New Rule POLL: Mid-season FA signings ideas

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New Rule POLL: Mid-season FA signings ideas

December 11, 2019, 05:46:28 PM

New Rule Proposal: Acquiring Mid-Season Free Agents
Proposal: Allow teams to sign existing free agents to 1-year deals mid-season. When acquiring a player, teams must remain under the salary and 40-man caps. Teams may add as many of these in-season free agents as they deem necessary.

The discussion seemed positive toward implementing the rule, but there are two ways we could do it.

1) A one-week auction (that would also promote league-wide activity). The auction would happen sometime between games 82 and 100, and last one week. Teams can nominate and bid on players as per the normal FA rules. Players will be won and purchased at face value. No HTDs. No 1-year contract mark-ups.

2) Allow teams to simply alert the CO to their desire to add a free agent player (in the current database) at $250K. All existing rules remain applicable.

Please vote. The poll will remain active for 3 days. You may see the results only after you have voted.

Re: New Rule POLL: Mid-season FA signings ideas

Reply #1 – December 19, 2019, 12:26:16 PM

Something was very clear based on the discussion and the voting - there seems to be near unanimous agreement (17-1) that there needs to be a rule change in favor of some sort of in-season FA.

So, we have made the decision that without a plurality of votes for one method over the other to implement the CO original plan for FA which is the one week FA auction. The timing around the FA auction will need to be officially finalized in coordination with the minor league draft. My initial take is we'll do the FA auction in July and the minor league draft in August, which will allow us to have some give time between the two events. This should also allow for both events to complete prior to the playoff push.

Re: New Rule POLL: Mid-season FA signings ideas

Reply #2 – December 20, 2019, 08:57:01 AM

Quote from: Scurvy Dogs – on December 19, 2019, 12:26:16 PM

So, we have made the decision that without a plurality of votes for one method over the other to implement the CO original plan for FA which is the one week FA auction.

There is a plurality of votes in favor of allowing teams to sign players whenever they need to, instead of having an auction. The vote was 9 for that plan and 8 for the auction. So, I'm not following your idea here. There wasn't a majority of all GMs in the league, since one GM voted to not change a thing and 2 GMs didn't vote at all. However, there a plurality in favor of the other proposal. Sorry, this seems like shiganagans on the CO's office.

Re: New Rule POLL: Mid-season FA signings ideas

Reply #3 – December 22, 2019, 02:30:57 PM

I do want to apologize to the COs for using the word shenanigans here, since that came off much hotter than I meant it to me. I was unclear on how this topic would be decided with a vote, and should have limited my question/comment to that topic.

Re: New Rule POLL: Mid-season FA signings ideas

Reply #4 – December 24, 2019, 01:57:20 PM

Quote from: profjason – on December 22, 2019, 02:30:57 PM

I do want to apologize to the COs for using the word shenanigans here, since that came off much hotter than I meant it to me. I was unclear on how this topic would be decided with a vote, and should have limited my question/comment to that topic.

Jason, MSB has never been a democracy when it comes to rule changes. They (the CO) are not a dictatorship, either. Obtaining votes are the CO's way of seeing where the owners of the league stand on new ideas. But they're not bound to a majority vote. Never have been.

This FA idea is a good one. When it happens isn't really that big of a deal. The decision to do a one-week auction - as I understand it - is yet another way to have league interaction during the season. The other way doesn't provide for that. So this is a win-win. A good rule addition that also provides for more interaction.

Re: New Rule POLL: Mid-season FA signings ideas

Reply #5 – December 29, 2019, 04:38:12 AM

Pushing back the minor league draft....

I can see what you are doing here, going to limit the number of players who have made their debut and being eligible for the minor league draft and pushing them into free agency for the following season.

This still feels like a forced transaction period with a FA auction and doesn't resemble something done in MLB.

