Mutiny Simulation Baseball

All,

We have only a few rule changes this year which belies the amount of time it took us to write and revise these.  These changes include the following:

• We've increased the number of minor league players on one's team to 28 for the 2023 season and 30 for the 2024 season.  We want to be at 30 but want to stagger the increase over a two year period.
• We have changed the manner in which we calculate the first year of arbitration.  Previously we used fWAR from the immediately prior year.  We felt that this did not accurately capture a player's value to that point.  So we've shifted to career fWAR to date and adjusted the arbitration chart to reflect the change to career fWAR.  What this meant is that the ranges for specific salaries moved upwards.  While this would have some impact on the top end, we believe that the impact should be minimal for most arbitration-eligible players.
• Going forward, players on a salary offset (for whatever reason) will not be eligible for the playoffs.  We believe that teams receive a significant benefit in the 50% cut to their salary and are concerned that players with limited AB/IP can have an outsize impact in the playoffs.  These players will still be eligible to play in the regular season.
• Playoff teams must carry at least 2 catchers.  We had an issue this year (impacting me) where Salvador Perez was tossed from a game and I had to start Luis Urias in his place.  While nothing problematic happened, we felt that this was a scenario that should be avoided.
• We will be implementing version 12a of DMB.  It doesn't require any rule change, but wanted to be clear that we are doing this.

Picadores

I am a bit concerned about the changes to the arbitration system. I can understand the concern that just using the previous year's WAR might not fully reflect the "true" value of a player, but this change seems to swing too far in the opposite direction. I don't have the chart from previous years, but I'm more concerned about the inflation in the upper end of the scale. I'm guessing the highest starting salary in the first year of arbitration was around $4 million (given that Juan Soto's salary is $4 million in his first year and that's based on a WAR of 7.0), and now a player like Soto would get an initial offer of $7 million. The idea of arbitration was to mimic arbitration, where the salaries start to move towards what a player gets in free agency, and this adjustment seems just a bit too much.

I understand the concern of some GMs about free agency and pushing more players into free agency quickly. However, I think the arbitration system has been working well as is. Teams that have been good at drafting minor leaguers do get a benefit from that skill, but as I can attest and I think Brendt can now attest to, this is a double-edged sword. Arbitration can really tie the hands and salary cap of a team, which is an indication that teams aren't getting cheap talent. For example, this past off-season, instead of going to arbitration with Lindor, I declined arbitration and then resigned him at a price that was cheaper than arbitration. I have a feeling that increasing the starting values of arbitration will push more teams to do what I did with Lindor, which could be the CO's desire; although I'm not sure if everyone would agree with that.

I guess a comparison of how the old and new system would affect salaries would be nice to see what the true impact of this is, so we can better judge this change.

I echo Jason's remarks.  The change in initial arbitration salaries will result in roughly a $7 million uptick in team salary for the Winds.  That total includes a $3M salary offset for Tatis otherwise the increase would be about $10M.  This is for only 3 players and 1 of them has no stats.  If you want to initiate such a big rule change there should be a ceiling per year with the overage moved to the next year.  Obviously there was no way to plan for this year's changes when projecting my 2023 payroll based on my 2022 payroll.  It's just a bolt out the blue.

mike

I agree. May I ask for a further explanation for the change? It seemed quite fair as it was.

Yeah, Tatis is a really good example for this discussion. Mike's decision - while certainly a no-brainer (and I understand we're trying to make arb decisions more than that), is a difference of $6M for a guy who didn't even play. Salary offset helps, of course, but that's still brutal.

I think to be fair, any rule change affecting salary to such an extent should have a one year waiting period.  That gives GM's time to plan on the changes.  The new rule seems to unfairly penalize the GM for astute or fortuitous player picks while the players were still wet behind the ears, so to speak. 

mike

I glanced at #2 and without looking at any rosters seems to punish GMs and is an attempt to push players to free agency.

I agree with @Mike Loar that a salary change should be given at least one year's notice.

As David stated, the CO felt just looking at the previous year WAR was not an accurate representation of the players value and therefore determination of whether or not to offer arbitration.

I can honestly state that Tatis never came up in any of our discussions regarding this topic. This was never about any specific player. Although having said that, we are aware of an example of a player whose arbitration value would have gone DOWN under the new rules (Mullins). I’m sure there are others.

