International FA Discovery/Signing Question

[JMDurron]

From the Road to Release e-mail I just received, the following is in the description of the International Free Agent Discovery And Signing Period:

This feature is fully customizable and you can set both the date the draft pool is revealed and the number of players that become available. Be prepared, however, to put your accountant hat on because the best of these free agents are likely to come with hefty signing bonus demands. And even though this is OOTP, not all of us go around pretending our name is George Steinbrenner, so you'll likely want to take the time to plan out your spending because there's a preset spending cap.

Is the preset spending cap a part of the customizable options, or no? I ask because if the number of players is customizable, but the spending cap is not, then there will be a larger proportion of penalized teams and/or unsigned players as a result. It's workable either way, I was just curious.

[Bluenoser]

Originally Posted by JMDurron

From the Road to Release e-mail I just received, the following is in the description of the International Free Agent Discovery And Signing Period:



Is the preset spending cap a part of the customizable options, or no? I ask because if the number of players is customizable, but the spending cap is not, then there will be a larger proportion of penalized teams and/or unsigned players as a result. It's workable either way, I was just curious.

I guess that depends on if the players demands will rise or not based on the amount of players.

Eg: Cap = $5M

Players = 25

If you lower amount of players to 20, and still have $5M cap, will the players sit down and figure out that hey - there's only 20 of us and $25M, we can ask for more. Or are their demands more along the lines of slot bonus type, and value depends on ability?

[JMDurron]

Well, if that's an option, then the question becomes a two-parter.

1) Is the Cap customizable?

2) If not, do the players dynamically scale their demands to the league cap level, a la cash available for MLB teams in free agency?

[JMDurron]

Bumping since Markus seems to be on a question answering streak right now.

[JMDurron]

Still would like an answer to these questions, please.

[JMDurron]

Hi there!

[Cras]

I was just wondering about this myself, since there was a time (as in before last off-season) where there was no such cap. Or if there was, I was not aware and thus I assume the penalties were not nearly as server as they are now where teams actually pay attention to them.

[Markus Heinsohn]

Originally Posted by JMDurron

Well, if that's an option, then the question becomes a two-parter.

1) Is the Cap customizable?

2) If not, do the players dynamically scale their demands to the league cap level, a la cash available for MLB teams in free agency?

Yes, it is customizable.

[JMDurron]

Originally Posted by Markus Heinsohn

Yes, it is customizable.

I was hoping that this was the case, thank you for the response.

Out of curiosity, do players scale their demands relative to the cap, or are the cap and player demands not coupled? I could understand it being implemented either way.

[Markus Heinsohn]

Sorry, I spoke too soon... I somehow missed adding it. Will be part of the first patch, though.

[flaquis010285]

Will be possible to export existing players into the International FA process? (eg. Ichiro or Darvish migrating from Japanese pro ball)

[Markus Heinsohn]

Originally Posted by flaquis010285

Will be possible to export existing players into the International FA process? (eg. Ichiro or Darvish migrating from Japanese pro ball)

No, established international FA are handled like normal free agents. The international amateur free agents are all game-generated very young players.

[Lukas Berger]

Originally Posted by Markus Heinsohn

No, established international FA are handled like normal free agents. The international amateur free agents are all game-generated very young players.

We will be adding some of the real July 2nd int. free agents to the MLB roster set too. They won't be in the initial roster, but you'll likely see them show up in an update.

[flaquis010285]

Originally Posted by Markus Heinsohn

No, established international FA are handled like normal free agents. The international amateur free agents are all game-generated very young players.

Surely I didn't said clearly: suppose I had a Japan-based league and I setup my US league's teams for bidding to the best of that Japan leaguers (mimicking the real MLB setup).

[blasek0]

Would it be possible to see the option to turn the penalties (and the cap) off for international players, similar to how it was pre-2012, where a team could spend whatever it wanted? Have the players base their demands off of team revenues or something in that case, so players demands are roughly in line with what teams can actually afford to pay them.

Setting the cap to absurd numbers to "turn off" the penalties only results in players demanding insane amounts of money that teams can't actually spend. For example, I set the cap to 2.147 billion, and the top players are demanding 2 billion+, even though the top revenue team in this fictional world has a 194 million total budget.

[JMDurron]

Originally Posted by blasek0

Would it be possible to see the option to turn the penalties (and the cap) off for international players, similar to how it was pre-2012, where a team could spend whatever it wanted? Have the players base their demands off of team revenues or something in that case, so players demands are roughly in line with what teams can actually afford to pay them.

Setting the cap to absurd numbers to "turn off" the penalties only results in players demanding insane amounts of money that teams can't actually spend. For example, I set the cap to 2.147 billion, and the top players are demanding 2 billion+, even though the top revenue team in this fictional world has a 194 million total budget.

This is what I was afraid of when I originally asked the question. In order to simulate different eras of player acquisition, there needs to be a way to scale/eliminate this cap while keeping the international FA known finds.

[blasek0]

I completely agree with you.

[JMDurron]

It seems that this may not be a high-demand item. Anyone else interested in this as a potential issue, or does it fall into the "mild preference of a couple outliers" bucket?