The Five Plan: A Front Office Dynasty

[darkcloud4579]

In part due to having emergency wisdom tooth surgery, I'm going to be in bed for a few days. My copy of Vince Gennaro's book, Diamond Dollars: The Economics of Winning In Baseball is interesting to me, because well, I love the financial side of the game.

OOTP models some stuff really well and fails at other things. The parts where it fails to me are on the financial side. It just makes it too cumbersome and tedious to create a working financial model without completely ignoring real life. It's too much work to maintain in a solo league and as a result, it made me want to go outside and start my own financial model

That resulted in my financial market model.

Problem is, it has too many variables to maintain and while I think it works very well, it's just not simple enough for one owner in one league to be able to use it and adapt it well enough to his or her purposes.

So I've decided to go back to the drawing board and to come up with my newfound knowledge of baseball economics (or actually, I knew most of it already. I'm just modeling it better..) into a streamlined model that basically allows one owner to run their team and to have a financial model that is

1: Realistic (using modern day numbers...)
2: Current (using real-life active players...)
3: Challenging (who needs house rules when you're using real-life financials?)

So in other words, using this system would be fine to let a guy go out and sign ridiculous contracts or to go crazy signing guys left and right. And you know what? If they couldn't sustain, team goes bankrupt or has to do a fire sale to stay solvent if they don't win it all.

Plain and simple.

I won't take a big-market team, mostly because it would a lot of the "mystery" out of it. I also won't be able to move the team I run during the five-year sim that I conduct and so, I'll have to follow real life market conditions.

I'll explain more, later. But that's the basic premise. It'll be a short dynasty, as I'm mostly using it as a test of the financial model more than anything.

[darkcloud4579]

I don't have a roster set handy that would work for this. So I'll sit on it for now. But..it's in the pipeline.

[ctorg]

I'd also love to see the financial side of the game work more realistically. I believe Markus has said he won't go back to it for now, and there isn't much clamor for him to do so (I guess people feel it's good enough), so going outside the game will probably be the only option for a long time.

I've downloaded your spreadsheet but haven't had a huge chance to look it over yet (there's a lot to digest and a lot to comb through in the thread). I'm hoping there will eventually be some way that some knowledgeable programmer can create something that will allow us to get around the in-game system and use something more comprehensive and realistic like what you've worked on. I'm looking forward to looking at it more closely (whenever such a chance might arise).

[darkcloud4579]

I'm trying to create something more simple and then maybe if I can figure out how to code it, I can code a web app that will serve the same mechanism as the spreadsheet does. But I'll have to figure out how to do that. I'd love to, mostly because I do have the skills, I just don't know where to begin, you know?

I'm going to hopefully have something very simple to use in lieu of the old spreadsheet before the weekend so that people can download and use that, rather than the long digestable sheet. I think I'm onto something, so...once I do, I'll go forward with it and we'll see what folks think.

I'm glad there is interest, because you are right..most people seem to think it's "fine" the way it is and would rather focus on other stuff, but...I think that along with other "mainstream" enhancements the game needs, the financial system is the next big one. But at the same time, I almost prefer it's ignored if they're just going to flub it up or make it worse or not marginally better and would rather just create something far more efficient on the outside, you know?

[ctorg]

A lot of times, what it takes to get an improvement into the game is pretty much what you're doing. A member of the community who has a strong affinity for one particular element of the game goes and creates a third party item of some kind that becomes popular with the fan base to the point where more people begin asking for it (or what it does, anyway) to be integrated into the game. If you can come up with something that works better than the system in place and that's simple enough for people to use, perhaps Markus will be moved in time to include the ideas in it in the game. I'm pretty sure the Stickware schedule generator and Catobase both would have been integrated into OOTP if their designers had stuck around to respond to Markus's requests.

Then again, Markus is probably very wary of touching the financial engine. It took a while to get people as satisfied as they are. In an atmosphere where the attitude is to leave well enough alone, the best thing to do is get people to feel like the current state isn't "well enough". And the way to do that is to do what you're doing.

One suggestion I'd have if you were going to make an app of some kind out of it would be to make it as tweakable as possible. Include things like the financial coefficient as an adjuster, the ability to specify a number of teams, etc.

I'm only good for Excel and Access. The Excel version will probably be to cumbersome and most people don't have Access. Otherwise I'd try to help you with it if I could.

[ootpFox07]

Maybe a Flash/Flex tool could work. Something where you plug the raw financials into a spreasheet or CSV text file and bring in the CSV and Flash does the heavy listing. Then you could run the tool and it could give you the $$$ to plug into the game again. With Flash, you could also do some pretty neat visual stuff too like chart animations and such.

