Salary Cap and Ridiculous CPU Spending---Max Contract Sorely Needed!!

Matter2003 · 07-31-2006, 12:44 AM

I am using the El Paso Diablos of the American Association(Indy League), which has a $100,000 salary cap limit. I am currently in my first offseason, and something is not right. Players have been brought up from the Reserves, but still have no major league contract, and are on active rosters, but still have a minor league contract. Many of the CPU controlled teams are spending ridiculous amounts of money on single players. For instance, a team just signed a player to a 1-year $67,000 contract,

effectively taking up 67% of the cap on 1 player. Since all of the other players they have on their roster, except like 1 or 2 still have minor league contracts, they decided they could spend all this money on one player.

Something is not right here---no GM in their right mind would spend 67% of their cap on one player, nor should they be able to. There should be a Max Contract Box on the league setup screen, which would limit the maximum contract you could give a player(which would prevent this sort of thing from happening). For instance, I would probably set the Max Contract for this league to $18,000(18%), which means no team would be able to sign a player to a contract worth more than $18,000 per year(including bonuses).

What it would not fix, however is the fact there are 20 players on their active roster that still have no cap figure, that SHOULD have a cap figure(they should not still have minor league contracts). The minimum league contract I believe is around $2500, so even if all these players were at the minimum, it would come out to roughly $50,000, which would be half their cap. The only thing I can think of is that these contracts don't roll over until the season starts, and since I am still in the offseason, they have not been given Major League Contracts yet.

If that is the case, then one of two things needs to happen:

1) Players are given major league contracts immediately upon being put on the active roster(the easiest method).

2) the CPU factors in how many players on the active roster still have minor league contracts, and subtracts their total $ amount from their available cap number.

Either one of these methods would work, but obviously something is not working right here---having only $2700 for player payroll, but having 22 players on the actuve roster(21 with minor league contracts), and then spending a ridiculous amount for 1 player, not taking into account the other players on the team who will eventually have to have a major league contract is not a successful method to use for leagues with salary cap restrictions...

Please look into this one!!

Matter2003

endgame · 07-31-2006, 02:27 AM

I'm barely holding my eyes open right now, Matter, but I'll say before I get a chance to look at this again, part of the issue may be related to the ST and/or pre-season period. The game suspends the contract rules enabling you to bring up players for ST, then assigns the contracts once ST ends. As I said though, I'll try to take a look tomorrow night when I get home. Food for thought for now.

tysok · 07-31-2006, 09:55 AM

What are your normal contract numbers? If you have a cap of 100,000 then your normal contracts should be scaled appropriately, otherwise who knows what could happen. If you want a max contract of 18,000 then your normal superstar salary should probably be about 16,000 (just guessing, never looked at this specifically). Star should be like 13 or 14 thousand, down to the scrub player making almost minimum. Those norms are how you control the financial contracts, if you confuse it by saying your superstars could make 50 grand, but there's a 100 thousand salary cap... then the computer has to decide which number it should use....... and you never, never want to let a computer try to decide which command it should listen to and which it should ignore, 90% of the time a computer makes the wrong decision.

This looks like it may be a case of your normal contract for superstar players not being scaled appropriately. The game not assigning ML contracts to palyers until the regular season is a good thing, otherwise players on spring training trials would mess with the budget more than it should which would result in the dreaded "unrealistic" tag rearing it's ugly head... but at the same time the game should (and I've not actually seen it not) take into account that those guys WILL have to be paid if they stay for the regular season.

JinAZ · 07-31-2006, 11:15 PM

I don't agree with the maximum contract thing being a fix, but the financial system does seem to need some adjusting.

Example: I have a 30-team fictional MLB league. Salary cap set to $100 million (to try to keep things sane), superstar defined @ $15 million, star @ 10 million. Current payrolls in my newest league, after ~3 years of simming, range from 34 million to 99 million (median $82 million). High player salary is $30 million, with everyone in the top-25 making over $18 million. The $30 million salary was signed in the first offseason, but just this past offseason at least 5 players signed for more than $20 million, and went as high as $25 million.

