Free Agent offers

[tward13]

I'm new to the game. Can free agent offers be retracted?

I took over the Mets in an existing league and there are offers out to free agents that I would like to take back.

Wouldn't this be necessary anyway in cases where a trade or other FA signing makes the proposed deal unnecessary for the team?

Thanks

Tom

[DodgersGM]

You can not retract FA offers. Here is the best explanation as to why. Hope it helps.


Originally posted by James Grove
The real reason we can't allow the leading bidder to retract his bid has to do with Auction Strategy.

Say the current bid on player Bob Jones is 10 points for 4 years, with Anaheim leading the bidding. Only Anaheim knows that his max bid is 20 points for 4 years (because he really fills a gap in Anaheim's roster).

Bob Jones is looking for 13 for 4, and will sign at that price.

Along comes Baltimore, and they want Bob. They are only willing to pay 12 points for 4 years, however. So he places a bid for 12 for 4, and the new lead bid price is Anaheim bidding 13 for 4. This meets Bob Jones's asking price, so at the end of the round he signs with Anaheim for 13 for 4. Ultimately, So Baltimore does not win the player.

Of course, Anaheim thinks they got a good deal, because they were willing to go to 20 points for 4 years.


Now then, under the different scenario:
if Baltimore could retract their bid, they would immediately enter a bid of 100 points for 4 years. The bidding would jump to Baltimore leading at 21 points for 4 years.

Baltimore would then decide that this was more than they wanted to pay, and they would retract their bid. The bid would return to Anaheim at 10 points for 4 years, where it was originally.

Now Baltimore wants to make sure Anaheim pays as much as possible. So he places a new bid: 19 points for 4 years.

Now the price goes up to Anaheim leading at 20 points for 4 years.


The end result: if players can retract their bids, they can find out what other teams are bidding, and they can manipulate the auction so that the winning bidder has to pay through the nose.


That is why we don't allow bid retraction.

Any questions?

Thanks for playing,
-James

[tward13]

OK, that exlains that. Makes sense in a cutthroat world, haha.

My only problem is that I'm saddled with a couple of offers I wouldn't have chosen to make. Oh well.

Thanks for the explanation.

Tom

[Clay Dreslough]

Tom,

You make a good point. It's tempting to allow bid retraction in special cases like yours, but I think it wouldn't be worth the negative impact it would have on other teams.

Commissioners may choose to make special rules for new owners - I'm interested to see how this issue evolves.

Clay

[tward13]

Clay,

I appreciate the responses. Looks like BB Mogul will be fun with this kind of support.

I have no problem wih the rules. I look at it as if I just purchased a baseball team and have to live with all the decisions of the previous owner.

Thanks

Tom

[drotruck]

Could you make it so that when a team retracted a bid, The team that retracted the bid no longer is able to place another bid. Almost like a player refusing to sign with a team do to bad blood?

[toner37]

Originally posted by drotruck
Could you make it so that when a team retracted a bid, The team that retracted the bid no longer is able to place another bid. Almost like a player refusing to sign with a team do to bad blood?

Great idea.

[James Grove]

Unfortunately, that doesn't quite solve the problem...

While it prevents the scenario I described from happening, let's use the same scenario I described before, and see what would happen instead:

Baltimore bids 12 points for 4 years, and the bidding jumps to Anaheim leading with 13 points for 4 years.

Baltimore knows that he can't win the player for a price that he wants to pay any more. But he CAN run the bid up for Anaheim.

So he bids 14 points for 4 years. The bid is now Anaheim leading with 15 for 4.

Baltimore bids 16 for 4. Anaheim leads with 17 for 4.

Baltimore bids 18 for 4. Anaheim leads with 19 for 4.

Baltimore bids 20 for 4. Anaheim had already bid a max of 20 for 4, so it maintains the high bid at 20 for 4.


Baltimore now stops bidding, because he knows that this is Anaheim's top bid. Anaheim wins the bidding, but they have had to pay full price.


There is a small variation on this -- say that Anaheim's max bid was 19 for 4. Then Baltimore would have been the top bidder at 20 for 4. But if Baltimore could retract their bid, then they would retract that final bid, returning the price to Anaheim leading at 19 for 4.

Because Baltimore knew that he wasn't going to win, and because he knew that he could slowly jack the bidding up without getting stuck with the player, then he could raise the bidding with impunity.

So once again, we are left with a situation where we can't allow users to retract their bids.

-James

[James Grove]

Here's a follow up -- the only real solution, I think.

If you make a mistake and bid too much on a player, first off all make sure you drop your Max Bid to the current bid price. This will ensure that nobody can bid you any higher.

Then hope that somebody else will place a bid on the player, which will drop you from the high bid.

Then try changing your bid to a 1-year contract. The player may want more or less money, but it will usually be less overall than the player would want for a longer contract.

If nobody bids, and if you get stuck with the player, offer him in a trade to the next higher bidder. You may have to throw in a few points, but it will be a pretty cheap way out of the contract.

And if all else fails, release the player. If you changed his contract to 1 year like I suggested, then you will only have to pay 50% of that one-year contract to be rid of him.

All of these options are easy to do, shouldn't cost any owner too much money, and don't require any changes to the game or to the bidding strategies.

Good luck!

-James Grove

[toner37]

Ok...

In the second situation isn't there a way to just drop the price back down to what it was originally?

Anahiem sets their max bid at 19pt's for a player.
Baltimore does what you said; they bid 20pt's and then retract it.

When they retract it, can't you just get rid of all of their bids (instead of just the last one) and drop the price back down the 1pt? (Or if say New York had bid 10pt's also, make Anahiems new bid 11pt's)

I suppose this doesn't exactly get rid of the other scenario though. But from the looks of it, you don't even really need to be able to retract a bid to do that.

[Eric Freda]

I made a trade proposal to a computer team where I meant to ASK for 50 points and his subpar player in return for my allstar player. I put the 50 in the wrong place and instead of getting 50 points, I LOST 50 points AND my ALLSTAR.

There should most certainly be a way to double check a trade after it's been sent to a computer team.

Don't you think?

[takaplan]

Eric,
I'm not sure I understand. We already have a confirmation screen that displays the screen, so to make a mistake, you would have to not only make a mistake offering the trade, but misread the confirmation screen.

I think it would be a burden for most users to have a second confirmation screen, don't you think?

Tom

[Eric Freda]

People who play the home PC game (Mogul 20003) don't worry so much about offering trades to computer run teams as you get a "OK or "Just Kidding" button after the computer run team agrees to your offers.

I wonder if computer run teams could at least say, "Are you sure you want to be ripped off like this?"

They certainly don't have a problem saying, "You must be kidding!!" ;-)

[toner37]

I think it's better the way it is. In real life if you offer trades to teams, they accept them, and then you back out of them repeatedly, they are going to stop dealing with you all together. That's not negotiating, that's trial and error to see what the best deal you can get is.

That is fine for the CD game where it only affects you. But online it's going to affect everyone else in your league. The way it is now is the fairest way, I believe.

[James Grove]

FYI, I believe that the computer GMs actually do hold it against you if you say Just Kidding.

If you repeatedly back out of trades, then they get harder to negotiate with in the future. But if you make lots of successful trades, they get easier to deal with.

Your reputation gets around...

-James