Player Contract Negotiations

[Winnipeg59]

Whether part of the on-going updates of OOTP14 (which btw is the best version yet) or as part of the work being done to 15, I would like to propose more attention to contract negotiations.

There are three scenarios that I tend to find unrealistic and, imho, need to be tightened up so the “AI Agent” is more realistic.

1) Team Options – Offering a huge team option year (or team, then player option years), with a $0 buyout seems to dupe the AI Agent into taking a contract. In most cases (solo or online) the intent is to never pick it up, but simply to secure the player. Not only is the huge team option amount an issue, but also the $0 buyout. I would turf my agent (or at least counter with simply changing it to a huge player option instead).

2) Decreasing Contracts – I expect to see multi-year contracts offered from the AI Agent as generally a consistent amount year-over-year (say $10m-$10m-$10m-$10m) or increasing amounts (say $7m-$9m-$11m-$13m) but contracts seem to easily be structured as decreasing, in some cases radically decreasing, to again secure a player in an unrealistically team-friendly way (again imho). Examples being ($15m-$12m-$8m-$5m) or, when combined with the first point ($8m-$4m-$4m-$4m-team opt $20m). Once again my agent would be seeking a new client.

3) Pre-Arb Long-Term Contracts – Stud players seem to be able to be locked up in their initial year(s) to long-term contracts that take them from pre-arb, through arb and into their FA years for unrealistically low dollars. No agent worth his-her salt would agree to something like that, even with a modestly talented player.

I know there are likely billions of factors to consider if you try to tighten this up. And I would imagine there are that many or more opinions on how it should be tackled. But respectfully, I do think it’s an area that could use a little more tuning to make it more of a challenge (in either solo games or in online games against other human GM’s) when negotiating and to improve the game. Otherwise, again in my humble opinion, you leave it open to being gamed.

[Cras]

I just had an issue with this in my league. I just recently switched from reserve era ball to now I have arbitration.

And so i now am dealing with multi year contracts and the like. No free agency yet (well, there is but you need whatever the max service time is 25 years or something, setting it to 1 year arbitration and no free agency essentially broke the game and it reverted itself to no arbitration and no free agency, but anyway)

I signed a stud SS to a 4 year contract. Year 1, he takes a big pay cut. Year 2, he gets a huge raise, of almost 100k. and it gives him more money than the salary he had when he signed the new extension. Then year 3 and 4 give him huge pay raises, that would result in him busting the highest ever salary by huge amounts, totally to the first ever 1 million plus contract ever awarded in my league.

But, those final two huge years, are team options
and zero dollar buy outs

So yeah, I have no intention of giving him those years.

[greenrebellion]

Great post. This pretty much summarizes the three major areas I have noticed that are easily exploitable.

[byzeil]

I pretty much agree with points 1 & 3 but not so much with point 2.

Front loading a contract can actually be in a player's favor. Take your ($15m-$12m-$8m-$5m) example. Though a little extreme the player gets his money up front. Lets say the player was looking for 4 years at $10mil a piece for the $40mil total. Your example contract gives him over half that money in his first 2 years. IRL he gets that money to invest or do with as he will. This isn't at all a bad thing for the player. Now if the AI logic is accepting that $40mil example contract when he really is looking for a balanced $60mil deal, now there is an issue. But the front loaded contract on it's own is not an issue to me.

The big one is the backloaded contracts with team options ($0) that many GMs never have the intention of giving. I'd like to see an option in the league setup that set a default minimum % buyout for team option years. So you could set it to say 10% or 25% or whatever and that would be the minimal buyout for a team option. Again that would allow you to leave that at a default of 0% so things remain as they are if you so choose.

[r0nster]

I always backload the contracts as much as possible for fear of high rate of injury and if the player suddenly falls off the map I can simply trade the guy and dump salary as well. I also add for team options between 100,000 to 2,000,000 buyout clause. It helps my budget and buys me the time to build a winner and hopefully be consistant winner.

[Cras]

Team options are you best friend. I always look to include them. And especially if I can get them with a zero dollar buy out.

[sandman2575]

I've actually not yet encountered (in my admittedly limited experience) a time when I *had* to include a buyout clause on a team option.

Seems to me that the AI should *never* accept a Team Option year with $0 buyout -- yet it's all I've seen so far.

Negotiating contracts may be one of those areas of the game where House Rules need to be implemented so as not to exploit the AI.

Originally Posted by byzeil

I'd like to see an option in the league setup that set a default minimum % buyout for team option years. So you could set it to say 10% or 25% or whatever and that would be the minimal buyout for a team option. Again that would allow you to leave that at a default of 0% so things remain as they are if you so choose.

this is a great idea --

[sandman2575]

To the idea of a "default minimum % buyout" game option, which I like a lot -- it would be cool if the player's "Greed" level would then determine on top of that how much more you'd have to pay in order for him to accept a Team Option buyout. So if you set a 10% minimum, maybe a player with "High" Greed rating would need 15% on top of that for a total 25% of the Team Option year's salary to be convinced...

