2021 Rule Changes

Topic: 2021 Rule Changes (Read 1778 times) previous topic - next topic

2021 Rule Changes

December 10, 2020, 12:31:59 PM

Active rosters are now 26 players to match MLB.
Previously teams were only able to spend $50mn in free agency every off-season. We have added arbitration decisions (which have now become significant) into that $50mn limit.
This year we had a trade in which one team pro-rated their traded players and one team did not. We feel that this is not within the spirit of the rules for pro-rating of trades and have amended the rules to state that, if players are pro-rated in a trade, all players must be pro-rated in the trade.
We fixed some language in the rulebook to clarify that arbitration decisions may be made at any time prior to free agency for players who were previously offered arbitration. Minor rule cleanup.
We fixed the following language in the rulebook, "After making a pick, each GM is encouraged to e-mail the GM (with all email addresses available on the MSB website) that has the subsequent pick to let them know that they are next. ~~However, the timer starts immediately after the prior pick is made.~~" as the struck out language is no longer applicable.

Re: 2021 Rule Changes

Reply #1 – December 11, 2020, 08:59:54 AM

Can I ask what the reasoning on the adding the arbitration money to the free agency limit on spending? I'll admit that I don't see the logic behind this change, although I do agree that the arbitration money is getting to be larger and larger and larger. I'm not sure about my team, but the arbitration decisions might push me above $50 million by themselves. Actually, I could see teams getting into some type of salary cap hell where if they offer arbitration, they won't have any money to fill out their team. In my viewpoint, the players who are offered arbitration are already on the team, and we're just opting to give them another contract. Moreover, their salaries are already counted to the salary cap of $90 million, so a team that offers arbitration isn't getting some type of leg up in the system. I'm not sure why offering Mookie Betts arbitration should count toward my $50 million free agent limit, since I'm already limited by the $90 million salary cap.

Re: 2021 Rule Changes

Reply #2 – December 11, 2020, 09:35:03 AM

I just wanted to give a few more details to my comments above, and again, I am wondering why we are putting arbitration players into the same $50 million limit as free agents. Another thing I'll say is that at this point, I knew that I would be having all of these players coming into arbitration, and in my planning for this season, I also knew that I would have a decent amount of money to fill any holes in my lineup. Putting this change on how we can spend our money just before the season seems a bit burdensome.

So, here are the values for the ACLs. I'm assuming that I offer arbitration to all but one of my arbitration eligible players (Javier Baez (8M), Mookie Betts (13M), Michael Comforto (4.5M), Willson Contreras (2M), Francisco Lindor (7M), James Paxton (6M) and Miguel Sano (3.5M)) and I waive arbitration on Felipe Vazquez, since he'll be in a penal baseball league soon enough. According to the WAR spreadsheet, offering arbitration to the 7 players I mentioned, it will cost me 44M. Given my losses in free agency, at the end of the day if I offer arbitration to those players, I will have 27 players on my major league roster and I will have total salary spending of $70.26M, giving me another $19.74M to spend on players to fill up my roster. However, under this rule, I can only spend another $6 million on free agents. As for the rest of my money to be spend, I guess I can give it to rookies (although this year I'm hesitant to call up anyone, since the projections disc isn't super kind to them), or I could make some trades, but that will deplete my minor league and draft pick capital.

I guess my concerns is that for teams that are planning ahead, this rule seems very last minute and very constricting on how we organize our rosters. I also feel like it is penalizing teams that have done a good job of building their minor league system, so that we have these quality players that we can offer arbitration to. I think arbitration has been a good thing for the league, giving incentives to build a quality farm system, while making it more costly to keep those players. I'm still being limited by the $90 million salary cap, since my arbitration players are taking up half of my money at this point.

I guess I would like to know more of the reasoning here, since I don't know if I can see what the reason is.

Re: 2021 Rule Changes

Reply #3 – December 11, 2020, 10:07:36 AM

Quote from: profjason – on December 11, 2020, 09:35:03 AM

(Javier Baez (8M), Mookie Betts (13M), Michael Comforto (4.5M), Willson Contreras (2M), Francisco Lindor (7M), James Paxton (6M) and Miguel Sano (3.5M)) and I waive arbitration on Felipe Vazquez, since he'll be in a penal baseball league soon enough. According to the WAR spreadsheet, offering arbitration to the 7 players I mentioned, it will cost me 44M.

Jason, the idea isn't to apply the $50mn against the total value of the contract but against the additive amount of the contract. So for Mookie, it would only be the additional $4mn, not $13mn. Baez would be $2mn, not $8mn, Conforto $2.0mn, etc...

