2023 Rule Changes

Topic: 2023 Rule Changes (Read 1278 times) previous topic - next topic

Re: 2023 Rule Changes

Reply #15 – December 23, 2022, 06:26:45 PM

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

Re: 2023 Rule Changes

Reply #16 – December 23, 2022, 07:58:46 PM

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.

Re: 2023 Rule Changes

Reply #17 – December 23, 2022, 08:33:22 PM

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.

Re: 2023 Rule Changes

Reply #18 – December 24, 2022, 02:21:02 AM

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.

Re: 2023 Rule Changes

Reply #19 – December 24, 2022, 07:20:15 AM

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.

Re: 2023 Rule Changes

Reply #20 – December 24, 2022, 11:32:33 AM

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?

Re: 2023 Rule Changes

Reply #21 – December 24, 2022, 04:34:02 PM

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.

Re: 2023 Rule Changes

Reply #22 – December 25, 2022, 07:36:39 AM

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.

Re: 2023 Rule Changes

Reply #23 – December 26, 2022, 04:06:39 PM

Quote from: thebuland – on December 24, 2022, 04:34:02 PM

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.

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.

Mookie Betts	Don't Offer Arbitration	Old System	Proposed System
After 2018 Season (Career WAR = 30.6, Season WAR = 10.5)	$500K	$5M	$7M
After 2019 Season (Season WAR = 6.4)	FA ($12.75M - $17M)	$9M	$11M
After 2020 Season (Projected WAR = 6.4 due to COVID)	FA ($12.75M - $17M)	$13M	$15M
Total Spent	$26M - $34.5M	$27M	$33M

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.

Re: 2023 Rule Changes

Reply #24 – December 26, 2022, 04:40:42 PM

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?

Re: 2023 Rule Changes

Reply #25 – January 03, 2023, 10:45:53 PM

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!

Re: 2023 Rule Changes

Reply #26 – January 03, 2023, 10:50:34 PM

Quote from: Kyle – on December 26, 2022, 04:40:42 PM

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?

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.

Re: 2023 Rule Changes

Reply #27 – January 04, 2023, 02:51:57 AM

Thanks, Rod.

Re: 2023 Rule Changes

Reply #28 – January 05, 2023, 09:15:22 PM

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!

Re: 2023 Rule Changes

Reply #29 – July 26, 2023, 09:45:12 PM

Quote from: David Johnson – on December 22, 2022, 07:08:25 AM

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.

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