Questions about Salaries and Minor Leagues in a Custom Game

[SamuraiProgrammer]

I may have painted myself into a corner. Here are the details.

This is the first time I have tried to play with financials. I am playing as GM and Manager. I have Commissioner rights but don't want to abuse them unless necessary.

I have searched the manual for answers but I am hoping my understanding of things is off a bit.

Maybe Too Much Information - Questions at bottom.

I have started a fictional league in 1870. I have all fictional teams with all fictional players. It also has two levels of minor leagues (AAA & AA). I imported financial information for 1871.

I did not 'sim' any years before taking control of a team.

At the start of Spring Training, I added players from the two minor league affiliates to fill out the ST roster at 60. I have played all of the players (most multiple times) to see who looks good.

There is about a week to go in ST and I am taking long hard looks at the team to see who I want to be at the ML level. All of the players that started the game on the ML team have a salary of $86.

Projected Budget Room is $48. There was $416 at first but I had two vacancies in my staff and let the scout go so I could hire a better one.

Oddity: I set the roster size at 25 while setting up the game. 27 players have a salary.

Two players on the team (both keepers) have used 1 option year and the rest of the roster has not used any option years.

So starting out, I will have two players that have no spot on the roster. I am assuming they will remain on the 40 man roster and can live with that.

I want to add 1 pitcher to the staff (taking it from 10 to 11) who does not have a contract. I have another player who is near the top of the batting averages (for players that have statistically relevant PA) that I would like to offer a contract to.

Now the situation is that I have too many players for the 25 man roster.
2 from the original 27
1 to make room for the pitcher
1 to make room for the hitter

I can't do anything about the 2 players over the 25 man rule (other than changing the rule. I could live (unhappily) without promoting the hitter but I suspect I will need the pitcher.


QUESTIONS

When I relegate 4 players with major league contracts to the minor leagues, will I have to pay their full contract?

Does the timing of the relegation matter? (i.e. if I do it before spring training ends)

Is the Projected Budget Room a hard cap on what I can spend?

If not, will the owner be likely to be angry at me? (He is a demanding economizer with normal involvement and balanced priority.)

Thank you in advance for any explanations or advice.

[BBGiovanni]

Originally Posted by SamuraiProgrammer

QUESTIONS

When I relegate 4 players with major league contracts to the minor leagues, will I have to pay their full contract?

Does the timing of the relegation matter? (i.e. if I do it before spring training ends)

Is the Projected Budget Room a hard cap on what I can spend?

If not, will the owner be likely to be angry at me? (He is a demanding economizer with normal involvement and balanced priority.)

Thank you in advance for any explanations or advice.

OK, I think there are a couple of things going on here, apologies in advance if I've misread. First, although it's very accurate to talk about "relegating" players to the minors, in baseball the word they use is "optioning" or "sending down"; in the OOTP context people will be confused that you are talking about something else. (I only recently realized that baseball's system is the opposite of international football, in that players move up and down as opposed to teams. But anyway )

Second, I think you are missing out on the "40 man roster" concept. In OOTP you can make it larger/smaller or turn it off, but in MLB there are really two rosters. The regular 25/26 man active roster from which you can choose your players for a game, and the 40 man roster including 15 reserve players. It sounds like you added players to the 40 man roster by accident when you tried to get them on the spring training active roster.

OOTP recently added the ability to add minor leaguers to the active roster during spring training, you'll see the number change from 26 to 40 or 60 or whatever you set, and you can pull minor leaguers up and down freely until the season starts. BUT if you add them to the 40 man, they are a permanent part of your roster, begin drawing a major league salary, and count against the overall 40 man limit. It also triggers a bunch of other things that work through payroll, limit the number of years you can send someone to the minors, etc.

Assuming the game will let you send someone to the minors, because there are limits on how many times that can happen, their salary remains the same. As long as the guy stays on your roster, on the injured list, or even if someone claims him on waivers or you release him outright, he will get paid. MLB contracts are guaranteed.

I'll leave the budget question for others, as I don't fully understand what is or isn't counted and how OOTP decides to include full or partial amounts. When you try to offer a contract over budget the game will give you a "your owner does NOT approve this contract". With your description of the owner I'd say you should assume it's a hard cap.

[SamuraiProgrammer]

First of all, thanks for answering!

Originally Posted by BBGiovanni

OK, I think there are a couple of things going on here, apologies in advance if I've misread. First, although it's very accurate to talk about "relegating" players to the minors, in baseball the word they use is "optioning" or "sending down"; in the OOTP context people will be confused that you are talking about something else. (I only recently realized that baseball's system is the opposite of international football, in that players move up and down as opposed to teams. But anyway )

Got it. I will be more specific in the future.

