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TheWarmWind · 07-02-2020, 12:18 PM

Intro

I've typed this all out a few times, so I figured maybe like my directional hitting guide ( https://forums.operationsports.com/f...ing-guide.html shameless self plug), I should just have one spot that people can reference and I can link to.

Learning contracts and rosters in Baseball is an intimidating task. The goal of this guide is to help you learn the ropes while avoiding any pitfalls in MLB the Show. I will try my best to present these systems for how they work in game, not real life.

Contracts

When signing a player to a contract extension, there are three types of players: Renewable, Arbitration, and Free Agent.

Renewable, Arbitration and Free agency refer to the contract eligibility of your players.

For the first 3 years of a player's service in the majors, their contracts are known as renewable, unless they fall under the super 2 rule, which is a long and complicated rule that states that exceptional players (as judged by certain stats and league averages) are only required to serve 2 renewable contract years. What this means is that during those 3 (or 2) years the team and the player can still agree on a contract the same as any other player (including multi-year contracts), but the player cannot enter free agency and the team has the right to unilaterally renew the contract for as low as 80% of the previous year (this is done in the weeks before spring training and cannot be done at any other time).

Unless the player is an absolute blue chip stud and you want to pay a little bit more now to save some money later, it's best to just sign renewable players to one year contracts until the last year of renewability at least. Players demands will be reasonable because they know you can just unilaterally renew the contract if they are greedy. A team must offer a contract to the renewable player by a certain date in the offseason, but the amount can be anything the team wants (though it's recommended you offer at least 80% of the previous year's contract). As long as the team makes this offer, the two parties have until near the end of the offseason to negotiate a contract. If a contract is not settled on, the team can choose to unilaterally renew the player or allow them to enter free agency. This option will appear in the contract negotiations screen not long after arbitrations are settled.

If no contract is offered, the player will enter free agency after a specific date, which will be one of the stars marked on your calendar. When you click on a date with a star on it, one of the options will be "View significance of date". This applies to all other dates mentioned as well.

After the renewable years are over, a player has to go through arbitration until they have 6 years of service time. Again, you can offer a regular contract during any signing phase (including multi-year contracts) but if no contract is agreed upon before free agency opens up to players not offered arbitration (happens in November I believe) then the team must tender an arbitration offer in the form of a one year contract. The amount can be anything the team wants. The player then counters with what they perceive their value to be in the form of another one year contract. The two parties can continue to negotiate just like any other player on a contract (still including multi-year deals) and the player will not hit free agency. An arbitration date is set for the two parties in the early parts of the next year. If no contract is agreed upon, then the two arbitration values are brought before a third party arbiter, who then selects which of the two values are more appropriate for the player in question.

The team then only has two choices: pay the arbitration value set by the arbiter in the form of a one year contract, or let the player become a free agent. This is true even if the arbiter sides with the team in the arbitration.

Free agents can be tenured during the 5 days of exclusive negotiations before free agency opens up if they spent the entire season on your team (so a trade deadline rental cannot be tenured an offer). Tenured offers are in the form of a 1 year contract and are set by the league and are quite high, so you only want to use this on your superstars. If the players accepts the offer, it's a contract, but if they reject it and sign with another team, you'll get a draft pick in one of the compensation rounds in the next draft.

You can sign any player out of free agency, including ones you let go instead of renewing, didn't offer arbitration, or stars who didn't sign with you before the 5 days were up and rejected your tenured offer.

Contract eligibility is based on service time in the majors alone. Multi-year deals will use up renewable and arbitration years. Time in the minors does not count against service time, even if the player in question had previously served in the majors.

Rosters

There are three levels on the roster. You have your full roster, your 40 man roster, and your 26 man roster.

Your 26 man roster represents the players who you can actually put in the field. Each of MLB, AAA, and AA have a 26 man roster, and players on the MLB 26 man roster will accrue service time, regardless of if they actually play or not. The 10 day disabled list will remove of player from counting towards the 26 man roster, but they will still accrue service time if they were on the MLB roster at the time of the injury.

Your 40 man roster consists of all the players who can potentially play at the MLB level. If you want to call a prospect up to the majors, they must be added to the 40 man roster. When a player gets added to the 40 man roster, a team can then choose to spend up to three options on the player (VERY IMPORTANT: Options have nothing to do with optional waivers, which you will receive messages about them resetting throughout the season. Options do not reset at any point in a season.) Options are exclusive to each player, and the number spent stays with them even if they are traded or released to free agency.

