Player accepts way below market extension in beginning of May??

[Matter2003]

Allright, something definitely is not right about this one...

Jeremy Bonderman, who is in the last year of a 4 year/$38 million contract accepted a 4 year/$7.1 million extension. What made it worse, was it was in the beginning of May. This is completely ridiculous. There is no way in the world his agent would begin negotiating a contract paying him about $11 million/year less than his current contract. Heck, he probably wouldn't even think about negotiating an extension that didn't include a raise in there of some kind. For him to sign that deal in May, when he would have had the ability to go to free agency and likely get much more than that, even if he had a crappy year is nothing more than ludicrous. This kind of stuff has to stop. This isn't even in the upper deck area of being remotely believable...

Someone needs to take a look at something like this, and realize that no player is gonna take an $11 million per year paycut unless its as a free agent who is really tailing off and no team is willing to give him a huge deal...

[damientheomen3]

his paycut isnt even 8 mil... pretty bad, but not even close to your saying he took an 11 mil paycut

[Matter2003]

Originally Posted by damientheomen3

his paycut isnt even 8 mil... pretty bad, but not even close to your saying he took an 11 mil paycut

His final contract year paid him $12.4 million...a high school kid could tell you that is where the negotiations would be starting for any extension talks...

[damientheomen3]

high school kids FTW I is one of am

[gnomez]

I got an extension on a $7 million pitcher in April for 650k.

[jasonn29tn14]

It's Collusion!

[Dogzilla]

Maybe his ratings are in massive decline and your scout hasn't noticed it yet?
I've had that happen when I signed what I thought was a cheap extension.

[fredandres]

Originally Posted by Dogzilla

Maybe his ratings are in massive decline and your scout hasn't noticed it yet?
I've had that happen when I signed what I thought was a cheap extension.

I've had this issue in my online league with scouts turned off. Setting house rules alleviates some of these issues, though it's clear the game has issues with extensions.

[BMW]

The game clearly takes current season's performance into account. So at the beginning of the season, it's very common to have the odd superstar each season to have a few bad weeks and be sporting a .220 average or 6.00 ERA. When you run across these guys, the game can let you sign them for quite a bit under their market value.

The league I am in has house rules so that teams cannot extend a guy in April and May. Frankly, the game should take this into consideration. Whatever modifiers that are applied from the current season success should be negligible in when the season is only 10 or 20% completed. (You wouldn't want to use months, ABs, or IP, because this would break for a league that started in February rather than April, or a season that only had a 50 game schedule.)

[Matter2003]

Originally Posted by BMW

The game clearly takes current season's performance into account. So at the beginning of the season, it's very common to have the odd superstar each season to have a few bad weeks and be sporting a .220 average or 6.00 ERA. When you run across these guys, the game can let you sign them for quite a bit under their market value.

Lets just look at it from a player standpoint and forget the team. Clearly for an extension to be signed, both the team AND the player must agree to it. Why on earth would a player who is having a bad start to the season sign an extension that was heavily based on those stats when they could just wait til the end of the season and hopefully have much better stats by then?

IMHO this is beyond the realm of being improbable...this is ludicrous, ridiculous, and any other term you could think of. It would NEVER happen. Period. It's not even about "Well, it COULD happen, so its technically not unrealistic." It would NEVER happen. There is not one player in baseball you can show me who signed a multiyear extension for $11 million less per year in early May. If he did, his agent should find a new job immediately because he will never get another client ever again.

So regardless of what the team is thinking, the player should basically laugh at the deal, tell the team to kick boulders, and tell them we will take it to free agency. The player is helping the team out by basically saying "You're right. I am sucking the first month and a half of the season this year, so let me take an $11 million per year pay cut starting next year."

Markus...you can't be serious with having this stuff happen, can you? This is so ridiculous to have this sort of thing happening, it seems like something that would have been a bug to report in version 1 or 2, not 10...

[jbergey22]

I agree with Matter on this. In my online league Jeter just signed an extension for 1.4 million after making over 20 million the previous 8-10 years. Not a chance in hell of that happening.

[endgame]

FWIW, I did ensure there is a BZ# assigned for this issue to be examined before the final patch.

[jbergey22]

Thanks Endgame

[Corsairs]

I would agree that this seems to be a problem. I am also noticing a related issue that bears looking into.

Once the regular season starts, unsigned free agents who have been asking for multi-year contracts reduce their demands to just one year. They also show a willingness to sign for significantly less. This part is not the problem. It's entirely reasonable that a player would lessen his demands if still unsigned after the start of the season on the premise that it's better to make some money than no money at all.

What is not reasonable is the degree to which the player will lower his demands, and more importantly the player's willingness to accept a multi-year contract in conjunction with those drastically lowered demands.

For example, I'm seeing instances where a player who was asking for a 5 year/$50M contract in the offseason drops his demands to 1 year/$8M once the regular season starts. Completely reasonable. But then I'm seeing that same player willing to accept a yearly salary at or near league minimum (let's say $1M for the sake of this example). What's worse, the player will gladly accept this salary over multiple years. So the same player who in March was asking for a 5 year/$50M contract can be signed to a 5 year/$5M contract just a month later.