[darkcloud4579]

Originally Posted by DesertFox07

Maybe a Flash/Flex tool could work. Something where you plug the raw financials into a spreasheet or CSV text file and bring in the CSV and Flash does the heavy listing. Then you could run the tool and it could give you the $$$ to plug into the game again. With Flash, you could also do some pretty neat visual stuff too like chart animations and such.

I have Flash CS3. I'll google this and see what I can come up with. I've completed the spreadsheet that I think you all will at least want to give a whirl, because unlike the old one where you had to input something like 15-20 different columns to get results, with the new one, it's just 8 and only five need to be changed each year. So it's a really quick process and I think more logical based on a more streamlined understanding of baseball finances as it relates to OOTP.

I'll take a look at flash and see what I can come up with and I'll have something for you all this evening to play with.

[darkcloud4579]

Or sooner. Here's the link to the newest edition of the spreadsheet, it's really simple to use and I hope you like it.

Here is the info from the actual thread linked above:

In addition to DCCash, a modified version of my financial spreadsheet that will take you no more than 5 minutes to do and be ready to play each season. The other module is called DCTicketPrice, which you need to have in order to complete the DC Cash spreadsheet.

Here's the express financial model. It's pretty sweet. It'll save you a ton of time and you can use it only for your team. It's especially helpful when running a small-market club, because then you can use it to model how much money your club truly has, depending on the size of your small market.


Here are the variables:

TEAM CITY: Where your team is located.

MARKET POP.: Your market population. Includes the metropolitan statistical area nearby and any other areas within 300 miles or so, that you claim within your market, so long as they are not part of another team's market. If so, adjust that number.

TICKET PRICES: Use the amount calculated from DCTicketPrice in this variable here.
CY WINS: Current Year wins
LY WINS: Last year wins
PLAYOFFS: Enter a 1 if your team makes the playoffs, a 2 if you make it to the LCS and 2nd round of the playoffs and a 3 if you make the World Series or final round of your league.

WS TITLE: Enter a 4 if your team wins the league title/world series

MEDIA TYPE: Media Types: (includes media sponsorship)

Bare Bones: No Broadcast TV deal, radio deal only (Expos death sentence) (Enter 0.75)

Radio deal, Broadcast TV contract: (Enter 2)

Radio deal, Regional Cable TV contract (FOX SPORTS NET, TBS): (Enter 5)

Licensed radio deal, Regional Sports Network owned by team (YES, NESN): (Enter 8)

EXPANSION: Enter a 1 if your team is in its first 2 years of expansion franchise-dom and a 0 if not.
---

THAT'S IT! The rest of the formulas are completed automatically!!

Your media deal should stay the same for five years, so you shouldn't change it each year and you ought to complete this spreadsheet at the end of the playoffs each year.
---

The Orange section of the spreadsheet are for OOTP.

The fan interest number goes into your fan interest area of the game.

Fan interest modifier is the same. (I'm working on a way to model when your team signs a new player that gives you a 'boost' in fan interest. But not in this particular version.)

FAN LOYALTY: Enter this into that area in the game.

MARKET SIZE: Same deal.

LY MERCH: Last year's merchandising income

MEDIA DEAL: Total media contract plus sponsorships. Do NOT enter this into the game's media contract area.

MEDIA RTY: Enter this amount (it's the amount of your media deal each year for five years) into the media contract area and media revenue last year box and put 5 years as the total number of years. You never have to mess with it again. Until 5 years are up.

CASH: Enter this into the cash area in the game.

Avail Budget: This goes into the budget area in the game.

If you check this out, let me know what you think....I'll be tweaking it, but it's a good starting point I think. And it's meant for modern day baseball, so if you're simulating another era, it's not going to work for you moneywise.

[darkcloud4579]

New areas:

I added new areas already, so sorry to pull the old one so quick with updates. But I figure with how it's done now, it ought to be a pretty good working tool that you can test out all weekend and report back with how it worked for you (yeah, right..)

I've designed the sheet to be used just for your team. There is a 2nd team area in there, but it's mostly to show you how it would work for a behemoth like the Yankees. The top spot is for your ballclub.

Below the stats, there is an entire area for your 25-man roster. List those players (and any bonus babies if you're into that...) on that particular sheet and map out your salaries over the next five years.

In addition, I have an area for "player development budget" And how that ought to work is like this.

