Financials out of whack - any workarounds?

[Corsairs]

Originally Posted by tysok

There's somewhere else talking about guys seemingly "stealing" a player on the cheap later in the season. Where he was asking for too much to begin with, and declined offers early. Later on he lowered his demands until he was signing multi-year very cheap deals.

You can find that discussion here: Mid-season free agent signings. This issue has been a major pain to deal with and has caused an inordinate amount of grief in our league. The fact that players lower their 1-year demands as the season progresses is great and completely realistic, but they shouldn't also be lowering their multi-year demands. You end up with situations like the superstar SS holdout who was asking for 5 years/$90M at the start of the season singing for 4 years/$8M in June. Talk about a balance of power shifter in an online league!

While we can debate whether house rules are necessary to deal with this kind of behavior, I think it'd be quite a reach to suggest that this is in any way, shape or form realistic. It would be outstanding if this issue caught Markus's eye and was made a developmental priority. I think player financials are a big enough part of the game to warrant the attention.

[Solonor]

Are you saying that if no one is willing to give the superstar a multi-year contract, that he should not take a single-year one if offered? If so, I completely disagree!

If the human manager's don't offer a player what he wants, he has to drop his demands and take the highest bid in order to play. I think it's a much bigger problem if A-Rod simply quits because no one will pay him what he wants than if he drops his demands to take what he can get.

Now, this is limited to an all-human league, because the AI should step up and give the man what he wants (within the limits of budgets and the financial setup of course). But if all the other humans are stupid enough to let a perfectly good player sit out until his salary demands go down, then another one jumps in and takes him, that's absolutely the way it should work.

[tysok]

Originally Posted by Solonor

Are you saying that if no one is willing to give the superstar a multi-year contract, that he should not take a single-year one if offered? If so, I completely disagree!

If the human manager's don't offer a player what he wants, he has to drop his demands and take the highest bid in order to play. I think it's a much bigger problem if A-Rod simply quits because no one will pay him what he wants than if he drops his demands to take what he can get.

Now, this is limited to an all-human league, because the AI should step up and give the man what he wants (within the limits of budgets and the financial setup of course). But if all the other humans are stupid enough to let a perfectly good player sit out until his salary demands go down, then another one jumps in and takes him, that's absolutely the way it should work.

The problem he's talking about is a guy who was asking for big dollar multi year deal... no one offered anything, he dropped his demands appropriately but ended up signing a MULTI year very cheap deal.

They should drop their demands and sign... but they should be signing 1 year deals then. Think Kyle Lohse, who was asking for too much money this last off season... signed a 4.25 million deal with the Cardinals for 1 year. From what I understand of the other thread, someone could have signed Lohse for 4 million for 4-5 year deal.

If A-rod was sitting around asking for 25 mil a year but no one would offer anything over 10, he'd drop his demands and sign. He most likely wouldn't have signed up at 10 mil for 2+ years though.

[Long_Long_Name]

But, then, you end up with star players forever waiting for April to sign 1-year contracts. Anyway, I think this only addresses a symptom of a larger issue.

[gordyhulten]

Originally Posted by Long_Long_Name

But, then, you end up with star players forever waiting for April to sign 1-year contracts. Anyway, I think this only addresses a symptom of a larger issue.

Play with your revenues to lower them a bit. I think you can get this under control with tweaking not only your cash but your revenues.

[Long_Long_Name]

Originally Posted by gordyhulten

Play with your revenues to lower them a bit. I think you can get this under control with tweaking not only your cash but your revenues.

Sorry for not acknowledging you earlier . Yeah, that could be the "missing part of the puzzle". Cash plays a colossal part, but doesn't do it completely. I think "robbing" teams will be enough, but if it can be even better, I might as well try .

In any case, in my league, revenue varies from 36mil to 90mil (36, 40, 47, 55, 56, 61, 62, 64, 73, 76, 88, 90). I can lower them, every team has a 30mil media contract, that's easily adjustable. If I do, what can I expect? I mean, I always come back to my good old mediocre reliever, but he's asking for 15% of the richest team's budget - can you imagine a mediocre reliever asking for 25-30mil in MLB, where revenues are about twice as high as in my league?

[Solonor]

Originally Posted by tysok

The problem he's talking about is a guy who was asking for big dollar multi year deal... no one offered anything, he dropped his demands appropriately but ended up signing a MULTI year very cheap deal.

They should drop their demands and sign... but they should be signing 1 year deals then. Think Kyle Lohse, who was asking for too much money this last off season... signed a 4.25 million deal with the Cardinals for 1 year. From what I understand of the other thread, someone could have signed Lohse for 4 million for 4-5 year deal.

If A-rod was sitting around asking for 25 mil a year but no one would offer anything over 10, he'd drop his demands and sign. He most likely wouldn't have signed up at 10 mil for 2+ years though.