Basically I would take a snapshot of each team prior to free agency and arbitration and look at that (and accounting for trade values). By that logic, your $37,740,000 of remaining salary means that absent you shipping off $12.260mn of salaries, you cannot hit $50mn in this offseason.

Ultimately the only teams that this would impact this year would be the Robots, Rainiers, and Sweets. And frankly except for the Robots ($58mn available), none would be impacted very much.

Re: 2021 Rule Changes

Reply #4 – December 11, 2020, 10:09:20 AM

Clearly I need to fix the language of that change to ensure it is more clear, but that should hopefully address your concern.

Re: 2021 Rule Changes

Reply #5 – December 11, 2020, 12:28:13 PM

Thanks for the explanation there, since I was interpreting it as the entire salary was counting against the $50M, but making it only the increase in salary, that does decrease the size and scope of it. However, I'm still wondering what the consideration for including that is?

I do agree though that this won't impact my team for this season, and most of the time won't affect teams, unless they have a boatload of arbitration eligible players who are all getting big raises and they have a ton of salary cap space.

Re: 2021 Rule Changes

Reply #6 – December 11, 2020, 02:09:38 PM

Same concerns as Jason. I don't understand why free agent money and arbitration money are being combined. I won't rehash all the points, but this does seem to me to penalize the teams/GM's who do a good job building from within.

A somewhat similar example in MLB: LA Dodgers. They have done a remarkable job building from within and have several star players on manageable contracts due to arbitration (Bellinger, Seager, Urias, Buehler, Barnes) or pre-arb deals (Smith, May, Gonsolin, Graterol) which allowed the team (as they have planned all along) to go out and splurge on that one centerpiece player via a long term deal (in MSB would translate to a big free agent signing since we can 't preemptively sign a player before FA) in Betts.

I will also say that from the beginning my whole focus in building my team has been on building my farm system so I would have manageable contracts to fill out my roster while I looked for a centerpiece type player in free agency. If a GM can be creative/focused enough to build a largely complete roster through the farm system and arbitration for under $40M, what is the reasoning to penalizing him that full $50M in FA?

Re: 2021 Rule Changes

Reply #7 – December 12, 2020, 12:34:56 PM

My take is that limiting teams to a certain dollar figure for “new” spending each offseason is that it’s (in part) an anti-tanking measure. It’d be pretty easy to sell off players costing draft picks and minor leaguers, then spend $80M in one off season, totally skewing that offseason’s plans for some owners. Also, a motivation for a rule like this is to keep player costs down just a bit.

I do get the arbitration argument, and this is not a hill I’d die on, especially when I’ve been on record saying “less is more” for the MSB 2021 season.

Re: 2021 Rule Changes

Reply #8 – December 13, 2020, 01:59:34 PM

Quote from: Kyle – on December 12, 2020, 12:34:56 PM

My take is that limiting teams to a certain dollar figure for “new” spending each offseason is that it’s (in part) an anti-tanking measure. It’d be pretty easy to sell off players costing draft picks and minor leaguers, then spend $80M in one off season, totally skewing that offseason’s plans for some owners. Also, a motivation for a rule like this is to keep player costs down just a bit.

I would agree this seems to be an anti-tanking measure. However, I'm not sure if any team that would be tanking and then spending $80 million would be able to effectively use arbitration in those goals. I guess a team that might have a lot of arbitration players coming up could tank one season with those arbitration players, but normally, since those players are pretty good, I don't see how easily they can tank. Plus, I don't know if a team would trade away arbitration players to a team that wanted to spend a ton of money. Of course, maybe I'm not creative enough (or too competitive) to come up with how to game the system like that.

Re: 2021 Rule Changes

Reply #9 – December 18, 2020, 09:48:34 AM

I'm not in favor of the 50M limit including the arbitration bonus salaries. This is going to limit plans of many teams and my team included. If this is to be implemented, I think it needs to be announced and plan for the following season at the soonest.

Re: 2021 Rule Changes

Reply #10 – December 18, 2020, 09:51:14 AM

Quote from: Rum Runners – on December 18, 2020, 09:48:34 AM

I'm not in favor of the 50M limit including the arbitration bonus salaries. This is going to limit plans of many teams and my team included. If this is to be implemented, I think it needs to be announced and plan for the following season at the soonest.

We're discussing it and hope to have a response in the next day or so. That said, you only have $31mn remaining for 2021 so unless you plan on dumping a ton of salary in trades, this wouldn't impact you at all.

Re: 2021 Rule Changes

Reply #11 – December 21, 2020, 09:21:18 PM

All,

We've decided to pull back this change and will revisit next offseason. Otherwise, I think we are good with the rulebook and are ready to move forward. We will send out the new database by Friday and open up transactions this weekend.