Suggestions: Player and Staff Contracts

[chimanbj]

Suggestion
Add functionality to the arbitration function so that the GM has the ability to make an offer to the player, thus giving the arbitrator something to decide upon.

Reason
Currently, you are at the mercy of the arbitrator, and have no way of knowing how much you're going to get hit with.
Plus, it's interesting to see what a young stud thinks he's worth, and then lowball him, and see the abritrator pick your number, which then would affect the players morale.

Priority
The function needs to be upgraded, so I'd say it's pretty high. But the fun part about affecting the morale is low.

[cbbl]

Suggestions

Have notice provided when personnel contracts are about to expire.

Rationale

Makes management of organization easier.

Priority

Medium / low

[cbbl]

Suggestion

Receive e-mail when personnel retire (including advance notice of impending retirements, when known), similar to notices received when players retire

Rationale

Prevents GMs from being caught off-guard when personnel retire (right now its easy to miss that your head scout left, for example). Makes management of organization easier.

Priority

Medium to high

[cbbl]

Suggestion

To quote 1998 Yankees in a General Discussions thread:
"There should at least be an indication that somebody would be interested in a position before you have to fire somebody just to find this out."

Rationale

Prevents GMs from making "boners" by having to attempt to rehire staff (or risk not being able to) when trying to upgrade.

Priority

Medium

[enuttage]

Suggestion

Show Contract Status for Free Agents

Reason

Pretty self-explanatory. A GM would want to know if a player will be an auto re-sign, arb eligible, etc.

Priority

Medium

[enuttage]

Suggestion

Allow a GM to counter offer a better/differently structured contract to a Free Agent favoring an offer from another team.

Reason

Right now there is no way to counter a better offer from another team.

Priority

Incredibly high. Especially for online leagues.

edit: I should clarify this, since I got a PM from Steve and some questions from the guys in my league, too. What I mean is that we should ONLY be able to counteroffer a new contract amount IF a player is 'publicly' (via the information in his contract demands) acknowledging that he likes the offer of another team best. As it stands now, you can only helplessly watch as the player favors another offer. You can't 'call' the player's 'agent' to sweeten the pot. IRL, this would not be the case, and this is especially frustrating in online league communities.

[Russ]

Suggestion

Allow non-roster invitees to ST.


Reason

Realism, immersion


Priority

Medium to medium-high

[injury log]

Suggestion

Base arbitration awards and FA compensation bands on player stats, and not on player ratings.

Reason

This would bring realism, and make for more interesting contract decisions. Now through arbitration players are never overpaid, because they are paid based on ratings (or at least that's my impression), so deciding whether to hold on to an arb-eligible player is rarely an interesting decision. It is also difficult to truly play with ratings invisible, because so many game functions are based on ratings; by looking at arbitration salaries, it is possible to guess how well a player is rated, which shouldn't be possible.

FA compensation bands don't make much sense at the moment; 20-win pitchers can be no-compensation free agents, which is not realistic.

Priority

Medium.

[ms2002]

Suggestion
Make the free agent process more like OOTP6. It should be a game in itself and involve much more information given to the player than in OOTP 2007. There should be lists of who's bidding for who. There should be more negotiation.

Reason
Too many times in OOTP2006 have I seen news headlines for players having secret meetings with teams or have negotiations. 9 times out of 10, these players NEVER sign with the team in the headline. I think there has to be a lot more to the negotiations. More bidding and competition.

Priority
Medium to high.

[sparky]

Suggestion

Add the ability to offer more incentives/features to players contracts, such as bonus for making all-star game, allow team/mutual/player options after certain years in long contracts instead of just at the end of the contract (ex. A-Rod), signing bonus, ect...


Reason

Adds to the realism to player contracts


Priority

Low

[eriqjaffe]

Suggestion

Buyout amounts for contractual option years

Reason

Realism - IRL, options almost always contain a buyout amount (Darin Erstad, for example has a $3,500,000 club option for 2009, but there's a $250,000 buyout if the White Sox decline the option), the team's still on the hook for something.

Priority

Medium

[Raidergoo]

Processed.

[Raidergoo]

Suggestion
Contracts should have to be renegotiated in favor of the player.

