Free Agents signing late

markprior22 · 11-18-2011, 09:15 AM

I started a brand new fictional MLB setup league with OOTP 12. I auto simmed 25 yrs and then took over a team. I'm in the middle of April in the first season I've played and have seen 3 really good free agents just now getting signed. These guys are really good. The one I saw last night is a 28 y.o. coming off a +.300 BA with 44 HR's and 128 RBI's. The one before that was somewhat similar....he was 31 y.o.

I've never had this happen since I've been playing OOTP (ver 3). Anyone else finding this to be the case? Maybe it's tied to financials and players not getting what they want and finally caving.

I guess you could make up all kinds of scenarios about what might be happening but I don't like to do that. It is simply not realistic and I don't recall this happening before in all the years I've been playing the game.

rudoggy · 11-18-2011, 09:21 AM

likely no.....
But it is the culprit a cash issue?
Did no one pick him up until he dropped his demands and was affordable?
I have seen it before if all the teams are totally strapped for cash.

markprior22 · 11-18-2011, 10:42 AM

Could be. This is the first time I've ever simmed 25 yrs ahead before starting. Never made it this far before. I'm sure that financials are extremely difficult to code but I really hate this. I set cash max really high. I don't know...just really frustrated with this game.

SiN8 · 11-18-2011, 10:51 AM

There seems to be a problem with the financials in the game. I'm only in my 3rd season of the MLB quickstart and many top free agents are not being signed. As the season approaches, the FAs start lowering their demands and sign one year deals.

You have to manually inject some cash or raise the media revenue for the league.

boshk · 11-18-2011, 11:10 AM

those players are the best, you can get them for like 90% off market value sometimes.

SiN8 · 11-18-2011, 11:31 AM

I'm surprised that this issue has not generated more attention on the forums. The fix seems relatively straightforward to raise the revenue. But has anyone found a good balance as to what the settings should be?

Cinnamon J. Scudworth · 11-18-2011, 11:47 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SiN8

I'm surprised that this issue has not generated more attention on the forums. The fix seems relatively straightforward to raise the revenue. But has anyone found a good balance as to what the settings should be?

The issue (the high quality of unsigned free agents) got a ton of attention earlier this year, and one or more of the subsequent patches made attempts to address it, I believe through a combination of tweaking AI behavior and tweaking default financial set-ups.

One thing to try is to raise the cash maximum, to allow teams to build up more cash. One suggestion as a baseline (I forget the name of the poster, sorry) was to make the cash max to be twice the superstar annual salary as set in the league's financial options screen.

markprior22 · 11-19-2011, 11:09 AM

Upon further inspection, teams seem to have money for extensions but no more than a mil or two for free agents. Any ideas how to fix this so I don't have to scrap this league?

Mecza · 11-19-2011, 11:16 AM

You need to significantly increase revenue or decrease expenses. I'm not looking at the game right now, but for my league I think I increased revenue by roughly 30 million and everything looks peachy now. You will need to test around to suit your needs. What concerns me right now is that I now have some of the top closers making eight figures. But that is kind of happening in real life too.

PSUColonel · 11-19-2011, 11:30 AM

I have been wanting to know what the best settings are as well, but it seems as though people are not running long term tests they way they used to. There has never been a good answer to this question.

markprior22 · 11-19-2011, 12:43 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mecza

You need to significantly increase revenue or decrease expenses. I'm not looking at the game right now, but for my league I think I increased revenue by roughly 30 million and everything looks peachy now. You will need to test around to suit your needs. What concerns me right now is that I now have some of the top closers making eight figures. But that is kind of happening in real life too.

Thanks I'll give this a shot. Added some to national media contract. Teams seem to be in better shape. I'll keep an eye on it. Thanks for the idea.

PSUColonel · 11-19-2011, 12:49 PM

How much should be added?

markprior22 · 11-19-2011, 03:14 PM

I added 30 mil to the national contract. Have to hit "refresh" after entering a number and it will give you a basic look at the effect that change will have on your league. Hope it works but it is frustrating to have to mess with this stuff just to make the game playable.

SandMan · 11-19-2011, 03:50 PM

When starting a fictional league I have found the following problems with financials After the inaugural draft you you may have 10-15 players still making the 400K minimum. When they hit the arbitration period they get 3-8 Million dollar awards. Multiply the difference between that and the 400k you will find that you just increased your payroll by 30-40M or more. When these players are eligible for FA a lot of the players are asking for 20M or more to stay with your team. You let the players go to FA and sign lesser quality players to fit your budget and you do not have enough to pay the star players. I have been able to keep my payroll under budget but the quality of players I now have are no where near where I was in seasons 1-7. The longer you play the lesser the quality of player you can afford during the FA period and the chance that good players don't get signed or get signed at a lowball contract.

I play with reserve roster instead of minor leagues but I don't know if that makes much difference but I do notice that by the 10th or 11th seasons I am running out of reserve roster players and have to go to the FA screen to sign "reserve" players. I need these players in the case of injury to any of my starters. This adds about another 3-4M on my payroll.

