Online League Free Agency: Let's Improve It

[Buane]

Online League Free Agency is just plain broken and there's really no way around saying that out loud anymore. It's broken and it's getting worse. After seasons upon seasons of putting up with the system's quirkiness and even changing the league structure to accommodate OOTP's AI flaws, I come bearing potential solutions that I hope can be seriously considered.


The Problem: Wholly unrealistic Free Agent Demands prevent teams from making players offers and signing perfectly legitimate players.


The Background:: This has been a problem for some time, but for the sake of being able to recall facts with confidence, I'll only go as far back as OOTP9 which is when the Online League that I run was started.

The issue, at its core, is simply that OOTP appears to ignore a variety of factors when assigning player "demands" during Free Agency. Perhaps "ignore" is not the right word for all such situations, but I would say at best it is "unpredictably caring" on a player-by-player basis.

Now, the way that one would assume Free Agency be built is that the game identifies "similar" players - this could be done by looking at players currently under contract or looking at a database of what previous players have received in free agency, or even some kind of amalgamation of both. In this way you'd have a financial system that at first is a construct of the league settings, but over time would grow into a personalized representation of the financial tendencies of your league as a whole - much in the same way a Free Market system would.

If you've ever played an OOTP league, I don't have to tell you that this is not how Free Agency works. Back in OOTP9, we started to see a lot of good, but flawed players (strong offensive first basemen, injury prone starting pitchers, over-talented under-performing youngsters) go completely unsigned over the course of free agency. Why was this happening? It's not as if these players were bad or worthless. They were good, sometimes borderline-excellent players, but come Opening day they'd still be teamless.

Well, what was happening is that their demands were way, way out of whack with what any GM was comfortable giving them. Say there was an injury-prone SP in free agency who had the potential to be very good if he could stay healthy. The kind of guy who sounds like he'd be worth the risk on a one or possibly two year deal at six or seven million? Unfortunately he'd be demanding seven years at $23 million per. Since players in OOTP won't even listen to your offer if it's too far off what they are demanding, nobody would sign him and he'd go retire at the end of the year despite having plenty of baseball left in him. It was bad for the league and it was bad for the storyline.

Now a couple things to note about this scenario.

First, in our financial settings section, the "Superstar" player level was set at around $15 million. This still led to demands far, far above that level by players who obviously should have been ranked a level or two below "superstar." I'm not sure what good these settings are when the game still seems to make up its own financial base.

Second, yes, the player demands will come down as free agency moves along. Unfortunately, no GM wants to wait around to find out that MAYBE the player will eventually accept a more reasonable offer and MAYBE I can make the best offer at that point in time. No, the GMs are going to go out and fill that roster spot with a different player instead of risking getting burned and being able to land nobody at all.

So we basically experienced two scenarios:

Player has priced himself completely out of the market, signs with nobody, demands do not lower enough and he spends the entire season as a free agent.

Player has priced himself completely out of the market initially, later his demands lower and he is signed at the end of Free Agency for LESS money than he would have received if he would have had more reasonable demands at the beginning.

Neither of these scenarios really make for a fun experience.


And OOTP13 Makes it Worse: After converting to OOTP13 last season (we skipped OOTP12, so maybe what I'm about to talk about carried over from that version) we're finishing up our first OOTP13 free agent season and the reviews are not good. It seems a new feature of Free Agency is that some players will collect a number of contract offers and leave them all "pending" for a number of weeks before finally making a decision to sign. They make that decision without allowing any of the other teams a chance to up their offer.

In a world where you can't make free agent offers in excess of your budget, this means that if you've got a contract offer out there on the player you want for $15 million, that's $15 million you've got tied up in a guy who might not respond to your offer for three or four weeks, and when he does respond it's to tell you he has already signed with another team. Whoops.

Now, maybe this is all intentional. Maybe the argument in favor of all of this is that it's realistic, it's sometimes how free agency in real life works, it's unpredictable and you can't rely on landing free agents, etc. But it's not fun, it really handicaps GMs in Online Leagues, or forces them to make really bad financial moves, and even if this is the intended design then I'd just say there's really no good reason to try and emulate a broken and frustrating system.

Basically, in conjunction with the larger issue I already laid out above, Free Agency in our Online League is quickly becoming untenable.


The Solution: But, of course, I come prepared with ways this could be fixed!

Option A: OOTP AI is improved to the point where it no longer creates unreasonable demands for free agents and prices them in an accurate range so that GMs can feel comfortable submitting offers and including them in their offseason plans.

Knowing nothing about how easily OOTP player evaluation AI could be improved, this is not an ideal immediate solution as it surely would not see the light of day until a later version. Ideally, something along the lines of what I mentioned above, where it compares current player contracts and/or the last few seasons of free agent signings for comparable players.


