OOTP v6 transaction primer

[Matteo]

After spending 10 hours finding answers for the conversion of my online league by talking to my co-commish, trying to understand the financial league setup description in v6 and doing lots of searchers between us, here is what the status quo is:

1) I am upset how online leagues are treated in the whole conversion process. There has been very little support so far. I understand that service days were not tracked in v5 and can live with that, as well as rating/ talent conversions and the deviations that come with that are also inevitable.

2) The conversion itself is a mess. Tracking years of pro-service as a function of age is shortsighted. There should be a way to count for years after the first year a player has minor league stats (or major league if they go straight to the majors). Now we have to do lots of manual editing. Even this I can live with somehow

3) What I cannot accept is that there is no guide how all the financial options work and how they influence things like arbitration etc. This is crucial when you try to manage a team, make long-term financial decisions etc. I know it is in the manual, but since it seems this is not a priority we are dependent from commissioners doing all sorts of research, trial and error etc.

I don't want my league going through the stress of uncertainty, so I decided to get to the bottom of this before we proceed.

4) Here are our current findings. Please add to this part when you feel we are wrong or you have additional information. Maybe this can then be a "conversion guide"...

i) MLB service days is counted whenever a player is on the active roster during the regular season after 4/1. I am not sure what the end date is the game stops counting MLB service days (end of regular season, end of playoffs???

ii) A player also accumulates MLB service days whenever he is on the DL, or optioned to the minors for less than 20 days??? (question: does the game adds these days to the player report? our guess is yes)

iii) The game counts the days as described in i) and ii) in the MLB service days this year, and stops whenever 172 days are reached.

iv) Years of MLB service is important for the contract status of a player. The term years is a bit misleading, because it is more like cumulative days on the active roster. Once this amount of days surpasses 3x172 days a player is eligible for arbitration, and once it surpasses 6x172 days he will be an unrestricted FA.

v) This means the contract status of a player can change during the season (eg. on 4/13 he has 1000 MLB service days, and is arbitration eligibe, but on 6/13 he has 1060 MLB service days (> 6x172) and will be an unrestricted FA.

So, in a nutshell, MLB service years is influencing the contractual status of a player, and can change DURING a season! Hence, an owner must be cautios and do a lot of manual stuff to do team management. It doesn't help that there is NO info like: potential unrestricted FA when accruing 32 more MLB service days.....

vi) The first thing I thought was: lets put a player in AAA just before he exceeds 6x172 or 3x172 MLB service days to avoid paying for him (when it is august or september, or depending of his ratings). To avoid this, there is the pro service counter....

vii) The years of pro service counter is pretty easy. Once a player turns pro (is on the active or minor league roster of a franchise), he will have a pro service year. It doesn't matter whether he plays or not..... Every subsequent year he is on the roster (active or minor league), he gets an additional pro service year....

viii) The conversion does a bad thing, it sees pro service as a function of age. Since this part is important for rule V draft, minor league FA, waivers etc., it must be accurate. The best thing is to look at the first year a player has minor league or major league stats, and substract that year from the current year.... This will mean a lot of manual editing....

ix) The pro service counter serves the following purpose:

a) A player with more than three, but less than 6 years of pro-service AND who is not on the 40-man roster is eligible for the rule V draft.

b) A player with more than 6 years of pro service AND who is not on the 40-man roster is eligble for minor league FA when they have a minor league contract. The description in the game is very cryptical: "minor league players with 6 years of minor league experience...." Minor league experience is NOT tracked, so I assume it would be pro service years???

x) The last part of the transaction primer is the waiver and minor league options procedure. The minore league options procedure is very unclear to us: "Allows a player to be optioned to the minor leagues 3 seperate years while on the 40-man roster. After 3 option years, he must stay on the active major league rosters, or clear waivers before demotion"

This raises a couple of questions:

a) Does this mean a player can only be send to the minor leagues from the active roster 3 times, 3 years, 1 time per year???

b) What about a player who is in AAA and on the 40-man roster. Can he be swapped between majors and minors as much as we want?

c) Is pro-service and mlb-service time irrelevant when demoting/promoting playes?

xi) If minor league options are enabled, players who are out of option years must clear waivers before they can be sent to the minor leagues.

How does this interfere with players that can refuse assignment. Is that the same, or can players refuse at will. The way I read this, a player doesn't has the right to refuse based on his personal wish, but more whether he is out of option years...

xii) How to handle waivers in online league. What should we use in waiver period considering we sim 10 days a sim...?

xiii) We haven't found a single reason why the service time on the 40-man roster is counted....Also, wouldn't it be enough to set a 40-man roster just at the end of the season?

