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PureSim financial system - 11/26/2007 4:58:39 PM   
QuikSand

 

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In a recent thread, Shaun posted that he was currently paying a lot of attention to the game's financial system...


quote:

ORIGINAL: puresimmer


quote:

ORIGINAL: QuikSand

So, is the general consensus that this game is just unworkable with finances turned on? That it just won't work for what I want to play -- a sim where I just run a team, have to make intelligent decisions about signing/trading players, and manage my roster each season?

That's fine, if all this game amounts to is a historical sim or a no-finances sim. I won't waste my time with it, since that isn't what I want to play, personally.


Absolutely not, I spend a lot of time focusing on this aspect of the game. Of course it is the most complex aspect to balance. Maybe there is some issue causing his demand to be so low.

This is an area I am spending a lot of time on right now so you have perfect timing. What exact setup are you using? I'll try and re-create the exact issue.

Shaun


While it turns out that the specific problems I was having in that thread were, at least to a degree, a function of my particular league setup (I'm not sure why that should be so, but it seems that way) -- I wanted to start a new thread, to discuss issues with the current financial system, and perhaps fuel some more ideas or tweaks from Shaun.

I'm sure there are plenty of people here who have a ton more PureSim experience than I do, and I'd welcome your long-term impressions or ideas, as I'm sure would Shaun. I plan to offer a few thoughts based on my own short-term experience, coming from my own dabbling with both this version and a few earlier ones. I hope this proves to be helpful.
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RE: PureSim financial system - 11/26/2007 7:41:24 PM   
puresimmer

 

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Great idea. This is a hot topic for me with next year's version.

I'm all ears.

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RE: PureSim financial system - 11/26/2007 8:21:43 PM   
PadresFan104


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Some ideas directly and indirectly related to the financial system...

1) Revamp the Markets. Give us more market choices, maybe adding some cities outside of the US. I'm hoping their could be some database you could tap into... I'd love a more Macro view so I could easily create a world league, and a more US-Centric Micro view so I could create a Pennsylvania League, a California League, etc.

2) Make the Market dialog sortable by name when playing with financials on.

3) For the MLB scenarios, find a way to make the disparity between the smaller markets and bigger markets in 2000 and beyond more like real life. Right now, there is too smooth of a curve, it should be much more drastic rise at the top.

4) Make a players hometown factor into contract negotiations to some small extent. For example, maybe an aging (but effective) pitcher looking for a 1-year contact will take less money to play in his home region?

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RE: PureSim financial system - 11/26/2007 8:38:13 PM   
Frozen Stiffer


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I've got two ideas:

(1) If possible, and I may be jumping the "Programmable Reality" gun here, it would be great to have teams with payrolls close to (if not exactly matching) their at-that-time limits. In my modern Marlins replay, I know for a fact that I would not have been able to afford the players I've signed and/or extensions I've granted had it not been for the astronomical team payroll. It would be a nice challenge to try to pit a small-salary team like the Marlins in a closer-fitting real world scenario. I know that I can remedy this by manually updating each team's salary, but I'm obviously looking for a more automated solution to this.

(2) Also, there's a little exploit that I admit to taking advantage of (though I haven't done it lately so I don't know if it still exists)... When in the Free Agent signing process, I've found that if I have a player who's finally leaning towards my contract offer after a scrappy bidding war with another team, I can downplay the contract and still keep him interested- just paying him less. For example, let's say Joe Longball is leaning towards Richmond's 4yr 10-mil offer. I up that to an 10.5 mil offer and he bites. Next week, he's leaning towards our contract offer. In the past, I have gone in, offered him much less (whatever the original minimum he was accepting), say a 4-yr 5-mil offer and he remains leaning towards my offer. On a few occasions, they're "reoffered" a higher contract by the original competitor or a new team entirely, but most of the time they have stuck with my offer. In the end, they've signed the lower offer. I feel guilty about it and the only compensation my conscience has felt is that I have not done this often- 5 times in a 13-year association. Again note that I have done this in the past and not recently, so I don't know if it may have been addressed in a previous patch/hotifx.

