2013 Franchise Issue Explained (With Pics)

[Neolithic]

Re: 2013 Franchise Issue Explained (With Pics)

OK, one offseason down, a few more to go. I'm happy with the results thus far. The CPU renewed everyone on the last day off the offseason. There's a couple of players in the FA pool that were arbitration eligible, but nothing like before. The mainstock of the FA pool now, is players in their mid to upper 30's as I would expect it to be. I'm considering throwing a wrench into it by only making offers on Dec 2nd for 15 teams, and seeing if the other 15 make offers to those last remaining guys on it's own. (I'd write down all the names so I could compare them quickly to the FA list the next day.) I'll probably make a new save of this thing once I hit the next offseason, so I can keep doing what I'm doing now, and testing making offers for only half of the teams.

[raleigh mcclure]

Re: 2013 Franchise Issue Explained (With Pics)

yes, in my tests of making offers on day 1, my tests have all kept the "known stars" from being FA's as of spring training.

I think we've narrowed this issue down to the Tender/Non-Tender date, and players that should remain under team control being dumped into the FA pool, skewing everything from how it should be.

And I think it's cool that all of us pretty much in the last set of posts, all came to the same conclusions and ideas for a fix :P

Wow, from baseball to philosophy. Here's a piece of a quote by Charles Sanders Pierce, one of the first pragmatist philosophers, on truth:

"The opinion which is fated to be ultimately agreed to by all who investigate, is what we mean by the truth, and the object represented in this opinion is the real. That is the way I would explain reality."

[Neolithic]

Re: 2013 Franchise Issue Explained (With Pics)

So far so good in offseason 2, just finished making offers to all renewables. Waiting for the sim to make it way through to spring training again to see how things look.

something I've noticed so far, with budgets off (no ceiling, open checkbook) teams are WELL under their teams budget, some by as much as 45m. Will be interested to see how that goes along as I get further and further in.


Side note: Vodka and Revenge of the Nerds on the 2nd monitor while I sim on the TV, and post on the main monitor is a beautiful thing.

[Neolithic]

Re: 2013 Franchise Issue Explained (With Pics)

so, my hopes about the budgets went out the window. there are a number of teams now after the 2nd offseason that are over budget. nothing extreme, a few million or so, most are under a million over. Still a lot of teams under budget, just not 40m under. most under budget teams are withing 5-8m of the budget for that year.

FA still looks good after year two.

[ktd1976]

Re: 2013 Franchise Issue Explained (With Pics)

So far so good in offseason 2, just finished making offers to all renewables. Waiting for the sim to make it way through to spring training again to see how things look.

something I've noticed so far, with budgets off (no ceiling, open checkbook) teams are WELL under their teams budget, some by as much as 45m. Will be interested to see how that goes along as I get further and further in.


Side note: Vodka and Revenge of the Nerds on the 2nd monitor while I sim on the TV, and post on the main monitor is a beautiful thing.

reminds me of the days when I'd have a TV with The Show going, a second TV with a movie on...and my laptop in front of me...aahhhh multitasking is a great thing.

Neo, thank you for all that you have done in this area. And to everyone else, an big thank you as well

[Neolithic]

Re: 2013 Franchise Issue Explained (With Pics)

3rd offseason update:

Everything seems well and fine. There was a single A pot 22 year old in FA as of spring training. He's got 0.000 years of service, so I'm working on why he slipped through the crack. Budgets are still withing reason, some over, some under, nothing extreme however.

As a side note, and I"m not sure if it has a dramatic effect. Every Feb, I get notices from what I think is every team, that they have reached the roster limit, and all outstanding offers are withdrawn. It doesn't seem to effect renewals as I think they allready count against your roster. It just stops you from signing new FA. Might be something to address at some point.

Season 4 sim is underway.