What an option does is allow a team to send down a player to the minors without having to send them through waivers, keeping the player totally protected from other teams. If a player is not sent down all season, no option is spent. Once an option is spent, the player in question can be brought up and sent down for the rest of the season without ever spending another option. To reiterate: 1 option = 1 year of being able to send a player down to the minors without exposure.

Any player on the 40 man who is in the minors is using up an option, with the exception of players added to the 40 man after spring training has started but have yet to be called up to the majors. Only players on the 40 man can go to spring training, qualify to be on the playoff roster, or be called up during September roster expansions.

The 60-day disabled list removes a player from the 40 man roster and does not cost an option, but they will still accrue service time or, if they were in the minors, you already spent the option anyways (unless they were added to the 40 man roster after the beginning of spring training and never were called up).

The overall roster can have a maximum of 90 players. No team can go over this number (not even close to true in real life by the way). Players in the minors not on the 40 man roster do not spend their options, but if they spend enough time in the minors without being added to the 40 man, they become rule 5 eligible. You can check their rule 5 eligibility status on their player card.

Rule 5 is a draft that happens in November. All teams get a chance to draft from other teams rule 5 eligible players. If a team drafts a player, they must keep said player on their MLB roster for a full year. If they try to send the player down to the minors, the MLB team who originally owned the player can take them back into their minor league system. If the MLB team keeps the rule 5 player on their team the whole year, the player becomes a standard 40 man player for the team that drafted them from that point on. Rule 5 players can be traded, but again they must stay in the majors or else they revert back to their original team.

Drafted rule 5 players will be clearly marked in the trade screen so you won't accidentally trade for one without knowing what you're getting.

Players on the 40 man roster cannot be drafted in the rule 5 draft regardless of how many years of minor league service they have.

If a team chooses not to draft a player in a round of the rule 5 draft, they cannot participate in any later rounds of the rule 5 draft that season.

Players removed from the 40 man roster must go through waivers.

Disabled Lists

The name of each disabled list indicates the minimum number of days a player must be on it. There is no maximum number of days. Once the minimum number of days has been served, the player can leave the list at any time or stay on it with all the benefits without having to serve any more minimum amount of days.

For example, a player could need 11 days to recover from their injury. Putting them on the 10 day disabled list means they can be available after those 11 days, and that single day after the minimum time served of the list is met still gets all the benefits (they won't count towards the 26 man roster). Another player could only need 9 days, but if you don't want them to count towards the 26 man roster, they must spend an extra day on the list (and therefor ineligible to play).

A player can be moved from the 10 or 15 day to the 60 day at any time, and any time served already on the 10 or 15 day will count towards the 60 day minimum. There is no reason to use the 60 day disabled list unless you need the spot on the 40 man roster.

Players will be added back onto their respective rosters (26 man and/or 40 man) once they are both healthy and have served their minimum days required. They will be added regardless of whether you want them to or not.

Players on the disabled lists cannot be moved in the rosters or traded.

Position players are allowed to go to the 10 day, while pitchers need to go on the 15 day. There is no difference between the 10 day and the 15 day other than the minimum required days.

Releasing players

Players can be outright released at any time. When a player is outright released, they are removed from the roster and enter waivers. If another team claims them, then they take on the player's contract. If a player is not claimed on waivers, then the team that released them must pay out a minorly reduced amount of the players contract. The player then becomes a free agent, and can be signed by any team, including the one that just released them.

Service Time

Players earn service time for every day they are on the major league roster or major league disabled lists. This includes days when the team has no games or when the player spends time on the bench.

A player's service time is represented by a number followed by a decimal point and then another set of numbers, however these are not decimals. The second set of numbers represents days served towards a full season. A season is considered 172 days, even though there are more days in a season. When a player reaches 172 days in a single season, they do not gain any more service time. It is possible for a player to accrue a full season of service time even if they did not spend the entire season in the majors. Any spare days from an unfulfilled season stay with the player into the next season and all future seasons.

To reiterate: The numbers after the decimal point are not decimals. They are counting up to 171 to represent the progress to the 172 days needed to gain a year of service time. A player can only gain a maximum of 172 days of service time in a single season, regardless of how many days there actually are or any previous season's spare days of service time.

Outro

It's a lot I know, so ask below if you have any questions. Also, let me know if I missed anything or got anything wrong.

