Free Agency

[Joy in Mudville]

Hi, my friends and I have the Joy in Mudville League some of you may have followed over on the dynasty thread. We want to start free agency up in a few years.

I'm curious to see how other league handle this? Do you set a date that all bids have to be in by? Do all bid get emailed to the commissioner?

I'd appreciate any ideas or help you could give.

Thanks!

[sporr]

Originally Posted by Joy in Mudville

Hi, my friends and I have the Joy in Mudville League some of you may have followed over on the dynasty thread. We want to start free agency up in a few years.

I'm curious to see how other league handle this? Do you set a date that all bids have to be in by? Do all bid get emailed to the commissioner?

I'd appreciate any ideas or help you could give.

Thanks!

Actually, FA bids can be entered into the game by the owners and export with their lineups. Then the commish just sims however many days at a time you want to sim. Most leagues break FA up into several "rounds" to give everyone a chance to enter new bids.

[littlechris1977]

Originally Posted by sporr

Actually, FA bids can be entered into the game by the owners and export with their lineups. Then the commish just sims however many days at a time you want to sim. Most leagues break FA up into several "rounds" to give everyone a chance to enter new bids.

That's how it's done in the Corporate Baseball League...Corporate League Baseball.

[Corsairs]

Originally Posted by sporr

Actually, FA bids can be entered into the game by the owners and export with their lineups. Then the commish just sims however many days at a time you want to sim. Most leagues break FA up into several "rounds" to give everyone a chance to enter new bids.

How many rounds do you typically break this period up into, and how long do they last? I want to make sure my owners have enough time to negotiate without dragging the process on too long.

[Joy in Mudville]

Thanks for your ideas. Our issue is that the league is run off line. Any one out there with an idea for us?

[Raidergoo]

Originally Posted by Corsairs

How many rounds do you typically break this period up into, and how long do they last? I want to make sure my owners have enough time to negotiate without dragging the process on too long.

From the time that FA starts, eMLB does a daily sim, and each sim covers three days. One neat thing is that the Winter Meetings are held live on AOL Instant Messenger, and that draws maybe 2/3rds of the clubs. One day is simmed every 30 minutes, with the commish manually entering the offers. Once we get into January, I think it goes to a week a sim, with one sim a day.

It does take almost a month of real time to do the entire offseason, but eMLB is a slower-paced league. During the regular season, there are two sims of 7 days each. The goal is to get two simmed years in per one real year.

[Corsairs]

Originally Posted by Raidergoo

From the time that FA starts, eMLB does a daily sim, and each sim covers three days. One neat thing is that the Winter Meetings are held live on AOL Instant Messenger, and that draws maybe 2/3rds of the clubs. One day is simmed every 30 minutes, with the commish manually entering the offers. Once we get into January, I think it goes to a week a sim, with one sim a day.

It does take almost a month of real time to do the entire offseason, but eMLB is a slower-paced league. During the regular season, there are two sims of 7 days each. The goal is to get two simmed years in per one real year.

Actually, the pace of eMLB sounds almost exactly the same as our own; we do 2 sims of 8 days each week. I like the system that you're using for the off-season. Now I'm not 100% sure that my owners will be up for daily sims; that's something I'll have to look into with them. But it'd be nice if possible since it provides time for them to negotiate.

I also really like the idea of the live Winter Meetings. Any more specific details on that? What all exactly are the owners doing this time while they're on AOL? Do you find it at all difficult to keep up the 30 minute/sim pace?

[sporr]

We break ours down a little differently. I sim 5 or 6 or 7 days per "sim" until we get to the draft on 12/20. Then we sim to January 1st in another sim. The next sim takes us to February 1st (the official off-season). Finally, we sim right up to the start of Spring Training.

[DWK]

BTL holds off until January 23 to start FA then we do a daily sim, each sim covers 2 day for the first week then 5 days the next week

[spot]

Once we get to the end of the playoffs I sim to the day options are decided on (Usually the day after the season). I then sim up to the day FA file so teams have a last chance to sign the potential FAs. After that I sim to the Rule V draft, run it based on lists provided to me by owners and then sim all the way to Jan. 1st. I don't import at all once the FAs file so that no one can have an opportunity to make offers to FAs until Jan. 1st. After that it's a 14 day sim every other day until the preseason when we then go to our normal M-W-F 7 days per schedule. We are looking into going to daily sims right now (we are in the offseason) because most teams are out of money.

[Raidergoo]

Originally Posted by DWK

BTL holds off until January 23 to start FA then we do a daily sim, each sim covers 2 day for the first week then 5 days the next week

If you do that, your FA's will accept lower $ contract bids, especially the ones that are only getting 1 or 2 offers.

The lsat two seasons, I have set aside cap space to snipe a player or two that slips through the cracks due to his extravagant demands early during FA, and is still on the market in late Feb-early March. Sometimes I can get them at 25% of their demands.

Harry Collins went at a 75% discount. Dave Spitzer went at a 67% discount.

[Raidergoo]

Originally Posted by Corsairs

Actually, the pace of eMLB sounds almost exactly the same as our own; we do 2 sims of 8 days each week. I like the system that you're using for the off-season. Now I'm not 100% sure that my owners will be up for daily sims; that's something I'll have to look into with them. But it'd be nice if possible since it provides time for them to negotiate.