5) I predict havoc if these issues are not cleared in the near future. Online leagues that are using v6 will have many disgruntled owners if the start realize they have made decision based on false or a lack of proper information hhow all rules exactly work. That is why we are commited getting all the answers before owners start making decision the would have never made when they had the full information they deserve....

[HolyCow98]

First off...I really enjoy playing OOTP 6 and feel it plays so much better than previous versions, with that said....I've had my reservations about converting our league to V6 for some time now. I wasn't expecting there to be as many issues and question marks.

The way the game converts V5 leagues service times is a big concern I have....which in my solo leagues isn't as a big deal to me...but in online leagues...is crucial. Players who should be unrestricted free agents or arbitration years or anything else that service time impacts....well, I feel like I have to check every player in the league one by one. My head is spinning.

The league Matt is referring to is entering its 6th season...so there are a lot of players who have to have accurate (or as close as possible) MLB service time or we're going to have alot of players who should be unrestricted or who should be getting one more year of abitration who aren't getting the correct type of contract unless we check hundred and hundreds of players....

I don't mind having to do it....I like doing big projects like this....but...this is one of those projects where it feels like it should be unneccessary....like it shouldn't be this way.

At the moment I feel like I have a lot of things I want to say...but after being up all night....and needing sleep...I will stop now...

[kq76]

Much of the below is what I think is correct, not necessarily know to be correct. If someone can correct me or back me up, please do so.

Also, it might be good to edit your post with the answers that this thread generates.

Originally Posted by Matteo

i) MLB service days is counted whenever a player is on the active roster during the regular season after 4/1. I am not sure what the end date is the game stops counting MLB service days (end of regular season, end of playoffs???

end of RS

ii) A player also accumulates MLB service days whenever he is on the DL, or optioned to the minors for less than 20 days??? (question: does the game adds these days to the player report? our guess is yes)

iii) The game counts the days as described in i) and ii) in the MLB service days this year, and stops whenever 172 days are reached.

MLB regular seasons are slightly longer than 172 days (I believe it is 26 weeks, so times by 7 days equals 182 days). So say your schedule is substantially less than MLB (e.g. 81 games in 91 days), then you probably want to change that 172 days to a smaller number or it's going to take 2 years to get 1 year. Or say your schedule is longer, up it. Or perhaps your schedule is like MLB, but you want to make it easier(/harder) to get a year, then decrease(/increase) the 172 setting.

iv) Years of MLB service is important for the contract status of a player. The term years is a bit misleading, because it is more like cumulative days on the active roster. Once this amount of days surpasses 3x172 days a player is eligible for arbitration, and once it surpasses 6x172 days he will be an unrestricted FA.

v) This means the contract status of a player can change during the season (eg. on 4/13 he has 1000 MLB service days, and is arbitration eligibe, but on 6/13 he has 1060 MLB service days (> 6x172) and will be an unrestricted FA.

So, in a nutshell, MLB service years is influencing the contractual status of a player, and can change DURING a season! Hence, an owner must be cautios and do a lot of manual stuff to do team management. It doesn't help that there is NO info like: potential unrestricted FA when accruing 32 more MLB service days.....

That would be great if it did. I'd love to be able to make a mod that would tell us this, but we need the end date (e.g. day 270 of the calendar year) of the regular season and the exporter does not automatically spit it out. It spits out the start day, so I imagine it could spit out the regular season end day too.

vi) The first thing I thought was: lets put a player in AAA just before he exceeds 6x172 or 3x172 MLB service days to avoid paying for him (when it is august or september, or depending of his ratings). To avoid this, there is the pro service counter....

vii) The years of pro service counter is pretty easy. Once a player turns pro (is on the active or minor league roster of a franchise), he will have a pro service year. It doesn't matter whether he plays or not..... Every subsequent year he is on the roster (active or minor league), he gets an additional pro service year....

viii) The conversion does a bad thing, it sees pro service as a function of age. Since this part is important for rule V draft, minor league FA, waivers etc., it must be accurate. The best thing is to look at the first year a player has minor league or major league stats, and substract that year from the current year.... This will mean a lot of manual editing....

Very frustrating, especially for people like me that have overflowing minor league affiliates and will have to be very picky when it comes to who to leave off the 40 man and risk losing. This is not so much an issue for people who do not have many players that they don't want to lose.

ix) The pro service counter serves the following purpose:

a) A player with more than three, but less than 6 years of pro-service AND who is not on the 40-man roster is eligible for the rule V draft.

b) A player with more than 6 years of pro service AND who is not on the 40-man roster is eligble for minor league FA when they have a minor league contract. The description in the game is very cryptical: "minor league players with 6 years of minor league experience...." Minor league experience is NOT tracked, so I assume it would be pro service years???

