Fifield cheating again . . .

Player A has an existing contract. Player A gets cut. Blind bidding will be open to secure him for the remainder of the season. In order to retain the player in future seasons you must resume responsibilities of contract. (alternative would be to force them into FA in the offseason.. but i think there should be SOME possibility to gain an edge by being proactive on free agents... just not the kind of edge where you get 5 years of cargo/prince for $20 because you were the only team to have that much left/be paying attention)

what is the flaw in this? i know we discussed this when this problem has come up previously but i don't remember why nothing was implemented. and i know i've personally been a beneficiary of the current rule w/ Joe Nathan (though not this year).. but it does seem like we need to have some rule covering this stuff.

Just to clarify, the salary floor rule would only deal with under-contract players who are released to waivers. It would make it so that the player's new team would have to pay at least some share of the old contract (we haven't figured out the details yet, but that was gist of the proposal).

I see your point about how this would still exclude teams who have limited funds late in a season.

Bolded would serve as the "salary floor rule" mentioned above, right?

Primetime made the following proposal back in the 2010 offseason:

This ended up getting positive feedback from other owners, but was never put to an official vote/ratified for some reason. I like this proposal.

One tweak we could make is to allow the bidder to pick up the player at any price during the season, but once the season ends the price reverts to the higher value and is treated as a new 5-year contract.

That way, you still get the mid-season boost through the waiver wire, but could have a financial incentive to release any huge contracts back to FA afterward. This doesn't really capture lower $ value contracts though (like Cargo's here).

Here are other times where this issue has been discussed:

1) #3782

2) #2115

3) #2136

How about any player over x dropped after y auto becomes an FA the next year?

The flaw in the one proposal is cutting a guy who is in Y5 and cheap and injured. Too lazy to look up an example but I think someone's got Bautista at like $10. So it would floor him at $10 (a joke) or his blind bid price which is still not representative of his real vale given half the league is in a budget bind or otherwise constrained.

Maybe something like a right in the auction to get him for $1 more than the last bid. So might save a few $$ not getting in a bidding war for the guy to keep him

I agree this should be rectified immediately, as I can snap drop Joey Bats and Matt Latos who combine cost me $25 and both on c5s(even someone like Desmond on an r5) and I have the most money available, etc.

I will also probably forget to do all of that, but still, my point stands.

There's certainly other solutions, most of which are going to come with "if X, then Y" to the point where everyone is going to get a headache and there will be exceptions to the exception. A rule where any player dropped is a FA but can not be retained is the simplest and possibly best solution.

At a minimum, Prince/Cargo are off-limits in tomorrow's FAAB run until we can sort something out?

But what about a guy like Pujols. I have no intention of dropping him now, but if he were to get injured, I have no intention on keeping him next year at his current contract despite being in year 1. Same as Salazar that was already picked up.

Yeah that's my point. There are so many damn possible scenarios I think the safest thing is just so say .. you drop Pujols, he enters the FA pool and is bid on accordingly. And after the season he goes back into the auction pool.

Any non-rookie picked up after the auction, assuming he wasn't on a roster up to that point, is treated the same as if you won the player in the auction and can be kept on contract.

I like the idea of anyone being picked up is an FA next year. Maybe anyone picked up after X date?

I may not be able to get online for the next several days, but will jump back into the discussion soon. I'm glad to see all the suggestions getting posted.

I haven't had time to think about this in depth, but here's a possible hybrid solution:

Non-year 5 players dropped on waivers: Use some version of Primetime's "greater of two values" rule.

5th year players dropped on waivers: Will become a FA at season's end, salary for the rest of the season equals the winning bid (per usual).

Can you guys think of any potential problems developing out of this proposal?

And I'm not worried about complexity because a) I don't think this is that tough to follow, I could even start a tab on the spreadsheet tracking dropped player salaries and

b) Exit and I are the ones who have to manage the transactions anyway. The rookie rule is as simple as it gets and people still **** that up. No point in watering down what could be an effective solution for the sake of simplicity.

Just for clarity when you put the rule in the rulebook, I'd say "last year of contract" or something to cover our 6th year rookie guys.

I feel like this is pretty good but just talking out loud working it through a few examples.

Exit has Braun at $142/4, let's just say he gets injured or busted for PEDs again or whatever and Exit drops him today. I win the blind bidding on him in today's FAAB auction for $27. So I can have him on my roster for the rest of the season at that $27 price. But if I want to keep him the following season, it would be $149 ($142 escalated by 5%) for the 2015 season? So he'd be $149 / 2nd year of contract on my roster for that season? Seems like it would work pretty well.

Sergz has Shields at $23/4. Today, he hypothetically blows out his arm and needs TJS missing the remainder of this year and 2015. So his contract is basically worthless so Sergz drops him. As a rebuilding team I pick him up for $4 in today's FAAB auction. But if I want to keep him the following year (and just eat the contract) he'd be a $24 / 2nd year contract guy. Seems a little unusual at first glance, but it's still better than current setup where he can be kept for basically the league minimum of $4.

Seems like this works well, I'd support it unless I am missing something.

i think that system is clearly better than what is currently in place, but it still has flaws like if a player is year 4 on a super bargain deal (i.e. Jose bautista).. i think the option to retain for following seasons should be on old contract/old contract year.

so in your examples, you could retain Braun but he'd be $149 and a year 5/ Shields would be a 24/5.

Exit - I thought about that too, but I just have to assume if a player is on a super bargain deal he most likely won't be dropped in the first place.

I like most of the ideas thrown out, but i don't see how you can change the rule during the season. Many people should may/should have anticipated this happenings and saved funds for that reason. Meaning they passed up earlier season pick ups or lost out on bids in order to save money for end of the year drops.

Well if not, enjoy Cargo at $8 for the next five years Pecota!

I mean, i understand not implementing rules mid season, but we did make sure to include something about the commissioners have discretion to keep things in order.. i'm not saying i'm going to just have my way, but i think if we decide this is not what the rules meant to create that we can do something about it now without screwing over someone.

i don't think anyone saw it coming that actual stud FA's would be dropped late in season and able to be resigned to 5 year deals at an extreme discount. i know i didnt. i think it messes with the whole dynamic of the league.

we created the rules with the intent to mimic real life mlb as much as was reasonable, this totally does not.

Holy christ CarGo for $8. Great idea me not to log in an hour earlier.

LOL at no one bidding on Prince Fielder tho.

The Year-5-you're-an-FA/year-4-you-revert rule seems good. This player proposed a rule whereby everyone - year 5 or no - becomes an FA in the off-season, but was shouted down at the press club.

Not knowing what sort of rule we'd eventually agree upon, I did put in a bid on him (and no one else did, surprisingly). I have zero expectation of keeping him, contingent on the new rules.

I dunno, I'm not so sure we should be applying any rules retroactively. We agreed that we should implement a rule about this in the off-season and then never quite got around to it. Meh.

I thought I bid 60 on each haha

****ty espn fantasy app

I mean this league will simply cease to exist if Pecota is allowed to keep CarGo at an $8 year 1 salary, and I think he understands that.