Simpler 40-Man Roster

[gosensgo101]

This has been one of the oft requested features for 2k9. This could be complicated to impliment. I have thought up a way to serve the same purpose but without having the complications of a 40-Man Roster.

Waiver Wire
This is almost always in the same (digital) breath as "40-Man Roster". It could however be implemented on its own though. When a player who has 3 seasons in the Majors (Not counting September maybe?) or reached a certain age (maybe 29?) they would have to pass through waivers.

Rule V Draft
Anyone who has either 4 (I think) pro years (for college players) or 6 (I think) pro years (for High School players) would be eligible for the Rule V Draft. (Draft year doesn't count I believe) It could be run like an expansion draft with each team being allowed to protect a certain number of players, the rest would be available to the other teams for a certain fee. Players would be forced to stay in the Majors or DL for the whole season or be 1) exposed to waivers and then 2) offered back to the original team. (Maybe a player could only be pretected 3 times to simulate options?)

5 and 10 Rule

the 5/10 Rule whereby players who have been with a club for 5 consecutive years and have been a major league player for 10 years cannot be traded without their consent

I believe that players who fit the above criteria can also demand a release if sent to the minors.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

These would all help stop stockpiling of talent and make the game for deep and competitive without have to go through the hassle of coding a 40-Man Roster feature and with less confusion for more casual gamers.

[HoustonGM]

It doesn't seem that much simpler than the real 40-man roster rules. Personally, I'd like to see the 40-man rules (almost) completely implemented, or things kept the way they are now.

[gosensgo101]

Options and Minore League Free Agency are about the only thing that are omited. And those (mostly) are probobly the most confusing ones to 1) code and 2) understand as a casual user.

[RickD]

It doesn't seem that much simpler than the real 40-man roster rules. Personally, I'd like to see the 40-man rules (almost) completely implemented, or things kept the way they are now.

Ditto!

[HoustonGM]

Options and Minore League Free Agency are about the only thing that are omited. And those (mostly) are probobly the most confusing ones to 1) code and 2) understand as a casual user.
While I'd prefer having options, but could do without, I think minor league free agency is a must if 40 man rosters are added.

I actually think that minor league free agency, and to a lesser extent options, are easier to understand (and probably code) than the Rule 5 Draft and waivers...

[Red Sox Fan 734]

I would rather see normal waivers implemented then rule 5 and all that stuff

[HoustonGM]

I think it pretty much all goes together.

[ohms_law]

I think it pretty much all goes together.

Me too.

As always, my main concern with this is that we're treating the symptoms rather than the disease, so to speak. The real problem here is that the AI seemingly has little or no concept of it's team as a whole. It's very common to see the AI pursue and eventually sign multiple free agent players at one position. The large market teams will often end up with several good veteran players playing in the minor leagues, and the primary reason is that the AI sees those players as a good value. The AI is very good at valuing players individually, and so when it sees players who are 80's overall asking for $1-$2 million on the FA market, it'll pursue those players whether or not the team actually needs players at that position.

And then of course, there's the issue where the small market teams seem unwilling to keep good players at all. The small market teams are simply too sensitive to their financial condition, which ends up emphasizing their poor financial position even more. As a human user, it's fairly easy for me to take a Tampa Bay, Milwaukee, Pittsburgh, etc... and turn them into a competitive team long term. The trick to it is that I'll keep or occasionally pursue the superstar level players, and almost always I'll keep the more average players beyond arbitration. Granted, I'll often trade away players after arbitration, but I'm at least able to gain some value from them after they go through arbitration. The key to that is being willing to blow the budget for a couple of seasons, though. By doing that, I can gain attendance and ultimately build fan loyalty, which is key. The AI small market teams, on the other hand, almost always end up with fan loyalty below 75 and often as low as being in the 60's. Once that happens, the team is crippled for years and years.

Point being, there are some more fundamental issues which I think should be addressed prior to adding any of this stuff.

[JayC]

Yeah, Ohms has a good point. Generally I'm in favor of putting those roster management elements in the game, in part because I'd like the added challenge to managing a team. But as the AI works now, what I could see happening is stuff like this: a team's AI sees a good veteran free agent available cheap, and signs him although he isn't needed. He doesn't fit on the 25 man roster, so he goes to waivers. Another big market team picks him up, but can't use him... so he gets waived again. And on and on.

So clearly some kind of improvement to the AI's ability to manage a roster to begin with has to happen before that management itself is made even more complicated.

[ohms_law]

a team's AI sees a good veteran free agent available cheap, and signs him although he isn't needed. He doesn't fit on the 25 man roster, so he goes to waivers. Another big market team picks him up, but can't use him... so he gets waived again. And on and on.
Exactly!