Reason
Many players get paid too little for their output. I'd like to see some of them sulk, and have morale issues, until a GM renegotiates their deal.

Priority
HIGH

[christian troy]

Suggestion
I remeber in a previous version of the game you actually negotiated a contract for yourself, rather than just applying to a job and staying there until you quit or get fired. I would like to see that return to the series.

Reason
It doesnt make sense that every other player/coach/scout/doctor etc. in the game has a negotiated contract, but we, the general managers, do not. I used to really enjoy negotiating my own contract, and it was fun to leave my dynasty for better pay in a bigger market. As it is now, i have no reason to ever leave unles they can me.

Priority
High. Its been in the game before so it cant be too hard to put it back in. I really feel that this is a glaring omission.

[christian troy]

Suggestion
I also remember in previous versions that personnel contracts were negotiated. I would like to see that return to the game. I really dislike the current method of just signing them for a going rate and them accepting immediately.

Reason
Without any type of negotiation it is FAR too easy to stack your rosters full of highly qualified personnel. As soon as a good one comes available you snatch them up before the computer. It would be far better if there was a negotiation process, and the bidding could escalate like it does in real life. That way it would be too expensive to stack your rosters full of the best personnel and the computer would have a fighting chance.

Priority
HIGH.

[tysok]

Originally Posted by christian troy

Suggestion
I remeber in a previous version of the game you actually negotiated a contract for yourself, rather than just applying to a job and staying there until you quit or get fired. I would like to see that return to the series.

It also gives the human controlled team around a 600 thousand dollar advantage. I used default financial info for personnel and other AI teams are paying 600k+ to a general manager that I don't have to pay for my team.

[CobaltJays]

Suggestion

Ability to define a player's role when offering a player a contract, similar to how it worked in EHM.

Reason

It would give the player an idea what kind of role to expect when he signs with a club. If I sign a player to be a bench player, the player should know that and knowingly agree to it. I don't want his morale dropping a couple weeks into the season because he's not in the starting lineup.

The player should also weigh playing time as a factor when deciding on who to sign with. A player may be inclined to take less money from one team if he's guaranteed a starting job.

This can also apply to offering extensions to pending free agents. For example, if you won't guarantee a player a job in the starting lineup when offering the extension, he may be more inclined to test the market.

The player's morale could drop more quickly if the general manager doesn't keep his word. If I signed a player to be a starter but I only use him off the bench, the player would feel betrayed and ask for a trade sooner.

Priority

High

[CobaltJays]

Suggestion

Make fringe players more inclined to accept minor league contracts rather than sit for long periods of time in the free agent pool waiting for a major league contract.

Reason

Too many players seem to over-estimate their abilities and hold out for major league contracts that never come. In real life, marginal major league players sign minor league contracts all the time.

Priority

High

[CobaltJays]

Suggestion

Include split contracts. These specify what a player will make in the majors and what he'll get in the minors.

These contracts are usually for players with little or no major league service time (not yet arbitration eligible), or veteran players signed to a minor league contract.

Reason

As of right now in the game, if a player on a minor league contract gets called-up to the major leagues at any point during the season, he'll have a major league contract at the league minimum for the rest of the year. In reality, most young players have split contracts which dictate what they will make when they're in the majors and what they'll get in the minors.

The easiest way to implement this in the game would be to have all contracts for the league minimum as split contracts, with the player making nothing when in the minors.

Additionally, with the way the game is set up currently, having a bunch of players in the minors making the league minimum can add up, especially if a team is in a financial bind.

Priority

High

[Kaitiaki]

Suggestion

When a player sends a message replying to a contract offer, include the full terms of the offer he's responding to in the message. This could be built into the message text in a relatively easy and generic way, such as "I received your contract offer of..." followed by his reaction to the offer.

Reason

Users are usually negotiating with many players at once, and it can become difficult to remember all the details. The Pending Offers screen does contain this information, but it can be several clicks away. Also, including the terms of a deal in the player's message would allow the user to keep those messages if they wished, providing a record of the various offers that have been made (currently, you can only ever see the last offer you made to a player; it is often helpful to look back and see how the player's responses have changed over a progression of offers).

Priority

Low.

- Kai