Option B: An "Online League Free Agency" mode is added that, when enabled, removes the "minimum" that a contract offer must hit before a free agent will consider the contract offer.

The Free Agent's demands stay at 7 years & $23 million per, but now he'll actually listen and hold on to your offer of 2 years @ $6 million. Perhaps the farther away your offer is from his demand equates to a longer time he'll sit on your offer before signing, but at least with this mode you'll be able to submit the offer you think is reasonable and the player will consider and can eventually sign it.


Option C: Allow the Commissioner to edit the Free Agent contract demands of players.

This is the band-aid option, as it technically fixes absolutely nothing...but at the very least it allows the Commissioner of an online league to target the silly demands and bring them in line with reality. Even if that demand gets re-set too low, the GMs will be able to bid on the player successfully and drive the price back up to the market level.


Sideoption D: Have an Online League setting that mandates players NOT sign for at least X days after accepting a new leading offer.

This would address the 'newer' issue of players not responding to their contract offers, and then suddenly accepting terms with a team. In my league we run sims of 5 days during the first parts of the offseason, so in my case I would set this variable to something like 11 days in order to make sure there was an opportunity for actual competition for players to take place.


In my opinion, Options B and D would really be the ideal solutions to these problems. It would turn Free Agency into the Free Market that it really should be. If Option B is too complicated or would require waiting for a future version of the game, I think Option C is really worth considering as well to at least allow leagues some measure of their own control. We'd like to play the game our way.


And, yes, I know sideoption is not a word.

[subtle]

Originally Posted by Buane

words.

I just want to add that this is not a league in which all GMs are overly frugal. We've just had a few GMs sign international free agents to very expensive multi-year contracts in spite of the fact that they have less-than-reliable stats to go off of and we're in a league where you can't see current ratings.

Like Buane said, it seems like the problem is that some factor in the free agents' logic is telling them to demand exorbitant sums of money.

In real life, there are players who will sit out rather than take an offer for less than they're worth but that almost always happens with veterans who would like to play with a certain number of teams or get paid a good deal of money to keep playing like Derrek Lee or Roy Oswalt. We're actually dealing with players who are in some of their prime years who are retiring because nobody wants to come close to their ridiculous demands.

[eriqjaffe]

Generally, I've noticed that as free agency goes on, demands get lower, and players will often accept offers that are below their stated demands.

The problem seems to be that nobody's willing to make lowball offers in the first place, so players sit there not getting any offers at all.

[McExpos]

Originally Posted by Buane

words

I have logged into my OOTPDev account for the first time since freaking 2005 to say that these are very good suggestions and would be incredibly helpful for online leagues.

Do it, or I swear to God, I won't log into my OOTPDev account for another 7 years, and you'll be sorry then.

[hluraven]

I see this in online leagues with too much money, but not in well run online leagues that have low cash max or have reduced revenue in some way.

Leagues that start off allowing high cash maximum and/or allow GMs to void starting bad contracts etc tend to swim in money, and players sign for stupid money. Other FAs demand the same and some get it, make the problem worse. The solution is to have less money in the league as otherwise someone will pay the FAs and (realistically) they will all ask for the moon.

[Jontler]

Originally Posted by hluraven

I see this in online leagues with too much money, but not in well run online leagues that have low cash max or have reduced revenue in some way.

I would be thrilled if this would get taken seriously, and not automatically attributed to some kind of mismanagement by a commissioner. Even presuming that finances get totally and completely out of whack (which is not true and I am not willing to grant), the pending free agent issue with tied up money, no responses, and no real control to work with online leagues is a real problem.

This problem cannot be addressed by hand-waving it away with the status quo.

[Sabermetric Baseball]

Is this for the Rising Stars league linked in Buane's signature?

I see multiple teams in there have $100 million Cash, which is unusually high (especially since the highest *budget* in the league is only $125 million). I've noticed OOTP FA demands go awry if there's excessive amounts of available cash in the league.

Just as a test, try creating a copy of the league with all of the available cash values dropped down to $0. I bet the FA demands become a lot more reasonable after the change.

I'm in four leagues right now (League of Dreams, NIBA, MLB2012, and SBS) and the FA demands haven't been a problem at all. But I believe all of these use max cashes around $10 million not $100 million.

Seems like the main OOTP problem is just for this one scenario - how available cash influences FA expectations.

[The Wolf]

Too much cash on hand ==> outrageous FA demands

[SandMan]

nm

EDIT:OOPS noticed that The Wolf beat me to the solution to the problem.

[Jontler]

Originally Posted by The Wolf

Too much cash on hand ==> outrageous FA demands

I fail to see how this addresses anything else in Buane's post.

