Season 26 (1863) Off-season thread

[Young Drachma]

Rather than try to go through each team's arbitration cases, I just let it run. To offset the increase payroll situation by each team, for this season only, the cap increases to $200 million. Effectively, we're "uncapped" but I don't expect it to result in won-ton spending outside of wacky one-year deals because all deals are still fully guaranteed.

I just don't want to have to check the cap for teams and figure out who had lots of arby versus teams with little to none. By just doubling the cap, it offsets whatever "advantages" there were, the problem is neutralized and next year, we'll go back to $100m.

Free agency is now granted after eight years for ML players and moved to 4 years for minor league free agents under the guise that a guy shouldn't have to toil for ages to get a chance at playing for a team he can help.

Game date is Jan. 19th, but no free agents were able to sign so it'll be no different than normal, I just wanted to get to the pre-season so we'd get the arbitration thing turned off once and for all.

[Young Drachma]

Draft pick tracker is updated

[Young Drachma]

1B Jayden Peterson was traded to Chicago to complete the Ponty Lopez deal, as he was Gettysburg's 2nd rounder in the '62 draft.

[Young Drachma]

Winnemucca's Erik Doucet broke the post-season record for most strikeouts in a game by a pitcher last year with 15. The previous record was 14 which had been reached by three different pitchers -- all of whom had pitched for the New York Americans. The Americans folded and all of their players moved to the Winnemucca Choo-Choos expansion team.

[Young Drachma]

Ok, file is up. We'll do FA1 tomorrow. FA2 on Wednesday and we'll sim to the start of ST on Thursday and do spring training on Friday.

[Jack Raden]

How will this affect FFA auctions? Should we just expect one year with a ton more cash flowing?

[Gomer]

So we'll have a few one year $120 million offers on Cameron and Salazar.

That'll be fun.

[claphamsa]

Originally Posted by Gomer

So we'll have a few one year $120 million offers on Cameron and Salazar.

That'll be fun.

that or some fun bids on the youth...

[Gomer]

How the fuck does Fred Stone go from 105 potential stuff at the end of the season to 84 now, a couple months later?

Should I not have put him in the winter league or something?

[Young Drachma]

Originally Posted by Gomer

How the fuck does Fred Stone go from 105 potential stuff at the end of the season to 84 now, a couple months later?

Should I not have put him in the winter league or something?

I don't see why Winter league would ruin him, though my impression of it is that it works best for younger-ish players. I might need to change it from "Winter League" to "International" so that the level of competition is better as far as the game is concerned. I will do that tonight. (INTL is the closest thing to major league in the game. Winter League was near Rookie League level for the purposes of talent creation. Not sure how it affects players interest in playing..but it shouldn't)

But our commish did install OOTPOU with DEV so we could track that stuff.

[Young Drachma]

Originally Posted by Jack Raden

How will this affect FFA auctions? Should we just expect one year with a ton more cash flowing?

Originally Posted by Gomer

So we'll have a few one year $120 million offers on Cameron and Salazar.

That'll be fun.

Originally Posted by claphamsa

that or some fun bids on the youth...

1853 FFP Auction & RFA Designations - Front Office Football Central

As for free agency, yeah I imagine it'll be a wacktastic year of crazy offers. But everyone has the same bazooka, so...it'll be fair and it might be fun.

[Young Drachma]

For this year only, also, FRANCHISE player teams can buy access to FFP/RFA for $25m in cap space. Also FFPs will be for anyone 17 and under. But we'll do them public like we always do, because well...when it goes to 17 and under, I want to participate.

[Young Drachma]

FA1 is tonight nerds, just a reminder.

[Young Drachma]

Here we go:

