An unrealistic, but useful, strategy.....

[Slugger222]

Want to dump some salary during the off season? Give yourself some more cash for Free Agents? Try this:

If you have some aging star who is entering the last year of his contract, but wants to extend at a discount - extend his contract one year, and if you don't really want him, buy out the contract.

Real (Mogul) life example:

Brian Jordan earns 40 points per season. He was asking for 6 in his extension. I extended his contract, which lowered his salary to 6 for the coming season. That gave me 34 more points for free agents.

But it does not end there.....

I then bought out his contract for 12 points - since the guy had been wretched for my team. That freed up 6 more points in payroll. Not only that, but I had just bought out B.J. - at a discount.

Brian Jordan's 40 point salary was completely erased from my payroll for the bargain basement price of 12 points.

Not bad, eh?

[Bad_Ash]

Think of it this way...

He didn't live up to his contractual incentives so he didn't get paid.
It also could be feasible that he was let out of the contract so he could pursue a team that will allow him to play.

Badash

[Slugger222]

Yeah, I guess that you can rationalize it any number of ways. I don't hate the fact that you can do that.

I just wanted to post it, so that the strategy could be seen, and maybe used by some of these guys who are dealing with bloated payrolls.;)

[faulk28]

if a player is in the final year of his contract you can just release him at no cost therefore, not costing you any points at all.:o

[Slugger222]

I believe that you are wrong. You have to buy out the last year of his salery. That cost's cash.

The timing of this is after the WS, right after all of the FAs have been released.

In the example above, I would have had to pay 40 points to buy out Jordan's salery.

[gMa]

When i go to release a player in the last year of his contract, i don't seem to lose any cash, and it doesn't give me the warning about buying out the remaining part of his contract.

I haven't tried this with anything more than a 2pts/year contract though, so who knows.

[asianpride]

when a player is entering his final year of his contract, you can release him for nothing, but it has to be done before the start of the next season. once the season start it will cost money to buy his contract out........

[faulk28]

to release players in their final year. I have released players who were costing me a lot of money in their final year and it didn't cost me anything. I cut Barry Larkin in his final year and he was costing me 18 pts.

[kohut]

This error you are sharing will soon be fixed so that it cant be done anymore.

[faulk28]

I like that you can release a player. I think it really helps the small market teams. Especially when you start out tied down to expensive contracts without the possibility of raising enough revenue to pay for those contracts. That's why i'm in favor of starting a league with nothing but free agents. Anyway, if that's not a possibility, i like the idea of being able to cut a player in his (original)final year of his contract. When i started out with Cincinnati I could not pay for all those high point contracts.

[kohut]

What leagues are you in?

[faulk28]

34,35, and 14.

[mikeh5]

I think it's a little unrealistic that you can resign a player to a lower contract and have that player's current year salary adjusted to the new lower rate. This is especially difficult to justify when a player (for example) signs a new 5 yr contract for 5 pts per season when he was formerly making 30 points in the current season. Effectively, this player is saying that he'll play 4 additional years for free and give the team 5 pts to do so (because under his old contract he was due 30 pts and in his new contract he is only due 25).

Who would do this in real life? I can't imagine a pro athlete doing this. I know I wouldn't let my boss do that to me.

[Bad_Ash]

It is common in the NFL...Big money player reconstructs his huge salary to allow team to sign more players. He does usually get this money later on tho.

Badash

[faulk28]

which in effect means just what BadAsh said. A player in the nfl gets a contract (Marshall Faulk as an example) 6 YR $42 million contract. Well in year four i think it is he is scheduled to make $12 million. That makes the team either cut him or work on an extension(which the way he is playing he may be worth $12 million). Players do that so the team can't use the franchise tag on them. Anyway that's what i have read about those contracts. Also you always hear of players taking less money to play on a team they may want to play on. Barry Larkin after his mvp year in Cincinnati('95) probably could have made more than $5 million a year. Jr could have made much more than he is making now in Cincinnati. Those are but a few examples.

[gMa]

A lot of times what they'll do is defer money. Although I think the teams are screwing themselves over, they'll be paying a player's contract off for 10 years after he's retired sometimes.

[Slugger222]

Kohut,

Which error are youtalking about? The original situation posted, or the, "Release for nothing," situation.:confused:

[Slugger222]

Well, it looks like you can indeed drop someone from your roster during the FA period at no cost to your team, as long as they are in the last year of their contract.

I assume that this is a bug......

[kohut]

I been told they are working on correcting this bug. There still is one more bug that is very damaging if learned. I do not want to say because I assume they will be correcting it.

[mikeh5]

Faulk and Bad Ash - there's a big difference between football and baseball contracts. Football contracts are rarely guaranteed, thus players are often willing or forced to renegotiate their deals. Baseball contracts are almost always guaranteed though, so players would not have an incentive to renegotiate their current salary unless it would pay them more money over the life of the contract.