Were it not for the salary cap, things would be even worse, because the budgets of 11 teams is over $100 million. Market sizes vary from 3 to 10, but even market size=3 teams can have an $80 million dollar budget because of merchandising, which I have little control over aside from editing the previous years' manually...which isn't practical in a long-term simulation playstyle. -jinaz

tysok · 08-01-2006, 12:45 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JinAZ

I don't agree with the maximum contract thing being a fix, but the financial system does seem to need some adjusting.

Example: I have a 30-team fictional MLB league. Salary cap set to $100 million (to try to keep things sane), superstar defined @ $15 million, star @ 10 million. Current payrolls in my newest league, after ~3 years of simming, range from 34 million to 99 million (median $82 million). High player salary is $30 million, with everyone in the top-25 making over $18 million. The $30 million salary was signed in the first offseason, but just this past offseason at least 5 players signed for more than $20 million, and went as high as $25 million.

Were it not for the salary cap, things would be even worse, because the budgets of 11 teams is over $100 million. Market sizes vary from 3 to 10, but even market size=3 teams can have an $80 million dollar budget because of merchandising, which I have little control over aside from editing the previous years' manually...which isn't practical in a long-term simulation playstyle. -jinaz

With that information, I'd say there's a bit of a problem. The average contract amounts for the different levels of players should keep things in line, I gather that's what it's supposed to do and the purpose of it's existence. It shouldn't be a firm number of course, bidding on a player could make it go higher or lower... but it definately shouldn't deviate from that average by doubling it.

Matter2003 · 08-01-2006, 08:31 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tysok

With that information, I'd say there's a bit of a problem. The average contract amounts for the different levels of players should keep things in line, I gather that's what it's supposed to do and the purpose of it's existence. It shouldn't be a firm number of course, bidding on a player could make it go higher or lower... but it definately shouldn't deviate from that average by doubling it.

Tysok, the supestar contract is right around 12,000-13,000...I am running the MLB2006V3.1 universe...there are some major issues with the cap and the calculation of payroll during the offseason(namely that any minor leaguers called up during the offseason don't figure into the payroll).

Perhaps the max contract idea should be optional, as some leagues do have max contracts(NBA and NHL), but some don't. This would be more of a workaround fix for the AI than an actual fix. The bigger problem is that free agents who would never sign with unaffiliated minor independent leagues are still signing with them.

Either way, this is something that needs to be looked into bigtime, as the salary cap is basically no use if teams are going to sign players to ridiculous contracts and not factor in minor leaguers with minor league contracts sitting on their rosters that will have major league contracts when the season begins.

Matter2003

tysok · 08-01-2006, 11:56 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Matter2003

Tysok, the supestar contract is right around 12,000-13,000...I am running the MLB2006V3.1 universe...there are some major issues with the cap and the calculation of payroll during the offseason(namely that any minor leaguers called up during the offseason don't figure into the payroll).

Perhaps the max contract idea should be optional, as some leagues do have max contracts(NBA and NHL), but some don't. This would be more of a workaround fix for the AI than an actual fix. The bigger problem is that free agents who would never sign with unaffiliated minor independent leagues are still signing with them.

Either way, this is something that needs to be looked into bigtime, as the salary cap is basically no use if teams are going to sign players to ridiculous contracts and not factor in minor leaguers with minor league contracts sitting on their rosters that will have major league contracts when the season begins.

Matter2003

I've never seen the problem, I don't play with a salary cap so never had reason to go looking for it. Obviously it is a problem. I don't think there needs to be a max contract, although that would fix it as a work around with the AI... personally I think it just needs to look at the average contracts you've specified and stop doubling it.
Those options should be enough to keep your finances in line with the league and everything should be somewhat fine... but it apparently isn't caring what your normal superstar salary should be, and just going insane on some guys.

Also it doesn't seem the AI is very good at dealing with salary caps... what really seems stupid is in JinAZ's post he says he has a 100 million cap, but some teams have a budget over 100 million....
I've not seen the AI have problems with the budget, but obviously it does with the cap... maybe it's because the max budget for a team in a salary cap league should be (drum roll please) the SALARY CAP!

