Anyone here play with the salary cap turned on?

[Accipiter]

If so, any tips on making it run smoothly? Been thinking of setting a cap that's about 10% above the current league average in my sim and seeing how that effects things.

[tds7887]

I tried it a few times and didn't see that huge of a difference. It's worth remembering that arbitration can kill a team so either shortening arb years or making free agency kick in quicker may help if your league is having a problem

[chucksabr]

I wondered about what the salary cap did. Specifically, I wondered whether it led to more parity over time.

[MBarrett]

There's a good discussion HERE, with lots of info. on use of the Salary Cap.

[Fyrestorm3]

I had a league that ran for quite a while with a salary cap, and it fared pretty well. My few tips and tricks for it:

• Arbitration is a killer if you're going to use a cap. In my opinion, you can only have one or the other. I always turn arbitration off entirely.
• Set the media revenue to Same Contract for Every Team, and set the number a little higher than the cap. This gives all teams enough money to be able to spend to the cap if they choose.
• A lower cap is better, just to simplify things. Personally, I go with $50M, with most contracts averaging $1M and superstar contracts around $5M.
• Always remember that teams will not "dump" salary to get under the cap - if they're over, they'll be unable to spend money, but they will not actively try and get under the cap until they do so naturally.
• Don't just set it up and dive in. Create the league as a template, and then do a few test runs where you sim 15 years into the future to make sure that everything's working as intended. When you mess with the financials, things can get screwy.

[sprague]

Originally Posted by Fyrestorm3

I had a league that ran for quite a while with a salary cap, and it fared pretty well. My few tips and tricks for it:

• Arbitration is a killer if you're going to use a cap. In my opinion, you can only have one or the other. I always turn arbitration off entirely.
• Set the media revenue to Same Contract for Every Team, and set the number a little higher than the cap. This gives all teams enough money to be able to spend to the cap if they choose.
• A lower cap is better, just to simplify things. Personally, I go with $50M, with most contracts averaging $1M and superstar contracts around $5M.
• Always remember that teams will not "dump" salary to get under the cap - if they're over, they'll be unable to spend money, but they will not actively try and get under the cap until they do so naturally.
• Don't just set it up and dive in. Create the league as a template, and then do a few test runs where you sim 15 years into the future to make sure that everything's working as intended. When you mess with the financials, things can get screwy.

this is an interesting discussion, as i had thought too of implimenting a cap

why do you suggest a lower cap is better? easier for teams to squeeze in a top $5 salary than $20 mil am guessing

ps additional question. The choice of what the cap should be. Say in a 20 team league, the player salaries for team 8 on the salary list? Or should the choice be higher?

one more question. Under your system all teams are bringing in the same revenue. The only difference would be ticket money coming in. Does in your league there be a real difference from teams at the top to teams at the bottom? Because in real life, eve with a cap, a few teams still have a bit more money than others to spend, just the difference is much closer than without the cap.

Thanks. This is a good discussion of a topic not up here that often

[RchW]

I have a salary cap and arbitration. No problem.

[sprague]

wondering if rich and fyre could post a screenshot of the finance settings you are using...
thanks

[byzeil]

Originally Posted by RchW

I have a salary cap and arbitration. No problem.

We do this in an on-line league. It basically forces teams to make tough choices come arbitration time and thus makes more players available during free agency.

[Fyrestorm3]

Originally Posted by RchW

I have a salary cap and arbitration. No problem.

That's surprising to me; I've tried that and constantly saw teams exceeding the cap - even by a few million dollars, it still irked me.

Originally Posted by byzeil

We do this in an on-line league. It basically forces teams to make tough choices come arbitration time and thus makes more players available during free agency.

Sure, it works great in an online league, because you have human players who understand how the financial system is set up to work. I'm talking about the AI, which doesn't know that spending over the cap is a bad thing - with contract offers, the AI will know that you can only offer X amount of money, but there's no such restrictions on arbitration.

Originally Posted by sprague

why do you suggest a lower cap is better? easier for teams to squeeze in a top $5 salary than $20 mil am guessing

As I said, just for simplicity. I suppose it depends on how much wiggle room you want to give teams. Also, too high of a cap makes the whole idea of a cap pointless - if you set it to, say, $120M in today's modern MLB, it would only affect a select few teams.

Originally Posted by sprague

ps additional question. The choice of what the cap should be. Say in a 20 team league, the player salaries for team 8 on the salary list? Or should the choice be higher?

Really up to you. Trial and error is the best method. It also depends on what you set the individual players' salaries.

Originally Posted by sprague

one more question. Under your system all teams are bringing in the same revenue. The only difference would be ticket money coming in. Does in your league there be a real difference from teams at the top to teams at the bottom? Because in real life, eve with a cap, a few teams still have a bit more money than others to spend, just the difference is much closer than without the cap.

If you wanted to simulate that, you could have the media revenue set to be lower than the cap, and then ticket sales and cash on hand matter. See, without a media revenue that allows teams to spend to the cap, you also have to factor in owners' budgets (though you could disable those), staff salaries, cash on hand, ticket sales... in my opinion it just gets a little too complicated. I like a league with real parity, where the best teams might rule for a few years, but can get dethroned in an instant, and the best way to do that is to ensure that every team can spend to the cap.

Originally Posted by sprague

wondering if rich and fyre could post a screenshot of the finance settings you are using...
thanks

Don't have that league anymore, but I posted a screenshot here when this was asked last year:

http://www.ootpdevelopments.com/boar...086-post8.html