Originally Posted by BBGiovanni

Second, I think you are missing out on the "40 man roster" concept. In OOTP you can make it larger/smaller or turn it off, but in MLB there are really two rosters. The regular 25/26 man active roster from which you can choose your players for a game, and the 40 man roster including 15 reserve players. It sounds like you added players to the 40 man roster by accident when you tried to get them on the spring training active roster.

Maybe, but I don't think so. The 40 man roster only says 25/40 players. The Spring Training Roster says 60/60 players. To me that seems like I didn't do what you suggested.

Originally Posted by BBGiovanni

OOTP recently added the ability to add minor leaguers to the active roster during spring training, you'll see the number change from 26 to 40 or 60 or whatever you set, and you can pull minor leaguers up and down freely until the season starts. BUT if you add them to the 40 man, they are a permanent part of your roster, begin drawing a major league salary, and count against the overall 40 man limit. It also triggers a bunch of other things that work through payroll, limit the number of years you can send someone to the minors, etc.

I had some data from before spring training pasted into a spreadsheet. I have identified that the original roster was, in fact, 25 men.

I have identified the two players that are receiving a salary but are not on the 40 man roster. Both have 3 option years remaining and have not used an option this year.

Out of curiosity, I may use the template I saved and create a new game just to see if this situation of 2 extra players is there. If not, I must have done something wrong, but in light of the 40 man roster showing 25 men, I don't believe it was that.

Originally Posted by BBGiovanni

Assuming the game will let you send someone to the minors, because there are limits on how many times that can happen, their salary remains the same. As long as the guy stays on your roster, on the injured list, or even if someone claims him on waivers or you release him outright, he will get paid. MLB contracts are guaranteed.

This is what I am afraid of. I thought I read somewhere about a player demoted to the minors receiving a % of his contract but have not been able to find it again. I probably imagined it or erroneously confused something else as applying to my situation.

It will be interesting to see what happens since these two players are not on the 40 man roster.

Originally Posted by BBGiovanni

I'll leave the budget question for others, as I don't fully understand what is or isn't counted and how OOTP decides to include full or partial amounts. When you try to offer a contract over budget the game will give you a "your owner does NOT approve this contract". With your description of the owner I'd say you should assume it's a hard cap.

Hard cap is what I am afraid of. Oh well, I shouldn't expect my first run as GM with financials to have gone perfectly

Thank you again for answering. I am still open to any other suggestions from you or anyone else.

I think I will save right before the last game of spring training and start sending players down and see what happens.

[SamuraiProgrammer]

Here is an update of the situation for anyone who finds this thread in the future and to solicit comments and advice.

After the last game of Spring Training, I started assigning players to which level I wanted them to go.

I had two players that were receiving a salary but not on the 40-man roster. I tried to send one of them down to AA and was told since he had a ML salary, he had to be on the 40-man roster. I added him to the 40-man roster and then sent him down.

The other player that was in that situation had to be added to the 40-man roster before I could play the first game, as did the two minor leaguers that I wanted to keep on the Active Roster.

I have played the first game of the season and have noticed a couple of interesting things.

I have two players on the active roster with Minor League Contracts. One of them played in the first game. There have been no messages and no indications that this is a problem.

My projected budget room and total money available has gone up. I can see that the season ticket sales have improved from the spring training projections. I still don't have enough cash to pay the two players without contracts (if they ask for $86 like everyone else on the team) but maybe things will improve.

I went to one of the players and clicked the contract extension button and he is asking for a non guaranteed 1 year major league contract with a salary of 129. On the same screen, it says that the maximum allowable contract for the next year is $86! This may get interesting.

It does indicate that the 129 would be paid for this year. I am not going to wake this sleeping dog just yet.


Again, any further advice, information, guidance, etc. would be appreciated.

[SamuraiProgrammer]

One last update:

I created a new game using the template I saved.

There were two players on the AAA minor league team with major league contracts. Neither of these players were on the 40-man roster.

I don't know if this is a bug that needs reporting or if it is just something that is the way it is. It was certainly unexpected. However, having Minor League players with a Major league contract doesn't bother me. But shouldn't they be on the 40-man roster already?

Now I am looking for opinions as to whether this is a bug that I should report or if it is just fine.

Thanks.



EDIT

One last thing (I really mean it this time - I think )...

In my current game (that spawned this thread), the promoted players that showed no salary now show a salary of $86 like the rest of the players. Combining this with the 83.5% saving because they are minimum deal players makes up the change in my projected budget room.

On the Team page, on the Front Office tab, on the Salaries sub-tab, at the very bottom it says "players in minors on league minimum deals are only paid 16.5% of their salary while in the minors" - At least I wasn't imagining that