Free agency issues with latest patch?

[Habsfan18]

I made a few threads in the bugs report forum after my free agency experiences with the lastest patch.

Have you guys noticed any odd free agency behaviour?

In my test files:

- Many good position players are spending entire seasons in free agency rather than signing with clubs. They eventually bring their demands way down and teams still aren't interested. This is mainly affecting position players. I wondered if it was an age thing, as players 35+ are getting absolutely no interest from clubs, even if they're coming off MVP type seasons and they're still rated among the top players in the game. I understand teams not wanting to commit long term big money deals to older players, but even when they're requesting 1-2 year deals, teams are still not interested. But even not considering the age thing, players 28-30 years old that are 4 star players and requesting 3-4 million for 1 year still aren't signed. This isn't realistic and has never been a problem in my leagues until now. It isn't a financial thing. Teams do have the available funds.

- I like to allow the game to generate international pro free agents every year rather than include the international leagues. This happens yearly on the day free agents file. Teams aren't signing these players at all and they are remaining in the free agents list for years. Guys that are highly rated and highly touted. 30 year old Japanese stars with absolutely zero interest league-wide?

- To do more testing, I created a historical 2015 game and simmed a year to the beginnig of the 2016 season and then continued simming. Among the players that spent the entire season in free agency was Robinson Cano, Starlin Castro, Johnny Cueto, Nelson Cruz, Ubaldo Jiminez, Elvis Andrus, Jhonny Peralta, Asdrubal Cabrera etc..all ranked pretty highly. 4-5 star guys..

So, at least in my experiences with the latest patch, free agency has been completely messed up in my games.

[Habsfan18]

Jpeters just posted a thread as well, so I'm not the only one.

http://www.ootpdevelopments.com/boar...ee-agents.html

[jpeters1734]

Your post is much more detailed than mine

[Ron.]

Just finished my first offseason with the lastest patch, had 3 or 4 guys deserving of multi-year 20m+ contracts end up asking for 1 year deals in spring training. I just assumed they signed. It's august now and I check the FA pool:

[monkeystyxx]

Yeah, I've noticed this too. FA in general seems a little screwy right now.

Firstly, there are the mid-tier players demanding $20m out of the gate, like Francisco Cervelli. They usually reduce their demands down to sensible levels once ST starts, but by then it's usually too late because most teams have spent their money and/or filled their roster and aren't looking.

Then there's the older players coming off great seasons that remain unsigned even when they reduce their demands right down, like Jose Bautista. Nobody is even remotely interested. 2016 NLCS Championship Series MVP Edwin Encarnacion, didn't play baseball at all in 2017.

It's as if, rather than looking for the best players, the AI teams (even the ones with massive budgets) default to looking for cheap talent over established money players. Everyone has become the Pittsburgh Pirates. Which in some ways is good, but it's not realistic. Bautista and Cervelli will not be unemployed for all of 2017 in real life. Bold prediction, right there. ¬_¬

[Ron.]

Looking at my screenshot I just realized that all of those players are international, I scroll further down my FA list and notice all of the rest of the really deserving unsigned FAs are also international. Could that be relevant to the bug somehow? If it's a coincidence it's a hell of one.

[The Wolf]

It's certainly suspicious.

[monkeystyxx]

You might be on to something there, Ron. Bautista, Encarnacion, Cervelli, all international too...

Maybe Trump won the election ,and half of the MLB got deported.

[Ron.]

Originally Posted by monkeystyxx

Maybe Trump won the election ,and half of the MLB got deported.

[Murph3]

Hmm... Hopefully there will be a patch for this soon. All unsigned players with high ratings born outside the US. I have a hard time believing that's just a coincidence.

[jpeters1734]

That's interesting. I didn't think of the correlation. Come to think of it, most of the FA in my league are internationals as well

[pgjocki]

Haha, bunch of old white male owners screaming at foreigners to "get off my lawn".

In all seriousness though, this is why it's best to run several tests with each new version and don't import your save until at least 3 patches.

I have no doubt this will be fixed shortly.

[GoBucsGo]

I thought I was the only one seeing this. Putting my game on hold for sure as this is definitely a game killer. None of the top free agents go signed. You have SUPERSTARS sitting out entire seasons. I have no doubt this will be fixed rather quickly. Hopefully

[delv213]

Originally Posted by monkeystyxx

You might be on to something there, Ron. Bautista, Encarnacion, Cervelli, all international too...

Maybe Trump won the election ,and half of the MLB got deported.

Make MLB bad again!

[sprague]

I had similar issues along the way, that for now has me playing test games without the finances on, just to enjoy the rest of the game features.

I had a different oddity. That was a team signing a free agent for a long 7 year 6 million a year deal (12 mill per year equivalent today) in February, then without any change in his ratings, releasing him in April after getting just 13 games out of him, forcing 70 million in long term salary on their books. It was so odd. here is the screenshot...

Lets keep presenting what we find to help Marcus and the gang get the free agent and financial word running better.

[Chico Guilbault]

Perhaps related to this, I have found that many free agents since the patch are signing with teams located in their home country. I have 4 international leagues with teams throughout the world, so maybe they wouldn't have signed at all if I didn't. At first I thought this was cool, but not so sure now.

[BusterKing]

Well this needs to be fix a.s.a.p It's a show stopper.

[Dem Bums]

Simmed to 2020. Jose Fernandez initially demanded $40M per, and never got signed even though his demand dropped all the way to $3.4M by the time the regular season ended.

[Griever20]

I'll sim my fictional league a bit further (while playing OOTP 16 aswell), will be looking out if I see similar things there...

[Matt Arnold]

I think another change may have screwed this up. We'll dig deeper into this tomorrow, but for now, I think if you set the foreigner limit to 25 (or whatever your active roster is), that might help this case.