Quote:
Originally Posted by alekhine8
I'm thinking about starting a similar league to this one with some guys. Besides some of the hiccups with guys getting dropped towards the end of their contracts this year (given it was 5th year and lots of expiring deals), any other significant issues come up that needed significant resolution or caused any issues?
I'm not really changing that much. Probably going to add a second catcher, and may give a few extra bench spots instead of DL. But nothing too substantial.
If I were doing it again, I think the only thing I'd tweak is contract structure, at least initially. Our contracts are asymmetric: they're one-year guaranteed with team options for up to four years after that, with just a 5% raise YOY. Really good for the teams. So even if everyone goes for fair value in the auction, the guys who turn out to be a little better than we thought get kept, often for the full five years, whereas the guys who disappoint get dropped.
So what this means is that for the first five years the only guys entering the auction pool are the let-downs (undrafted rookies aside). Since they turned out to be overpaid, there's a lot of money getting freed up but not that much talent. So our free agent prices skyrocketed in years 3-5, which I didn't see coming, though maybe a more savvy team did. Even since you joined I'm sure you saw the chatter about how the talent pool in the auction was kinda thin.
In this pool, we're past the five-year mark, so the players in the auction pools will be the let-downs, as before, but also the good players whose contracts have expired, whether they were signed as free agents or rookies. So our auction pool will be much deeper from now on. Also, we rectified some of the asymmetry of contracts by bumping pay raises from 5% to 10% YOY. This will tilt the keep/cut decision a little further toward cut, and thus deepen the auction pool a little further.
But that's us. If I were starting this again from scratch, I'd consider a couple of solutions:
1) The really interesting one is guaranteeing more than one year and not having options. So someone bids 1/20 and another team bids 2/35. Of course, then you have to decide which contract "the player" would accept, which is some combination of overall value and AAV that hinges on the player's risk tolerance and all that. Probably too complex, but it would be pretty interesting if you were willing to put the effort in.
2) A simpler solution is just to arbitrarily limit the number of option years on some contracts signed in the early years. So players born in January or February don't get any option years, players born in March or April get one option year, etc. Or you could randomize the number of options
after the auction. That way you get contracts expiring every year.
3) Radically increase the YOY raises players get in the first few years. So players get 25% raises after year 1, 20% raises after year 2, etc., all the way down to 10% or whatever your eventual goal is. This just increases the number of "let-down" players who voluntarily get thrown back into the auction.
Or maybe you don't think it's a problem, I dunno. I think we handled rookies really well in this league. I'd consider the recent proposals for unlimited rookie rosters, or maybe capped at 30 or something. And you can draft as many as you think is worthwhile given the $4 cost.