Realistic Salary setting?

[Sax332n86]

Basically, I'm tired of seeing the Pitsburgh Pirates increase their payroll from 28 million in 2004, to 86 million in 2005. That includes signing Pedro Martinez to a 26 million $ contract.

I want realism! I want to see the big clubs (NYA,BOS,LA, etc) be the only ones to throw around ridiculous money contracts. I want to see teams like Pittsburgh and Milwaukee have to trade arbitration-eligible players before they get a huge raise. I don't want to see Carlos Beltran tell me (LA) that he "doesn't like my organization" (even though I won 100 games and the world series in year one) and go back to Kansas City, who would never be able to afford him in real life.

I've set the minimum TV contract to 0, and raised the league minimum wage to 1 million. Anyone else have ideas to make this more realistic?

[jmm8356]

The best thing to do, IMO, is to increase the disparity in Team Markets. (In a real-life league, it should be called "Owner's Pocketbook".) That's the best way to have a big difference in incomes. You could also give the have-nots MUCH smaller stadiums than the haves, since a good portion of OOTP income comes from attendance.

If you get the incomes right, reducing the cash maximum would keep the have-nots from saving up and signing one big name FA every three or four years.

I see the logic of a $1 million minimum salary (reducing the "extra" money available to go above replacement-level), but I'm not sure it will work. Even if you figured out how to make Pittsburgh's income ~$30 million, I doubt the AI could get the payroll below $35 million with a $1 million minimum. I'd try around $600K.

EDIT: You'll have to play with the merchandise revenue too, but the good news is, once you change it (in the "Last Year" section), it will stay relatively constant, plus/minus $200K a year.

[Le Grande Orange]

I'd also suggest artificially reducing your stadium capacity to limit the maximum potential attendance revenue the team can generate.

You can even do some simple calculations to figure out what level to set. Using a $10 ticket price and assuming you have 81 home games per year, the maximum possible attendance revenue for various sized parks is:

10,000 seats = a maximum of $8,100,000
15,000 seats = a maximum of $12,150,000
20,000 seats = a maximum of $16,200,000
25,000 seats = a maximum of $20,250,000
30,000 seats = a maximum of $24,300,000
35,000 seats = a maximum of $28,350,000
40,000 seats = a maximum of $32,400,000
45,000 seats = a maximum of $36,450,000
50,000 seats = a maximum of $40,500,000

So, by slashing a 40,000 seat park down to 20,000 seats, you cut the maximum possible attendance revenue in half, cutting as much as $16 million out of a team's revenue stream. That should put at least a little dent into their budget.

You could refine the above process even more by looking at the average attendance per year of the team for the last 5 years or so, and adjusting the park size to some amount below that average. Also, take a look at your team's financial history and calculate how large a percentage of attendance revenue is of your team's total revenue; that'll help you determine how much of an impact reducing your park's capacity will affect your team.

Granted, you will have an artificially small capacity park, but that's the best that can be done given OOTP's current financial engine. Hopefully the next version will allow more flexibility to limit a team's revenue stream without having to resort to artificially small-sized parks.

[jmm8356]

Well said, LGO... but...

In my league, half of the teams are Below Average markets with the other half around a median of Above Average. All the stadiums are around 40,000... except San Antonio's Alamo Field (a/k/a Old Fort Park) which holds 26,300. The first year of the league, the AI bumped San Antonio's ticket price to $13 (or until they weren't constantly selling out). Eight years later, they're still at $12 and seem to have pretty much the same resources as the rest of the league.

The moral of the story is, making really small stadiums won't work unless they come with really small Team Markets too, IMHO.

[EDIT: Incidentially, I wasn't sure this would even out, and was pleasantly surprised when the AI took the correct action to keep San Antonio from becoming the Expos of my league.]