I ran through this, testing my financials, 10 times to get a feel for the game. I find that it is manageable to stay within budget but in time a few star players will not get signed in the FA period and have to sign low offers during the season.

I feel the fix would be to have the game have an inflation mode where your financials increase yearly 3-5%. This may offset some of the issues as long as the players did not increase their demands by more than the inflation amount. It appears the more money you have available the more that the FA players ask for.

For those playing with historical or MLB teams I don't know if these problems with the financials affect you. Hopefully not.

I also wanted to add that I will have 40M to sign extensions at times but very little for FA. I wish there was a way to "mortgage" the future and use some of the money for free agents. It would mean that you could not sign your own players the next season but you would probably not be able to afford them anyway.

The culprit is not the FA period or signings. It is the rapid rise in salaries for arbitration eligible players. I usually will pay the players through arbitration then let them go FA losing a good player around age 28-29 unless I can sign them during the last year or so of arbitration to a long term contract.

Hopefully Markus will come up with something to make the financial model work better in the next version.

PSUColonel · 11-19-2011, 04:35 PM

I just don't understand this. The new financial calculator tells us what the avg. profit in the league should be. Why is there a problem still? What should the avg profit be to prevent bad things from happening? Is this issue going to happen no matter what I do? I am not going to fiddle with financial settings each year

SandMan · 11-19-2011, 05:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by PSUColonel

I just don't understand this. The new financial calculator tells us what the avg. profit in the league should be. Why is there a problem still? What should the avg profit be to prevent bad things from happening? Is this issue going to happen no matter what I do? I am not going to fiddle with financial settings each year

What I think is crazy is when you get a good profit from one year to the next and then the owner takes it away. Example is I had 45M in profit the owner takes 39M and leaves me with 6M in cash available. So if you have money for FA you might as well use it or you will lose it the next season. You really don't need to fiddle with financials every year as long as you live within the budget amount and really evaluate the players coming off 400k contracts and starting to get arbitration awards. I literally fired my whole team one season when I got pissed because I had 15 players arbitration eligible and I could not afford to keep most of them. Just let the whole group go and signed cheaper, but not as good, players.

PSUColonel · 11-19-2011, 06:13 PM

The question here is whether the AI has the ability to realize when it can't afford to offer arbitration to its Players.

SandMan · 11-19-2011, 06:24 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by PSUColonel

The question here is whether the AI has the ability to realize when it can't afford to offer arbitration to its Players.

The AI will use all the money available for Free Agents and Arbitration players. This makes it difficult to stay under budget in later seasons. The AI will dump players and this is where you see good free agents not being signed.

PSUColonel · 11-19-2011, 07:45 PM

So it sounds to me as though the settings have zero effect on the problem....it's an AI problem that should have been addressed long ago. What makes me a bit ticked off is that this should have been the number one priority for a patch(which I believe it was) the trouble is it was never fixed correctly/Wholely. Call me crazy, but I feel like we are owed another patch that addresses this issue fully.

PSUColonel · 11-19-2011, 11:48 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SandMan

The AI will use all the money available for Free Agents and Arbitration players. This makes it difficult to stay under budget in later seasons. The AI will dump players and this is where you see good free agents not being signed.

So the current system is broken then...correct?

11-18-2011, 09:15 AM	#1
markprior22 All Star Starter Join Date: Apr 2002 Location: springfield, illinois Posts: 1,225 Blog Entries: 2	Free Agents signing late I started a brand new fictional MLB setup league with OOTP 12. I auto simmed 25 yrs and then took over a team. I'm in the middle of April in the first season I've played and have seen 3 really good free agents just now getting signed. These guys are really good. The one I saw last night is a 28 y.o. coming off a +.300 BA with 44 HR's and 128 RBI's. The one before that was somewhat similar....he was 31 y.o. I've never had this happen since I've been playing OOTP (ver 3). Anyone else finding this to be the case? Maybe it's tied to financials and players not getting what they want and finally caving. I guess you could make up all kinds of scenarios about what might be happening but I don't like to do that. It is simply not realistic and I don't recall this happening before in all the years I've been playing the game.

11-18-2011, 09:21 AM	#2
rudoggy Major Leagues Join Date: Oct 2003 Location: In my own little world Posts: 430	likely no..... But it is the culprit a cash issue? Did no one pick him up until he dropped his demands and was affordable? I have seen it before if all the teams are totally strapped for cash.

11-18-2011, 10:42 AM	#3
markprior22 All Star Starter Join Date: Apr 2002 Location: springfield, illinois Posts: 1,225 Blog Entries: 2	Could be. This is the first time I've ever simmed 25 yrs ahead before starting. Never made it this far before. I'm sure that financials are extremely difficult to code but I really hate this. I set cash max really high. I don't know...just really frustrated with this game.

11-18-2011, 10:51 AM	#4
SiN8 Minors (Double A) Join Date: May 2010 Posts: 108	There seems to be a problem with the financials in the game. I'm only in my 3rd season of the MLB quickstart and many top free agents are not being signed. As the season approaches, the FAs start lowering their demands and sign one year deals. You have to manually inject some cash or raise the media revenue for the league.

