Thoughts on FA Compensation/revised arb model

[zonk84]

I'm excited to see that Free Agent compensation is planned for OOTP7 - and just wanted to throw in my 2 cents on how I'd like to see it work. For it to function "realistically", I think modifications need to be made to the whole FA/FA signing and arbitration models, since compensation is directly dependent on arbitration being offered.

First - to some extent, I think FAs need to be processed differently at the end of the season. A personal preference would be having OOTP FORCE you to deal with arbitration questions (or at least -- the option should exist to force Y/N offerings).

Take a team with Carlos Zambrano, Kent Merker, and Todd Walker -- at the end of the season. Zambrano is arbitration eligible, but not FA eligible. Merker and Walker are both FA eligible. At the end of the season - if I haven't signed any of them to extensions, I should have - or like I said, maybe, forced -- to make the following decisions:
Zambrano -- Offer arbitration or non-tender?
- If I select non-tender, my ties are cut to Zambrano and he enters the FA pool with no strings attached. I also do NOT get any compensation if/when he signs elsewhere.
- If I select "Offer arbitration", he should remain my property - but NOT yet be assigned a contract during the offseason.

For both Walker and Merker, my choices are either offer or not offer arbitration
- For Merker, I select not to offer... he gets released to the FA pool with no compensation. I also cannot offer him an FA contract (at least, not until May 1, if he goes unsigned that long)
- For Walker, I decide to offer arbitration. Here - no contract is assigned during the offseason, but he does go into the FA will compensation attached. I also can continue to negotiate with him for a portion of the FA signing period.

Second, after the "offseason" is processed and I enter the FA signing period
OOTP tallies all the players in the FA pool (regardless of whether they were offered arbitration or not) and assigns them as either "Type A", "Type B", or "Type C" -- or in some cases, no assignment at all -- status. I wouldn't worry too much about the assignments are made. If you follow this in "real" MLB, you know that Elias does a crappy job of assignment anyway. I think this needs to happen at the beginning because what "type" a player is will influence whether I offer him a contract or not.

Assuming OOTP stays with a basic 1/1 through 1/30 model for FA signings --
- non-FA eligible players I've offered arbitration to stay with my team and are NOT in the FA pool (this would be Zambrano)
- FA eligible players that I have offered arb to ARE in the FA pool (Walker) and can sign with anyone at any time
- FA eligible players NOT offer arb are also in the pool - with no strings attached.

On about 1/15 (or halfway through the signing period) -- Arbitration hits.
- At this point, if no one has signed Walker, and I haven't been able to negotiate a contract, the player makes a choice to either ACCEPT or DECLINE arbitration. If he accepts - he gets removed from the FA pool (and into an "arbitration pool"). If he declines, he just stays in the FA pool, but I CAN LONGER negotiate with him after this date. I would say that the AI should be set so that Type A's rarely accept (which is true, since these are usually the stars that can get big contracts on the open market) and so on.

All the arb eligibles playeres I offered arb to and either had no choice but to accept (Zambrano) or chose to accept (Walker) have their "hearings" as day 15 is processed. I would prefer the "real" method -- I offer a figure, the player offers a figure, and OOTP makes the decision, but I'm not all that attached to it. The new arb contracts are put in place and the players are now under contract.

The rest of FA progresses as usual - and then, the compensation is assigned.

I don't have the particulars, but again, compensation only applies if I offered the player arbitration....
Type A's - losing team gets the signing team's first round pick unless that pick is a top (10, I think?) pick. If the pick would be top 10, then signing team gets a sandwich pick and round 2 pick from the lsigning team instead.
Type B's - losing team gets a sandwich pick between round 1 and 2 and signing team's round 2.
Type C's - losing team gets a sandwich pick.

Since a team can get multiple picks -- factor is head to head player rankings (better player = better pick).

I know I'm off a little bit on the actual compensation - but again, I'm just basically saying that in order to do FA compensation right, the arbitration model needs to become a lot more robust and interactive.

[pat]

I wanted to start a thread about non-tender thing but his suggestion looks alright.

I know there's a work-around by just releasing the players before the off-season and no expenses would be added but I think it would be neat to have non-tender players.

[Derek4jc]

This is something I would very much like to see implimented. The only thing is it is a top 15 pick that is protected, rather than just a top 10.