Thank you.
:)

[Gaedel]

Maybe it might be simpler to have the 40 man roster, then every minor leaguer who is available for drafting goes on a list like the free agent list for a fixed period of time. After the end of the period, unclaimed players revert to their orginal teams. If a tream drafts a player from this list, the player must go on the 40 man roster or he goes back on the list.

[ohms_law]

As we were talking about above, as long as it doesn't create another form of the sign and release bug, I'd be fine with adding 40-man rosters. If they are going to be added, I don't think that it should be any sort of "simplified" system. May as well add the whole system if it's going to be added. I really just don't think that this is the right time to add anything like this yet, though.

[nutt]

Waiver Wire
This is almost always in the same (digital) breath as "40-Man Roster". It could however be implemented on its own though. When a player who has 3 seasons in the Majors (Not counting September maybe?) or reached a certain age (maybe 29?) they would have to pass through waivers.
It's 3 years of MLB Service or if they are out of minor league options....And I forgot how many times one player can be optioned to the minors before clearing waivers.


Rule V Draft
Anyone who has either 4 (I think) pro years (for college players) or 6 (I think) pro years (for High School players) would be eligible for the Rule V Draft. (Draft year doesn't count I believe) It could be run like an expansion draft with each team being allowed to protect a certain number of players, the rest would be available to the other teams for a certain fee. Players would be forced to stay in the Majors or DL for the whole season or be 1) exposed to waivers and then 2) offered back to the original team. (Maybe a player could only be pretected 3 times to simulate options?)

The Rule V Draft deals with the 40-man roster. Any player signed at 18 or younger is exempt from the draf t for five years, whereas at 19 or older, it's four. If any player who is eligible for Rule V is not on the 40, he is available.

[Alloutwar]

Hey - quick question - since there is no 40-man roster rules in place now, AND there is not 'rest period' necessary when pitchers throw in the minor leagues, is the following situation conceivable?

1) I bring up a new hot-shot pitcher from AAA to make a start
2) I hire some flunky, bad free agent SP on the cheap to fill up a roster spot
3) I sim slowly enough (or play games in PBP) to actually drop the pitcher from my roster, back to AAA after every start, replacing him with the cheap FA SP
4) I bring him up again on the 5th day to make his start, rinse and repeat

Wouldn't this effectively give him only about 35 days of service time each season, meaning he potentially is under my contractual control for his entire major league career?

If for some reason there is an off-day and he actually pitches in AAA, I can still bring him in to pitch in the majors, even the same day, since rest is not required for pitching in minor league games...right?

I was trying to find ways to keep my star pitcher away from arbitration, and this intersection of bugs and missing features may have created the proverbial 'perfect storm'...

[ohms_law]

Well heck, if you're going to intentionally game the system that way then you may as well just go into the player editor and set player's service time to 0...

[Alloutwar]

Well heck, I don't want to cheat... :)

Not something that I would/will do, but it just occured to me while bumping the guy down to AAA while he was injured for a week or two. He made a start, and I called him back up the next day to make a ML start.

I'm not interested in doing this, as much as I am interested in seeing one of the features added so this isn't possible in the future. I guess, more ammo for 40-man roster rules, with AAA options and all that.

[LLP]

Me too.

As always, my main concern with this is that we're treating the symptoms rather than the disease, so to speak. The real problem here is that the AI seemingly has little or no concept of it's team as a whole. It's very common to see the AI pursue and eventually sign multiple free agent players at one position. The large market teams will often end up with several good veteran players playing in the minor leagues, and the primary reason is that the AI sees those players as a good value. The AI is very good at valuing players individually, and so when it sees players who are 80's overall asking for $1-$2 million on the FA market, it'll pursue those players whether or not the team actually needs players at that position.

And then of course, there's the issue where the small market teams seem unwilling to keep good players at all. The small market teams are simply too sensitive to their financial condition, which ends up emphasizing their poor financial position even more. As a human user, it's fairly easy for me to take a Tampa Bay, Milwaukee, Pittsburgh, etc... and turn them into a competitive team long term. The trick to it is that I'll keep or occasionally pursue the superstar level players, and almost always I'll keep the more average players beyond arbitration. Granted, I'll often trade away players after arbitration, but I'm at least able to gain some value from them after they go through arbitration. The key to that is being willing to blow the budget for a couple of seasons, though. By doing that, I can gain attendance and ultimately build fan loyalty, which is key. The AI small market teams, on the other hand, almost always end up with fan loyalty below 75 and often as low as being in the 60's. Once that happens, the team is crippled for years and years.

