[uruguru]

ok, what a crazy first day. I spent a huge chunk of time finding every available free agent that my scout told me his potential was at least 2.5 stars. From here onwards, I am going to convert the 5-star system into a 1-10 scale. Half-star is 1, five stars is 10. Easy peasy.

Number one rule: TRUST THE SCOUT. I don't want to fall into the trap of using my meta-knowledge of real history to guide my decisions, so I am relying on the scout.

ok... I mentally divided the players into 3 groups:

1) players with at least 5 potential (2.5 stars!) who were willing to accept a minor-league contract. EVERY SINGLE ONE of these players received an offer from me with some sort of scaled signing bonus (detailed later)

2) players who wanted a major-league option but whom I was confident would not be on my opening day roster. Any player with a 3 current rating (1.5 stars) or most of those with 4 fell into this category and none of them received offers.

3) players rating 4 or up whom I wanted on the active roster. All of these players received an MLB contract offer. Some of these were guys like Lou Brock 4/10 who wanted a minor-league contract, but I said no, here's a MLB contract.

The following 10 free agents received MLB offers:

* OF Lou Brock 4/10, $23,000 for 5 years (wanted milb contract)

* C Bill Freehan 4/10, $23,200 for 5 years (wanted milb contract)

* OF Tommie Agee 4/10, $23,000 for 5 years (wanted milb contract)

* SP Sammy Ellis 5/9, $120,000 for 10 years

* SP Dave Giusti 6/10, $130,000 for 10 years

* SP John Miller 5/8, $23,000 for 5 years (wanted milb contract)

* SP Dennis Ribant 6/10, $140,000 for 10 years

* 1B Dick Nen 5/10, $23,200 for 5 years (wanted milb contract)

* OF Tony Oliva 5/8, $30,000 for 5 years (wanted milb contract)

* SP Natividad Martinez 6/8, $130,000 for 10 years


Of my $1.56M budget, I just allocated $642K for those 10 players. However, signing veteran FA in November will be more expensive for the same quality.


In addition, I offered minor-league contracts to 96 players, with signing bonus totaling about $380K.

The formula for the signing bonus went like this:

Current rating * Potential Bonus = Signing Bonus

where the potential bonus is:

potential 5=$500, 6=$1000, 7=$1500, 8=$2000, 9=$2500, 10=$3000

So a 3/7 free agent would get a minor league contract of 3x1500=$4500. The idea here is to improve my chances to building a strong farm system by outbidding the AI and/or force the AI to spend money to outbid me for these guys. I have no plans to raise the offer if the AI outbids me, so I expect to get a bit of money back. However, a disproportionate number of quality prospects should land in my system which means players more likely to help me in future seasons and good trade bait for quality veterans.

That leaves me $547,112 left for free agents, plus any signing bonuses offered out to players who do not sign. I will probably be relying heavily on the Rule V draft to flesh out the reserves on the active roster (for minimum wage!)