I also really like the idea of the live Winter Meetings. Any more specific details on that? What all exactly are the owners doing this time while they're on AOL? Do you find it at all difficult to keep up the 30 minute/sim pace?

Daily sims are not that brutal, remember that it will take several days, or a week (or more) for the player to even react to your FA bid. Due to the salary cap, not everyone is bidding, and once a team gets a FA, they tend to be done with the process.

Live Winter Meetings are a blast, with GM's in 3 countries and 2 continents showing up to chat via an AIM chat room. There's a lot of trash talk, and announcements that so and so is being shopped, or that a team needs pitching, stuff like that. In the background, GM's submit bids for a player to the commish via private message , and the commish will enter them manually for the GM. At one time last year, I had the main chat going, with 7 separate PM conversations at the same time.

eMLB uses a trade review board, which can take a week or more to approve a trade. During the Winter Meetings, the review is done live, so teams can wheel and deal rapidly.

1 day gets simmed every 30 minutes, and in game news articles that come up get posted, plus PM's if a player likes or hates your offer.

It does not amount to much, but it sure is entertaining!

[Corsairs]

Originally Posted by Raidergoo

Daily sims are not that brutal, remember that it will take several days, or a week (or more) for the player to even react to your FA bid. Due to the salary cap, not everyone is bidding, and once a team gets a FA, they tend to be done with the process.

Live Winter Meetings are a blast, with GM's in 3 countries and 2 continents showing up to chat via an AIM chat room. There's a lot of trash talk, and announcements that so and so is being shopped, or that a team needs pitching, stuff like that. In the background, GM's submit bids for a player to the commish via private message , and the commish will enter them manually for the GM. At one time last year, I had the main chat going, with 7 separate PM conversations at the same time.

eMLB uses a trade review board, which can take a week or more to approve a trade. During the Winter Meetings, the review is done live, so teams can wheel and deal rapidly.

1 day gets simmed every 30 minutes, and in game news articles that come up get posted, plus PM's if a player likes or hates your offer.

It does not amount to much, but it sure is entertaining!

Wow, that sounds like a blast! I'm going to have to give serious consideration to trying something like that. We don't have the length trade review process you guys have, so I was thinking about maybe giving a small Contribution Point reward to any owner who makes a trade or signs a player during the live Winter Meetings. Might be just the little incentive needed to spark a flurry of action.

[Bristolduke]

We are in our first off season in the HNBA, I was doing 5 day sims starting in mid November. We still had a couple of FAs waiting to decide in Jan.

However, I have noticed that bids disappear. It has happened on the same player (who still isn't signed). The last occurance was a bid that the player favors, now no longer is there. In none of the cases has the GM indicated that they withdrew the offer.

Anyone else, see that problem and know how to resolve it.

Thanks
Bill

[Corsairs]

I'm not sure if this is the same problem, but we've experienced situations where owners contract offers have been lost in translation when importing their files. This hasn't been a common problem, but occasionally an owner will write me complaining that he made an offer that didn't seem to register (i.e. no feedback from the player). I've verified in these cases that the owner did offer the contract and that the offer disappears as soon as I import their file.

Whenever this happens I have the owner mail me the offer they want to make. I then enter it in myself after importing all the files. It always takes when I do it on my end.

[Bristolduke]

That could be similar. The cases we have to date are offers submitted, no response, another import and the original offer is gone. Or there is a response (I like your offer), a couple of sims go by (and another import or two) and then the offer disappears.

[Corsairs]

Originally Posted by Raidergoo

Live Winter Meetings are a blast, with GM's in 3 countries and 2 continents showing up to chat via an AIM chat room. There's a lot of trash talk, and announcements that so and so is being shopped, or that a team needs pitching, stuff like that. In the background, GM's submit bids for a player to the commish via private message , and the commish will enter them manually for the GM. At one time last year, I had the main chat going, with 7 separate PM conversations at the same time.

eMLB uses a trade review board, which can take a week or more to approve a trade. During the Winter Meetings, the review is done live, so teams can wheel and deal rapidly.

1 day gets simmed every 30 minutes, and in game news articles that come up get posted, plus PM's if a player likes or hates your offer.

It does not amount to much, but it sure is entertaining!

I just finished conducting our first live Winter Meetings in the style Raidergoo suggested, and it is indeed a blast. It's also an immense amount of work, but if you can handle the coordination then this is an experience I wholeheartedly recommend. Your owners are going to come together and have a ball wheeling, dealing and generally chatting each other up. Talk about a great league spirit-building exercise!

Now I do want to point one thing out. I actually sent out league file updates during the Meetings so that owners could make contract offers to FAs. Then I imported them back in every half-hour, advanced a day and repeated the process. If you choose to do it this way, don't be a doofus (like me) and make the mistake of processing trades before importing your owners' updates! Yes, I realize this will be obvious to most everyone, but in my rush I made this error during the first half of the Meetings and had to spend a couple hours post-Meetings editing players to be on the proper rosters and have the proper contracts. Doh!

Even with that bout of foolishness on my part, this experience comes highly recommended for intrepid commissioners who are looking for a way to spice up the off-season. This was such a hit in PEBA that the owners are now calling for a similar event to be held at the trade deadline. Thanks a million for the great suggestion, Raidergoo!