OOTP doesn't do a bang up job in the scouting department and so I'll leave how those players arrive to your team up to you (whether you go out to find, them, etc., ) and obvious, the money you spend won't necessarily correlate with success.

But how I've set it up, is that the available cash you've generated, will pay for that player development system of yours each year. It shouldn't leave you with tons of money to spend in trades, which is done on purpose if you're a small market club. You do get more money added to your cash, based on how much merchandise you sold the previous year, so you'll still be okay.

According to Diamond Dollar$, it can cost an effective franchise about $25-30 million to draft and develop good talent over time, where as a team that purchases it might get the same yield by spending about $75 million in free agency.

So by that standard, spending less than that $25 million threshold in present-day dollars, will not necessarily result in the same sort of bound of say, the Minnesota Twins or Oakland A's success on a budget and if it does, it's either because you're cheating, your draft players are tweaked too high or you're just plum lucky.

And it's your game, do whatever you want...

I rennamed DCCash, DCMarketModel. Just because it's more accurate that way.

But all in all, I think you'll find with the new model that it's the most effective tool out there for simulating more realistic finances than what the game produces. So long as you adhere to it and don't worry about what the game is doing, I imagine that it can be a challenge for you for as long as you choose to play.

As always C/C are welcomed.

[Dauis]

Just so I get this straight. You recommend changing the financial information for your team only? How is that going to affect the balance if you're playing by a separate set of standards? Also, what do you think would happen if you used this model on all teams in your league? Sorry for the questions, I just want to be sure of a few things before I implement this.

Edit: One more thing, for the stadium ratings--are those subjective or did you find those somewhere? I assume they're subjective but just wanted to make sure.

[darkcloud4579]

Optimally, you'd use this for all of the teams in the league. But if you have a big league, it might take a while to do it constantly. But that'd be the optimal scenario. That's why I streamlined it, but...ideally, all of the teams could use it. That's how the original one was devised and this one would work well too if you did it that way.

If you do it and the rest of the league doesn't, it'll probably make it harder for you to compete, but not in an impossible way -- especially if you're in a big market.

Umm...as for the stadium ratings, the entire ticket model I got from somewhere else and so, it's subjective, but it came from Baseball Prospectus, so take it for whatever that's worth. I think you can do whatever you want there, since to me Fenway is a cramped stadium that should be on the waterfront and to others, it's "quaint" and "nostalgic".

[darkcloud4579]

Another tip that I just figured out is...rather than using that entire player spreadsheet to map out who you have and who you don't have, you could simply input how much your opening day or end of season budget is each year into the total payroll box. It'll replace the formula there that is designed to add up all of the salary cells above them, but what's helpful about that is, you can basically map out how much payroll your team can sustain over a five-year period.

So that's way more helpful than having it simply map out payroll of players as you put it in.

Here's an example of what I did...



The first year's payroll for my Omaha club is $26.1 million. Rather than just look at the payroll as it currently is mapped to be (current contracts) in future years, I replaced those years with what I projected payroll to be (in my head) and while I'm not going to follow that methodology, what's nice about it...is that if you decide that your team wants to "go for it" over a particular period of time, you can map out what couple of years you'll "go for it" and then when you have to bring things back to earth.

Of course, after five years, you can change your media deal. So maybe there are benefits involved in it, who knows?

Just a new trick I learned and wanted to share. I'm constantly updating the original one I use, so if some of the fields I have are different than what you have (Luxury Tax among them) don't worry...it doesn't affect anything you do, but I did want to add that for future releases, basically lowers the amount of available cash that teams who spend over a certain amount (I believe it's set to $90 million) by charging them a luxury tax.

If you do end up doing it for your whole league, that can be a handy tool.

[darkcloud4579]

More lessons.

Using the attached 2007-08 DMA ranks (tv market ratings) from Nielsens, to create a more "accurate" market size, you ought to divide not just the regional populations of your market, but also add the TV market as part of that market. What it'll do for smaller market teams is, allow you to create a mechanism by which your team can actually generate revenues that otherwise would be off-limits with just factoring the "people" population of a particular area.

I did this and the results to me were far more "realistic" in terms of what the teams generated in revenue.

See what you think of that...

[Dauis]

One more question....For a team like the Nationals, that doesn't really have any data at the sites posted in the Baseball Prospectus article you got the Ticket sheet from, do you have any estimates as to what numbers we should put in?

[darkcloud4579]

Related to their new stadium? Meh. It's new, so put it on the high end. Otherwise? They're basically an expansion team, but in a baseball savvy market.

[darkcloud4579]

http://www.teammarketing.com/fci.cfm

[darkcloud4579]

bump