This was a topic that had a lot of conversation between the three of us. This wasn’t something that was done hastily or without a lot of thought. We all agreed using career WAR was a better than previous year WAR as the arbitration baseline. What took time was determining the new scale. Eventually we came to a compromise that we felt made sense. We completely understand that the tiers at the top are going to be a raise compared to the previous system. But we feel this is a better system and more representative of how the arbitration actually works in MLB.

CO, if this rule is a done deal regardless of how other owners feel about it (which is the CO's prerogative), would you all please at least discuss (maybe again - if you already have) waiting one year to implement it? Though I personally don't have a player affected by it this off-season, I totally understand owners who would appreciate a one-year heads up.

Implementing a rule with such far-reaching effects without studying the consequences specific to each team and without ample time to allow for GM planning is  pretty high-handed IMO. I would feel the same whether my team was affected or not. Bruised egos is not a reason not to reconsider the timeline of implementation.

mike

It is a drastic change of salary for some eligible players.  Tatis Jr would be $1.0 under the old system and $6 million on the new.  Wow.

Having it just the last year as it is now does not seem realistic as the career body of work before that is not considered.  It should be changed.

Maybe a compromise.  Keep the old grid and make the qualifying measure the average of the two highest previous WAR years.    Tatis Jr with 4.2 and 6.6 WARS in 2019 and 2021 would see a 5.4 WAR average and a salary of $3.5     

I agree with a lot of the points made by my fellow owners here about this change.

First, I agree that if this change goes through (and I hope that the COs reconsider and make adjustments based on the feedback they are getting here), it should be delayed at least one year. There is an implicit contract with the league rules regarding how arbitration works, and teams drafting, promoting, and planning their teams have used that to think about how they sign players, the deals they make, and everything else. Changing arbitration weeks before we go into that process seems to break that implicit contract with the league. jayhawk brings up a good point with Tatis since he could have planned that Tatis would need only a low initial offer this off-season due to this injury last winter. He could plan to have that additional salary space to sign other players either last season or this season.

On the COs idea that looking at last year's WAR might not be the best representation of a player's value, that can be true. I actually don't have as much of a problem with using the career WAR as much as the increases in the salary scale. Again, this seems to be done with the intent of hurting GMs who have been skilled at drafting and promoting minor league players and trying to push more players to free agency quicker. I do find it strange that there wasn't more thought about what the actual consequences of this change would be, by either looking at previous years of free agency or what might happen this year. I know that's one of the first things I thought of and started to do when I saw this idea.

I think Bob's idea of averaging WAR might be a better solution, along with keeping the old scale. I think a weighted average where 50% of the WAR comes from last season, 30% comes from 2 seasons ago and 20% comes from 3 seasons ago. This would shift some of the calculation to thinking about how a player has done for the first 3 seasons but giving weight to more recent production and less to production from the past. I know this might be a bit more challenging to do (since we'll need to actually get 3 figures), but this seems like a doable change, which accomplishes the COs goal of a more accurate representation of a player's value while discounting the past a bit.

I think one of my biggest concerns though is that this is a major change to how the player acquisition and retention system works. While I agree that the COs need to do what's in the best interests of the league, this seems to be one that should involve the input of all owners. As I recall, when arbitration was first introduced, it was because of the input from other owners and not the COs in thinking about how we needed to change the system of minor league promotions. We'll get better buy-in from all owners and fewer hard feelings if everyone gets to have a say in what might happen here, instead of feeling like this decision came from on high and that's that. I want to emphasize that I do think the COs have the best interests of the league, but this is something that needs to be discussed and debated by all owners, and allow the owners to offer suggestions and critiques of the plan so that it meets the needs of the entire league.

I can appreciate that not everyone will agree with this change. But please don’t suggest that we didn’t put a lot of thought into this.

If my comment about Tatis above gave the impression that anything other than the fact that this was carefully thought out and debated on to come up with what we felt was the best solution then I apologize. But a lot of effort was put into this knowing that it was going to impact some players, especially at the top end. However it solves for some issues that we feel needed to be rectified under the old arbitration system. And for the record, there were other proposals that was discussed - including ditching arbitration completely. But none of us wanted to do that if we could instead make some small changes to the system. We felt this accomplished that.