Point being, there are some more fundamental issues which I think should be addressed prior to adding any of this stuff.

I don't think a Waiver Wire is a good idea. The poor teams probably still wouldn't sign players whom they need to sign. The Rule V draft makes alot more sense, as a team like the Yankees, even if it doesn't hoard Major League-caliber players in the minors, is going to hold their top prospects. The Rule V players would likely be pre-arbitration players (I'm sure it is possible to exempt players who are post-arbitration) who would be cheap enough that they'd stay on their new team at least until arbitration (and arbitration salaries need to be reduced so that teams can afford to keep their players longer). However, the most important thing to do is to fix the AI problems that cause teams to make stupid decisions in the first place. It would also be nice to add an AI competence rating which is random and hidden and changes from year-to-year (though visible and editable in Commish mode). If the Yankees have low competence like in the 80s or nowadays, they'll waste money (Carl Pavano is a great example, as is Kaz Igawa), but if they have high competence, they'll spend their money wisely and dominate like they did in the 90s. This would also affect the competitiveness of small market teams, as competent teams like the Athletics or the Twins would outperform incompetent teams like the Royals or the Pirates. A big reason why real life MLB is so competitive right now (2000 and 2007 are the 2 most competitive years in history) is because of the incompetence of Steinbrenner in recent years and the exceptional management of teams like Oakland, Minnesota, and Detroit, though Boston threatens to break that competitive balance if their team can ever perform up to its potential instead of just good enough to win. One of Mogul's main AI flaws is that every AI team is run exactly the same, except for market size.

[ohms_law]

Yea, I've been harping on that for a while now myself.

[Keith L]

One of Mogul's main AI flaws is that every AI team is run exactly the same, except for market size.

Seconded (or perhaps thirded based on Ohm's response).

I'm a bit hesitant to do this, but I am going to attach a file for anyone interested in viewing/commenting.

To be honest, because of my technical background I've been toying around with the idea of doing my own baseball SIM. Even if it didn't turn into a commercial success, it would be a fulfilling endeavor for me personally as I quite enjoy programming as a hobby anyway. In fact the goal for me of writing such a program would be to satisfy my own desires first and then worry about commercial viability later. :)

In any event, I've been working on a design document for some time -- it's not complete yet, but it captures a lot of the ideas I have for rules/algorithms in a structured format so that I can remember them for later when/if I begin programming the actual application. The attached file is an excerpt from that document -- it's the section dealing with financials. In it, I've expressed an idea of how I would achieve having AI GMs with differing viewpoints in terms of evaluating player overall worth and salary they'd be willing to offer. But this section also covers thought on implementing things like league-wide revenue sharing, roster rules, and free-agency.

My idea was not to create a game that strictly follows MLB rules. But as you would see, some of the design decisions I've chosen do at least loosely resemble real-life counterparts.

I'll state upfront that I'd be fine with Clay, Ian and/or Ohm's borrowing and using any ideas from this in BBM as I'd be happy to see my input used to better the product. But, I will also state that although I am releasing this snippet for public viewing, I am by no means relinquishing my own rights to use the same information contained within it for my own application at some time in the future.

Anyway, that disclaimer out of the way, I would be happy to hear any comments and/or criticisms related to the ideas contained within the section as they would relate to BBM or just in general.

The file is in Excel format so that I can easily embed calculations and formulae as necessary.

[Alloutwar]

Very nifty man, good stuff. I've been thinking along the same lines - maybe create a new platform - maybe something a little less constricted than the current BM code base.

Ideally, the 'willingness to spend' on a free agent wouldn't depend so much directly on their position, rather than what is needed by the team. For instance - you sort of put low caps on catchers and 3rd basemen (6%, 5%), but catchers handle your whole pitching staff...guys like Varitek and Posada could easily be offered more than that. A-rod is a 3rd basemen, but clearly they are willing to pay a LOT for him.

Conversely, NO pitcher - even an ace - is going to pull in $30mil, because they don't play every day. Aces make $10mil-$15mil, I think...right? So maybe the valuation of players should be a bit more trended towards their possible impact on a team - then by their relative impact on that PARTICULAR team.

Say, if a team already has an 85-rated player at SS, they are not at all likely to sign a FA 90-rated SS. But if their SS is rated 72, then their likelihood of signing/pursuing increases. That's what BM doesn't handle now - instead team sign and sign based on overall player value/price, disregarding their particular needs and weaknesses.