[Neolithic]

Re: 2013 Franchise Issue Explained (With Pics)

4th offseason looks good too. don't see any high level prospects in the list. The ages of FA players have dropped down some I think, but 99% of them are C/D/F potential/overall players that are just falling out of teams systems I think as they draft younger higher potential players, and the older guys have retired.

there were 25 teams that had the maximum player reached notice in the last couple weeks of Feb. the number of contract renewal eligible players has seemed to drop off some after the first year or two. I'm wondering if it might even work better to only offer renewal retainers to guys under say 30? let the older players that just now made it to the MLB fall into FA and either get signed or just fall off as a guy who never could quite stick at the MLB level.

That might lowe the amount of players in an organization and possibly fix any issue, if any there is with teams reaching the maximum towards the end of Feb.

I'll run this sim at least another year, maybe 2 to make sure it stays consistant. I'll start on a sim identical to this one, just with budgets on to see what difference it might make.

But it looks like we might have this nailed down pretty good now. Little more data, and some staring at it for a bit, and we should be ready to wait an see what SCEA comes up with for a fix.

[Neolithic]

Re: 2013 Franchise Issue Explained (With Pics)

5th offseason looks good as well. I think we got a workaround for the time being. Tweakable as I said, possibly only offering contracts to guys under a certain age.

I'll be interested in my sim I run with budget constraints on, and how drastic an effect it might have on things.

[Neolithic]

Re: 2013 Franchise Issue Explained (With Pics)

Gets lonely around here at 4 am....


<.<

>.>

O.O

[andrewochs615]

Re: 2013 Franchise Issue Explained (With Pics)

so is this is done with 30 team control, does the no budget thing work with single team control?

[joshopsu]

Re: 2013 Franchise Issue Explained (With Pics)

Okay....this is important....(with and without 30 team control)
1.-Are you guys seeing teams offer arbitration properly....?
2.-Are you guys seeing teams offer renewable contract players offers?
3.-Are they losing control of the young players as a cause of the above?
4.-Do you feel like the FA problem is a separate issue from the above or because of the above?

I haven't been testing like you guys but rather going off what you guys have been posting.

If you guys could post
-what you think the problem points are
-what you think needs to be done to remedy it(just the process...not the coding obviously)
Thanks!

M.K.
Knight165

1. I'm not sure if they're offering arbitration properly...I only use 1team control.
2/3. Teams seems to be renewing for the most part. I think there are some exceptions that some stud prospects are asking for too much $$. My guess is that the CPU doesn't know how to lowball like a human player would. I think the CPU simply chooses from either a) give the prospect what he wants or b) release to free agency. Option c) is not registering in the CPU "minds," which is offering lowball $$ and then waiting until after Feb 15th.
4. I STRONGLY BELIEVE that there is NO "free agent problem." The big name free agents sitting in the FA pool and not getting many offers is a result of the renewal glitch.

[joshopsu]

Re: 2013 Franchise Issue Explained (With Pics)

Quick thought:

I think the "band-aid" fix is to insert code that runs on Dec 2nd, and makes every CPU team go through their "contract renewable" flagged players, and if they haven't received an offer yet, offer a 1 yr/50k contract to them. This will act as the retainer offer. That will keep them out of the FA pool till at least spring training. Then you have to go into the AI Logic for deciding to renew contracts or not. One way is to just make it renew every available contract, or, narrow it to always renew A and B potential players no matter what on say Feb 28th. Using whatever under the hood logic there is now for anyone C potential or lower.

It's not the perfect fix, but it would essentially keep players under control of their team for 6 years of MLB service time (at least in the case of A and B potential prospects, which generally is true, barring major catastrophic injury or wild circumstanct, teams give those kind of prospects every chance to succeed, rarely cutting them or letting them go before they lose absolute control over them)

that's how I would fix it, but I don't know anything about how they wrote their code or how it runs under the hood. This is just my observations from the outside.

I absolutely agree!!! I hope they can code it in or something similar to it.

