Eat part of a contract

[Phantom9in]

I would like to see the ability for a team to trade a player and "eat" part of the contract. Example: Team A trade player with 5yrs/$100M left on deal to Team B, but to get top prospects, Team A must pay Xyrs/$XM(2yrs/$20M...5yrs/$50M..or whatever teams agree to). This would reflect what goes on in real MLB trade for players that teams can't afford to keep anymore OR(like the current Dodgers) have too many players for not enough positions.

[Matt Arnold]

I want this too . It will eventually make it in, but there's some small things we would have to take care of first before we can get this done.

[Gai1997]

Would love for this to happen.

[blasek0]

A lot of people have suggested this for more than a few versions. It sounds somewhat simple on the surface, but the reason it hasn't been done is probably because it would require a re-write of the trading AI, as well as the financial engine. Does this 50% of the contract come out as a lump sum? Is it 50% of each year's salary taken out once a year? What if the contract value goes up? Down? What if there are buyouts on the option year? What if there's a 2nd option year? What if the player/team accepts the option? What if they accept option year #1 and decline #2? Complicated issue.

[RchW]

Originally Posted by blasek0

A lot of people have suggested this for more than a few versions. It sounds somewhat simple on the surface, but the reason it hasn't been done is probably because it would require a re-write of the trading AI, as well as the financial engine. Does this 50% of the contract come out as a lump sum? Is it 50% of each year's salary taken out once a year? What if the contract value goes up? Down? What if there are buyouts on the option year? What if there's a 2nd option year? What if the player/team accepts the option? What if they accept option year #1 and decline #2? Complicated issue.

I don't disagree with the concept but lets not suggest that long term 40% plus payments on contracts are common. I see this as a potential arcade function. Off switch needs to be part of it.

[Phantom9in]

Tigers traded Fielder to the Rangers, the Tigers had to agree to pay $30 million of Fielder's contract from 2016 to 2020.
Marlins take on $30 million of Hampton's salary. They will pay him $9 million in 2003, $10 million in 2004 and $11 million in 2005.(Col. Fla. Atl three team trade)
That's just thw two off the top of my head that I could remember. And it happens a lot and now that contracts are getting STUPID large in MLB, it will happen even more and more.

[blasek0]

Originally Posted by RchW

I don't disagree with the concept but lets not suggest that long term 40% plus payments on contracts are common. I see this as a potential arcade function. Off switch needs to be part of it.

Yeah, I was just throwing out 50% as a random number. What the number actually is isn't as important as the machinations that number is going to have to go through.

[Leo_The_Lip]

Why does not simply adding cash to an offer work well enough to make this request redundant? How does a lump sum offer not model the effect well enough?

I'm much more concerned about the effect of this suggestion on the game's financial model, which is already tenuous when compared to real life budgeting.

Specifically I am referring to the calculation of 'Money available for free agents' and money available for renewals' which are calculated in separately using an OOTP-world logic that is not representative of real life budgets in either the public or private sector. These two calculations are already the cause of numerous questions and complaints, and adding future payments to the mix will only make this worse.

So absolutely not to this suggestion.

[darkcloud4579]

I don't want the game doing this because it won't do it right. There are STILL major problems with the trade AI. There should be an ability for the game to deal say, players in the last year of their deal from bad teams to contenders and that doesn't happen at all in OOTP as opposed to real life.

This idea is one you can already do using commissioner mode and pen and paper or excel. I have no confidence the game would do it even remotely correctly. Hell we can't even trade more than 5 players from one team for no good reason.

[Pacoheadley]

Originally Posted by Leo_The_Lip

Why does not simply adding cash to an offer work well enough to make this request redundant? How does a lump sum offer not model the effect well enough?

I'm much more concerned about the effect of this suggestion on the game's financial model, which is already tenuous when compared to real life budgeting.

Specifically I am referring to the calculation of 'Money available for free agents' and money available for renewals' which are calculated in separately using an OOTP-world logic that is not representative of real life budgets in either the public or private sector. These two calculations are already the cause of numerous questions and complaints, and adding future payments to the mix will only make this worse.

So absolutely not to this suggestion.

It doesn't effect it well enough because of two reasons at least.

1 - There isn't enough cash available for most teams to eat more than just 1 or 2 millions dollars in some cases.

2 - A team doesn't just make a lump sum. They pay a certain amount every year in most cases, but there is no way for this to happen.

I think a simple enough way of doing it would be to just have shared payroll costs for the player involved in the trade. One team has him on the books for $12 millions, while the other team has him on the books for $4 million.

[blasek0]

Originally Posted by Pacoheadley

It doesn't effect it well enough because of two reasons at least.

1 - There isn't enough cash available for most teams to eat more than just 1 or 2 millions dollars in some cases.

2 - A team doesn't just make a lump sum. They pay a certain amount every year in most cases, but there is no way for this to happen.

I think a simple enough way of doing it would be to just have shared payroll costs for the player involved in the trade. One team has him on the books for $12 millions, while the other team has him on the books for $4 million.

And the game's revenues logic in trades won't let you trade cash if there's no room in your budget to trade it all.

Say I had a player at 4 years, 20M per year left, for 80M left. I'm willing to eat 60M of it to get the player traded, but I doubt my budget & cash on hand is ever going to have room to eat all of that 60M up front. But my budget probably does have room to eat the 15M that I'd get from the 60M I'm willing to pay to get rid of him over the 4 years left, especially since I was already going to pay him >15M for each of those seasons anyways.