Tuesday, January 27th, 1863
Winnemucca Lake Monsters: Signed free agent LF Corey Sanders to a 3-year contract worth a total of $2,400,000.
St. Louis Aviators: Signed free agent RF Lowell MacNeill to a 1-year contract worth a total of $3,000,000.
Memphis Smokers: Signed free agent 2B Alberto Hermández to a 1-year contract worth a total of $1,000,000.
Brooklyn Titans: Signed free agent C José Beltrán to a 1-year contract worth a total of $1,500,000.
Memphis Smokers: Signed free agent SP Dave Bennett to a 1-year contract worth a total of $1,000,000.
Memphis Smokers: Signed free agent C William Messer to a 3-year contract worth a total of $23,500,000.
Memphis Smokers: Signed free agent SP Takamasa Kichida to a 2-year contract worth a total of $8,000,000.
Gettysburg Gomers: Signed free agent CF Carlos Salazar to a 1-year contract worth a total of $135,000,000.
St. Louis Aviators: Signed free agent C Palmer Welch to a 1-year contract worth a total of $1,900,000.
Memphis Smokers: Signed free agent SP Pedro Villegas to a 1-year contract worth a total of $3,000,000.
St. Louis Aviators: Signed free agent SP Jarrod Karnes to a 5-year contract worth a total of $18,930,000.
Memphis Smokers: Signed free agent SP Tom Ware to a 1-year contract worth a total of $1,000,000.
Brooklyn Titans: Signed free agent 2B Alex Serrano to a 1-year contract worth a total of $750,000.
Gettysburg Gomers: Signed free agent C Jimmy Griggs to a 1-year contract worth a total of $5,000,000.
Winnemucca Lake Monsters: Signed free agent 1B Jimmy Berwind to a 3-year contract worth a total of $2,700,000.
Brooklyn Titans: Signed free agent CF Caspar Selkirk to a 1-year contract worth a total of $1,200,000.
Memphis Smokers: Signed free agent SP Alex Palacios to a 2-year contract worth a total of $4,000,000.
Sunday, January 25th, 1863
Memphis Smokers: Signed free agent MR Javier Macías to a 2-year contract worth a total of $5,000,000.
Memphis Smokers: Signed free agent SP Mike Cameron to a 1-year contract worth a total of $1,500,000.
Cleveland Laborers: Signed free agent RF Jimmy Evers to a 5-year contract worth a total of $47,500,000.

[Young Drachma]

Doc clearly wasn't joking, signing Carlos Salazar to a 1-year deal worth $135 million. Holy cow.

[Young Drachma]

Because of the accelerated sim, we're already at the day before spring training. So it seems like we might be better off just waiting until Friday and simming through spring training unless there are trades that need to be processed over the next two days.

[Young Drachma]

Ok file is up.

[Young Drachma]

Also we have our first RFA situation. Memphis has signed William Messer to a 3-year offer sheet worth $23.5 million. His former club, Washington, RFA'd him and so...claphamsa has 24-hours to match the deal (and then he'll go back to Washington) or decline to do so and he'll stay with Memphis.

[Gomer]

Originally Posted by Young Drachma

Doc clearly wasn't joking, signing Carlos Salazar to a 1-year deal worth $135 million. Holy cow.

This is apparently the only way I'm ever going to land a solid CF.

[claphamsa]

man, i forgot to xport! stupid me!!!!!!!

I will match the incredibly odd contract.

[Gomer]

LOLZ.... Salazar is asking for $60 million per year for 10 years.

Looks like he may be a one-hit wonder in G-burg.

[Young Drachma]

Originally Posted by Gomer

LOLZ.... Salazar is asking for $60 million per year for 10 years.

Looks like he may be a one-hit wonder in G-burg.

That'll obviously come down, he's just bargaining for what you told him he's worth.

[scotto313]

Originally Posted by Young Drachma

That'll obviously come down, he's just bargaining for what you told him he's worth.

On that note, I was quite surprised to see Jimmy Evers sign for a fraction of what I paid him last season.

[Young Drachma]

So reminder, no export tonight or tomorrow. Next deadline is Friday evening's sim where we'll do spring training. HTML is updated including STREP players

[Young Drachma]

Originally Posted by scotto313

On that note, I was quite surprised to see Jimmy Evers sign for a fraction of what I paid him last season.

Me too. Heh.

[Young Drachma]

Well unless there are trades or something. If there are trades, then I can do a file.

[Young Drachma]

How do you all feel about experimenting with auction-style free agency next year. So in other words, doing FA like we do FFP auction in public auction style format?

[claphamsa]

i think that benefits people who happen to be around at the deadline too much. i like it as is now.

[wolvie109]

I don't like the current FA format because a lot of the bargaining is determined by the computer (salary demands, length of contract, etc). In an auction style environment, salaries and years are determined by us.

Just a thought, are we able to re-sign players to new contracts before they enter free agency? If that is the case and if we adopt the new rule, will we still be able to sign players before they enter FA?