Let's break it down in a different way. What I'm hearing is "if your cash on hand strays above X, then things get weird and free agents ask for a boatload of money."

What that really means, though, is that OOTP is really designed around one type of league structure. That's the league structure where all teams keep their payrolls right around their budgets, and nobody stores up any kind of cash reserves.

Interestingly enough, when people instead of computers are put in charge of teams, this is not how things always work out. Some teams tank. Some teams dump contracts midseason and end up with a big surplus at the end of the year. Some teams pick up said bad contracts and go way in the red. Some act like dunces, completely ignore the game for all of free agency because something is going on, and suddenly pick it back up again when spring training starts with 50 million in budget room and no free agents left. The point here is that people do different things, and that is both expected and ok.

OOTP, though, is basing free agent demands on an algorithm or the state of the league. I understand that, and certainly get it, but the point here is that it's pretty clearly putting too much emphasis on cash on hand and not enough on budgets. Budgets are the ultimate payroll constraint. I can have 100 million in cash on hand, but that doesn't mean I can sign 3 guys to 24 million/year deals because I will be in the red so fast it'll make your head spin if the budget itself is stuck at 105 million. Moreover, multi-year deals of that scale are out of the question because those are based on budget. 8 year, 24 million AAV demands from mediocre corner outfielders are not reasonable in that kind of league.

These things almost certainly are not problems in offline leagues. Buane is asking for some minor changes or measures of control. Something special, specific to online leagues, to allow the commissioner some modicum of control over the situation in order to prevent things from spinning completely out of control.

None of this even addresses the issue of free agents quick-signing without giving the option to another team to sign, a problem that is very specific to online, or extremely long 'pending' scenarios where money is unusable because it's a pending contract.

ETA: Modifying the max cash on hand is the ultimate cop-out avoid-the-problem 'solution'. We can be better.

[SandMan]

Originally Posted by Jontler

Let's break it down in a different way. What I'm hearing is "if your cash on hand strays above X, then things get weird and free agents ask for a boatload of money."

Exactly. If cash is available the FA will want their share of it. This causes a rise in the players demand.

GMs also need to watch their financials closer and not get over the budget. It is not a problem with the game, it is more a problem in how the GMs are spending and going over the budget putting more teams in the red.

[Sabermetric Baseball]

Originally Posted by Jontler

OOTP, though, is basing free agent demands on an algorithm or the state of the league. I understand that, and certainly get it, but the point here is that it's pretty clearly putting too much emphasis on cash on hand and not enough on budgets. Budgets are the ultimate payroll constraint.

Exactly - people are agreeing that there's a problem, but disagreeing on the scope.

You should be able to set a $100 million max cash without it blowing FA demands beyond the thresholds assigned in the league settings. That is a flaw, and I don't think anyone's disputing it.

However, the flaw is limited to this one scenario in which there's unusually excessive amounts of available cash in the league. There is no flaw with "normal" settings.

The problem is "FA demands are too high when there's fantastically high amounts of available cash", the problem is not "FA demands are always too high".

[McExpos]

Originally Posted by SandMan

Exactly. If cash is available the FA will want their share of it. This causes a rise in the players demand.

Wait, but if the other owners aren't allowed to see each other's finances, why are players possessing this mythical knowledge of cash on hand?

[Bluenoser]

The way it works is, and this straight from the horses mouth (Markus), it's supply and demand. If your league has plenty of $$$, then players will ask for plenty of $$$ in FA.

You need to lower league revenue and, as stated above, teams with $100M cash are hurting you. Even if you have, say for example, a 24 team league and 8 - 10 of those teams have lots of money and the rest have some or none, it matters not. If the league as a whole is well off financially, you can expect high FA demands. There are plenty of ways to bring this under control, starting with things like cash max, media revenue, ticket prices, etc.

The prosposed ideas for correcting receive a strong NO vote from me. I have played in online OOTP leagues since it was possible to do so. It is up to the Commish and owners to get their revenue flow under control, otherwise you're going to continue getting high FA demands.

Option A is handled by controlling league revenues.

Options B,C, and D, if implemented, would be a deal breaker for me if they weren't optional.

Modifying cash on hand is not a cop out either, get your financial house in order, same as real GM's have to or expect high demands to continue. The programmer should not be required to program financials so online leagues can protect themselves from themselves, that is up to you as a league to police. That is why financials are editable, so you can control them.

And just to correct sabremetrics statement, which is on the right track, FA demands are high when league revenue is high, not just when cash is high.

[McExpos]

I'm new to OOTPDev (well, not really, but I honestly only did post twice back in 2005 and forgot I had an account until today), but are all of the answers to questions, "Your GM screwed up"?

Honest question.