[Phantom9in]

Football Manager has this type of financials built in so it shouldn't be too hard to code into the game.

[Leo_The_Lip]

Originally Posted by Phantom9in

Football Manager has this type of financials built in so it shouldn't be too hard to code into the game.

Wrong. FM does NOT have this built in to its trade logic because it does NOT have ANY trade logic. It is the 'part of the trade logic' that is the hard part.

[Leo_The_Lip]

Originally Posted by Pacoheadley

It doesn't effect it well enough because of two reasons at least.

1 - There isn't enough cash available for most teams to eat more than just 1 or 2 millions dollars in some cases.

2 - A team doesn't just make a lump sum. They pay a certain amount every year in most cases, but there is no way for this to happen.

I think a simple enough way of doing it would be to just have shared payroll costs for the player involved in the trade. One team has him on the books for $12 millions, while the other team has him on the books for $4 million.

Well, no. Your points are the reasons this will not work. If not the cash balance, where would the cutoff be? Can I promise an AI team $5 million per year? $10 million? For how many years? What if I don't earn that money, then what? How does the AI evaluate a revenue stream in a game that otherwise does not look beyond 2 years?

Further, a good AI should NEVER accept an overpaid, aging player you are looking to offload for more than a final season or two on a contract and only if you offer enough cash upfront to do that.

[Phantom9in]

Originally Posted by Leo_The_Lip

Wrong. FM does NOT have this built in to its trade logic because it does NOT have ANY trade logic. It is the 'part of the trade logic' that is the hard part.

HMMMM, I know for a fact I can sell a player to a team and get paid up front monies and per month moneys and per game monies and per goal monies and per international appearance monies. Not IDENTICAL to this, but if it can be done in FM, it can be done in OOTP.

[Phantom9in]

I have also had to pay part of a players salary per month for him to agree to move to a smaller club that won't pay him as much as I was. Had to pay a player $2000 per month for two seasons I believe it was for him to move, it was cheaper than me keeping him at $3500 per month, so I paid it to free up some space.

[RchW]

Soccer transfers are not trades so there is no comparison. I certainly don't want an FM ization of OOTP into a "transfer" market dominated by money. There are far more important Baseball issues to be addressed.

I'm not suggesting that it can't be done in OOTP but it must be done completely and realistically, with limits built in (max %) and not as another exploitable module. I'd like to see a "commissioner" module in OOTP just like real life where the Commissioners office must approve trades that involve more than a certain amount ($10M?) of money. Give the Commissioner's office the power to disallow certain trades if they are against the spirit of the game.

As for the mechanics of these trades; for example an agreement to pay say 25% of a $10M per year contract for 3 years must show up on your books the same as a 3 year $2.5M contract. This will ensure the proper effect on budgets, FA and extension dollars. Further this should also have an effect on the viability of the trade at the time it is proposed. If for example in the year or 2 years after the trade 2 or 3 players on the paying team are getting raises this $2.5M may not be available in the team budget and therefore the trade cannot proceed. No different than the current limitation where you cannot trade for a contract outside your budget in a future year. Without strict rules this could be a huge exploit.

[Phantom9in]

I agree, was just using the FM example to show that it can be coded for a player to be paid by two teams and have it come out of the budget. Also, I agree with a limit being put on how much of a % can be paid by the selling team and that it should take into account future raises by other players on the team.

[Matt Arnold]

I'd actually see no limit, other than the difference in player contracts.

To me some of this could be done now, but there are challenges. For example it's easy to throw the -3m from team A and +3m to team B for the next 2 years, but for now we could not tie that to a player specifically. What that means is if the payment is to eat some of Zito's contract, right now the team getting him would see him as a 10m player and have a random 3m line in their revenues (or -3 in their expenses). But he's not really a 10m player anymore, right? What if they trade him? Does he get dealt as a 10m player?

As I said, I want this around, and it will take a little time to make sure the AI can handle things reasonably, and we have a few little logistics to work out, but it's not the hardest feature in the world to get working.

[Leo_The_Lip]

Originally Posted by Phantom9in

HMMMM, I know for a fact I can sell a player to a team and get paid up front monies and per month moneys and per game monies and per goal monies and per international appearance monies. Not IDENTICAL to this, but if it can be done in FM, it can be done in OOTP.

The part you are completely missing is the trade EVALUATION aspect of the logic. In FM, the AI chooses to take a player, then it offers you a bad financial deal. If you try to improve the terms of this deal, it falls through. There is no player comparison involved.

So the type of deal you want to add to OOTP always fails in FM. I have never been able to alter the financial aspects of deal in my favor by so much as $1.

That's the part that is the crux of the matter. In OOTP you have a player offered for a player, with money tossed in now and then. In FM you have a player offered for money and when a team offers to buy your player, you have little or no possibility of altering the deal in your favor. You can dicker of the cost of acquiring a player, but the sale is pretty much 'take it or leave it.'

And if something can be done in FM, then it can be done in OOTP? Seriously? If it were that easy then why can't FM do all the things that can be done in OOTP like:

1 Play any season with historic players
2 Create a fictional league of any size you want

And,

3 Create a league based on the American Reserve Clause instead of selling for cash.