< Message edited by Frozen Stiffer -- 11/26/2007 8:41:59 PM >


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RE: PureSim financial system - 11/27/2007 5:10:44 PM   
QuikSand

 

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What should young players command as a salary?

Seems to me that the reals small-market teams in real baseball are often focused on "staying young" is that there is a massive advantage to getting production out of players who have not yet gained enough experience to become true free agents, where their salary would be set by the market.  Young players are cheap, by and large.

Yes, the handful of guys who sign big contracts at the very top of the MLB rookie draft each year get signing bonuses and fairly big money, but other than a pretty modest amount, the salaries of young players -- even pretty promising ones, is a fairly trivial sum compared to the investment required for a productive free agency eligible player.


In PureSim, though, this gets convultaed badly (in my view) by the players having distinct salary demands based on their skills.  In my last draft, I was in round three, and saw multiple decent-looking rookie players still unpicked, but who were saking for salaries of more than $1.5-2 million per season.  That makes no sense.

Rookie player salaries should be "slotted" essentially based on their draft position, rather than their scouted skills.  That's how things work in every sports league that I know of -- again, with the only possible exception being the very tip-top level of a given draft, where a select handful of players might command major league deals and real pay right away.


Point is... teams *love* getting a 23 year old player who can perform at the major league level for a couple of years, because in reality he's only making $400K or something along those lines.  That frees up meaningful resources for those couple of years -- either makes him affordable for a small market team, or allows a higher market team to invest their resources elsewhere.  It makes a material difference in the financial side of roster management.  in PureSim, as currently configured, I don't think this really happens.  With salary depands seemingly tied directly to player ratings (or whatever) it seems that players are basically in an open maket from day one, and teams have no choice but to offer ther that style of contract.  It makes the entire concept of "go young, go cheap" close to worthless in this game, as the meaningful advantages of restricted contracts for younger players are the real gold mine there in the real life MLB system.


I am not arguing that PureSim *must* follow MLB conventions... but here, I'd argue that doing so would add a *good* element to the game.  Investing n young players should not just be an opporutnity to have them and pay them what they are worth -- the whole gain is to pay them far less than they are worth, and get value that way.  It's the best angle that small-market teams have in real baseball.

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RE: PureSim financial system - 11/27/2007 7:22:30 PM   
PadresFan104


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+1 to what QuickSand said. That kind of feature would be AWESOME.

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RE: PureSim financial system - 11/27/2007 11:21:31 PM   
modred

 

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Make sure that players in the top third of the league in talent sign before the end of the free agency period.

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RE: PureSim financial system - 11/28/2007 1:38:16 AM   
KG Erwin


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This is a timely subject, given that A-Rod is on the verge of signing for some $300 million.

If one wanted to really do this historically, the player salary/team payroll info is available for the last several years online. We can edit team finances, but can we edit salaries?

This could be part of creating PSA templates for associations using financials. In other words, the starting point would be the actual figures, and in successive seasons let the game model take over.

We all have personal views on the current salary structure, but that's immaterial. If you want to use it, I believe a simmer should have the ability to set a realistic starting point. Yeah, it would require a lot of work on the simmer's part, as salaries are NOT part of the Lahman database. Nevertheless, the option to manually enter these values should be considered.

Even at that, a semi-realistic adjustment for inflation has to be considered. Are the actual minimum salaries for a given year taken into account? After all, that's the baseline for a rookie, isn't it? That's another value that could be manually inputted during the association setup.

I think everyone agrees that the real-life salary structure is completely nuts. The key to restoring a sense of logic to this (in PS terms) revolves around several things, and we can't get around a free agent's asking price based on his previous season's performance.

I have a radical idea here -- his asking price (in a logical world), would be based on his CAREER performance. This would bring down prices drastically, but it establishes a sense of rationality.

