Quote:
Originally Posted by dbqs
Currently free agents do ask for less money as they sit on the market longer in the offseason. I've signed plenty of guys for way cheaper contracts than their initial demand, especially if they're older/declining etc. If they're young stars, of course they'll get what they demand. I've seen the Mike Moustakas situation play out plenty of times in the offseason (especially with MM himself, lol) where they have a demand of double digit-salary for 4-5 years, etc but if you wait til February and no one's signed their sorry ass you can snag em on a 4m 1 year deal.
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To me this is an issue itself. There shouldn't be a pre-determined date where all the contract demands go down. Players should individually decide when they want to lower their demands, and it should happen at different intervals.
We had one offseason in an online league where most teams were cash-strapped due to a lot of spending in the previous offseasons, and there were tons of players just sitting around. Everyone knew we had to just wait until February and if that didn't lower the demands enough then you wait for Spring Training to sign them to one-year deals.
In reality, the players should notice that there's a cash crunch and that no offers are going out and lower their demands much more quickly. They should realize there are a finite amount of dollars to be given out and the longer you wait and allow more players to sign, the more likely you are to be left out in the cold.
This is all compounded by the fact that qualifying offer salaries aren't tied to the top 125 contracts like IRL (you have to manually monitor this) and that players can be offered a qualifying offer as many times as you want (IRL they can be offered it once in their career). This past offseason there were nine players offered and none accepted, but there are a lot more offered and accepted in practice in OOTP.
I would also love to see some players have more specific demands, i.e. they want an opt out after year 4 and won't take any offer that doesn't have that or specifically wants a 4 year deal with a player option in each of the last two years. I think this could help shield some of those players that are signed to long-term deals early in arbitration by most of them wanting opt outs a few years after they would've hit free agency or wanting deals that end before they hit 30 so they get a good shot at free agency.