Money for Extensions, but not Free Agents

[georgecf]

I had taken over a poorly-run team several years ago in an online-league and have been digging out of a financial hole . . .

I understood last off-season that I had no money for Free Agents, because we were deeply in the hole . . .

I had been looking forward to this off-season, but again there is no money for Free Agents . . . Yet there is $38,283,000 available for extensions . . .

Is there anything I can do, other than trading some big contracts away, to free up money for free agents?

TIA

[CBeisbol]

Originally Posted by georgecf

I had taken over a poorly-run team several years ago in an online-league and have been digging out of a financial hole . . .

I understood last off-season that I had no money for Free Agents, because we were deeply in the hole . . .

I had been looking forward to this off-season, but again there is no money for Free Agents . . . Yet there is $38,283,000 available for extensions . . .

Is there anything I can do, other than trading some big contracts away, to free up money for free agents?

TIA

The first thing you need to do is understand your financial situation.

Go to your Accounting tab and then Front Office

Start with your budget. That's how much your owner will allow you to spend. If you're not playing with owners, then you have your total Revenue to use.

Then look at your expenses
Player Expenses - those are your contracts
Staff Expenses - contracts for your staff and front office
Scouting Expense - money for your scouting department
Draft Expenses - this is either how much you have already spent on the draft, or money you plan to spend on the draft
Player Development Expenses - money for player development
Miscellaneous Player Expenses - I'm not sure, but I think, this is where money for bonuses and maybe retained salary goes.
**If you don't have an owner that sets your budget, you'll also have to consider any revenue sharing you'll expect to pay.

Those should be all of your expenses

Whatever is left over (plus cash) is what you have available for signing free agents (or increasing your scouting or development budgets, spending more on the draft, international free agency, etc).

The only way you can increase that is to increase your budget or decrease your expenses.

You can, sometimes, increase your budget by meeting owner goals.

You can decrease your expenses by:
-trading away players with contracts
-non-tendering players who are arbitration eligible
-lowering the amounts you spend on player development, scouting, the draft or international free agents.

That's it.


I gave up on using the accounting system within the game, because it was never clear to me how it worked. I do my own accounting. I don't know where the number for money available for extensions comes from.

Understanding the accounting will, I think, help you better run your team and, maybe, provide some useful skills for life outside of OOTP.

[BirdWatcher]

Originally Posted by CBeisbol

The first thing you need to do is understand your financial situation.

I gave up on using the accounting system within the game, because it was never clear to me how it worked. I do my own accounting. I don't know where the number for money available for extensions comes from.

First of all I want to say that I think this was a very thorough and helpful response and I'm glad someone took the time to give the OP such a thoughtful response.

As for the part quoted above though, I'm pretty sure that the money for extensions is basically (and I hope I'm not over-simplifying this) your projected budget for the following year/season minus your projected expenditures for next season. Which is why this number changes over the season as estimates for upcoming arbitration cases fluctuate depending upon player performance/ratings, etc. (Among other things.)

So for the OP, for instance, while he may not have any money for FA's this season the fact that he has quite a bit of money for extensions likely means that at least a few contracts come off the books starting next season and he then should have some money to spend.

[BBGiovanni]

Sorry if this is too basic for you, but I want to make sure you know these issues too. Keep in mind that those numbers lump lots of things in that may never happen, or may happen differently. For example, the numbers listed for guys due arbitration are estimates only, they can be higher or you can sometimes chisel them down in the hearing. Or just nontender them and they go away. More importantly, guys with long term deals are on the salary schedule even though there may be vesting or team options during the period. So, my Mets owe Robbie Cano for 2020 and 2021, and the budgets list him for years after that. But there's a team option for 2022, so I don't care what numbers are on the schedule after that for him, but OOTP does. It won't let me spend that $20M on someone else to extend them or whatever, it assumes you're spending that money.

[CBeisbol]

Originally Posted by BBGiovanni

Sorry if this is too basic for you, but I want to make sure you know these issues too. Keep in mind that those numbers lump lots of things in that may never happen, or may happen differently. For example, the numbers listed for guys due arbitration are estimates only, they can be higher or you can sometimes chisel them down in the hearing. Or just nontender them and they go away. More importantly, guys with long term deals are on the salary schedule even though there may be vesting or team options during the period. So, my Mets owe Robbie Cano for 2020 and 2021, and the budgets list him for years after that. But there's a team option for 2022, so I don't care what numbers are on the schedule after that for him, but OOTP does. It won't let me spend that $20M on someone else to extend them or whatever, it assumes you're spending that money.

Right, this is a big part of the reason that I do my own accounting.

Also, players signed to minor league vesting options aren't accounted for.