Reserve Era Salaries

[StratMan]

I've been working on an 8 team league starting in the 1800s with minors and reserve era financials.

After running the simulation for several years, I still see only one player with a salary > "Above Average Player" - the max being $419. Only 14 of the 128 salaried players have salaries > $300.

The player salary brackets for Super Star through Minimum are $800, $620, $500, $410, $330, $260, $200, $150, $130, with average = $330.

Nearly all teams have a 50% profit margin so pretty sure money shouldn't be the issue.

• Do reserve era financials even look at the financial player salary brackets?
• Has anyone else used reserve era financials?

The problem with this is that free agents DO use the brackets making them very expensive and causing them to not get signed. I'd also like the salaries to widen a bit to be more realistic and not pay $600 for a free agent by $300 for the star on the team.

[Carplos]

My recommendation is to not use reserve rules and instead just use no free agency.

The salaries still don't completely match the settings, but they're closer to what you set vs reserve rules. And they function the same. I don't think with reserve rules I've seen players released or receive multiyear contracts even if you have that set to happen.

[uruguru]

I play with Reserve era rules and see career minor leaguers or aging veterans get released. But I use secondary (40-man) rosters so maybe that has something to do with it.

[StratMan]

Originally Posted by Carplos

My recommendation is to not use reserve rules and instead just use no free agency.

Thank you for the suggestion! I've tried a couple different iterations and below are my findings:

Standard Financials / No Free Agency
* Salaries seem to be set to player value immediately and vary quickly. The problem with this is you would have almost no way to control your budget as your team salaries can fluctuate very quickly.

Standard Financials / 20 yr Free Agency - Arb at 1 year (super "1" 15%)
* Allows for rookies to get minimum contracts and build up salaries via arbitration. This option seems to be hard coded for 2-3 year arbitration as player salaries will hit FA levels at that point and keep going up. NOT VIABLE

Standard Financials / 20 yr FA - KBO Style Arb at 1 year (super "1" 15%)
* This is where I settled for now. You get 1-2 years of minimum salary plus 3-4 years to get to FA level salary buckets. Even though $650 is set for my superstars, arbitration salary levels for stars and superstars climb to $900 - $1100. The biggest issue here is the top end is 50% higher than my buckets (which I can probably make work) and that aging veterans salaries don't come down aggresively enough which can cause them to be let go. I plan to monitor the $500+ guys and manually "extend" contracts to those that need adjustments (particularly in the downward direction).

Any one else have any thoughts?

[StratMan]

Originally Posted by uruguru

I play with Reserve era rules and see career minor leaguers or aging veterans get released. But I use secondary (40-man) rosters so maybe that has something to do with it.

I too have seen with my 20-year free agent set up a little hesitancy for the AI to promote younger / better prospects, though it is not too bad.

Before the v26 patch that addressed this, it was a much bigger problem though.