Extended today, traded next week(Too many extensions?)

[JimSpriggs]

Over many years the issue of the AI offering recently extended players for trades has been noted, its been in the game for years, i have a house rule to never take up these offers but AI to AI trading has no such rules..

Started a MLB live start early june, am now at spring training 2024 and looking at what teams got up to in the off season...

Ian Happ(CUBS) 9th Sept 23 signs 4 Yrs $63M....11th Sept 23 traded to Texas
Bryan Reynolds(PIRATES) July 23 signs 4 Yrs $75M...Oct 23 traded to Dodgers

This next couple went in the same trade.
Michael A Taylor July 23 signs 2 years $20M...Nov 23 traded to Dodgers
JD Martinez Oct 23 signs 3 years $47M...Nov 23 traded to Twins

Jose Trevino(NYY) July 23 signs 4years $50M....Dec 23 traded to Rockies
David Robertson(NYM) 15th Nov 23 signs 2 years $15M ...30th Nov traded to Philies
Luis Guillorme(NYM) Sept 23 signs 4 years $32M...Nov 23 traded to Dodgers
Danny Jansen(BLUEJAYS) 6th Nov 23 signs 3 years $30M...18th Nov 23 traded to Pirates

there may have been others but these stood out, i guess something like this could happen and probably has happened IRL but from what i know about baseball (UK fan) this seems pretty out of whack.

All these trades happened with trading frequency on VERY LOW.

I wonder if part of the problem is the amount of extensions the AI is dishing out , i think the $/years the AI is paying for its talent is pretty reasonable you see the odd questionable deal but on whole the logic seems good, its just there are so many extensions being signed, i know MLB is heading that way,
locking up players (eg like the Braves) so maybe it's realistic. It seems high to me, anyone else noticed this ?
You only have a game option to Allow/Disallow Extensions, maybe allowing the user a choice for Extension frequency would be a good option.

Ok looked into this the best i can , in my game June-Dec 23, 58 multi year extensions were signed.
June- 7 extensions signed, July 10, Aug 5, Sept 13, Oct 7, Nov 12, Dec 4.

according to Spotrac there are only 127 players in MLB playing under an extended contract, this includes a few guys on 1 year extensions (which i didnt count, and they were only a few) but doesn't count a guy like aaron hicks.

Are there just too many trades even on "very low" ? , is that not helping.
I counted 106 major league deals between 2nd Nov 23 to 26th Jan 24.
171 Total deals including minor league deals for the same period.
No real idea if this seems high?

[Bobbyraz49]

I'll be following this thread.

[JimSpriggs]

I ran another sim , live start early june and simmed to spring training 2024
Before the end of sept ,Ohtani,GuerreroJr,Bader,Soto,Snell,Mullins,W.Smit h,Heim,Valdez,McKenzie,Cortes,Flaherty,Woodruff,Ve rdugo all sign multi year deals.
By the end of Dec 23 , 61 multi year extensions
were signed.


Keeping track of these extensions is not as simple as going to MLB/League News and then filter "contracts", that should be it, but so many are not showing up, for june it informs me that Joe JImenez has signed 3 more years with atlanta but fails to mention Ohtani, Vlad and Soto!


For this sim i turned down trading to "almost never" and only 2 of the 61 were traded before the season even started. But on this setting there was way too little action around the trade deadline.

Good news : simming the whole of 2024 and only 30 or so multi year deals
were signed for the whole year, so maybe when the AI takes over it extends all the guys it really likes and then settles down...shouldn't really ever be trading them away within days/months though so its best to keep the trading frequency on "almost never" for most of the year.

[Marinersfan51]

Don't read too much into anything in the first 2-3 years of a game, especially a real world game. The AI starts off with rosters and situations it didn't construct to there is a ton of activity as it shuffles all the pieces around chaotically.

Just as an example, the real life Phillies are comfortable with their plan of having a lineup of mostly 1B/DH types and Dombrowski built this team so he isn't trying to move Bohm/Schwarber/Castellanos for better defenders at those spots, but the in-game Dombrowski looks at the team and says "all these guys are playing out of position, let's make some moves."

[JimSpriggs]

Yes that all makes sense and is very acceptable and seems to be what is happening, you want the AI to make moves and once the game world starts it has to do its own thing and that a pretty complex thing.

I guess my concern is after all the chaos is over will the AI quit extending players and then trading them in no time and by no time i mean before the extension has even come into force.

Even on trading frequency "almost never", the AI extends McCluthen for two years at pittsburgh and then promptly trades him away in the offseason.

"almost never" - that's not chaotic and it still does things like this.

It's not the extending logic, it's not the trading logic, it's when the two meet.

Just my reflections, it's never going to be perfect but this extending and then trading thing bugs me a bit, but as you say lets see if it's an ongoing thing 3+ years later.

[JimSpriggs]

Simming ahead to the end of 2028, did not take long to find this beauty.
Signs a 4 year $136M and then traded 8 days later
Just wished this didn't happen.

[futuremarlinsgm]

From my experience, most of those teams that traded those players on extensions end up having limited to negative budget space in the offseason as the game's finances balance out. This may be why those teams trade those contracts away.