PS - David is unable to access the forums right now as he is having an issue with his firewall. I have been sharing some of the comments on this thread via screen grabs.

Just wanted to update everyone in case they were trying to reach him through the website.

So the league can assume there will be no compromise on this issue?

No Mike. Don’t assume that. I’m not on the CO anymore, but I’ve worked closely with all these guys for many years. That’s not how this CO functions. Let’s all take a breath. Everyone wants this to continue to be the best league possible.

I've done a quick look at arbitration on spotrac. I encourage you all to check it out to get a feel for things.

Essentially what I am seeing of the arbitration results, settlements and short term contracts is that the numbers are not that out of scale with what our players make in mutiny. From what I am seeing, the arbitration system works pretty effectively. Each year there has been a push to alter the system, but as I've said before, what is so off-base that needs adjusting?

Now if you are trying to make the argument that elite young players are underpaid, that's probably true. But that's the reality of the MLB system which we try to replicate.

There are some players that are getting big salaries in their first year of arbitration but those are typically long-term contracts that pay younger players more than arbitration early in the contract, with the later years (early FA) potential bargains if a player continues to produce at their early year pace. This change doesn't replicate that recent MLB trend.

So where I find myself is skeptical of the need. I'd ask for some numbers/data showing that were off the MLB system.

I'd also second Kyle's sentiment about how the League Office operates. These are great guys that put a lot of extra time into making this league function extremely well. I expect that there's room for debate on this change given the concern of many in the league.

Perhaps I should try to give an example of what we're trying to achieve with this change.

Walker Buehler:
Coming off a season in 2021 where he had a 5.5 WAR with a combined (2017-2021) WAR of 14.2 he was given an initial arbitration of $3.5 million. Had the rule change been in effect last season that would have bumped up to $6.0 million (an increase to his initial arbitration amount of $2.5 million).

Now let's compare that to FA. Unfortunately there isn't an apples-apples comparison but I tried. This is every significant SP signed last year (besides Rich Hill who isn't a comp due to age, HeWhoShallNotBeNamed who isn't a comp due to sex charges, Luis Garcia who isn't a comp due to lack of MLB experiance, and Jacob deGrom who is in a class by himself due to performance and injuries). Ready? Go...

Zach Wheeler - pWAR 7.2, cWAR 18.2, $12.5 million
Marcus Stroman - pWAR 3.4, cWAR 12.0, $8.55 million
Freddy Peralta - pWAR 4.0, cWAR 6.9, $8.55 million (no MLB stats in 2017 which impacts cWAR)
Chris Bassitt - pWAR 3.3, cWAR 7.2, $7.0 million (no MLB stats in 2017 which impacts cWAR)
Nick Pivetta - pWAR 2.2, cWAR 6.4, $6.0 million
Chris Flexen - pWAR 3.0, cWAR 1.8, $6.0 million (no MLB stats in 2020 which impacts cWAR)
Nathan Eovaldi - pWAR 5.7, cWAR 8.5, $5.5 million (no MLB stats in 2017 which impacts cWAR)
Eduardo Rodriguez - pWAR 3.9, cWAR 11.7, $5.3 million (no MLB stats in 2020 which impacts cWAR)

Hard to say who the best comp is. Some combination of Wheeler, Stroman, and Eovaldi? If you average those 3 you get someone with a pWAR of 5.4 with a cWAR of 12.9 - close enough for this exercise. Those three averaged $8.85 million in FA.

Buehler has had injuries in the past, but so have my comps. Buehler is also 3-4 years younger than my comps so I'd be fairly certain he'd have exceeded the comp average had he entered FA after the 2021 season. But even if you strictly use the $8.85 average that's a significant bargain compared to the $3.5 million he received in arbitration. The $6.0 million is still a bargain, but it's closer to FA.

But here's the catch.
Buehler pitched 65 innings in 2022 and could potentially miss the entire 2023 season due to TJS. Which means unlike my Wheeler/Stroman/Bassitt hybrid comp, Brian isn't locked into the $8.85 annual salary for the next two seasons. He can choose to just walk away, no penalty or salary offset associated. There is significant risk in FA if the player underperforms or is injured in the following years. We've all had it happen. You can offset some of that risk by paying a premium on the FA contract (20% for 2 years, 100% for 1 year) but there's none of that in arbitration. Not only do you get a savings compared to FA, you also get a 'get out of jail free card' with each purchase.