Good question. I assumed it was pro time too.

x) The last part of the transaction primer is the waiver and minor league options procedure. The minore league options procedure is very unclear to us: "Allows a player to be optioned to the minor leagues 3 seperate years while on the 40-man roster. After 3 option years, he must stay on the active major league rosters, or clear waivers before demotion"

This raises a couple of questions:

a) Does this mean a player can only be send to the minor leagues from the active roster 3 times, 3 years, 1 time per year???

Unlimited times per year, or at least that is how I believe it is in MLB.

b) What about a player who is in AAA and on the 40-man roster. Can he be swapped between majors and minors as much as we want?

I believe so.

c) Is pro-service and mlb-service time irrelevant when demoting/promoting playes?

Well it's not relevant in the way you are probably thinking, but it sure is to me with good young players. Those cheap years are pretty valuable, including when you're just going to trade the player. You don't want to waste them, even when it's not a whole year for just a day or two like it was in v5. You also need to consider that if you add a player to the 40 man to put him in the bigs that you might have to lose another player with that spot being taken up, so that other player's time might matter. As for demotions, right to refuse only comes after all the option years on a player have been used up, but that's not really mlb or pro time.

xi) If minor league options are enabled, players who are out of option years must clear waivers before they can be sent to the minor leagues.

How does this interfere with players that can refuse assignment. Is that the same, or can players refuse at will. The way I read this, a player doesn't has the right to refuse based on his personal wish, but more whether he is out of option years...

Not sure, I thought there was some personal wish involved.

xii) How to handle waivers in online league. What should we use in waiver period considering we sim 10 days a sim...?

Not sure yet, something I need to look into though.

xiii) We haven't found a single reason why the service time on the 40-man roster is counted....Also, wouldn't it be enough to set a 40-man roster just at the end of the season?

I believe so.

5) I predict havoc if these issues are not cleared in the near future. Online leagues that are using v6 will have many disgruntled owners if the start realize they have made decision based on false or a lack of proper information hhow all rules exactly work. That is why we are commited getting all the answers before owners start making decision the would have never made when they had the full information they deserve....

I think I have a pretty good handle on how most of these things work, but I imagine many do not. Those that do are going to have a pretty big advantage and those who do not are going to be awfully frustrated losing out on players. The more threads like this they read, the more level the playing field will be though.

[wish7694]

ii) A player also accumulates MLB service days whenever he is on the DL, or optioned to the minors for less than 20 days??? (question: does the game adds these days to the player report? our guess is yes)

I think the fact that 172 days counts as a full year allows the 20 day rule. I haven't figured the numbers exactly but I guess the best way to do it would just be to figure out the number of days in your season and subtract 20 from it.

a) Does this mean a player can only be send to the minor leagues from the active roster 3 times, 3 years, 1 time per year???

Unlimited times each year for three different years that the player is in the minors and on the 40 man roster. If a player is not in the minors for an entire season while on the 40 man an option year is not used.

xi) If minor league options are enabled, players who are out of option years must clear waivers before they can be sent to the minor leagues.

How does this interfere with players that can refuse assignment. Is that the same, or can players refuse at will. The way I read this, a player doesn't has the right to refuse based on his personal wish, but more whether he is out of option years...

If a player is out of options and has the right to refuse an assignment you can still send him to the minors if the following happens. First he must clear waivers, once he clears waivers you can try sending him to the minors at that point he can either accept or refuse the assignment. I have been able to send guys down this way in the game.

xiii) We haven't found a single reason why the service time on the 40-man roster is counted....Also, wouldn't it be enough to set a 40-man roster just at the end of the season?

I believe the 40 man roster time just helps to keep track of minor league option years. I find it is beeter to set the 40 man before the rule 5 draft. You never know which free agent you will sign that you will want to put on the active roster. Remember to clear space for them by sending players through waivers DURING the free agency period.

[The Playmaker]

In the ABA we're going to try a 20 day waiver period. The reason we're trying this is to allow owners to make their own waiver moves. The league will then be able to review all the waiver eligible players prior to sim 2 and post their claims on the message board. The teasm that places a player on waivers also has the right to send the commish an email stating that "If Player A is claimed, then revoke his waivers". The 20 day period helps us for DL purposes.

Example - Team A has player X get injured. They put him on the DL and call up player Y. If player Y has to clear waivers to return to the minors, then in that first sim, once recalled, Team A should also place player Y on waivers.

Sim runs. Website is updated to show Player Y is on the waiver wire. Team B makes a claim on the message board.

