accompanying risk, and trying to build for the future by grabbing elite prospects before anyone else. I was hesitant to tinker with that because that core simple set-up that allows for a lot of strategy kind of sets this league apart. I was not going to vote for such a fundamental change to the system unless I saw a brilliant, simple and clearly better replacement. And the options given me did not meet such a high bar.

And I am really against going to one year contracts. You got to roll the dice on the 3 year contracts.
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Post 14 Feb 2017, 6:53 am

Sharur wrote:So I'd like to ask - details aside, how would people feel about a move to a one-year-only contract system? No limit on how many times you can re-up.


We already have that option. It's what I do, when I decide to keep a player; it's always with a one-year contract. Other people like multi-year contracts. If so, that's great for them. Why would we want to limit their choice? Our current system provides choice and choice is good.
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Post 14 Feb 2017, 7:14 am

A very simple half-measure would be to increase the inflation rate in our current contract structure. A 6/4/2 set-up would still allow players to kept long term but would increase the opportunity cost of doing so.

That approach may have legs. It keeps choices intact and gets more players to free agency sooner. After all, we did it with rookie contracts.
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Post 14 Feb 2017, 8:47 am

So a $1 player would get a $7, $11 $13 contract. Good idea. We need tinkering, not restructuring. Why not put that to a vote right now for implementation in 2018?
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Post 14 Feb 2017, 9:01 am

Next year, Freeman.

1. Let's see what other ideas arise. Maybe someone will have a great idea (it will be huge, I'm sure).
2. I'm burned out on this. At this point, I just want to get the season started.
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Post 14 Feb 2017, 9:30 am

Choice is not always a good thing, and in the case of our league, I'm not convinced that we have as much choice as it would seem. At the risk of impugning George's strategy, it seems pretty clear to me that finding "elite" players and signing them to 3-year contracts is a dominant strategy.

Did I have the choice to go year-to-year with Mookie Betts? Technically, per the rules, yes, but it's a false choice. I had to sign him to a 3-year contract to maximize my competitive chances, and just accept the corresponding risk of injury and performance degradation.

I know that people probably view that risk differently than I do, but consider pitchers - does anyone feel confident in their ability to project pitcher health over multiple seasons?

I don't think moving to one year only contracts would compromise the strategy of the league in the slightest. Everyone would still be targeting the same players in the vast majority of cases. Players worth keeping for multiple years would still be desirable assets to control - being able to drop them if something goes wrong makes them MORE valuable, not less.

But what it would do is alleviate the punishment that we effectively levy against teams that are already not doing well. This offseason, we have observed the lack of parity in our league, and part of that is that teams that make good decisions receive those dividends for years, while teams that make bad decisions have to pay for them for years. One year contracts wouldn't eliminate that effect - trading away an elite player for a bad player would still have that result in terms of opportunity cost. But it would mitigate the effect, and make it more practical for teams to bounce back quickly from a series of bad moves.

I don't have any expectation that this would suddenly introduce a ton of parity into the league, and I have said in the past that if there's enough of a skill disparity within the ownership, we should expect to see the results we've seen, and shouldn't design our league to avoid it. But I also don't think we need to exacerbate the problem with our contract structure, and that's what I think we're doing.
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Post 14 Feb 2017, 10:39 am

Thank you Todd et al. To me this discussion has much more merit than the "Mike Trout broke our system" one. I voted against changing the structure because I don't care that a player can be kept for a long time.

The option to sign for multiple years at increased risk is a strategy element I find appealing. It probably does exacerbate the parity issue though. I've said I'm not in favor of making the league more vanilla though. Todd would likely argue that moving to one year contracts doesn't do that. I guess I like that you as an owner get to make more involved decisions on the value of your players than just "keep or not keep" each year.

It seems like the main impetus for accelerating inflation is to get more players back into the pool. I don't think that's important, so I remain unconvinced that our system needs a major change.
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Post 14 Feb 2017, 11:08 am

I voted against the amendment because I am a capitalist. If a player means more to you than his worth, then offer that much. A players value is set by the league owners valuation of him. If Mike Trout is worth X dollars and you want him badly enough to offer X+10 and the owner of Trout agrees, then the value of Trout just went to X+10.
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Post 14 Feb 2017, 2:52 pm

For what it's worth, no system we implement could possibly be capitalist, since we engage in price fixing.

Unless we implement some kind of crazy bidding system to make player price increases dynamic, I guess. We talked about a limited form of this a year or two ago.
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Post 15 Feb 2017, 2:12 pm

Sharur wrote:Choice is not always a good thing, and in the case of our league, I'm not convinced that we have as much choice as it would seem. At the risk of impugning George's strategy, it seems pretty clear to me that finding "elite" players and signing them to 3-year contracts is a dominant strategy.


Currently we have +5 +8+9 contract system depending on the length of time.

A one dollar player can be signed for one year 6, the second year for 9 and the third for 10.
with one year contracts, that player can be kept for year one for 6, year two for 11 and year three for 16.

So this is about the difference of 2 dollars at year two and 6 dollars at year three, and whatever after that. I don't see the value add, but I might be misunderstanding what Todd is talking about.
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Post 15 Feb 2017, 9:09 pm

6 dollars in year 3 doesn't seem significant to you? That's a 60% price increase on a $10 player, it's huge! Though I guess you do have a tendency to have a lot of money left over in the auction as well, so perhaps it doesn't feel as impactful for you as it does for me. It's also worth keeping in mind that this price differential is built in to any subsequent contracts, and will keep growing if you continue to decline the opportunity to sign a multi-year deal.