[Tavarin]

Originally Posted by Jontler

None of this even addresses the issue of free agents quick-signing without giving the option to another team to sign, a problem that is very specific to online, or extremely long 'pending' scenarios where money is unusable because it's a pending contract.

It's pretty amazing that everyone keeps ignoring this part of the situation, as it is a huge problem for online leagues that don't sim one day at a time. There was a player in this offseason who had pending offers for three weeks from at least 3 different teams, but then made his final decision just one day after replying to any of the teams, which made counter-offers impossible.

[OutS|der]

Originally Posted by Jontler

These things almost certainly are not problems in offline leagues. Buane is asking for some minor changes or measures of control. Something special, specific to online leagues, to allow the commissioner some modicum of control over the situation in order to prevent things from spinning completely out of control.

Yes let's change the whole way FA works just to suit the online players.


The quick signing is realistic so learn to deal with it. I'm sure players do that all the time so they should in OOTP to. If i was a team and i knew the player would just back to all the other teams bidding and tell them how much and how long i was offering i kinda would put a stop to it. I'm sure the agents will tell a team there are other offers so you will have to up yours but then they will also quick sign if the deal comes along to. Just because the league you are in sims days at a time shouldn't mean that a feature is changed just to suit you. It could be looked at to see if it needs to be toned down but leave it in, it's realistic and that should be all that matters for the most part.

The injury prone SP should lower their demands after awhile, well any player who sits in FA should lower their demands after awhile or at least well before the retire. Though if they are retireing then he can't be very young so i would expect that 37 year old to be more stubborn then a 25 year old. So i don't know what the real problem is.
Your two scenarios:

Player has priced himself completely out of the market, signs with nobody, demands do not lower enough and he spends the entire season as a free agent.

Player has priced himself completely out of the market initially, later his demands lower and he is signed at the end of Free Agency for LESS money than he would have received if he would have had more reasonable demands at the beginning.

That's how it works, the first one can happen though it all depends on how often, so that does and should happen. And the second part is how it works. He demands lower later because he couldn't get the first offer then signs for less money because if sometimes a team will sign a player for less later because they can. So what is the problem when this happens?

Option A What you see as unreasonable you will find many who find it reasonable, as you can tell just from this thread.

Option B Do we know that there is a "minimum" that a contract offer must hit before a free agent will consider the contract offer?
Ignoreing the option only for Online, that is a pretty good suggestion and should be something to look into.

Option C can be done now, have the teams make the offers to the commish then edit the player and contract onto the team, you obviously have an amount in mind the player is worth so it is doable.

Option D Again why just online? how about we improve the game for everyone and not just the Online?


I really wish this game gets separated in 3 games one day, so the online players can have their game work for them, the historical players can replay history to their delight and i don't have to listen and suffer though the game being changed because it didn't suit one persons style of play.

[Jontler]

Originally Posted by Sabermetric Baseball

You should be able to set a $100 million max cash without it blowing FA demands beyond the thresholds assigned in the league settings. That is a flaw, and I don't think anyone's disputing it.

I thought this sounded overly optimistic.

Originally Posted by OutS|der

Yes let's change the whole way FA works just to suit the online players.

[SandMan]

Before stating that something is broken in the way that OOTP plays in Online leagues can we get an idea of how many leagues this actually affects. If the number is just a few then the issue is GM related not a game issue. All leagues should know that anytime you mess with the default settings that you may have weird results.

Also online leagues should have sim by the day in the offseason when the FA are accepting offers. This will allow for counter offers if the player you are going after likes the contract of another team.

[Buane]

Let's not oversimplify the problem. The issue I'm talking about is not "All Free Agents Want Too Much Money" which I suppose, as some as you have pointed out, can be tied to available cash on hand. The problem is that there are a handful of free agents who are laughably unrealistic about their demands.

Who's going to give a guy an 8-year deal off of three elbow surgeries in two years?

Who's going to shell out $25 mil for the 1B/DH when NO other 1B/DH in the league makes more than $10 mil?

The majority of Free Agents have reasonable, meetable demands. If the problem was cash on hand, I would think everybody's demands would be off the charts.



Additionally, I'm not trying to ruin anybody else's league, that's why I asked for a checkbox or some kind of option that can be turned on. The flaws in the bidding system are overshadowed in a solo league because the AI for the other teams obviously will agree with the AI that's setting the player demands. In an online league, the GMs should be the ones setting the market for players, that's the only point I wanted to make.


And, I'm sorry, but the fact that you can't even get a player to talk to you if you offer him a $14 million dollar contract on Day 1 of the offseason, but that same player will happily sign a $6 million dollar contract on Day 90 of the offseason isn't a problem that anybody in any league would be interested in fixing?

If there was a financial setting that allowed players to "listen to" and "hold on" to any contract offer, you'd have a much more logical free agent system.