It's one thing to agree that a player would lower his demands to earn a paycheck. However, it's extraordinarily unlikely that a player asking for an 8-digit yearly salary would accept a near-league minimum contract under any circumstance. Even if you did find a player that incredibly desperate for some scratch, it's beyond imagination that he would sign away additional years of his career at a similarly discounted rate. Realistically he would take his lumps on a reduced 1 year contract, hit the free agent market again at the end of the season and hope that his performance rehabilitated his value.

Is anyone else seeing this kind of behavior? If so, please speak up. The more voices that chime in, the more likely it will be addressed in the final patch.

[Le Grande Orange]

Originally Posted by Corsairs

For example, I'm seeing instances where a player who was asking for a 5 year/$50M contract in the offseason drops his demands to 1 year/$8M once the regular season starts. Completely reasonable. But then I'm seeing that same player willing to accept a yearly salary at or near league minimum (let's say $1M for the sake of this example). What's worse, the player will gladly accept this salary over multiple years. So the same player who in March was asking for a 5 year/$50M contract can be signed to a 5 year/$5M contract just a month later.

Just wondering, but is that for players becoming free agents as a result of their prior contract ending, or for players becoming free agents as a result of being released, or both?

[Corsairs]

Originally Posted by Le Grande Orange

Just wondering, but is that for players becoming free agents as a result of their prior contract ending, or for players becoming free agents as a result of being released, or both?

I'm tempted to answer "both", but to be honest I've only been tracking players who became free agents as a result of their prior contracts ending shortly after the conclusion of the previous season (in other words, your garden variety free agent). I'm pretty sure this also affects players that are released early from their contract but I should probably verify that before saying so definitively.

[LeeDorm8185]

I thanked jbergey22 strictly for his avatar. Well done, sir.

Seriously, this bug sounds like something that needs to be looked at, and soon.

[Another Mike D]

This is not new, as I am the commish of beemer's league that doesn't allow early extensions. Good luck getting it looked at, I've been on a few betas and have banged the drum on this quite often. You can play around with the AI evaluation percentages (like current year stats, previous year, ratings), but it is an art, especially early in the season. I think the best way is to set it to about 80% ratings, 20% prior season's stats when you are in the first month or two, but even then you get some discounts.

The same applies for guys making rookie deals or early arbitration. They are bought out way to easily and for much cheaper, but like I said, it's been BZed in the past and not really addressed. It actually works the other way sometimes too during arbitration. I've seen guys making 4M in their first year of arbitration sign for 6-7M x 2, thus the AI is possibly paying them over value and not getting extra years. It would make sense realistically if that built some kind of "goodwill" or something between player and team, but I don't think that exists.

[bababui]

Originally Posted by Matter2003

Markus...you can't be serious with having this stuff happen, can you? This is so ridiculous to have this sort of thing happening, it seems like something that would have been a bug to report in version 1 or 2, not 10...

No one forces you to offer a lowball contract, do they? Its an issue but is it really something to get so upset about?

[Matter2003]

Originally Posted by bababui

No one forces you to offer a lowball contract, do they? Its an issue but is it really something to get so upset about?

I didn't notice this because of something I had done. I noticed this because of receiving a news email saying Detroit had given Jeremy Bonderman a 4 year extension worth 7.1 million...I said hmm...that seems kind of low for a guy who is a pretty decent pitcher, so I looked and he is in the last year of a 4 year $38 million contract, making $12.4 million...

Personally I wouldn't do this because it is completely unrealistic, regardless of if it benefits me or not. At the very least, there should be some kind of limit to how much lower you could even offer a player an extension at, based on the final year of their current contract.

So, for instance, if Bonderman is making $12.4 million this year, you cannot offer an extension that is below 15% of that value, or $10.54 million. Secondly, the player should probably outright reject any extension offer that is below what he is making this current year until at least August, when his season's numbers are not going to improve by much. These 2 simple things will prevent this situation from occurring.

If the team doesn't want to give the player a raise from the previous year, the player is almost 100% going to go to free agency and at least test the market(what agent would advise his player to take a crap extension, without at least seeing what else is out there?). While this makes it more likely he will not resign with his current team, if they make him a fair offer in free agency, he could resign with them. This way, he at least will allow 29 other teams to bid on his services, rather than taking a crap offer from 1 team who is basically bidding against itself at that point of the season...

Any way you look at it, it is ridiculous for this to be happening at this point in OOTP's development...just my 2 cents...yes it was pretty strongly said, but the standard this game should be held to is pretty high...it does a lot of things tremendously well. Its simple things like this that drive player's nuts because it is so far from reality that it is just silly. What makes it worse are the fixes I suggested would pretty much completely eliminate this issue, and would only require a few simple checks.

Check 1: Is ExtensionOffer >= (CurrentContract * .85)
If yes, check date before allowing extension offer(if extension below current contract---if it is a raise, no need to check date).
If no, team cannot offer this extension to player

Check 2: Is Month >= August(or whatever month/date, etc is set)
If yes, team can offer below current contract extension
If no, team cannot offer any extension below current contract.

Simple fix, simple to code...