New FA Rule

[Aston]

Everyone,

There is a new addition to the Free Agency rules, effective this season. This rule will address the bug described by Ben E Lou at the CCFL, and should only affect a small percentage of contract offers. It's currently in place at the CCFL, GML, and IHOF.

In BOTH Early and Late Free Agency, if the total value of an Unrestricted Free Agent contract is 10% of the salary cap or more, at least 10% of the value of the contract must be bonus money.

So in our current season, this applies to contracts worth $24.50M or more. Contracts worth less may have any bonus you like. Contracts worth more must have at least 10% bonus.

For a breakdown of the bug, see this Ben E Lou post at the FOFL. No rule is perfect probably, but this one is simple, unintrusive, and effective.

[Aston]

To clarify, this is the only rule in place for Free Agency.

[IrishGuy65]

To clarify, this is the only rule in place for Free Agency.

I hate rules

[Aston]

Me too, and I'm sorry about this, but the bug is clear. Fortunately, the fix seems to be easy as well: winning deals in bold.

3yrs, $75.2M (Bonus: $30K. Salary: $1.1M, $37.0M, $37.0M.)
3yrs, $12.48M (Bonus: $3.73M Salary: $2.48M, $3.060M, $3.21M)

3yrs, $75.4M (Bonus: $690K. Salary: $1.3M, $36.7M, $36.7M.)
2yrs, $9.77M (Bonus: $3.22M Salary: $2.97M, $3.58m)

2yrs, $6.1M (Bonus: $1.8M. Salary: $2.3M, $2.3M)
3yrs, $33.3M (Bonus: 30K, Salary: $2.3M, $15.5M, $15.5M)

These are from the CCFL, where the first two winning deals would have been blocked. The third offer goes up to their 10% boundary, where the in-game logic takes care of it.

There's plenty of room for FA strategy without making use of the bug. And if/when Jim patches it up, we can drop the rule again