I'm just offering up some talking points, guys.

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RE: PureSim financial system - 11/28/2007 2:28:13 AM   
Frozen Stiffer


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quote:

ORIGINAL: KG Erwin

We can edit team finances, but can we edit salaries?



Yes, actually. From the Player Card, the Edit Bio button takes you to their Edit screen where you can change the term and amount of the player's current salary. Not that I would ever go this far (by the time I'm done, I'd probably have died from old age twice)...

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RE: PureSim financial system - 11/28/2007 2:42:05 AM   
Frozen Stiffer


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Here are some figures for discussion:

My fictional association started in 2004 and is currently in 2017; the highest paid postion player is getting about $21-22 million per year (I can't recall the highest paid pitcher, I'll get you that when I go home).

In contrast (well, it's not that much of a contrast really) the highest paid position player in my modern-day real association (started 2006 - currently 2010) is Lance Berkman at $18.75-million; the highest paid pitcher is Francisco Rodriguez and his $16-million deal.

In both associations I witness the same issue which Quiksand brought up about overly greedy rookies. I don't like seeing them and I like signing them even less. However, I must confess that I have signed a handful of young gents to $4-6 million starting contracts. I'm not proud of it, but as there's no way to prevent the AI from signing them, I need to either jump on the bus or get run over. That is all on default settings with no adjustments made anywhere.

_____________________________

"It ain't braggin' if you can do it."

-Hall of Fame pitcher Jerome 'Dizzy' Dean

(in reply to Frozen Stiffer)
Post #: 10
RE: PureSim financial system - 11/28/2007 2:56:49 PM   
puresimmer

 

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quote:

ORIGINAL: QuikSand

What should young players command as a salary?

Seems to me that the reals small-market teams in real baseball are often focused on "staying young" is that there is a massive advantage to getting production out of players who have not yet gained enough experience to become true free agents, where their salary would be set by the market.  Young players are cheap, by and large.

Yes, the handful of guys who sign big contracts at the very top of the MLB rookie draft each year get signing bonuses and fairly big money, but other than a pretty modest amount, the salaries of young players -- even pretty promising ones, is a fairly trivial sum compared to the investment required for a productive free agency eligible player.


In PureSim, though, this gets convultaed badly (in my view) by the players having distinct salary demands based on their skills.  In my last draft, I was in round three, and saw multiple decent-looking rookie players still unpicked, but who were saking for salaries of more than $1.5-2 million per season.  That makes no sense.

Rookie player salaries should be "slotted" essentially based on their draft position, rather than their scouted skills.  That's how things work in every sports league that I know of -- again, with the only possible exception being the very tip-top level of a given draft, where a select handful of players might command major league deals and real pay right away.


Point is... teams *love* getting a 23 year old player who can perform at the major league level for a couple of years, because in reality he's only making $400K or something along those lines.  That frees up meaningful resources for those couple of years -- either makes him affordable for a small market team, or allows a higher market team to invest their resources elsewhere.  It makes a material difference in the financial side of roster management.  in PureSim, as currently configured, I don't think this really happens.  With salary depands seemingly tied directly to player ratings (or whatever) it seems that players are basically in an open maket from day one, and teams have no choice but to offer ther that style of contract.  It makes the entire concept of "go young, go cheap" close to worthless in this game, as the meaningful advantages of restricted contracts for younger players are the real gold mine there in the real life MLB system.


I am not arguing that PureSim *must* follow MLB conventions... but here, I'd argue that doing so would add a *good* element to the game.  Investing n young players should not just be an opporutnity to have them and pay them what they are worth -- the whole gain is to pay them far less than they are worth, and get value that way.  It's the best angle that small-market teams have in real baseball.



Interesting, and though-tprovoking post. I'm adding this to the list of financial model possible tweaks.





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RE: PureSim financial system - 11/28/2007 5:45:31 PM   
QuikSand

 

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Another related topic... how should a player's contract/extension demand vary as the years increase?

