FA Offer Problems

[Andrew]

Markus explanation for this issue is that the game won't let you spend money that might get dished out in arbitration for next season. So using Los Alamos as an example he has:

Budget: 78,943944
Payroll: 81,484,040
Staff: 3,059,000

That adds up to...
Proj Budget Room: -5,599,096

He also has 13,594,572 in cash which means his total money available is: 7,995,476 (cash + proj budget room)

Basically the game thinks the players who are going to be eligible for arbitration and automatically renewed contracts are going to get more money than that 7,995,476 that he has available.

So our options are this:

1) These teams are out of luck and can't sign any players until they have the room in their budget to do so.

2) I can temporarily increase the teams that are having the problem's cash by $50,000,000 or so and trust the owners to plan ahead so they don't rack up a lot of debt.

Me offering contracts for these teams is not an option. It would be way too much work during free agency.

[Jim]

Why not just increase the teams by the amount of their total money available, rounded up? So for Los Alamos it would be $8,000,000.

[Lintyfresh85]

So that's the problem huh? It's kind of distracting to see the game tell me I still have 10 million in money free but my owner doesn't approve any deals for me. But I guess it makes sense that, that extra 10 million would put me over budget.

[mahoney2]

The real problem is what happens during the season with that. For instance, I had a projected $4mm cushion on budget according to the projected budget room, had a better season that was expected (actually going .500) and I ended up digging into the cash reserves for $3.5mm at the end of the year.

We're going to have teams going bankrupt under option 2 if things don't go as planned during the season.

[Whale]

I think this is something teams need to plan for. For instance, I couldn't sign anything in the season because of Elliott and Moher going to arbitration. Knowing this, I traded away Elliott during the season so it wouldn't become an issue in the offseason, freed up all that cash. Now it won't always be that simple, but it should keep owners out of serious financial trouble. Andrew also has offered to do manual offers to players on your team during the season in case your owner is not approving deals.

So, what does this do for the offseason? I actually agree with Mahoney for once, that upping a teams cash to a higher number so they can sign players will cause more issues than not.

This also ties into the issue of market sizes/team budgets. I know my team has a budget in the $40m range. If the range was increased so I could sign some big players, the team would suffer a few years down the road big time, aka the Marlins. A team like Los Alamos that already has a $80m budget shouldn't get even more of an advantage by being able to sign more players and inflate it's budget.

I know the arguments will be that a team has a plan to dump other salary to bring on the guy they are trying to sign, which is quite valid. However I think the risk is greater than the reward. Basically, give Hartford $40m more so we can win a championship. Thanks.

[Sully]

I agree with the Whale.

[Ryan]

I also think option 2 would create some serious issues in the future.

[Lintyfresh85]

Just wanted to say I agree with everyone else. Option 2 would be a bad thing. Option 1 is the way to go.

[Andrew]

The only negative I see with option 1 is it doesn't allow teams to make perfectly reasonable decisions by planning ahead. For example they might want to sign a Free Agent and if they get there guy might decide to trade a high salary guy, not offer arbitration to a guy, not pick up an option, etc. However, with option 1 they won't be able to do that since they would need to get rid of a guy first.

[rubisco43]

oops, i meant to hit option 1... the lone vote (so far) for option 2 should be for option 1. sorry.

[Clay]

I went with option 1 as well. If we're going to have financials... we have to work within the parameters of them. We're the GMs, not the Owners, right?

[dkgojackets]

Yeah. Its not unreasonable to have owners lessening the funds available. I'd just leave everything as it is.

[Riverman]

If Markus' explanation is correct nobody should have this problem now since the arbitration contracts have already been awarded. Is anyone experiencing that problem now - money available but the owner won't approve a deal?

[Andrew]

If Markus' explanation is correct nobody should have this problem now since the arbitration contracts have already been awarded. Is anyone experiencing that problem now - money available but the owner won't approve a deal?

According to him, it's now looking ahead to the 1983 off-season so teams might still have the problem.

[Riverman]

According to him, it's now looking ahead to the 1983 off-season so teams might still have the problem.

If that is correct it should only apply when offering a deal for more than one year then. Does anyone have this problem even when offering just a one year deal?

Forgive me for doubting the explanation offered by The Man.