Projected Payroll Way Off Killing $ for Extensions

[kq76]

I'm posting this hoping someone in beta checks it for OOTP11. This has happened to me before and corrected itself late in the season so I don't panic over it now, but it would certainly be nice to have the correct $ for extensions well before near the end of the season and so others don't panic.

Just as an example, my current salary report (2033-6-27 in the CBL) says very clearly that my projected payroll for next year should be 40.9M. Great! With a budget of 71.8M and cash of 7M my $ for extensions should be 37.9M (71.8+7-40.9=37.9). That's good because 7 of my best players are up for FA this year and they're all probably going to ask somewhere from 4 to 14M a year, maybe 6M a year on average. 7*6=42 which is 4 shy of 38, but close enough. I probably won't be able to re-sign all of them anyway.

But wait, what's this? The finances screen says I only have 15M for extensions. What the? My best player is probably going to want 14M a year himself alone. I'm screwed! Luckily I've seen this before so I'm pretty confident it'll correct itself late in the season, but some people don't know this and it'd be nice if I could start extending guys now rather than be forced to wait near the end of the season when they might be asking for more.

I've looked up and down trying to figure out why the game does this, but I can't figure it out. And it's sometimes not a small insignificant difference either. Like now, my projected payroll should be 40.9M, but the finances screen says it is 63.8M (a 22.9M difference!), which causes the $ for extensions to go from 37.9M to 15M. That's a big problem when you've got several not so cheap players approaching FA.

[Flying Dutchmen]

Here's my guess as to why based on how the game's financials seem to work and without any particular evidence to back this up. If you have players coming up on their first chance at free agency (i.e. finishing up their arbitration years), the game will often keep their predicted arbitration award in the financial report until they reach 6 Years of service and it's confirmed that they will qualify as free agents. My guess is that several of your soon-to-be free agents have not reached the 6 Years threshold and so the game is subtracting out their presumed arbitration awards from your available money for the next season. I could be completely wrong here, but that's my best deduction. I would check the financial report and see if any of those players are listed as having salaries next year. It seems there might be a disconnect in the coding the game uses there between predicting free agents and calculating potential costs.

[RchW]

Originally Posted by Flying Dutchmen

Here's my guess as to why based on how the game's financials seem to work and without any particular evidence to back this up. If you have players coming up on their first chance at free agency (i.e. finishing up their arbitration years), the game will often keep their predicted arbitration award in the financial report until they reach 6 Years of service and it's confirmed that they will qualify as free agents. My guess is that several of your soon-to-be free agents have not reached the 6 Years threshold and so the game is subtracting out their presumed arbitration awards from your available money for the next season. I could be completely wrong here, but that's my best deduction. I would check the financial report and see if any of those players are listed as having salaries next year. It seems there might be a disconnect in the coding the game uses there between predicting free agents and calculating potential costs.

I don't know if it counts but the Salary Report page shows projected arbitration awards several years forward.

[kq76]

You know what, you're right! Not that it has anything to do with obvious arbitration, but for some reason it's thinking that they could possibly go to arbitration when they most likely won't and while the game is smart in not putting their arb figures on the salary report it must still be counting them. I have 5 players who have arb eli figures show up on their contract screens. With rounding they equal:

5
6
4.5
4.3
3.2
=
23M which is very close to the 22.9M

I can't believe I didn't think of that, it seems so obvious now. Nice going!

Actually, I think I know why I was thrown into not seeing that. My best player has 6 years ML service time already and only barely wasn't an FA last year so he didn't have an arb eli amount and since I was very concerned about him I was always trying to figure him into the problem when he just wasn't part of it.

Anyway, I suppose someone might say, "well, there is always the possibility that these guys won't hit FA this year so their arb eli amounts should count", but I'd say that for the purposes of $ for extensions their possible, but unlikely since their 5+ major league service year players, arb eli amounts shouldn't effectively count twice against you since you want to extend them instead of having them go to arb eli. And at the very least, the salary report and finances screen should have consistent projected payroll #s.

Thanks very much, FD!

EDIT: If someone in beta could see to a change in this with OOTP11, that'd be great.

[battists]

kq,

FD's post is spot on. The arbitration-eligible players are considered in this calculation.

It seems like this issue has been resolved, but there's certainly some clarification needed in the documentation, at least. I'll be sure this gets updated!

For now, I'm going to close out this issue.

Thanks!

Steve