I am glad to see a change in the general nature of these demands -- that young players now (since my last PS venture) demand *more* per year for a multi-year deal, rather than *less* like veterans do.  This is without a doubt a step in the right direction.

However, I'd argue that in both cases (but especially that of younger players) the shift in pricing is not dramatic enough.


Consider a 22 year old player who may have put in a year or two in the minors, and now seems to be good enough to get a look at the major league level, and has an indication of being a pretty good MLB player.  I don't claim to understand what the "potential" rating in this game means {it doesn't seem to mean what I might think it woudl mean} but by whatever means seems fair, let's just assume that the kid seems to have apparent potential.

If we approach this player, what sort of offer would be be open to in PureSim?  With baseball contracts being guaranteed, a multi-year deal is insurance against injury or ratings drops and the like, but it also involves a sacrifice of the ability to really "cash in" for more than that in the open market during that stretch.  That is the conundrum that faces a young player being offers a multi-year contract, rather than a short term extension.

In general, if the player is willing to sign a *one year* extension for something like $3 million... then his asking price for adding on successive years will be only a small increment on top of that... maybe bumping to something like 3.5-4.0m/yr for a five year extension.  Is that realistic?

Again -- I look to MLB not as an example of a perfect system, but a representation of how these sort of risks really play out when actors are able ot make their best decisions.  And what do we see?  Promising young players *clearly* demand a major premium to sign for multiple years carrying into their contunied development and "prime" years.  if you have a 22 or 24 year old promising young player, and you want to lock him up and keep him away from free ageny for five years -- you need to be paying him, in this last years of that contract, a pretty reasonable share of what he might expect to command on the open market.  The guarantee of multiple years makes a discount of some degree worth taking for the player, but it's not a 50% or 75% discount.

Anyway... in my mind, I would think that a more reasonable increase in salary for a player asking $3m for one year would be more like this:

1 yr, 3.0
2yrs, 3.5/yr (equivalent of 3.0, 4.0)
3yrs, 4.2/yr (3.0, 4.0, 5.6)
4yrs, 5.0/yr (3.0, 4.0, 5.6, 7.4)
5 yrs, 6.1/yr (3.0, 4.0, 5.6, 7.4, 10.0)

Candidly, I don't think it's necessary to have the actual salary rise in each year of the contract (like it usually would in a real baseball contract) -- it would be fine to have the 5 year deal be 5-5-5-5-5... but the main issue is that the team should be required to pay a meaningful premium to lock up a promising young player for multiple years.  He'd be giving up the right to go to the open market after two or three of those years, and command a multi-year $8-10m/yr salary or more.


Right now, in PureSim, I don't have any real trouble "unloading" contracts of players who are simply overpaid.  That is an underlying problem here, somewhat separable from the financial system itself.

But with those two issues working in tandem... if I approach a promising young player with a contract extension, it is a complete *no brainer* decision to offer him the 5 year deal for a trivially higher sum per year.  In my judgment, in a sport sim game, decisions should not be trivial -- they should be challenging.  The fact that it is relatively easy to lock up a young player for many years and that it makes perfect sense to do so in each and every case suggests a structural imbalance here.


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RE: PureSim financial system - 11/28/2007 7:02:49 PM   
Frozen Stiffer


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quote:

ORIGINAL: Frozen Stiffer

Here are some figures for discussion:

My fictional association started in 2004 and is currently in 2017; the highest paid position player is getting about $21-22 million per year (I can't recall the highest paid pitcher, I'll get you that when I go home).


I just looked at my association again. I was way off on the salary for position players, but when I went back to check, I was shockingly surprised. Here's the interesting twist: there's about a 7-way tie for the top-paid position player- they're all receiving $17,718,750 for the year. On the pitcher's side, there is no tie, but surprisingly enough... he's being paid the EXACT same amount!

That's too much of a coincidence...

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