Anyhow, Matter... could the budget be a problem wih the team who has this big salary player? Maybe it has such a huge budget that it says "Great I can sign this guy ridiculously high at 67 grand" but forgets to look at the bottom line that says he can't spend more than 100 grand?

Just trying to help nail down the problem since there's only (I think) one tech support guy who's not on vacation right now. Seems the whole OOTP world has gone on vacation... which reminds me, why aren't YOU on vacation Matter?

Matter2003 · 08-01-2006, 08:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tysok

Just trying to help nail down the problem since there's only (I think) one tech support guy who's not on vacation right now. Seems the whole OOTP world has gone on vacation... which reminds me, why aren't YOU on vacation Matter?

Hehehe...I'd love to go on vacation, but I have a scheduler to finish building!!!

Matter2003

battists · 08-22-2006, 12:20 AM

Hi guys, sorry for the delay in getting to this. Unfortunately, it's a little over my head. Is there any chance we can distill this down to a pretty simple description of the issue?

Carplos · 08-22-2006, 01:18 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by battists

Hi guys, sorry for the delay in getting to this. Unfortunately, it's a little over my head. Is there any chance we can distill this down to a pretty simple description of the issue?

The AI handling of salary cap space is pretty terrible.

In addition, players added to the active roster in the off-season (or Spring Training) don't get major league contracts. Thus, in leagues with salary caps (it also affects leagues without salary caps, though) teams have more open space than they should.

I realize the non-contract thing was put in so all players don't get major league contracts when called up for Spring Training, but the problem is players don't receive major league contracts even if they're on the active roster at the beginnning of the season, Spring Training or not.

Perhaps it should work in reverse and they should get the contracts when put on the active roster, and have it removed if they're not on the active roster opening day (as long as they have a minimum contract, anyway)?

Markus Heinsohn · 08-23-2006, 05:00 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Carplos

I realize the non-contract thing was put in so all players don't get major league contracts when called up for Spring Training, but the problem is players don't receive major league contracts even if they're on the active roster at the beginnning of the season, Spring Training or not.

The players do get major league contracts after the first day of the season.

Anyway, I tweaked the AI so that it handles minor league contracts on the active roster as minimum MLB contracts in its calculations.

Carplos · 08-23-2006, 05:59 AM

Quote:

The players do get major league contracts after the first day of the season.

Er, not that questioning the coder is something I particularly want to do, but can anyone else confirm this?

In my leagues, players called up to the active roster during the off-season or spring training and are still on it come opening day don't receive major league contracts at all unless they get sent down and recalled at some point.

I'll look at some more to be sure...

Markus Heinsohn · 08-23-2006, 07:14 AM

Sim Opening Day... after it, all players on the active roster have MLB contracts.

07-31-2006, 12:44 AM	#1
Matter2003 All Star Starter Join Date: Jun 2004 Location: In the vicinity of Buffalo,NY Posts: 1,634	Salary Cap and Ridiculous CPU Spending---Max Contract Sorely Needed!! I am using the El Paso Diablos of the American Association(Indy League), which has a $100,000 salary cap limit. I am currently in my first offseason, and something is not right. Players have been brought up from the Reserves, but still have no major league contract, and are on active rosters, but still have a minor league contract. Many of the CPU controlled teams are spending ridiculous amounts of money on single players. For instance, a team just signed a player to a 1-year $67,000 contract, effectively taking up 67% of the cap on 1 player. Since all of the other players they have on their roster, except like 1 or 2 still have minor league contracts, they decided they could spend all this money on one player. Something is not right here---no GM in their right mind would spend 67% of their cap on one player, nor should they be able to. There should be a Max Contract Box on the league setup screen, which would limit the maximum contract you could give a player(which would prevent this sort of thing from happening). For instance, I would probably set the Max Contract for this league to $18,000(18%), which means no team would be able to sign a player to a contract worth more than $18,000 per year(including bonuses). What it would not fix, however is the fact there are 20 players on their active roster that still have no cap figure, that SHOULD have a cap figure(they should not still have minor league contracts). The minimum league contract I believe is around $2500, so even if all these players were at the minimum, it would come out to roughly $50,000, which would be half their cap. The only thing I can think of is that these contracts don't roll over until the season starts, and since I am still in the offseason, they have not been given Major League Contracts yet. If that is the case, then one of two things needs to happen: 1) Players are given major league contracts immediately upon being put on the active roster(the easiest method). 2) the CPU factors in how many players on the active roster still have minor league contracts, and subtracts their total $ amount from their available cap number. Either one of these methods would work, but obviously something is not working right here---having only $2700 for player payroll, but having 22 players on the actuve roster(21 with minor league contracts), and then spending a ridiculous amount for 1 player, not taking into account the other players on the team who will eventually have to have a major league contract is not a successful method to use for leagues with salary cap restrictions... Please look into this one!! Matter2003 __________________ Goal Line Stand Football---An Open Source Project Check us out on the Git Hub Pages: Goal-Line-Stand-Football Last edited by Matter2003; 07-31-2006 at 12:48 AM.