07-02-2020, 12:18 PM	#1
TheWarmWind MVP OVR: 0 Join Date: Apr 2015 Location: A place with some stuff Posts: 2,622 Blog Entries: 1	Contract and Roster Management Guide Intro I've typed this all out a few times, so I figured maybe like my directional hitting guide ( https://forums.operationsports.com/f...ing-guide.html shameless self plug), I should just have one spot that people can reference and I can link to. Learning contracts and rosters in Baseball is an intimidating task. The goal of this guide is to help you learn the ropes while avoiding any pitfalls in MLB the Show. I will try my best to present these systems for how they work in game, not real life. Contracts When signing a player to a contract extension, there are three types of players: Renewable, Arbitration, and Free Agent. Renewable, Arbitration and Free agency refer to the contract eligibility of your players. For the first 3 years of a player's service in the majors, their contracts are known as renewable, unless they fall under the super 2 rule, which is a long and complicated rule that states that exceptional players (as judged by certain stats and league averages) are only required to serve 2 renewable contract years. What this means is that during those 3 (or 2) years the team and the player can still agree on a contract the same as any other player (including multi-year contracts), but the player cannot enter free agency and the team has the right to unilaterally renew the contract for as low as 80% of the previous year (this is done in the weeks before spring training and cannot be done at any other time). Unless the player is an absolute blue chip stud and you want to pay a little bit more now to save some money later, it's best to just sign renewable players to one year contracts until the last year of renewability at least. Players demands will be reasonable because they know you can just unilaterally renew the contract if they are greedy. A team must offer a contract to the renewable player by a certain date in the offseason, but the amount can be anything the team wants (though it's recommended you offer at least 80% of the previous year's contract). As long as the team makes this offer, the two parties have until near the end of the offseason to negotiate a contract. If a contract is not settled on, the team can choose to unilaterally renew the player or allow them to enter free agency. This option will appear in the contract negotiations screen not long after arbitrations are settled. If no contract is offered, the player will enter free agency after a specific date, which will be one of the stars marked on your calendar. When you click on a date with a star on it, one of the options will be "View significance of date". This applies to all other dates mentioned as well. After the renewable years are over, a player has to go through arbitration until they have 6 years of service time. Again, you can offer a regular contract during any signing phase (including multi-year contracts) but if no contract is agreed upon before free agency opens up to players not offered arbitration (happens in November I believe) then the team must tender an arbitration offer in the form of a one year contract. The amount can be anything the team wants. The player then counters with what they perceive their value to be in the form of another one year contract. The two parties can continue to negotiate just like any other player on a contract (still including multi-year deals) and the player will not hit free agency. An arbitration date is set for the two parties in the early parts of the next year. If no contract is agreed upon, then the two arbitration values are brought before a third party arbiter, who then selects which of the two values are more appropriate for the player in question. The team then only has two choices: pay the arbitration value set by the arbiter in the form of a one year contract, or let the player become a free agent. This is true even if the arbiter sides with the team in the arbitration. Free agents can be tenured during the 5 days of exclusive negotiations before free agency opens up if they spent the entire season on your team (so a trade deadline rental cannot be tenured an offer). Tenured offers are in the form of a 1 year contract and are set by the league and are quite high, so you only want to use this on your superstars. If the players accepts the offer, it's a contract, but if they reject it and sign with another team, you'll get a draft pick in one of the compensation rounds in the next draft. You can sign any player out of free agency, including ones you let go instead of renewing, didn't offer arbitration, or stars who didn't sign with you before the 5 days were up and rejected your tenured offer. Contract eligibility is based on service time in the majors alone. Multi-year deals will use up renewable and arbitration years. Time in the minors does not count against service time, even if the player in question had previously served in the majors. Rosters There are three levels on the roster. You have your full roster, your 40 man roster, and your 26 man roster. Your 26 man roster represents the players who you can actually put in the field. Each of MLB, AAA, and AA have a 26 man roster, and players on the MLB 26 man roster will accrue service time, regardless of if they actually play or not. The 10 day disabled list will remove of player from counting towards the 26 man roster, but they will still accrue service time if they were on the MLB roster at the time of the injury. Your 40 man roster consists of all the players who can potentially play at the MLB level. If you want to call a prospect up to the majors, they must be added to the 40 man roster. When a player gets added to the 40 man roster, a team can then choose to spend up to three options on the player (VERY IMPORTANT: Options have nothing to do with optional waivers, which you will receive messages about them resetting throughout the season. Options do not reset at any point in a season.) Options are exclusive to each player, and the