Next sim runs. If Team A did not request that Player Y's waivers be revoked, then Team B gets him on the 20th day. Team A may not care, because player X is also ready to come off the DL for the next sim. So they may be short on their roster for one day, but that's manageable. So a 20 day period seems long, but it's really two sims whether it's 11 days or 20 days in our league. At least the 20th day gives you the opportunity to use the player until your DL'd player is healed. It does take some roster management forecasting though.

What I'd like to understand is the minor league free agents. It says players are free agents at the end of the season. I think everytime I've gone into contract negotiations with one of those players, all it says is that "I will sign a minor league contract". I can't offer them a salary. So, are they still free agents are year end because they have only been extended at a minor league contract? In this case, I can't ever offer him a salary because the game won't allow me too so he'll always be a free agent. Or, do they come off the free agent list because they are now extended even if for a MLC. In that case, I don't understand why we even have the option to begin with. Jut re-sign them all for a MLC, and they are still your property, and they still don't cost anything.

[Matteo]

Thanks for the help guys...

For me, three things stand out at this point after reading the answers and other threads:

1. 40-man service time is irrelevant
2. Pro-service can be edited (and should as during conversion this is screwed)
3. MLB-service: only years can be edited and since the engine keeps days and convert this to years each day, this has to be done each season (just b4 hitting proceed). This means a whole season the wrong status might be shown, and this will be corrected just b4 hitting proceed. However, this influences how much is left for extensions etc., so one big mess...

[Le Grande Orange]

Originally Posted by Matteo

MLB service days is counted whenever a player is on the active roster during the regular season after 4/1.

Er, is this correct? If so, then what about those MLB seasons which start before April 1st?

[HolyCow98]

Originally Posted by Le Grande Orange

Er, is this correct? If so, then what about those MLB seasons which start before April 1st?

Not exactly....in the case of the league Matt is referring to...the schedule is made in stickware...with the seasons starts at April 1st....so wheither games are played are not...under those circumstances it would count MLB service days at April 1st.

It starts counting once all the offseason activities are over and you are able to sim....even if those first days have no scheduled games....

[Matteo]

Oh, and it would be great if we can get any comment from ootpdevelopment how we should edit the stuff as I don't see a way (and no-one else in this forum does) Obviously, it is a HUGE problem for online leagues converting....

[HolyCow98]

I'm not sure how its coded...but if the in-game player editor could be given the ability to edit the "Contract Roster Status" section of a players card....that would make this much easier.

I'm not upset really at the fact it imports the way it does. The data simply wasnt a part of the previous versions. I am frustrated though I have no way of correcting the things that need it.

I'm thouroughly enjoying the OOTP6 solo leagues I play...the online conversions of the leagues that I play in that use financials has been rough however. (sigh)

[Dark Horse]

i realize players created in v5 will have incorrect service times. But what about new players after the conversion?

Does v6 calculate all of the service years correctly for players for players created in v6?

[sporr]

Originally Posted by Dark Horse

i realize players created in v5 will have incorrect service times. But what about new players after the conversion?

Does v6 calculate all of the service years correctly for players for players created in v6?

I believe that service years will be accurate for any players created in v6. However, be aware that Pro Service Years may not be quite fixed yet. I'm told that some players enter the draft with a year of Pro Service listed. However, I have not confirmed this myself. I know that converted leagues run into this problem, but that is due to the conversion most likely and not v6 itself.

[kq76]

Originally Posted by wish7694

ii) A player also accumulates MLB service days whenever he is on the DL, or optioned to the minors for less than 20 days??? (question: does the game adds these days to the player report? our guess is yes)

I think the fact that 172 days counts as a full year allows the 20 day rule. I haven't figured the numbers exactly but I guess the best way to do it would just be to figure out the number of days in your season and subtract 20 from it.

What exactly is this 20 day rule? I've found,

A disabled player may be assigned to a Minor League Club for injury rehabilitation for up to 20-days for position players. Pitchers can be granted as many as 30-days of Minor League Rehab.

at: http://rangers.siegler.net/roster/rosterrules.html and

when you send a player down, he has to stay down for 10 days, unless you're recalling him to replace an injured player

at: http://eeeeeegp.com/Notes99/Aug99Notes2.html, but I'm not sure either one has anything to do with the 172.

EDIT: I found this:

If a player spends 20 days or less of the season on optional assignment, the player is given service time for the entire season. This is to prevent various shenanigans if calling up a player at the end of April to buy an extra year of rights.

at: http://www.baseballthinkfactory.org/..._2002-07-04_0/

But I still don't think they are necessarily connected. I don't think the MLB season is 192 days long.