No idea how hard any of this would be to program. just spitballin' here... But it does seem like some small-ish tweaks could make salary negotiations more realistic and fun.

[Winnipeg59]

Originally Posted by sandman2575

To the idea of a "default minimum % buyout" game option, which I like a lot -- it would be cool if the player's "Greed" level would then determine on top of that how much more you'd have to pay in order for him to accept a Team Option buyout. So if you set a 10% minimum, maybe a player with "High" Greed rating would need 15% on top of that for a total 25% of the Team Option year's salary to be convinced...

No idea how hard any of this would be to program. just spitballin' here... But it does seem like some small-ish tweaks could make salary negotiations more realistic and fun.

Great reply.
In the original post I suggested there are many ways to tweak this, also not knowing how hard that would actually be...

Tightening the (what I would characterize as) ways to game the system would be my first wish to generally improve OOTP in these areas, but after that there are unlimited ways to tweak the challenges of the negotiation (either strictly in-game or via options in setup - whatever is easier on the development team).

I would love to have players come back with counter proposals as far-fetched as what you intially might propose (like a player option instead of your team option, for starters - maybe even telling you that in the dialogue too).

I would love to have vets simply shut down negotiations a lot faster if you try to "mess" with them.

I love the idea above, the player's personality "attributes" playing much more of a role in their reaction or even more of a role in their on-field production and mood during and after a negotiation, possibly even just toward you?

All this would be behind the scenes stuff but in my opinion would make for even more immersion when trying to assemble and maintain a team. Every OOTP fanatic is different and one person's love is likely another's tedium, but I really hope this area can receive some love in the near future to take this game to yet another level.

[mgoetze]

Originally Posted by Winnipeg59

I would love to have players come back with counter proposals as far-fetched as what you intially might propose (like a player option instead of your team option, for starters - maybe even telling you that in the dialogue too).

Actually I have yet to see a long-term player (counter)proposal that did NOT include a player option. :P

It would certainly be fun if players had more varied reactions, e.g. every 10th player could say "I don't want a ****ing team option in my contract, leave it out or bugger off."

[Ripamaru]

I agree with #1 but not really with the other 2.

Front loaded contracts are good for most players as it acts like a signing bonus of sorts. It is guaranteed money quick, which most players like.

As for signing players before they get to arbitration/FA it may need to be kept to where some extreme examples are limited but this strategy has been the bread and butter of real life smaller market teams.

My Oakland A's have used it to retain many good players over the past 15 or so years under Beane. It doesn't always work but the majority of players will give a significant hometown discount in order to secure their future much earlier than usually possible. I have seen several young stud players sign for a small fraction of what they would have made a couple years later.

The choice for them is to stay at a couple hundred grand a year and risk getting seriously injured before you can cash in, or take 2-4 Million per now and secure yourself. It does work.

[Xpert7777]

Originally Posted by Winnipeg59

Great reply.
In the original post I suggested there are many ways to tweak this, also not knowing how hard that would actually be...

Tightening the (what I would characterize as) ways to game the system would be my first wish to generally improve OOTP in these areas, but after that there are unlimited ways to tweak the challenges of the negotiation (either strictly in-game or via options in setup - whatever is easier on the development team).

I would love to have players come back with counter proposals as far-fetched as what you intially might propose (like a player option instead of your team option, for starters - maybe even telling you that in the dialogue too).

I would love to have vets simply shut down negotiations a lot faster if you try to "mess" with them.

I love the idea above, the player's personality "attributes" playing much more of a role in their reaction or even more of a role in their on-field production and mood during and after a negotiation, possibly even just toward you?

All this would be behind the scenes stuff but in my opinion would make for even more immersion when trying to assemble and maintain a team. Every OOTP fanatic is different and one person's love is likely another's tedium, but I really hope this area can receive some love in the near future to take this game to yet another level.

Fantastic post. In a league I am in we have seen all of these exploited.

1. We finally had to make a fix for the ridiculous team options, but you were spot on. We were seeing deals like $2M-$2M-$2M-$2M-$12M TO for a guy who wanted to 6-7M per season. Basically secure the guy for $2M per year then just decline the option and you get a great player for super cheap.

2. While I have found decreasing contracts to come in handy this can be very much exploited as well. Having a team who cleared a lot of space, we see contracts like $13M-$4-$4-5M TO. This contract was accepted over one that was $7.4-$7.4-$7.4-$7.4 with no option. That big one year seems to sway players.

3. I honestly think this is the more unrealistic and contract exploit you can find in the game. With almost every great young player who is just called up, you can buy our their free years and first year of arb with contracts such as 600k-800k-1.2M-1.6M. With the way the game works extensions, you are now extending off of 1.6M instead of an arbitration number of 5-7M. It has become the thing to do in our league, I have even see contracts like this given to great prospects who don't even have any service time yet. It's just way unrealistic.

I would love to see a lot of these tightened up in 15, it make the online leagues a lot more challenging.