number spent stays with them even if they are traded or released to free agency. What an option does is allow a team to send down a player to the minors without having to send them through waivers, keeping the player totally protected from other teams. If a player is not sent down all season, no option is spent. Once an option is spent, the player in question can be brought up and sent down for the rest of the season without ever spending another option. To reiterate: 1 option = 1 year of being able to send a player down to the minors without exposure. Any player on the 40 man who is in the minors is using up an option, with the exception of players added to the 40 man after spring training has started but have yet to be called up to the majors. Only players on the 40 man can go to spring training, qualify to be on the playoff roster, or be called up during September roster expansions. The 60-day disabled list removes a player from the 40 man roster and does not cost an option, but they will still accrue service time or, if they were in the minors, you already spent the option anyways (unless they were added to the 40 man roster after the beginning of spring training and never were called up). The overall roster can have a maximum of 90 players. No team can go over this number (not even close to true in real life by the way). Players in the minors not on the 40 man roster do not spend their options, but if they spend enough time in the minors without being added to the 40 man, they become rule 5 eligible. You can check their rule 5 eligibility status on their player card. Rule 5 is a draft that happens in November. All teams get a chance to draft from other teams rule 5 eligible players. If a team drafts a player, they must keep said player on their MLB roster for a full year. If they try to send the player down to the minors, the MLB team who originally owned the player can take them back into their minor league system. If the MLB team keeps the rule 5 player on their team the whole year, the player becomes a standard 40 man player for the team that drafted them from that point on. Rule 5 players can be traded, but again they must stay in the majors or else they revert back to their original team. Drafted rule 5 players will be clearly marked in the trade screen so you won't accidentally trade for one without knowing what you're getting. Players on the 40 man roster cannot be drafted in the rule 5 draft regardless of how many years of minor league service they have. If a team chooses not to draft a player in a round of the rule 5 draft, they cannot participate in any later rounds of the rule 5 draft that season. Players removed from the 40 man roster must go through waivers. Disabled Lists The name of each disabled list indicates the minimum number of days a player must be on it. There is no maximum number of days. Once the minimum number of days has been served, the player can leave the list at any time or stay on it with all the benefits without having to serve any more minimum amount of days. For example, a player could need 11 days to recover from their injury. Putting them on the 10 day disabled list means they can be available after those 11 days, and that single day after the minimum time served of the list is met still gets all the benefits (they won't count towards the 26 man roster). Another player could only need 9 days, but if you don't want them to count towards the 26 man roster, they must spend an extra day on the list (and therefor ineligible to play). A player can be moved from the 10 or 15 day to the 60 day at any time, and any time served already on the 10 or 15 day will count towards the 60 day minimum. There is no reason to use the 60 day disabled list unless you need the spot on the 40 man roster. Players will be added back onto their respective rosters (26 man and/or 40 man) once they are both healthy and have served their minimum days required. They will be added regardless of whether you want them to or not. Players on the disabled lists cannot be moved in the rosters or traded. Position players are allowed to go to the 10 day, while pitchers need to go on the 15 day. There is no difference between the 10 day and the 15 day other than the minimum required days. Releasing players Players can be outright released at any time. When a player is outright released, they are removed from the roster and enter waivers. If another team claims them, then they take on the player's contract. If a player is not claimed on waivers, then the team that released them must pay out a minorly reduced amount of the players contract. The player then becomes a free agent, and can be signed by any team, including the one that just released them. Service Time Players earn service time for every day they are on the major league roster or major league disabled lists. This includes days when the team has no games or when the player spends time on the bench. A player's service time is represented by a number followed by a decimal point and then another set of numbers, however these are not decimals. The second set of numbers represents days served towards a full season. A season is considered 172 days, even though there are more days in a season. When a player reaches 172 days in a single season, they do not gain any more service time. It is possible for a player to accrue a full season of service time even if they did not spend the entire season in the majors. Any spare days from an unfulfilled season stay with the player into the next season and all future seasons. To reiterate: The numbers after the decimal point are not decimals. They are counting up to 171 to represent the progress to the 172 days needed to gain a year of service time. A player can only gain a maximum of 172 days of service time in a single season, regardless of how many days there actually are or any previous season's spare days of service time. Outro It's a lot I know, so ask below if you have any questions. Also, let me know if I missed anything or got anything wrong. Last edited by TheWarmWind; 08-12-2020 at 03:20 PM.