Re: New Rule POLL: Mid-season FA signings ideas

Reply #6 – December 30, 2019, 06:09:03 AM

Quote from: Kyle – on December 24, 2019, 01:57:20 PM

Jason, MSB has never been a democracy when it comes to rule changes. They (the CO) are not a dictatorship, either. Obtaining votes are the CO's way of seeing where the owners of the league stand on new ideas. But they're not bound to a majority vote. Never have been.

This FA idea is a good one. When it happens isn't really that big of a deal. The decision to do a one-week auction - as I understand it - is yet another way to have league interaction during the season. The other way doesn't provide for that. So this is a win-win. A good rule addition that also provides for more interaction.

If we as a league want more interaction, then let's consider scrapping the centralized management of how games are played and discuss the model where owners simulate their home (or away) games against the CPU manager, or, if they choose, play those games h2h. I am not saying we do this, but if the purpose is more league interaction there are other ways. As it is we have a 5-6 week FA period, the mid-season minor league draft takes a month, there is the GWaG, and an excellent web site with a strong forum.

But this? I don't know, just seems odd to me. We are a 20 team league, with 40 man rosters, with flexible usage rules - i.e. usage shouldn't be a problem. If we are going to allow FA pickups, and not keep them (which in no way we should keep them), then we could use the already existing waiver process. I wouldn't want to see any salary cap and/or some other budgetary tie-in for this. We have gone a number of years without picking up FAs, and if you did, it cost you a draft pick (I believe).

What I can see being a problem is an owner trying to pickup every 20-30 inning reliever with good ratios and try to stream a bullpen without paying the freight during the FA auction period. Same can be done for lefty mashers on the offensive side, or other small sample size type guys. My assumption would be that this would be limited, maybe only 1 FA pickup per team, per season. Again, we shouldn't need them given the usage rules, and the fact that we have an 'open' auction week where we can nominate whatever we want to cover those scenarios, we shouldn't need another one of those mid-season.

Re: New Rule POLL: Mid-season FA signings ideas

Reply #7 – December 30, 2019, 02:28:34 PM

A couple of thoughts.

One of the difficulties I've had with the rule changes this year is that they directly address a small issue but ultimately have a greater purpose which hasn't always been clear to me until we dive deeper into the discussion. I tend to be a little dense sometimes so that might just be me.

I think I've finally caught up to the league office now and see that for most of the suggested rule changes the ultimate goal is increasing in-season league activity.

I'll be perfectly honest, I do this for the off-season. I am not big on game to game team management though I am probably getting better at tracking my team since the playing time limit adjustments we saw last year. Again, it's just not my bag. I don't sim a ton prior to the season and really have only done a couple of head to head games ever. If I could hire a manager I would. Anyone looking for a job?

My guess is that a number of us look at the league in a similar way but I also understand the negatives of in-season lulls. In years past we've probably lost a few players through in-season inactivity and it probably impacts the competitiveness of the league to varying degree.

So I find myself a bit in-between on the issue of in-season activities but since we are talking about it I'll bite.

I think my biggest issue with this rule is that I just don't see it raising the bar a whole lot. And because of that, I tend to think it would be more useful as a way of bridging playing time needs which would be better served as a throughout the season option versus for one week.

With the players being short term and needing to stay under the cap I don't see a ton of excitement for these players. Most contending teams spend near their limit so this likely benefits teams who are rebuilding who could both be short in playing time while having cash to spend. There could be some teams that try to job the system, as Chris pointed out, but I think even that will be fairly limited. It's hard to see how this generates a ton of intrigue and at the most it's really for a week or two if you factor in nominations.

Chris raises a point about the waiver wire and that is very interesting to me as I recently mentioned boosting the waivers to another owner in the league and for me is a plus because it hypes up an underutilized existing mechanism of our league.

Very few people use it with the exception of a few players that enter when teams bring up September call ups.

I think a combonation of rule changes could add intrigue to it. One simple change would be to require 40 man rosters to start out the season. Any additions would require a subtraction which should add to the waiver wire.

