Franchise Budget Question

[SethMurphy]

Re: Franchise Budget Question

what is your screen showing when you are trying to offer the 31 million/year? Is this off season? If so what kind of rejection notice are you getting? How many are on your 40 man and how many are in the organization?
Even before they changed to the weekly cash flow system last year, there were times in off season where I looked to spend less than my remaining annual budget but I was told that I couldn't afford that offer, and often it was because I didn't have near full 40 man or sorely understaffed throughout the organization.

The only message I ever get is that "The Nationals can no longer afford the contract offered to X player and it has been withdrawn" or something like that

I usually have just under 40 on my 40-man, making sure I have room to sign the free agent in question to a major league deal. I do have pending offers (arbitration/tendered offers to minor leaguers) but it's all one phase, so you have to offer those contracts, which don't all get accepted, at the same time you are offering contracts to the free agents.

maybe a solution would be to separate the re-signing phase from the open free agency phase. do a phase where you re-sign all those guys, offer arb and such, then do the open free agency.


honestly, i think they should just simplify the budget, have a total budget per team (i/e $125M for one team, $135M for another) and you see your current total ($55M) and pending offers ($40M) leaving a gap from the $95M committed in offers and salary, to the total budget of say $125M, leaving $30M in available money to spend however you see fit. I don't need to see that I can only offer a $5.5M/year contract when I have $30M to spend under budget.

[coach422001]

Re: Franchise Budget Question

The only message I ever get is that "The Nationals can no longer afford the contract offered to X player and it has been withdrawn" or something like that

I usually have just under 40 on my 40-man, making sure I have room to sign the free agent in question to a major league deal. I do have pending offers (arbitration/tendered offers to minor leaguers) but it's all one phase, so you have to offer those contracts, which don't all get accepted, at the same time you are offering contracts to the free agents.

maybe a solution would be to separate the re-signing phase from the open free agency phase. do a phase where you re-sign all those guys, offer arb and such, then do the open free agency.


honestly, i think they should just simplify the budget, have a total budget per team (i/e $125M for one team, $135M for another) and you see your current total ($55M) and pending offers ($40M) leaving a gap from the $95M committed in offers and salary, to the total budget of say $125M, leaving $30M in available money to spend however you see fit. I don't need to see that I can only offer a $5.5M/year contract when I have $30M to spend under budget.

OK that is the same message that I've seen over the years too, but it sounds like you did what you should by making sure you are close to your 40 man limit. In the past the game sometimes would not let me make that big signing until those guys on the tender, auto-renew and arbitration started signing filling up the rest of the organization. So it may still be doable but later in the process. A few years ago I had a heck of a time trying to sign Lester to the Cubs even with an additional 7 million cushion. It was counter intuitive but I had to fill in some of the roster spots before the game finally let me sign him. You're right they should allow you to sign and then deal with whatever money is left for the rest of the roster spots but that's not how they've been doing it.
One other thing to keep in mind at least in 17 (and I learned this just before my off season) the deeper into the off season the less these guys will sign for. I couldn't get Sale onto the Sox until late January getting the same message you got but then I underbid him and he signed as the off season wore on. I don't know how the new phases will affect this. I'd suggest if you can to sim to further points in the off season to see if as you get players signed from your current offers this issue gets resolved (then it really is more like it was in the past) or if it never does with plenty of cash flow to spend (then it sounds like a glitch). I wish I could help more but that's the only thing I can think of off hand. Good luck.

[Caulfield]

Re: Franchise Budget Question

Pitch counts on the scorebug with quick counts on is 5th grade math compared to the new(ish) budget system.

[MvPeterson2828]

Re: Franchise Budget Question

So everything I read in the thread and I think I got, signing top players to big contracts seems difficult to almost impossible to? I was researching this more and I don’t know if anyone watches MrHurriicane, but I watched his off-season video of MLB the show 2018 with his twins. After he did Arbitration and everything else ( Not the most knowledgeable MLB guy ) he went on to signing Goldschdmidt to like a 6 year deal, 108 mill and some other guys too with decent size contracts. I’m not sure if this is because he transferred his save from MLB the show 17 and continued or maybe you have to wait until you have done Arbitration, and the other contract stuff? I just thought it was interesting to read through this thread and some guys are struggling to make a 31 million contract and then he proceeds to make that one to Goldie haha.


I don’t understand why the budget system is so complex and difficult in this game? I don’t want to turn budgets off due to it being easy to build superstar teams. I mean, I could handicap myself and not allow that, but wouldn’t the cpu just go crazy and signing all these top players?


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[coach422001]

Re: Franchise Budget Question

So everything I read in the thread and I think I got, signing top players to big contracts seems difficult to almost impossible to? I was researching this more and I don’t know if anyone watches MrHurriicane, but I watched his off-season video of MLB the show 2018 with his twins. After he did Arbitration and everything else ( Not the most knowledgeable MLB guy ) he went on to signing Goldschdmidt to like a 6 year deal, 108 mill and some other guys too with decent size contracts. I’m not sure if this is because he transferred his save from MLB the show 17 and continued or maybe you have to wait until you have done Arbitration, and the other contract stuff? I just thought it was interesting to read through this thread and some guys are struggling to make a 31 million contract and then he proceeds to make that one to Goldie haha.


I don’t understand why the budget system is so complex and difficult in this game? I don’t want to turn budgets off due to it being easy to build superstar teams. I mean, I could handicap myself and not allow that, but wouldn’t the cpu just go crazy and signing all these top players?