I agree that the player should drop his demands for dollars and years. And in the cases I tested, they do.

I still see it as a fundamental problem if a player quits just because he doesn't get what he wants. If the best offer is 10 mill for 2 years, then he's either gotta take that or sit out for a year and try again. Retiring is not realistic at all. He's gonna play for someone, even if it means going to Japan.

[Solonor]

Originally Posted by Long_Long_Name

Sorry for not acknowledging you earlier . Yeah, that could be the "missing part of the puzzle". Cash plays a colossal part, but doesn't do it completely. I think "robbing" teams will be enough, but if it can be even better, I might as well try .

In any case, in my league, revenue varies from 36mil to 90mil (36, 40, 47, 55, 56, 61, 62, 64, 73, 76, 88, 90). I can lower them, every team has a 30mil media contract, that's easily adjustable. If I do, what can I expect? I mean, I always come back to my good old mediocre reliever, but he's asking for 15% of the richest team's budget - can you imagine a mediocre reliever asking for 25-30mil in MLB, where revenues are about twice as high as in my league?

There is still a basic issue here between what the player is asking for and what he will settle for.

Yes, there may be a problem where the player is asking for ridiculous money just because there is a lot of cash around. But if no one is willing to pay that much, then the player will take what he can get. You don't have to suck cash out of the system or anything else. Just have the humans GM's all decide they're not going to pay him what he asks, because it is ridiculous!

[Corsairs]

In response to the question above, tysonk has it right. The problem isn't that players lower their 1-year demands as the season progresses. I agree with you, Solonor: that's exactly what the player should do, and it absolutely beats the player retiring. A real life player would show this kind of prudence as well. The problem is that players are also dropping their multi-year demands as the season progresses. That part is not at all realistic.

Take a player who overestimated his market value by pricing himself at $19M a year for five years. The season starts, he sits unsigned and slowly realizes, "Gee, maybe making some money this season would be better than holding fast to my demands and getting nothing at all!" It makes sense that he'd start coming down from that asking price on a 1-year contract that will both give him some cash and an opportunity to rebuild his value for the next free agency cycle. But he's certainly not going to give up the next 3-4 of his prime free agency years to a contract that pays him just 8% of what he was asking for at the start of the season. That's not practical; that's financial lunacy!

Originally Posted by gordyhulten

Play with your revenues to lower them a bit. I think you can get this under control with tweaking not only your cash but your revenues.

I'm working on tweaking financials in my league right now and I wanted to ask your opinion on what you feel is an appropriate amount for total league revenue to exceed total league expenses. The target I've been shooting for is total revenues to exceed total expenses by about 3%. My hope is that's modest enough growth to keep demands in line. What do you shoot for in your leagues?

[tysok]

Originally Posted by Long_Long_Name

But, then, you end up with star players forever waiting for April to sign 1-year contracts. Anyway, I think this only addresses a symptom of a larger issue.

It is the symptom of a larger issue. The larger issue is you have too much cash coming into the league and your salaries haven't inflated to match it (yet).

First step is to suck the cash out of the league. As long as loads of cash are sitting there the problem will persist. There's nothing else to do with your cash (yet maybe/hopefully?). So to avoid the inflation you have to get rid of the cash. Obviously, though, you'll have cash accumulations again. So second you need to get revenue lowered.

I've never tried to do it backward. All my tests were in trying to get salaries and revenue to match up initially (which isn't possible).

Is the league you're talking about the Beta Baseball link you have in your sig?
I'm looking at that and you're all out of whack (if that's the case).
Look at your payrolls vs your budgets:
24/40
33/61
57/62
48/56
56/73
43/54
56/90
81/89
36/48
48/76
23/36
12/64

The problem there isn't just that you have loads of cash, but that you have major major budget rooms as well. Getting rid of all the cash will result in that cash coming right back up. To keep that same type of salary structure you need to suck out a lot of revenue and beat budgets down as well.

I may not be looking at numbers good enough to draw hard conclusions off of though. I see everyone has 30 million in media revenue... that pays for 70% of every team's payroll at the moment. It accounts for, it looks like, around 50% or more of a team's total revenue. When an AI run league levels out it accounts for 38-40% of a team's total revenue, and pays for about 30% of a team's payroll.

[Long_Long_Name]

Originally Posted by Solonor

There is still a basic issue here between what the player is asking for and what he will settle for.

Yes, there may be a problem where the player is asking for ridiculous money just because there is a lot of cash around. But if no one is willing to pay that much, then the player will take what he can get. You don't have to suck cash out of the system or anything else. Just have the humans GM's all decide they're not going to pay him what he asks, because it is ridiculous!