I think Free Agency alone isn't a big value, but in combination with other rules could compliment. FA would mean waiving a player, adding more players to the waiver market. This now adds players with potential long term value to the mix.

Combine that with more incentive for a waiving/claiming a player and you might have a lot of in season maneuvering. To me the biggest way to increase intrest in waiving and claiming is to alter the financial cost of a given player. Right now if a player is waived the new team takes on the full contract. In most cases a player is to costly to claim. That means there is no real incentive to waive the player (non roster obligation) and no incentive to claim the player. So no one uses it.

One possilbity to changing the financial obligation of a player is the reduce the contract obligation. Let's say we reduce the contact by a percentage. Now a player is cheaper to claim and there is incentive for a waiving team to reduce salary obligation. I'll be claer, this idea is not something I particulary like because I don't like taking away obligation. It's part of the game to take on risk. It shouldn't be taken away.

So what about this idea. What if during the wavier window a claiming team could bid on the player rather than just claim the full contract? Multiple teams could bid as we do in free agency up to the full contract value. Ties could go to the team with the worst record when waived as it currently does with the waiver priority. The old team would only be obligated to the difference over the life of the contract. This particularly benefits teams who are rebuilding and those teams probably have the hardest time staying involved because they don't have an expectation of pushing for the playoffs.

In conjunction with a spread out in-season free agency and starting the season at 40 men we would see a lot more activity during the season and the type of players available would be far more intriguing and impactful. The bidding would be fun, and it wouldn't be locked to a particular time so there would be more incentive to follow along so you don't miss out.

The League Office clearly sees a lack of team participation in-season as a signification issue that impacts the quality of our league and I am willing to buy that theory. But to really address that issue I think we need to have a league wide conversation rather than jump to rule making. We have some brilliant people in our league that if focused on a big picture issue like this could give us some really great options. Not that I want to delay our off season (it really is my favorite time of year), but I think this BIG issue is worthy of that conversation.

Finally, this might be a good time to go back to Mutiny's history. Our league was founded by a group of owners, in which I was one, that were exhausted by the constant debate over issues after issue. It was intentional the empower a league office. Our league office is great about getting our feed back when they feel a bit issue comes to their attention. I greatly appreciate not having to talk about every issue but are consulted for opinions (this was called a poll and not a vote) when the issue is a bigger one. I think they took our opinion into consideration when discussing what would happen on this topic even though it was not exactly the popular vote.

However, these smaller rule changes are really tackling an issue that it much bigger and I would much prefer to have a conversation about that big issue before we get to the rule making part of this. As much as I hate to delay the off-season started I want to hear what our cumulative brains can come up with to keep teams paying attention during the season.

It could be simple and direct like weekly MP updates or it could be more complicated like the 2rules changes I suggested plus free agency or something completely different. But I want to see what the league has to offer before we settle on one these solutions.

I call on the League Office to consider pulling this rule back so we can take the time to have a solution based league discussion and then go to the rule poll, vote or implementation depending on what he league office sees fit. That is if you can make it this far through this novel.

Re: New Rule POLL: Mid-season FA signings ideas

Reply #8 – December 30, 2019, 05:57:58 PM

Before this goes down a rabbit hole, give us some time to respond. It’s the holidays and I’ve been way too busy to do so while tending to my family.

Re: New Rule POLL: Mid-season FA signings ideas

Reply #9 – January 01, 2020, 11:52:03 AM

I'm not going to waste any more of the league's time on this proposal; we won't be implementing anything related to in-season free agency this year. When we initially discussed this rule change, I viewed it as a minor change that would impact every owner equally, that was designed to provide added flexibility down the stretch for PTL management, and that we thought would encourage in-season activity. It would appear that it's been viewed as far more than that.

To the extent that the owners want to discuss in-season activity as Matt suggests in his post, I would encourage that. The forums are open to everyone in the league and I would guess that 75% of our rule changes are suggestions from owners who are not part of the CO.