Salaries increase by 5% with a minimum of $1, which is why the $29 guy gets the same increase as the $4 guy. Sorry if you already know that, it wasn't clear. So I think what you're saying is that 5% is too little, or that it should be greater than 5% for salaries less than $50 or something. Or perhaps a bigger min; at least $2 or $3 or something.

I don't feel too strongly about it, but in regards to the effects that you wrote of, I think they're transitory. In turn:

1) There are lots of keepers not so much because salary increases are modest year-to-year, but because the going rate for free agents right now is really high. I'll talk about why below.

2) Right. And you're right that this is because so many guys are getting kept, and so few guys are entering the FA pool. BUT, right now the only guys entering the FA pool are voluntary cuts. After next year - that is, after year 5 - the first round of contracts will begin to expire, and so we'll get those guys in the FA pool as well as voluntary cuts. This will increase the supply of free agents substantially.

3) Maybe, I dunno. If you sign a guy for $4 that no one else wanted, and he turns out to be a big contributor, you obviously deserve a reward. After all, you gave up the salary and the roster spot for him. Is the five-year contract with 5% annual increase too much of a reward? I dunno, maybe. But I don't know how common ridiculous FA deals are. It's pretty rare to get big production over what you pay, no?

I'll add that it could be the case that our current salary structure is too team-friendly, and leads to a sub-optimal number of players entering the FA pool every year (sub-optimal from the perspective of league welfare, I mean). But it's going to be hard to know that until we're through the first five years of this thing. Once contracts start expiring, I suspect there may be plenty. We're in a unusual spot this year and next.

Also, I forgot that rookie contracts will begin to expire after year 6 as well; a new source of players into the FA pool. And I suspect a lot of rookies will get cut after year 4 and year 5, when their salaries for the following season reach $30 and $50, respectively.

this was basically what i was getting at yes.

I just feel that salaries should increase by more than 5% at the bottom end the spectrum.

I just think that grouping 4$ players and 29$ players in the same group seems wrong.

I get where you're coming from, but my inclination is to favor the simplicity of the present system over a more complicated system of tiers.

Maybe. I've never been in a position pre-draft in which I've been close to the cap. I haven't made a concerted effort to stockpile prospects, but in any given year I get enough guys who either a) get promoted or b) totally flame out that my minor league roster is pretty trimmed down by draft day. But I can see the possibility of it happening, under extreme circumstances.

But a fixed-number-of-rounds system does increase the cost of trading a prospect, right? If I trade a prospect today, I know that I'll be able to replace him with another guy come draft day, albeit with a late pick. With a fixed number of rounds, I can't replace that guy. So the cost of trading the prospect, to me, is higher.

Here's a hybrid, which I'm pretty much making up on the fly and I'm not sure if it makes sense:

Everyone gets at least five picks. If five picks puts you at a minor league roster of 10 or over, then you don't get any more picks. If you're still short of 10, you keep picking until you get there. There's no cap to minor league rosters. That way you can stockpile a massive minor league roster if you want, and you don't sacrifice any picks in the money rounds.

I am pretty close to this. I have 9 minor league guys, all in BA top 100 prospects, none may start year in pros. I also have 3 first round picks and an early second. So gonna have to do something

Something like this wouldnt be bad

Yeah, and you're by far the most extreme farm system builder we've had, but of course we want to make it possible, I think.

It's no big deal either way. Don't need special rules if I am an outlier. I would just need to know so I can start trading picks or consolidating prospects.

Well, you're the first one to so thoroughly blow up their team to stockpile rookies, but that doesn't necessarily make you an outlier; maybe the rest of us are in denial. I think it should be an option though.

I think Muckface is basically right that it's too easy to keep everyone. I'm probably just going to cut a few randoms and injuries and completely sit out the auction this year because I know I won't get any value at auction and I can keep all of a pretty strong team. Obviously, I'm quite happy with this, but I'm not really sure that I should be able to do that.

Probably just needs to be a happy medium. To turn around a team you need some combination of stocking up on rookies/picks/prospects and finding value in the draft. Right now both of them are kinda limited

Levarkin's minor league compromise thing works pretty well for me. Probably need to work on a few minor details - things like whether picks are still protected if they're traded, and what rules we are operating under for the draft coming up, but I think that it basically works.

+1

And I still think that it's a years 3-5 peculiarity and not a long-term issue, but of course it's hard to predict . . .

If we're really concerned, we could randomly designate half of existing contracts to expire after year 4, and the other half as eligible to expire after year 5. That would get us closer to the eventual long-term. But I dunno, no biggie, IMO. It's just two more years of underwhelming FA classes.

^^^^^

Probably not a great idea, by the way, changing the rules of the game after we've started. It would be in some owners' interests to tear up half of the contracts after this year, and the interests of other owners not to. I think we just have to wait it out. Not a huge issue, IMO.

I still say having more turnover of players keeps things more fresh.

Correct me I'm wrong but isn't this same thing going to happen every 5 years? Yes that one year, or that year and the next will be juicy, but then won't there be 3 dull years after where this happens again?

The five-year pattern should diminish as time goes on. I would expect the number of FAs entering the pool every year to stabilize within a few years, and we'll only notice a more modest supply this year and next. If then.

Anyway, I'm not against change, if we want to discuss it, I just think that we could end up seeing plenty of turnover within a couple of years even with the current structure.

Oh, and not to belabor this, but another reason why the five-year thing is one-time is that all contracts signed in years 2, 3, and soon 4 will be signed at the going rate for FAs then. Just like in real baseball, FA value will end up being a lot higher than true value. We signed guys for roughly true value in year 1, but the value of FAs took off after that, so a lot of year-1 contracts ended up looking pretty good, even if the players had declined a little. Whereas if you sign a contract this year, there's no assurance that the FA value will be higher next year, it might be lower. So even a player who performs to expectations might not be worth keeping next year.

I think it will get better as more players end up on different contracts, and when we start getting cohorts being released into free agency. I'm still not sure that 5% increases are enough though - just about everyone who is released is a substantial under-performer or a bad injury.

I could be talked into a 10% increase instead of 5%. Here's how it would shake out, salary range and year-to-year increase:

<$15: $1
$15-$24: $2
$25-$34: $3
$35-$44: $4

And so on.

But I'm not sure it's fair to change it now. And I think we should wait until after year 5 and see what the long-term looks like.

Actually, it wouldn't be unfair. New contracts could get signed to new rules; old contracts are grandfathered in. No conflicts of interest, I don't think.

I actually think the problem is with the really cheap guys - adding $1 out of a $1000 to someone's salary makes no difference. Something like a minimum salary increase of $4 or $5 might work.

Actually, I should shut up. The current system suits my team just fine.

Yeah, but really cheap guys are usually pretty marginal contributors, so $1 could actually mean something. Or maybe the main cost of those guys is a foregone roster spot, but that just means that their salary isn't especially relevant, regardless of the scheduled increase.

I just feel like the decisions are all so easy right now, it's very cut and dry. Everyone has the same team as last year.

But I get the 5 year thing, just seems like a big investment of time to wait something out and see.