Now. Before you start arguing:
Yes - I cherry-picked an example. Not everyone will see a multi-million dollar savings compared to FA. And not everyone will get injured in the following season after being offered arbitration.

Arbitration was supposed to reward owners for drafting well. But that doesn't mean it's supposed to be a windfall either. And believe me, David and Brendt and I have spent many hours debating how much of a comparison there is between arbitration and FA. The arbitration escalators year-over-year are not insignificant, but there is little decision needed whether to offer arbitration initially. Last year alone 5 players coming off a negative pWAR were offered arbitration, including 2 with a negative cWAR.

So since I brought it up, let's compare arbitration to FA in another way. Again, using Buehler.
Let's assume Buehler doesn't ever get hurt. In 2018, 2019, and 2021 he averaged a WAR of 4.56. Again, let's say he doesn't get hurt and for the next two years instead pitches to his average WAR (not including 2020, let's all try to forget about 2020).

Old system:
Based on 2021 WAR of 5.5 his initial arbitration contract is $3.5 million
In 2022 he gets his average of 4.5 WAR which gives him a $2.5 million raise to $6 million.
In 2023 he again gets his average of 4.5 WAR which gives him another 2.5 mill raise to $8.5 million.
@David Johnson will appreciate this - in the final year of arbitration he received almost exactly what my hybrid comp averaged in FA! But there was a lot of cash savings up to that point ($8.55 mill).

New system:
Based on 2021 WAR of 5.5 his initial arbitration contract is $6.0 million.
------>Arbitration still offered.
In 2022 he gets his average of 4.5 WAR which gives him a $2.5 million raise to $8.5 million.
------>Arbitration still offered.
In 2023 he again gets his average of 4.5 WAR which gives him another 2.5 mill raise to $11 million.
------>This is the decision point. Do you offer him again? It's less than Wheeler, but more than Stroman/Eovaldi.

Ultimately, I think the decision would be made to offer arbitration in 2023 for the simple reason that you still have the 'get out of jail free' card to play if he were to get hurt in 2024. But I can understand the desire to forgo $11 million in arbitration and see what he gets in FA with a HTD in play as well. What I'm suggesting though is the new system still provides a value to the original team compared to FA year over year. The value is less with the new system (only $1.05 mill) but in total much better than FA when considering how Brian can walk away at any time.

I've done the research. Assuming all 32 players offered arbitration last year were still offered arbitration had the proposed rules been in place there would have been a total increase in the initial salary of $39 million. That's an average of $1.2 million per player. Which isn't insignificant. But I don't think it's massive either. Yes, there are some who will get a large raise (Acuna for example who topped the list with a $4 mill increase) but there are a lot of players whose raise was minimal or had no change at all.

We wanted an arbitration system that evaluated the career of the player, not just the previous year (looking at you Jack Flaherty and Jeff McNeil), to determine the initial arbitration baseline amount without changing the annual raises. And still provide value to the team for drafting well. Hopefully we've done that. Hopefully I've shown how we've done that.

As a compromise however what if we offer to remove the top tiers for this season. This will in effect keep the initial salary of players like the Acuna example (and Buehler for that matter as well) at the previous max of $5 million. The tiers themselves stay the same, it's just that anyone with 10+ cWAR gets $5 mill instead of escalating to $6 mill or $7 mill. With the full changes going into effect next season after everyone has had a chance to plan accordingly.

Rod, thank you for this. I didn't even realize a conversation was happening about arbitration numbers, so seeing the rule change without context kinda threw me this late in the offseason.

And thank you for your willingness to compromise.

Some thoughts: Having been highly involved in the initial arbitration rules for MSB, the intent was that the final year of arbitration would mirror what that player might get in Free Agency. The point is always to try to mirror real life. And in real life team control over players, the times when a player and team actually go to the arbiter, this seems to ring true (his salary equal to what experts believe he'd get in free agency). In the first and second years of arbitration, the intent in real life AND MSB are NOT to mirror free agency costs. The team should still get credit for good scouting and excellent development/use of the player and not have to pay the free agent market price for the young player they picked in the draft.