Well, the way we deal with it is that we run our own separate bidding war for free agents and pay market prices for them. So, we simply don't use the OOTP free agency system anymore.

The problem, however, is with contract extensions. There's no way I can justify offering my star right fielder 30mil a year in our financial context. It's just not going to happen - and forget my mediocre MR asking for 13mil a year. Basically, what the financial system does, other than getting us to bypass OOTP's FA system, is to seriously cut down on extension possibilities. I'm thinking of offering my owners a 40% rebate on any players they sign to an extension - basically, if you sign a player to an extension for 10mil a year, I'll edit the contract so that it becomes 6mil a year, which is about market price.

40% off is a pretty far cry from the desired salary scale, in my opinion.

[tysok]

Originally Posted by Corsairs

I'm working on tweaking financials in my league right now and I wanted to ask your opinion on what you feel is an appropriate amount for total league revenue to exceed total league expenses. The target I've been shooting for is total revenues to exceed total expenses by about 3%. My hope is that's modest enough growth to keep demands in line. What do you shoot for in your leagues?

That's probably about right.
In my AI run test leagues, after everything evens out, total revenue appears to exceed total payrolls by 2-4% continually.

[battists]

I'll see what I can do to raise the priority on this topic, but honestly, I see this as being an "offseason" kind of change. It would probably involve:

a. A lot of code changes
b. A TON of testing

As such, unfortunately I doubt it's going to be a good candidate for revision in a third patch, or really any patch.

[tysok]

Originally Posted by Solonor

Yes, there may be a problem where the player is asking for ridiculous money just because there is a lot of cash around. But if no one is willing to pay that much, then the player will take what he can get. You don't have to suck cash out of the system or anything else. Just have the humans GM's all decide they're not going to pay him what he asks, because it is ridiculous!

That doesn't solve the problem though. That just delays dealing with it. You're basically saying they should sim to the last week of the offseason/preseason and then make offers. If you suck the cash out and get the revenues adjusted correctly you can solve the entire problem and the offseason can run like it should.

[tysok]

Originally Posted by battists

I'll see what I can do to raise the priority on this topic, but honestly, I see this as being an "offseason" kind of change. It would probably involve:

a. A lot of code changes
b. A TON of testing

As such, unfortunately I doubt it's going to be a good candidate for revision in a third patch, or really any patch.

It could easily be fixed (well, how EASILY I don't know) if there was an option to have the contract requests base themselves only on the salary structure and ignore cash or any other financial considerations. That would solve the problem here.

There will be another problem sprout up later though, when it would I don't know. Take that team 193 million in cash. You can spend your cash on free agents. This guy could buy, right now, every free agent on the market easily and run away with a championship (probably). It'll only get worse as cash continues to flow in at those huge rates. You salary structure would stay in place, but at some point someone is going to spend what's laying around. 193 million dollars in 1 year contracts can get you some players.

[Long_Long_Name]

Originally Posted by tysok

It is the symptom of a larger issue. The larger issue is you have too much cash coming into the league and your salaries haven't inflated to match it (yet).

First step is to suck the cash out of the league. As long as loads of cash are sitting there the problem will persist. There's nothing else to do with your cash (yet maybe/hopefully?). So to avoid the inflation you have to get rid of the cash. Obviously, though, you'll have cash accumulations again. So second you need to get revenue lowered.

I've never tried to do it backward. All my tests were in trying to get salaries and revenue to match up initially (which isn't possible).

Is the league you're talking about the Beta Baseball link you have in your sig?
I'm looking at that and you're all out of whack (if that's the case).
Look at your payrolls vs your budgets:
24/40
33/61
57/62
48/56
56/73
43/54
56/90
81/89
36/48
48/76
23/36
12/64

The problem there isn't just that you have loads of cash, but that you have major major budget rooms as well. Getting rid of all the cash will result in that cash coming right back up. To keep that same type of salary structure you need to suck out a lot of revenue and beat budgets down as well.

I may not be looking at numbers good enough to draw hard conclusions off of though. I see everyone has 30 million in media revenue... that pays for 70% of every team's payroll at the moment. It accounts for, it looks like, around 50% or more of a team's total revenue. When an AI run league levels out it accounts for 38-40% of a team's total revenue, and pays for about 30% of a team's payroll.

You're right that, indeed, our payrolls looks small. Most of it comes from us being at the start of the offseason and no free agents having signed anywhere yet, so it's not the most accurate report. In any case, you are right, even if we do add the free agents available this offseason, odds are we'll still have more revenue than expenses.