07-31-2006, 02:27 AM	#2
endgame Hall Of Famer Join Date: Aug 2002 Posts: 16,842	I'm barely holding my eyes open right now, Matter, but I'll say before I get a chance to look at this again, part of the issue may be related to the ST and/or pre-season period. The game suspends the contract rules enabling you to bring up players for ST, then assigns the contracts once ST ends. As I said though, I'll try to take a look tomorrow night when I get home. Food for thought for now. __________________ "Try again. Fail again. Fail better." -- Samuel Beckett _____________________________________________

07-31-2006, 09:55 AM	#3
tysok Hall Of Famer Join Date: Aug 2003 Posts: 4,925	What are your normal contract numbers? If you have a cap of 100,000 then your normal contracts should be scaled appropriately, otherwise who knows what could happen. If you want a max contract of 18,000 then your normal superstar salary should probably be about 16,000 (just guessing, never looked at this specifically). Star should be like 13 or 14 thousand, down to the scrub player making almost minimum. Those norms are how you control the financial contracts, if you confuse it by saying your superstars could make 50 grand, but there's a 100 thousand salary cap... then the computer has to decide which number it should use....... and you never, never want to let a computer try to decide which command it should listen to and which it should ignore, 90% of the time a computer makes the wrong decision. This looks like it may be a case of your normal contract for superstar players not being scaled appropriately. The game not assigning ML contracts to palyers until the regular season is a good thing, otherwise players on spring training trials would mess with the budget more than it should which would result in the dreaded "unrealistic" tag rearing it's ugly head... but at the same time the game should (and I've not actually seen it not) take into account that those guys WILL have to be paid if they stay for the regular season.

07-31-2006, 11:15 PM	#4
JinAZ Minors (Single A) Join Date: Dec 2005 Posts: 95	I don't agree with the maximum contract thing being a fix, but the financial system does seem to need some adjusting. Example: I have a 30-team fictional MLB league. Salary cap set to $100 million (to try to keep things sane), superstar defined @ $15 million, star @ 10 million. Current payrolls in my newest league, after ~3 years of simming, range from 34 million to 99 million (median $82 million). High player salary is $30 million, with everyone in the top-25 making over $18 million. The $30 million salary was signed in the first offseason, but just this past offseason at least 5 players signed for more than $20 million, and went as high as $25 million. Were it not for the salary cap, things would be even worse, because the budgets of 11 teams is over $100 million. Market sizes vary from 3 to 10, but even market size=3 teams can have an $80 million dollar budget because of merchandising, which I have little control over aside from editing the previous years' manually...which isn't practical in a long-term simulation playstyle. -jinaz

08-22-2006, 12:20 AM	#9
battists Hall Of Famer Join Date: Jul 2004 Posts: 18,506	Hi guys, sorry for the delay in getting to this. Unfortunately, it's a little over my head. Is there any chance we can distill this down to a pretty simple description of the issue?

08-23-2006, 07:14 AM	#13
Markus Heinsohn Developer OOTP Join Date: Dec 2001 Location: Germany Posts: 24,803	Sim Opening Day... after it, all players on the active roster have MLB contracts.