Sent from my iPhone using Operation Sports

While it isn't intuitive based on how we all have understood player budgets I just looked at the weekly budget before and weekly budget after and managed through the off season. I'm sensing that it may be that you need to get deeper into the off season as you saw for these bigger contracts to get through. I have seen that same message others have seen in other iterations (so it is likely not the way they display the budget system) but I would suspect even early on you should be able to sign 10 million dollar a year contracts like the old days...yet folks seem to be having that difficulty with this version.

[RyanLeaf16]

Re: Franchise Budget Question

This is the right answer, let me decide how I want to spend my free $40M in budget space for example. If I want to offer one player $31M per and leave myself $9M to fill out my roster, that's my problem as the GM of the team.

Just give me a yearly total I need to stay under, don't make me worry about weekly numbers that don't matter.

I have yet to see a max offer amount over $5.8M on that screen when trying to sign a FA..............

Yeah, because that max offer of $5.8mm per wk would equate to $150,000,000 a year.

It's really not terribly difficult. You're pending offers include arbitration, qualifying offers and contract renewable players. At one point, the arbitration will be settled and the qualifying offers will drop off too.

However, they can't give you the full cash flow b/c YOU HAVE to go through arbitration unless you outright release that player or sign them to a long-term extension and buy out their arbitration years.

Qualifying offers don't have to be made, but, if you want compensation for losing a FA, you should offer it. So, they need to reserve money for that as well.

Technically, you can do what you're requesting by releasing arbitration-eligible players and not making qualifying offers. Then you can offer that $1.192mm per wk aka $31mm per year to a player if you like.

Again, I'm not saying the system that they have set-up is ideal, and you're probably right that a salary budget number to work within arb, renewable, qualifying offers and FA would be better, but, it's not so overly complex that it should keep you from enjoying the game.

Like I said in a previous post. Just take your weekly cash flow and multiply by 26. That's your annual budget. Then look at what "pending offers" you have (this includes arb, qualifying offers & renewables) and subtract that from the annual number you got from multiplying by 26 and that's how much you have at that particular time. Remember too, that the number can go up. If you have guys reject the qualifying offer, that weekly cash flow number will increase. Losing in arbitration, will have it decrease.

If anything, it's more realistic, which everyone says they want...until they get it.

[brianbb1222]

Re: Franchise Budget Question

Could someone link a video explaining this? It seems like I can never sign a big free agent cause of that stupid message "Can't afford the contract offered to the player"!!!!!!!

[coach422001]

Re: Franchise Budget Question

Could someone link a video explaining this? It seems like I can never sign a big free agent cause of that stupid message "Can't afford the contract offered to the player"!!!!!!!

I don't know if there is a video; I've not seen one. I found out (maybe from Ryan or from Countryboy) after getting that same message in previous games even with a large buffer fund available that if there weren't enough players on my 40 man or signed to the organization that I'd get this message. Once I got my 40 man close to full and more signings then I saw this less (some teams no matter what big name free agent asks were taking the remaining budget down too low). Perhaps that first wave of tendered contracts and offers to renew need to get signed before you can make that deal. The intuitive thing would be with 150 million budget, 100 million accounted for and 10 million in offers out there, I should be able to offer 20 million for a big name player with 20 million still remaining to fill out the rest of my staff; unfortunately it doesn't work like that. It is hard to really gauge the 'trigger' point for when you can offer that big contract and when the game won't allow it.

[Jr.]

Re: Franchise Budget Question

All of this is why I turn budgets off. Too much going on and too little wiggle room to go over for trades.

[Williemayshayes00]

Re: Franchise Budget Question

All of this is why I turn budgets off. Too much going on and too little wiggle room to go over for trades.

Then you get teams like the A's and Rays signing Harper and that's no good either. They need to get their game correct, but they have disappeared from the boards so they dont have to explain all the screw ups they have this year.

[KBLover]

Re: Franchise Budget Question

you're probably right that a salary budget number to work within arb, renewable, qualifying offers and FA would be better

It would also be what's actually realistic - a true balance sheet with everything laid out (no mystery numbers) and able to be displayed projected into forward years.

You say folks want realism until we get it? Who would NOT want a simple laid out balance sheet with multiple year projections? That sounds a lot more like a budget a business would use instead of hidden "reserved amounts we aren't telling you about" and "we won't tell you if you can't afford something until after the day is over".

Just tell us what we have, what we're spending in arbitration (like...put it on the screen next to the player...? maybe? or let us hit X and have it pop up with the reserved amount, not just what we want to offer?) and renewals and all that and give us your available balance.

[Jr.]

Re: Franchise Budget Question

Then you get teams like the A's and Rays signing Harper and that's no good either. They need to get their game correct, but they have disappeared from the boards so they dont have to explain all the screw ups they have this year.

30 team control. Don't have those issues either

[Williemayshayes00]

Re: Franchise Budget Question

30 team control. Don't have those issues either

We should be able to trust the game to have some common baseball sense and not have to control all 30 teams. I only have a few hours a week to play. I don’t have time to do their job for them.

[Jr.]

Re: Franchise Budget Question

We should be able to trust the game to have some common baseball sense and not have to control all 30 teams. I only have a few hours a week to play. I don’t have time to do their job for them.

"Common baseball sense" isn't always so common. I can't imagine how difficult that kind of stuff is to program to make everyone happy.

But anyway, back to the topic of the thread

[Showtime_77]

Re: Franchise Budget Question

This sounds like common core math to me!! Lol