Franchise Budget Question

[coach422001]

Re: Franchise Budget Question

Well, lets say that at the start in one year of my franchise, I have a budget of 200 million dollars.

At the trading deadline at the end of July, I trade away players with contracts totalling 80 million dollars, and don't add any large ones. (just prospects)

To me, logically, that means that I should go into the following offseason with at least 80 million in budget space. Regardless of how much profit my team has made weekly. That's pretty much how it always worked in previous versions. 80 million that I can spend signing free agents from other teams or extending my own guys.

However, it doesn't seem like that is the case now. Does that make sense?

I actually think it does work that way, although in the past you didn't always get that 80 million...you may get a 10 percent bump or reduction. The problem is it isn't apparent to us like the old days. Then from the bank you get a percentage of this to go into the next year's payroll.

I think I have a save from the end of the year...I can take a look at the end of year payroll for several teams and (with a range of both 2017 payrolls and weekly profits/bank tallies) and see when I roll into the off season what the max offer may look like between these teams. It won't be as precise as we want but may provide some insights.

I can say I know I had teams that did not make a million a week but all offseason budgets were well over 26 million...what I don't know though is how the current year's budget gets changed 'behind the scenes' and the relation to what is in the bank.

[countryboy]

Re: Franchise Budget Question

Well, lets say that at the start in one year of my franchise, I have a budget of 200 million dollars.

At the trading deadline at the end of July, I trade away players with contracts totalling 80 million dollars, and don't add any large ones. (just prospects)

To me, logically, that means that I should go into the following offseason with at least 80 million in budget space. Regardless of how much profit my team has made weekly. That's pretty much how it always worked in previous versions. 80 million that I can spend signing free agents from other teams or extending my own guys.

However, it doesn't seem like that is the case now. Does that make sense?

I thought that is how it worked now, or at least very similar. I noticed that I had "extra" funds available to me during the offseason when I traded guys, such as Pham. I didn't look to see how exact it was but it wasn't erroneously off.

[Ace1234NY]

Re: Franchise Budget Question

Well, lets say that at the start in one year of my franchise, I have a budget of 200 million dollars.

At the trading deadline at the end of July, I trade away players with contracts totalling 80 million dollars, and don't add any large ones. (just prospects)

To me, logically, that means that I should go into the following offseason with at least 80 million in budget space. Regardless of how much profit my team has made weekly. That's pretty much how it always worked in previous versions. 80 million that I can spend signing free agents from other teams or extending my own guys.

However, it doesn't seem like that is the case now. Does that make sense?

Well, if I'm thinking about it correct, this all should make sense. Your yearly profit IS your budget. For example, if you're making 1 mil a week, that means about 26 mil or so of profit per year. So if you go and give a FA 30 mil a year, you'd be losing 4 mil next season. The owner would never allow the team to lose money. You'd go out of business. So you have to at least break even.

So if you did cut your payroll by 80 mil, you should be able to spend all of that in FA unless you were losing money when you started slashing the budget. Or maybe your team tanked as a result and less attendance = lower profit = lower budget. Or maybe you have some newly arbitration eligible guys eating some of that budget. I think mainly it's the secretive nature around what arbitration does to your budget that is the problem. But weekly profit x 26 for available payroll makes perfect sense.

[coach422001]

Re: Franchise Budget Question

I just simmed through an old save on 17 to see what I could learn. The Tigers had 142 million in spend and 848 k/week profit in June, and a max offer of 1.3 million. They had 81 players on the team. The Twins had a spend of 80 million, 1.98 mill/week and a max of 2.8 million. These teams were not going to make the playoffs.

The Cubs were in second, had a 79.8 million spend, 1.07 million/week, and 1.68 million max. They only had 73 players. They ended up losing to the Indians in the WS.

After the season ended, as I moved into the off season:
Twins: 25 million in current salary, 4.11 million/week projected cash flow. I took that, multiplied by 26 and got 106 million + 25 million for a 131 million dollar payroll.

Cubs: 40.7 million current salary, 3.44 milllion/week x 26 =130 million total payroll.

Tigers (last place): 3.66 million/week x 26 =95 million + 85.8 million existing payroll for about 181 million total.

I simmed the off season. All teams have 90 players. The Cubs player payroll at spring training is 121 million, 3.23 million/week profit. The Tigers have a payroll of 176 million but I think around 18k/week profit. I didn't write those down but should have. The Twins underspent with the off season budget reaching 66.9 million. They had a profit of 2.83 million per week and that math would be around 140.5 million, about 9 million more than I estimated from the start of off season.

So the new season budget is not limited to profit made (weekly profit x 26, for example). What is buried is the portion of previous year's budget that is given to you plus how much of the bank comes your way, so forecasting how much a team will have to spend doesn't seem possible. The other thing I don't have is the coach/scout salaries included which would be part of the amount you have to spend.

What I could do tonight is do the same thing with the cubs and twins, starting point in june 2017, add in the staff salaries, estimate how much the overall payroll would be, then do the same at the start of the off season, at the start of spring of the new season and at the start of the following off season, also tracking where these teams finish which effects the budget allowance for the next year from the owner.

[countryboy]

Re: Franchise Budget Question

One thing to point out is remember that each Friday, cash flow is transferred to the bank. So you're cash flow/available cash flow could vary week to week.

What is in the bank is what is used to determine how much of a budget increase you get at the end of the year.

[bravesfan1984]

Re: Franchise Budget Question

All the confusion that the budget generates really, really makes we want to just turn it off when I start my franchise up. Sometimes, it's just not worth the hassle!