[Gomer]

I like auction style.
I hear there's this really shitty ootp league, full of fuckwads and dickholes, called FOBBLE or something, that has a really cool free agency tool.
Maybe you can look into stealing that?

[wolvie109]

Originally Posted by Gomer

fuckwads and dickholes

You're the king, Doc.

[Young Drachma]

Dunno if I can get my hands on BWD or not.

[wolvie109]

That shit is top secret, it is. Well never hurts to ask but then is it going to be weighed the same? where 3 years is the premium?

[Young Drachma]

I forgot about Thanksgiving next week. I guess we should probably accelerate the schedule so we're done by Wednesday. Or at least have the regular season done by then and do the playoffs post-Turkey.

[Young Drachma]

Here's what we'll do next week:

Monday: 1st half
Tuesday: 2nd half
Wednesday: Playoffs & Draft

Then we'll take off through the following Sunday when we sim to the start of FA. Gives me a few days to figure out some possible other FA working scheme, because I'm with the crew that says letting the game set the market sucks, but I'm also with the crew that says live-auction isn't fair for the people who can't always be on the board.

Though one solution to that would be that rather than it being a live running auction, everyone lists two offers and then I use a randomizer to determine which offer gets accepted. (Unless it's a guy with no offers..)

[Young Drachma]

But in the meantime, it's all about the status quo.

[tvan]

i like the sound of the auction, but not sure how well the live auction would work for me with my schedule being as sparadic as it is

[Young Drachma]

Originally Posted by tvan

i like the sound of the auction, but not sure how well the live auction would work for me with my schedule being as sparadic as it is

Yeah, for now we're going to keep it how it is until we can come up with something that's fair to everyone. So no worries.

[Young Drachma]

Sooo...we're expanding by two teams this year. JonathanG is bringing the expansion Boston Blue Sox to the AL. The NL are getting a new team too, just not sure what they're going to be yet as the owner needs to get back to me and get registered here.

No playoff expansion though, fear not.

[Young Drachma]

Spring Training tomorrow nerds.

[Gomer]

I think an auction would work, as long as the bidding period lasts over several days. You can always come up with some kind of final or max bid system to stave off sniping.

Let's face it. This is fast sim. If you can't get to the computer over the course of a week, you should probably join some kind of slowsie league like the FOBLE or something.

(Or at least PM max bids to the commish if you'll be away).

[wolvie109]

I'm agree with Gomer. I think a one or two day countdown on bids would be more than fair. Especially if FA is only one week long. The countdown always resets when there is a new bid on a player anyway so sniping would only really happen at 2 specific times. 1) when the countdown is going out and someone is trying to extend that countdown and 2) at the End of FA.

If we actually do get the BWD, the system lets you enter a max bid anyway so if you can't be there, your max bid will still go through. Without the BWD, I think PMing the commish with your max bid would also be fair.

[Young Drachma]

We're not going to get our hands on BWD. I'll need to come up with something else (far more rudimentary) and simple. But in the meantime, we'll run with what we have and over the Thanksgiving break, I'll spend the next few days trying to concoct something that might work okay.

[Young Drachma]

For the uninitiated, a few guys here are current members of FOBL and it uses a custom EBay style auction system that hand developed by someone over there ages ago. Basically it enables you to bid on players without using the game and no one knows who has bid on someone until bidding is over. It's pretty slick. But it's essentially proprietary to that league.

[claphamsa]

just curious, why woudnt they share it?

for what its worth, i would like to see the STREP auction in game as well. there is no way ill be able to be on at 10 tonight....

[Young Drachma]

Originally Posted by claphamsa

just curious, why woudnt they share it?

for what its worth, i would like to see the STREP auction in game as well. there is no way ill be able to be on at 10 tonight....

Really the bigger issue is, it's a lot of work to manage that software for a league that does FA every other week. (Whereas FOBL does FA once every 2-3 months or so) I'm not burnt out on this league because it's relatively simple and when we innovate, it's simple innovations aimed at fun or whatevers. I don't really want to create that much more work for myself, because I'd literally have to manually move every player in FA to their new team, set their contracts and so, we're talking a process that's essentially automated right now (outside of FFPs) that I'd have to take several hours to do.

As for last minute bid sniping in public auctions, I'll come up with something. In the meantime though, I'd just recommend bidding higher if you really want a guy.