I also know that there seems to be too much revenue flowing in the league - the media contract was set that high because a few years ago, I think 8 teams or so were in financial difficulties, and they just couldn't keep up - perhaps it's time to adjust it the other way around. However, while it looks good on paper, perhaps they'll simply adjust their spending habits and spend even less, negating any effect lowering income would have. Which would lead us to the same problem. We've been doing the bidding war thing for a while, and extension prices are prohibitive, so it's not a case of people being able to find bargains by signing players to ridiculously low contracts or anything like that - it's just that my owners are extremely conservative. The only way out would be for people to start spending their money. The best way I can think of doing that would be to have a yearly income cap - if you can't earn more than 10mil a year, and you have a projected budget room of 22mil, you'd be foolish not to spend the 12mil excedent. That is, of course, assuming that the problem isn't too much revenue, but instead too little spending going on.

It looks like taking the cash amounts down to 10-20mil will be a nice enough workaround. Still, though, I find it a pity that I have to resort to that, that a mediocre reliever won't get the equivalent of 25mil in MLB.

[battists]

Originally Posted by tysok

It could easily be fixed (well, how EASILY I don't know) if there was an option to have the contract requests base themselves only on the salary structure and ignore cash or any other financial considerations.

Yeah, theoretically that may be one of the solutions, but again, I suspect that that sort of a change isn't "easily". And, the last thing I want to do is to rush into a hasty decision about something as important as this! As you can see even in this thread, there's not even a great deal of clarity as to the source of the problem.

[Solonor]

Originally Posted by Corsairs

In response to the question above, tysonk has it right. The problem isn't that players lower their 1-year demands as the season progresses. I agree with you, Solonor: that's exactly what the player should do, and it absolutely beats the player retiring. A real life player would show this kind of prudence as well. The problem is that players are also dropping their multi-year demands as the season progresses. That part is not at all realistic.

I think we're on the same wavelength. I haven't seen this happen in OOTP9, though. Each of the guys I tested dropped their multi-year demands a little bit during the off season, but they went to single-year demands as soon as the season started and then slowly starting lowering those. However, I have done far less testing in this area than others, so I might just be missing it.

Originally Posted by Long_Long_Name

The problem, however, is with contract extensions. There's no way I can justify offering my star right fielder 30mil a year in our financial context. It's just not going to happen - and forget my mediocre MR asking for 13mil a year. Basically, what the financial system does, other than getting us to bypass OOTP's FA system, is to seriously cut down on extension possibilities. I'm thinking of offering my owners a 40% rebate on any players they sign to an extension - basically, if you sign a player to an extension for 10mil a year, I'll edit the contract so that it becomes 6mil a year, which is about market price.

As opposed to the free agent issue, this is a major problem, I agree. If you can't sign a reasonable extension, then it's a big deal for owners. It does keep the free agent market flowing, though.

We had (have) the same problem in SGCBL. We have tons of cash from prior versions. At one point, I pulled out all but a set amount from each team and kept it in an offline bank, but it didn't change anything. I think the problem might have been the budget room, as tysok said, but I didn't think of that. So, we will probably go back and review our media revenue. Thanks!

[Long_Long_Name]

Originally Posted by battists

Yeah, theoretically that may be one of the solutions, but again, I suspect that that sort of a change isn't "easily". And, the last thing I want to do is to rush into a hasty decision about something as important as this! As you can see even in this thread, there's not even a great deal of clarity as to the source of the problem.

From my testing, anyway, it's very clear that stockpiled cash is a huge source of the "problem". Players in a league with cash amounts between -5mil and 20mil ask for about 60% of what players in my super rich league ask for. That's a huge amount. You're right, though, the salary demands adjustments for non-signees, retiring players, the effects of revenue, all that seems pretty shady at this point.

I'm glad to see I'm not the only one uneasy with logging this. I just don't know where to start.

[Long_Long_Name]

Originally Posted by Solonor

We had (have) the same problem in SGCBL. We have tons of cash from prior versions. At one point, I pulled out all but a set amount from each team and kept it in an offline bank, but it didn't change anything. I think the problem might have been the budget room, as tysok said, but I didn't think of that. So, we will probably go back and review our media revenue. Thanks!

Note that it doesn't change anything immediately. From my testing, it will only change demands (40% less, as I said) at the start of the next offseason period. Test it if you'd like, because it's a pretty nice workaround for the moment.

Originally Posted by Solonor

There will be another problem sprout up later though, when it would I don't know. Take that team 193 million in cash. You can spend your cash on free agents. This guy could buy, right now, every free agent on the market easily and run away with a championship (probably). It'll only get worse as cash continues to flow in at those huge rates. You salary structure would stay in place, but at some point someone is going to spend what's laying around. 193 million dollars in 1 year contracts can get you some players.

That's all I'd ask for, that'd be fine by me . If you want to restrict income, that's something else, and I brought it up a few posts ago: I'm considering imposing a yearly income limit on teams. That has the double effect of encouraging spending, and of limiting income. It's not a feature in OOTP, but with a small enough league, it can be implemented.