Free agency offers

[Vaevictis_386]

If you offer a player 4 million bonus and a 4 year contract with 1 million salary per year, does he:

1) Think of the offer as "This is worth 5 million in my first year, and who cares about the salary in later years"

2) Think of the offer as "This is worth 3 million in my first year."

More generally, is bonus always more attractive than first year salary?

For instance, would the best offer be to figure out what you can pay him in year 1, offer min sal and put the rest of the 1st year money into bonus?

[ozias]

Generally it's the bonus and the first years money that the player looks at, but other things do come into consideration.

If he is very loyal, and the original team has an offer in, you'll more than likely have to offer a much larger bonus to get him to sign with you. This doesn't always happen, as a loyal player many times just resigns with his team.

Next thing to consider, if you offer a 4 year deal worth 5 mil, but someone else offers a 3 year deal worth 4 mil, the player will generally go for the shorter contract, as they look at it as another chance to get a big contract in just a few years.

For your example, 4 mil in bonus over 4 years is 1 mil in bonus per year. With 1 mil per year as his deal, it basically a 4 year deal worth 2 mil per year to the player. So your deal is 8 mil over 4 years, an average of 2 mil a season.


Year Bonus Salary
yr 1 1mil 1mil
yr 2 1mil 1mil
yr 3 1mil 1mil
yr 4 1mil 1mil


Now for a 3 year deal at let's say 6 mil, but this is league min and mostly bonus. I'll use a reasonable min sal for this example.


Year Bonus Salary
yr 1 1.6mil 350k
yr 2 1.6mil 400k
yr 3 1.6mil 450k


Now you see your deal as having more money given to the player, but the player sees the other deal as a much higher bonus for a shorter amount of years, and to them that is a better deal than the longer one because they get a larger bonus and a shorter contract.

[Vaevictis_386]

Thank you for the information.

So is a bonus dollar more attractive to a player than a first year salary dollar?

[ozias]

For the most part yes.

It's better to look at it as this....the bonus and first year of the deal is more attractive to the player, then the rest of the deal.

Most MP league make you sign players to 3 year deal, but in SP you don't have that problem, so if you can offer a player a 1 year deal, you could give them league minimum and as much bonus you want, as long as you don't go over the cap, or offer so much your owner won't allow it.

That's why in a lot of MP leagues in the second Free Agency period(the one after the draft) you see a lot of outrageous 1 year deals, because people know a 1 year deal for lots of bonus is more then likely going to land a player far easier than a 3 yr deal will.

Of course in the GML, we have a 30% cap reduction to start with, so it's much harder for us to keep our team together compared to a lot of other MP leagues. So you really have to be careful with how you go about filling out your roster.

[Vaevictis_386]

That's really helpful information, I appreciate it!