GETTING FREE AGENCY TO WORK

[JBH3]

For those who've played multiple seasons or intend to you've either found or WILL find that the CPU controlled teams will likely sign ALL their expiring free agents to contracts.

Making free agency a barren wasteland.

The reason for this is (1) You can sign players WAY TOO cheaply (2) 99% of every player's contract is WAY off in terms of dollars.

I'm into my 2nd season and contorl 4 teams: PHI, WAS, KC, and BAL. The biggest FAs after season one were:

OF Ryan Sweeney 80 OVR (rel. by Oak)
SP Pedro Martinez 80 OVR (rel. by CLE)
1B Ryan Shealy 78 OVR (rel. by KC)

These were the top3 rated players available after yr one.

What I'm doing is using the below link for every team, and editing contracts given the salary listed.

Quote:

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/teams/roster?team=laa

The Angels unfortunately had a lot of potential free agents for the '09 offseason but they resigned ALL of them...guys like Abreu, Jered Weaver, John Lackey, Joe Saunders, Kendry Morales, Chone Figgins, Vlad, and Howie Kendrick.

If the CPU had let even a few slip away it would've been an even better FA pool. However, every player was re-signed and CHEAPLY at that. Abreu posted a + .300 avg, 23 HR, 90 RBI, and 23 SB and signed for a 4yr $5mil deal. ...IMO, that's about $4mil less than what he could've gotten IRL, and 4 years was crazy seeing as how he'd be 39; three years would've been more likely.

Jered Weaver signed for under 6 years $3mil/per, Figgins 6yrs under $5mil/per, and the list goes on...Even guys like Erick Aybar and Maicer Izturis signed longterm deals (4 yrs or more) which didn't even crack $1mil. I use the Angels as an EX. for every team in this game. Of course their budget's will vary, but this logic and these types of deals will occur if you don't edit their contracts.

So...How do you fix it?

The link I posted is a VERY good start, and can pretty much solve the bulk of the problem seeing as how guys signed for deals that run past 2010 have contracts that are still WAAAAY off.

Example = Carlos Lee who's signed thru 2012 and in the game his contract is about $5mil less per year than it is in real life; in MLB2K9 his contract is $14mil, but his salary for 2009 is $19mil.

Editing contracts is simple since the value you enter will be the amount paid for each yr of the contract, and as you enter $19mil for Carlos Lee's contract you take away $5mil from Houston's budget -- viewable in the top right corner of the Team Summary Menu.

If you're in the 2nd season of your chise or deeper you'll have to get a little creative in deciding how much to make the player's contract worth. I did a comparison of sorts...and settled in on a 4 yr deal @ $3.9 mil for Jered Weaver. Joe Saunders, a slightly lesser rated SP, I gave a 4 yr $3mil deal.

Someone like Chone Figgins, who signed for LESS than his expiring contract was worth, was bumped up to $6.5 mil/yr (from $5mil).

ALSO..Highly important to make the lower-rated bench players contract's no less than $400/450k. There's TOO MANY guys signed to like $317K or lower, and every little bit helps.

After editing MLB contracts for the Angels, A's, Astros, Bluejays, & Braves, results were as follows:

-The Angels were about $10mil over there budget after the edits.
-A's went from having $20mil to $6mil available. Matt Holliday was resigned for 5yrs and only $10mil. I changed that figure to $19mil...worthy of a 97 OVR rated player.
-Astros went from $15mil to $1.75 mil available.
-Bluejays went from $20mil to $4mil.
-Braves went from $17mil to around $3-4mil.

After editing these 5 team's contracts I wanted to test out what my edits did, & I was pleased in some of my findings:

Given the Angels were a good $10mil over budget they had some key guys becoming FAs, such as Brian Fuentes and Scott Shields. Neither of them were able to be re-signed and the FA pool now had a closer and trusted set-up man available for the taking. Mike Napoli also was a "Cap" victim as he wasn't able to be re-signed either. Neither Tejada, Pence, Halladay, or Vazquez became FAs though. ...That's ok...because their contracts will need to be edited as they were likely too low anyways. Which in turn will push their respective team closer to being over-budget, and can/will put a top-player in the next FA class.

As for ATL I've got a trick up my sleeve. Even though I'm into 2010, the McLouth deal was done after I was past the trade deadline in my 1st yr 'chise. I'll make that deal happen in my 2010 'chise, and that will tie up more of ATL's budget. Then perhaps someone like Tim Hudson will be available...or Javy Vazquez .

I know this seems like a lof of work, but if you pace yourself and do maybe 3-5 teams a day, before you know it you'll be done w/ the editing well before your season is over.

*NOTE* Since I simmed through w/o looking at the trade block it's unknown whether this could have an affect on the CPUs decisions on who to place on there. However, one can assume that maybe the CPU team who is OVER the budget will put an expensive contract on the block to CUT payroll.

[Trevytrev11]

By editing their current contracts, does this change the amount they demand/require in free agency.

In otherwords, you said Abreau accepted $5M a year. When you increase his current salary, does he no longer accept that deal and instead require a better deal?

Or is it really just limiting the teams caps and making them unable to sign many of their palyers thus adding more players to the free agent market?

[JBH3]

Quote: Originally Posted by Trevytrev11

By editing their current contracts, does this change the amount they demand/require in free agency. In otherwords, you said Abreau accepted $5M a year. When you increase his current salary, does he no longer accept that deal and instead require a better deal?

I haven't tested this yet. BUT Chone Figgins was making $5.5mil before his contract expired, and then his new deal was only $5mil/yr so and it was for 6 years so he essentially took a $3mil paycut.