That said, if you're trying to say year one of arbitration should indeed equal what that player would get in free agency, my question would be "Why?" That's not "team control" as it is in real life. That change makes no sense to me.

So let's try to get on the same page here. Is our intent to make a player's salary in year 3 of arbitration significantly MORE than what he'd get in free agency? Or is our intent to make it as close to equal as we can (essentially still mirroring MLB as much as possible)? If it's example A, I just don't understand that. Option B is as close to real life as it gets - again, the main motive for every rule we have.

That said, I DO think career WAR is a better figure to use than the previous years' WAR. We now have enough experience in MSB arbitration (what has it been, 6 years or so?) to have guys like Bhueler and Tatis to see star players have poor seasons in arbitration years, as well as witness the Flahertys and McNeils of the baseball world. Career WAR is an excellent idea.

I suggest tabling this until next off-season, and keep this discussion thread going. Give us all time to consume the numbers and one more year of experience with MSB arbitration. Everyone will feel heard, the idea isn't going away, and respect for one another remains high in the best SIM league on the planet.

Well presented, Pastor Kyle.  The crux of my concern has been primarily that the rule was sprung on the league without ample time to prepare for the changes.  MLB doesn't unilaterally create a CBA and instruct teams and players to sign.  I don't disagree that career or average fWAR would be a better way to go but what's the rush?  The current rules have worked well since their inception so why not hold off a year to give GM's a chance to prepare?

Arbitration is not an equivalent to Free Agency. I will keep hammering the point, which I think I've probably done each year, that it doesn't make sense to compare to FA.

Unless you would like to find the percentage difference between FA prices and Arbitration prices by WAR and then apply that percentage to the tier dollar values in our system. Otherwise I wish we would stop making that comparison.

The MLB system undervalues young players, right or wrong. Since we try to mimic MLB, our system should work similarly.

The arbitration system for MLB was a comprise. It is a windfall for owners (when looking at $/WAR), but it also is a windfall to players in comparison to an old system that let teams decide a players value. Our system was the same, with players valued at 500K their entire time under control until we added this rule. Let's not forget that it's already significantly more pricy that is was before. We did get an extra year of control when we implemented the Arb system.

As for the way we evaluate players, I am open to that part of the change. As far as I understand, an Arbitrator looks at the entirety of the players career up to that point and finds player comparisons so he can pin down a price.  This would be similar to career WAR. I do think that the timing of an player injury could really skew the value of a player throughout their Arbitration year and career WAR does a better job of reflecting that players value in comparison to his peers at similar points of arbitration. Our injury settlement system mitigates this increase as well.

Where I take issue with the proposal is that it significantly increases the price tag for the vast majority of players. I don't think the bulk of the league finds the old system problematic as far a prices and if they do they actually think the price tag might be to high.

I can certainly get behind using career WAR for that first year, but I would as that the tier dollar values be adjusted so they are more in line with the current arbitration dollar values.

I won't be much use here but thought I should just add my thoughts to show I'm actively watching.

I haven't been a huge user of Arbitration because I already thought it to expensive (I admit I must be wrong here because I think no one has suggested this; maybe my rookies have sucked and everyone else's aren't just equivalent to the FA pool). Olson was obvious to me and worked out well ( I haven't looked to see if he would be any different in the new system). However, other than him I've only really offered to players that had a bad year and I thought they should be better. I bet (but don't know) this rule will help prevent me from doing that which may be beneficial because I don't know if any of these flyers have paid off so I wasted the roster spot for nothing.

Anyway, The rule change seems unnecessary but I understand it. It makes the obvious players more expensive but they probably remain obvious. The cap compromise seems reasonable to get through the year. When I go through my team and see who increases in price I may be back to complain ;)

quick edit: I just want to confirm that my complaint suggesting catchers getting to start in the playoffs with maybe 175 PA or something less than 200 was discussed and rejected? As long as it was considered I'm happy with whatever.

I agree with a lot of what Matt has put here. However, there are a few things that I keep coming back to in my thinking on this issue. One is just changing the system right before free agency and when teams might have already been using the old system in their calculations for building their teams. This is a solid reason to at least delay and discuss this more.