11-18-2011, 11:10 AM	#5
boshk All Star Reserve Join Date: Dec 2004 Posts: 531	those players are the best, you can get them for like 90% off market value sometimes.

11-18-2011, 11:31 AM	#6
SiN8 Minors (Double A) Join Date: May 2010 Posts: 108	I'm surprised that this issue has not generated more attention on the forums. The fix seems relatively straightforward to raise the revenue. But has anyone found a good balance as to what the settings should be?

11-19-2011, 11:09 AM	#8
markprior22 All Star Starter Join Date: Apr 2002 Location: springfield, illinois Posts: 1,225 Blog Entries: 2	Upon further inspection, teams seem to have money for extensions but no more than a mil or two for free agents. Any ideas how to fix this so I don't have to scrap this league?

11-19-2011, 11:16 AM	#9
Mecza Minors (Triple A) Join Date: Oct 2011 Posts: 268	You need to significantly increase revenue or decrease expenses. I'm not looking at the game right now, but for my league I think I increased revenue by roughly 30 million and everything looks peachy now. You will need to test around to suit your needs. What concerns me right now is that I now have some of the top closers making eight figures. But that is kind of happening in real life too.

11-19-2011, 11:30 AM	#10
PSUColonel Hall Of Famer Join Date: Feb 2002 Posts: 12,990 Blog Entries: 37	I have been wanting to know what the best settings are as well, but it seems as though people are not running long term tests they way they used to. There has never been a good answer to this question.

11-19-2011, 12:49 PM	#12
PSUColonel Hall Of Famer Join Date: Feb 2002 Posts: 12,990 Blog Entries: 37	How much should be added?

11-19-2011, 03:14 PM	#13
markprior22 All Star Starter Join Date: Apr 2002 Location: springfield, illinois Posts: 1,225 Blog Entries: 2	I added 30 mil to the national contract. Have to hit "refresh" after entering a number and it will give you a basic look at the effect that change will have on your league. Hope it works but it is frustrating to have to mess with this stuff just to make the game playable.

11-19-2011, 03:50 PM	#14
SandMan Hall Of Famer Join Date: Aug 2003 Posts: 2,946	When starting a fictional league I have found the following problems with financials After the inaugural draft you you may have 10-15 players still making the 400K minimum. When they hit the arbitration period they get 3-8 Million dollar awards. Multiply the difference between that and the 400k you will find that you just increased your payroll by 30-40M or more. When these players are eligible for FA a lot of the players are asking for 20M or more to stay with your team. You let the players go to FA and sign lesser quality players to fit your budget and you do not have enough to pay the star players. I have been able to keep my payroll under budget but the quality of players I now have are no where near where I was in seasons 1-7. The longer you play the lesser the quality of player you can afford during the FA period and the chance that good players don't get signed or get signed at a lowball contract. I play with reserve roster instead of minor leagues but I don't know if that makes much difference but I do notice that by the 10th or 11th seasons I am running out of reserve roster players and have to go to the FA screen to sign "reserve" players. I need these players in the case of injury to any of my starters. This adds about another 3-4M on my payroll. I ran through this, testing my financials, 10 times to get a feel for the game. I find that it is manageable to stay within budget but in time a few star players will not get signed in the FA period and have to sign low offers during the season. I feel the fix would be to have the game have an inflation mode where your financials increase yearly 3-5%. This may offset some of the issues as long as the players did not increase their demands by more than the inflation amount. It appears the more money you have available the more that the FA players ask for. For those playing with historical or MLB teams I don't know if these problems with the financials affect you. Hopefully not. I also wanted to add that I will have 40M to sign extensions at times but very little for FA. I wish there was a way to "mortgage" the future and use some of the money for free agents. It would mean that you could not sign your own players the next season but you would probably not be able to afford them anyway. The culprit is not the FA period or signings. It is the rapid rise in salaries for arbitration eligible players. I usually will pay the players through arbitration then let them go FA losing a good player around age 28-29 unless I can sign them during the last year or so of arbitration to a long term contract. Hopefully Markus will come up with something to make the financial model work better in the next version.

11-19-2011, 04:35 PM	#15
PSUColonel Hall Of Famer Join Date: Feb 2002 Posts: 12,990 Blog Entries: 37	I just don't understand this. The new financial calculator tells us what the avg. profit in the league should be. Why is there a problem still? What should the avg profit be to prevent bad things from happening? Is this issue going to happen no matter what I do? I am not going to fiddle with financial settings each year

11-19-2011, 06:13 PM	#17
PSUColonel Hall Of Famer Join Date: Feb 2002 Posts: 12,990 Blog Entries: 37	The question here is whether the AI has the ability to realize when it can't afford to offer arbitration to its Players.

11-19-2011, 07:45 PM	#19
PSUColonel Hall Of Famer Join Date: Feb 2002 Posts: 12,990 Blog Entries: 37	So it sounds to me as though the settings have zero effect on the problem....it's an AI problem that should have been addressed long ago. What makes me a bit ticked off is that this should have been the number one priority for a patch(which I believe it was) the trouble is it was never fixed correctly/Wholely. Call me crazy, but I feel like we are owed another patch that addresses this issue fully.