[BoSoxPujols]

Re: 2013 Franchise Issue Explained (With Pics)

Neo great work! One question in regards to your workaround. Are you still seeing some bigger named guys and free agents switch teams in general or has this work around severely limited player movement? Its great you are no longer seeing high level prospects and big name free agents sitting in the pool but it still would be an issue if this workaround basically kept all the players on their same teams and restricted movement.

[maddguuns]

Re: 2013 Franchise Issue Explained (With Pics)

Okay....this is important....(with and without 30 team control)
1.-Are you guys seeing teams offer arbitration properly....?
2.-Are you guys seeing teams offer renewable contract players offers?
3.-Are they losing control of the young players as a cause of the above?
4.-Do you feel like the FA problem is a separate issue from the above or because of the above?

I haven't been testing like you guys but rather going off what you guys have been posting.

If you guys could post
-what you think the problem points are
-what you think needs to be done to remedy it(just the process...not the coding obviously)
Thanks!

M.K.
Knight165

I have been simming, only 1-team control, simply to spend more time controlling for individual things. Most everything I am finding others are posting; but, I can give my summary:

1. I can't be sure arbitration is being offered properly. In some instances, yes, in others no. Unfortunately, I have yet to pinpoint if it has something to do with a date on the calendar or a budget thing. The only thing I can be certain of is that the game seems to drop previously made arb offers for Type A and B FA's. SO far, it has just acted like it forgot these offers were made before the exclusive date and after the exclusive date.

2. Renewable contracts are not being offered consistently, and when they are, the amount renewed at is skewed. In two consecutive sims, with nothing changed between the two (simply looking for some reliability), Brian Matusz (Orioles SP) was offered a contract and then renewed at $400k in one and in the other he was renewed at $5.8 million. No team, when renewing a contract, would even consider renewing at $5.8 million because they are shooting themselves in the foot for the arb years. Additionally, new players who don't make it to the 40-man before the end of their rookie contract are becoming FA's instead of being under team control. For instance, a couple A prospect 22 year olds were drafted in the first draft, signed to two year contracts. Each never played in the majors, was released by the team after their 2-year contract, and was signed to $3-4 million/year contracts on the open market. This is just unacceptable if the logic is supposed to be an accurate sim of MLB.

3. Partially answered above; however, older players who command a bunch of money seem to be unsigned and here is my theory: When the CPU team is looking to sign up to 90 players, it tries to make the best move possible for every position in the organization. Coupled with the young, high potential players being put into the FA pool too early, the CPU logic is to pay too much money at all positions below the MLB level to solidify all rosters, thus leaving too small a money pool for the major league roster. In one sim, the Rays had 27 players with no major league experience, under age 26 in the minors. Each had at least a C potential and a salray of $1 million or more. All told, the total of those 27 contracts was actuall $39+ million. How is the game supposed to field a MLB roster with $39 million designated for 27 minor league players?

4. I entirely believe the FA issue is due to what I explained in #3. Further, I think #2 creates the issue in #3, which in turn creates the FA problem.

My solution...easy or not...would be to program the game to hold onto all new players for 6 years (maybe tracked on a different clock than the MLB service one), regardless of level, talent, potential, or age. Second, I would nsure the logic does not over pay in renewables (and renews all renewables). Third, the logic must also offer arb to arb eligible under-6 year players. Fourth, the game needs to maintain arb offers instead of arbitrarily forgetting they were made.

[maddguuns]

Re: 2013 Franchise Issue Explained (With Pics)

Ya know...I just tried something that seems to have made a HUGE impact on future years...

In single-team control, starting in the second offseason, I used the user controlled team and signed every one of the top 5 MLB players during the last week of February to 3-6 year contracts at $1.5 million a year then traded them for some minor leaguer to teams that could afford and use them (i.e. - Pujols in year 3 to the Cubs, who had only 23-year old or younger 1st basemen who all were pretty bad).

After the 4th off season, every single good player was being signed appropriately by the CPU. In off season 7 now, and the FA pool is filled with 35+ year old C-potential average players.

I theorize that by bringing overall salaries down across the board, the CPU has more money to waste on minor leaguers.