However, another idea that keeps coming back to me is what are the alternative decisions that a team can make. I've always thought the biggest decision is do you offer or not offer arbitration during that first season, since you are giving up the opportunity to have a player for a season for only $500K. Specifically, I wanted to look at my decision on Mookie Betts.

        In this case, I'm making an assumption that Mookie in free agency would get somewhere between $15 million to $20 million and the team that has Mookie would be able to sign him and get the 15% HTD. It is interesting that under the previous system, the total amount spent on Mookie would be near the low end of letting him play out the last season cheaply and then signing him closer to $15M. On the other hand, the proposed system would be more like Mookie getting a new contract at the higher price. This is for a superstar putting up All-Star performances, so this might be the high end of things.

So, I'm not sure if I'm seeing how the value system on arbitration is currently off base. Again, I think a discussion of using career WAR versus previous season WAR is a good discussion and I see the value of using career WAR. However, I would keep the top salary in the first season of arbitration at $5 million and then scale the career WAR to that limit. Maybe instead of going up by $500K, we should do $250K.

Again, I think delaying any new system until next off-season would be a good thing; although I also think we should have the scale and if we are doing career or previous season WAR decided before the season begins, so everyone will know what to expect during the season.

Quick thought about cWAR vs. pWAR... We're just dsicussing cWAR as the number for the first year of arb, right? Not for every year following? Assuming that's the case, what if we based that first arb year on "whichever WAR is higher" as the rule?

Guys - I'll be honest. After my sleep-deprived post I stayed off the forum while we figured stuff out offline. And then Christmas and then Green Bay. So tonight is my first time being back on the forum since 12/24.

Side note - Green Bay itself is not worth visiting. We spent a couple days in our hotel room watching Netflix cuz there was literally nothing else to do. But Lambeau? Awesome. I'm not even a Packers fan and that was incredible. There's just so much history there. The tour was fantastic - walking through the tunnel, being out on the field (well, kind of. They wouldn't let us on the grass with the game the next day) - anyway, it was awesome.

Moving on...
I think it's pretty obvious by now that I am the one driving this particular change amongst the CO, but this rule change was one we all agreed to. However, after seeing some of the concerns you all know by now a reasonable compromise was made to delay implementing the rule change until next season.

I still think arbitration reform is needed. However, I am willing to concede that maybe there is a better way of implementing that reform, but the best part of this league is there are a lot of great baseball minds - I'm sure we'll come up with something. Or maybe all that is needed was just to wait a year so this rule change wasn't something that was sprung on everyone right before the offseason really gets underway. But whatever happens, please know all I/we were trying to do was make this the best league possible. I appreciate all the feedback (really!) as that means you all are as passionate about this league as I am. If no one cared then the time each and every one of us spends on this little hobby wouldn't be worth it.

So with that - let's get the offseason started!

I know this is tabled until next year, but I wanted to answer this question. We would use career WAR just for determining the initial arbitration offering. Each subsequent year would be based on the previous year WAR, not career.

Thanks, Rod.

Hey - this isn't a "rule change" as this has been in place for years.
But I want to make sure everyone is clear about playoff eligibility. From the rule book:

Roster Eligibility:
Barring the restrictions below, all players who spent at least one game on an active 26-man roster during
the course of the season and who were on their current team's 40-man roster prior to September 1 are
eligible for the 26-man playoff roster, including those players who had previously exceeded their regular season playing time limit.
Restrictions:
• Choose your playoff roster wisely. Changes cannot be made to the 26-man roster once a playoff
series begins.
• Batters must have compiled a minimum of 200 plate appearances or 200 batters faced for
pitchers in real life to be eligible to start a playoff game.
• Relief pitchers must have compiled a minimum of 85 batters faced in real life to be eligible for
postseason play.

This means Sept callups are ineligible and also please note the PA and BF requirements. These requirements are in place to assure that playoff series are not swung by taking advantage of low-usage guys. Hopefully that makes sense to everyone!

Bump. Just wanted to make sure everyone is reminded of the MiL roster limit with the draft starting this weekend.

oh, dang, I missed this. Just FYI, the rulebook says 30 right now.

I'm lazy and just didn't want to update it twice!