[HoustonGM]

Conversely, NO pitcher - even an ace - is going to pull in $30mil, because they don't play every day. Aces make $10mil-$15mil, I think...right?
Barry Zito makes $18 million a year. And he's not an ace.

Since the prices of players have really skyrocketed, there hasn't been many signings of "aces" to really get a good feel for it. Johan Santana's going to be the first real test, and he's going to get over $20 million per year. Roy Oswalt and Carlos Zambrano are two "aces" who have recently signed extensions. Oswalt's making roughly $14 mil a year, but he'd definitely get more if he was on the open market. Zambrano's at about $18 million a year.

[Alloutwar]

Hmm...and Pedro was making about $17mil/year in his last option year with the Sox (2004)...but his price went down with the Mets, to about $13mil or so a year. I guess Clemens still makes huge money, when the Yanks pay his $4.5mil a month...(god, what is that? $800k a start?? He makes 11 times what I do in a year, every time he takes the mound?? wow.)

So maybe pitching is getting up there. But huge contracts for position players are generally more numerous, I would say.

[Keith L]

Ideally, the 'willingness to spend' on a free agent wouldn't depend so much directly on their position, rather than what is needed by the team. For instance - you sort of put low caps on catchers and 3rd basemen (6%, 5%), but catchers handle your whole pitching staff...guys like Varitek and Posada could easily be offered more than that. A-rod is a 3rd basemen, but clearly they are willing to pay a LOT for him.



Thanks for the comment Allout. Remember what the document contains is a sample profile for an AI GM preferences. Each AI GM would have a different profile. So just because the one listed rates catchers and 3B low, doesn't mean every team will. The idea with AI is to come up with simple and well defined rules. Every AI GM will try to get what they feel is the "best" player at any given position. But the valuation matrix simply guides them on how high to bid for FAs; or when choosing between two otherwise equal players, which is a "higher proirity" for this given team.

It also allows them to guage relative worth very similar to the scenario you outlined. For instance let's pretend a team has an "average" SS and is spending 3% of payroll budget on that player and has a chance to acquire a star SS through free agency by spending 7% of payroll. Also for this example let's assume their only backup SS is earning league minimum (i.e., less than 1% payroll and also releasable without penalty). So according to this team's profile, their current SS would become a backup earning less than the 4% they are willing to pay for that role (or possibly they convert the SS to 2B depending on what other players are available) and the FA earning 7% of payroll is still under their budget, so it's an easy choice, they try to sign the player. On the other hand if the current SS is making 5% or their current backup is earning higher than league minimum or the FA wants more money, the AI isn't going to immediately make that offer. It may explore alternatives like trading the current or backup SS or buying out one of the contracts and THEN pursuing the FA. But, if it cannot get the numbers to look better, it's not going to pursue the acquisition.

What I wanted was a way to ensure small market teams are not "afraid" to spend big bucks to get good talent -- when it fits their profile, while also keeping them safe from getting into a situation where the team way overspends its budget.

On a related note, you may notice the formula for revenue sharing essentially ensures that the miminum any team will receive is 50x the league minimum salary. That value was chosen specifically since it allows 25 players on the regular roster and 25 development players earning league minimum to essentially be paid for entirely out of revenue sharing. So when a small market team HAS to go into rebuilding mode and focus on prospects, they can do it without too much financial stress.

Anyway, it's just a model I created that I think will provide good financial stability as well as make for interesting varied AI GM decisions. Another factor that's not readily apparent when reading the descriptions (I wrote the doc for myself, not really expecting to publish it) is that superstar, star, average, backup are all relative. Ie., in BBM terms if the highest rated 1B in the league was rated an "88" he would be a superstar by definition of being the best at the position available. However, if 12 guys rated 89-96 were available in CF for instance, an 88 CF would be simply "average" and thus the AI GM logic would bid down appropriately for such a player.

I find it all very fasinating and fun. In fact I enjoy thinking about and defining these things almost as much as actually playing a game. ;-) I guess I'm just a geek.

[HoustonGM]

Hmm...and Pedro was making about $17mil/year in his last option year with the Sox (2004)...but his price went down with the Mets, to about $13mil or so a year. I guess Clemens still makes huge money, when the Yanks pay his $4.5mil a month...(god, what is that? $800k a start?? He makes 11 times what I do in a year, every time he takes the mound?? wow.)

So maybe pitching is getting up there. But huge contracts for position players are generally more numerous, I would say.
Well, let's put it this way. Your average 4th starter makes $10-$13 million a year - Jeff Suppan, Jon Garland, Gil Meche, the projected contracts for Carlos Silva and Kyle Lohse.