Amaroq
Posts: 1100
Joined: 8/3/2005 From: San Diego, California Status: offline
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1. There are three types of retirement. The 'typical' retirement happens during the off-season, between the World Series and the amateur draft. There are also (infrequent) retirements-in-season; these are typically from aging senior players stuffed down into the minor leagues, or from aging players whose early-to-mid-season form is utterly awful. Players can also retire-in-season due to a career-ending-injury. In each type of retirement, there is no warning: your player announces his retirement and *poof*, he's gone. Obviously, the first one is a lot easier to plan around - usually they're players you haven't renewed, or weren't counting on. 2. I can't answer for everybody! I typically offer extensions to my current players between May and July. That way, if I know I'm not going to be able to re-sign the player (or have decided not to), I can try to trade him. However, you can also offer your players an extension after the World Series but before pressing "Start Off-season". The advantage to doing it that way is that the salary of all of your players whose contracts are expiring is taken off the books immediately after the World Series. So, if somebody was demanding more than you could afford to pay, you might be able to afford it at that time. (Example: I have 60 players on roster for a total of $248M. Five of them, with a total contract value of $15M, are in the last year of their contracts. Most of them are aging backups, but one is a hot young pitcher, who wants a raise from $2M to $10M. Unfortunately, my budget is only $250M, so I can only afford to offer him $4M. If I wait until after the World Series, the values of all of those players are cleared off my wage bill - so my total is now 55 players for a total of $233M. I can now afford to pay him the $10M he wants. Its going to be a bit tight to pick up four other players for less than $7M, but that's what the amateur draft is for, right? ) What do I look at? Five factors: 1. Attributes - Duh. I'm more likely to renew a veteran player whose 'key' attribute (Stuff, Contact) is above 75 than one who is hovering around the edge of 'making my team'. 2. Age - I'm more likely to renew the younger the player is. However, with the '07 aging model, I have renewed a 36-year-old for a two-year contract, which I never would have done with '05. 3. Current performance - If he's currently got a 3.00 ERA, or is batting .300, I'm much more likely to offer an extension than I am to the guy with the 6.75 ERA, or the .217 batting average. 4. "Ratings History" - I don't remember if that's the exact name of the button, but there's a button on the player card that you can hit to get a graphical view of the player's ratings-over-time. This can give you a really good sense of whether the player has been improving the last few years, 'maintaining', is in a gradual decline, or is in steep decline. I'm much more likely to keep the guy who is 'maintaining' than one in decline. You can also get a 'quick' sense of that from the arrow next to potential: A guy with a green up-arrow is still improving, a yellow side-arrow is maintaining, and a red down-arrow is in decline. 5. Other players in my organization - This is pretty simple. Do I have a AAA player who is looking to make his break into the bigs, or not? If so, I'm more likely to let the veteran expire. If not, I'm more likely to renew. Sometimes, the equation gets quite complex. For example, I recently had the following situation at second base: - a 32-year-old starting-quality 2B, 'in decline' but still good enough to start. - a 28-year-old backup-quality 2B, 'maintaining', but not one I'd want to count on day-in, day-out. - a 25-year-old backup-quality 2B, 'improving', with great potential and nice AAA stats. All three were expiring. Obviously, I kept the 25-year-old. However, I also decided to give the 32-year-old a two-year extension, and let the 28-year-old go. The next year, the 32-year-old was the starter, with the 25-year-old as his backup, and two years later their situation reversed.
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