I'm guessing that regardless of the editing the CPU is always going to get the FA to sigh for cheaper.

Quote: Originally Posted by Trevytrev11

Or is it really just limiting the teams caps and making them unable to sign many of their palyers thus adding more players to the free agent market?

YES...It's pretty much just doing this. You'll see more FAs hit the market by editing the contracts as I've stated.

It's not perfect and will still require some "Maintenance" upon starting every new season.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

TIP - Before ending a season be sure to go through the TEAM CONTRACTS menu for both teams. Viewing it by "ALL HITTERS" and then by "ALL PITCHERS".

You'll need to write down the names of any player w/ 1 yr left on their deal so that you'll know to edit their contract at the start of the following year -- should they not become available due to being re-signed by the CPU.

[cubsfan203]

Wait, so we can edit players for other teams in the middle of a season?

This is good stuff, nice work. Say we do this in the middle of season one, do you think that would lead to more free agents at the end of the season?

[JBH3]

Quote: Originally Posted by cubsfan203

Wait, so we can edit players for other teams in the middle of a season?

Yes. And there is no limit as I've edited and edited and edited all sorts of things (that you're allowed to edit). Not sure what that limit people made issue was about...maybe a CAP limit. Not sure.

You can also trade players of other teams, and release players of other teams too. Which I found important once I saw that Boston hadn't used Big Papi in a single game in my 2010 'chise thru the 1st month (he was never injured).

I also had to make a trade in yr1 of my 'chise to get Manny into LAD's lineup as he was being blocked by Juan Pierre . I traded Manny to the White Sox for Octavio Dotel since Chicago had him on the block, and LAD could use a BP arm.

Quote: Originally Posted by cubsfan203

This is good stuff, nice work. Say we do this in the middle of season one, do you think that would lead to more free agents at the end of the season?

Yes. Start editing the salaries to match what is listed for each player using that ESPN link I posted. That way the player contract's are CORRECT w/ real-MLB, and each team uses up more of their available budget.

Which will lead to more FA's hitting the market.

Be sure to write down the names of players who have 1 yr remaining on their contract too.

This is viewable under:

"GM" >"TEAM CONTRACTS" > "ALL HITTERS" & "ALL PITCHERS"...

That way if the CPU is able to re-sign some of them you'll be able to edit their contracts to a more realistic amount since the CPU will sign them very CHEAPLY. Which will keep a cycle going of the CPU having to release certain players due to actually USING their budget.

[cubsfan203]

I was going to do some testing, but I got the dirty disk error (which means my 360 is probably going to die soon ).

Here are the free agents after the first season of simming. This is without contract edits, I was about to do that when the game froze.

--Conor Jackson (85)
--Josh Willingham (80)
--Mark Ellis (80)
--Ryan Sweeney (80)
--Jeff Baker (79)
--Chris Duncan (79)

--Troy Percival (83)
--Justin Duchscherer (83)
--Tom Gorzelanny (80)

I was going to make a list of players that needed their contracts edited, for example Brad Penny is signed for 1 year/$4 mill in the game when it should be $5 million. If you have any players in particular that should be edited let me know, because I want to test this again sometime this weekend with the contract edits in there.

[cubsfan203]

Double post...oops.

Anyways, I did some testing with the Angels. I edited the majority of their players contracts for this season and got them to be $2 million over budget. This still wasn't enough to make a difference, because they are always going to re-sign their players for cheaper than their last contract no matter what.

I'm not sure if it would be worth it to go through and edit EVERY team, because I'm not sure it will make much of a difference. Almost every player is making less than they should be, with a few exceptions that are making more. This leads to pretty much every team having $10 million left over, which is the reason there is such a lack of quality free agents.

I think to have an accurate franchise, these edits will have to be done though. If not, every player is going to wind up signing really cheap, 6 year deals. Who knows, maybe we can come up with some kind of step-by-step thing to get realistic free agents.

I'm going to simulate multiple seasons sometime this weekend and see if a low 80 is the best free agent every year.

[JBH3]

Quote: Originally Posted by cubsfan203

Double post...oops. Anyways, I did some testing with the Angels. I edited the majority of their players contracts for this season and got them to be $2 million over budget. This still wasn't enough to make a difference, because they are always going to re-sign their players for cheaper than their last contract no matter what. I'm not sure if it would be worth it to go through and edit EVERY team, because I'm not sure it will make much of a difference. Almost every player is making less than they should be, with a few exceptions that are making more. This leads to pretty much every team having $10 million left over, which is the reason there is such a lack of quality free agents. I think to have an accurate franchise, these edits will have to be done though. If not, every player is going to wind up signing really cheap, 6 year deals. Who knows, maybe we can come up with some kind of step-by-step thing to get realistic free agents. I'm going to simulate multiple seasons sometime this weekend and see if a low 80 is the best free agent every year.

Thanks for your efforts...hope all works out well w/ the disc and all. It doesn't neccassirly mean your box will die though. Madden08 did that to me ALL the time, and my box was fine.

Like I said...I went in and edited the Angels to where they were $10mil over the cap in 2010. Once free agency opened up they had released Brian Fuentes, Mike Napoli, and Scott Shields.

There's hope that if can work, you'll need to first get ALL the contracts corrected via the 2009 salaries. Even though I you do that some teams will still have an available balance...it may be a growing process. Just note the guys who have expiring contracts and make sure their contracts are edited to begin the next season.

REMEMBER...Budgets will fluctuate too depending on success yr to yr so that adds another wrinkle.