I just took over a team that to my inexperienced eyes look like it's has a lot potential. They have $25 mil committed this season, the #4 pick, and what looks like at least 5 top prospects. It's the Portland Thunder in the Long Haul R Us league if you care. Anyway, I have only set one budget before and I would be curious to see what people would recomend in this situation. I was looking at budgets from my other league and some only put money into only hs or college scouting. Many did not put a dime into the international scouting. With a young roster is training/medical as important? Is there any intelligence to the idea of taking a big budget and then taking other people's bad contracts in return for them giving me a solid project? I'd love to hear thoughts. I am assuming coaches are extra important in my situation.

It really depends on the direction you want to take the team. Depending on the guys you have that are up for Arbitration and the Free Agents you could re-sign you may want to decide whether you are wanting to really make a run at the playoffs sooner rather than later. If you would rather try to build through youth I would max College Scouting and International Scouting. place 20mil in Prospect and up my training. Whatever is left I would try to sign good coaches in the minors but I would probably not spend more than 13-14mil in coaching. Rest goes into payroll. That will still give you some room to potentially sign some decent Free Agents to keep your ML squad competitive. 

Posted by tomhighway on 11/18/2010 2:44:00 AM (view original):
It really depends on the direction you want to take the team. Depending on the guys you have that are up for Arbitration and the Free Agents you could re-sign you may want to decide whether you are wanting to really make a run at the playoffs sooner rather than later. If you would rather try to build through youth I would max College Scouting and International Scouting. place 20mil in Prospect and up my training. Whatever is left I would try to sign good coaches in the minors but I would probably not spend more than 13-14mil in coaching. Rest goes into payroll. That will still give you some room to potentially sign some decent Free Agents to keep your ML squad competitive. 

is there a good way to estimate arbitration desire prior to setting the budget? 

Found the arbitration report.

To me, a lot of it depends on what type of free agents are available, and what your current roster looks like, vs what your minor league system looks like.  You have 5 top prospects, are they ML ready, or do they need another season or 2 of minor league ball before they're ML ready?  Are there a couple of high impact players that you could bring in this season that will give you a shot to win right now, or is the FA class just kind of so-so?  I think there are too many variables to answer your question specifically as there are many different routes you can take depending on the options in front of you.

While just a generalization, I normally put 14-15 into training, 11-12 into medical, make sure I have enough for coaching (normally anywhere from 12-15, take a look at what returning rehires want and whether you need to fill any of the key expensive coaching spots - ML hitting, ML pitching, and ML fielding), 14 into advance scouting, and then make my call as to what I want to do with the draft and internationals. With the #4 pick, I would do 14 and 14 in college and high school. From there, you either pump up international scouting and max out prospect budget (with the intent of playing the international market) or you keep international scouting low, leave prospect budget at 8-10, and put everything into player payroll (with the intent of hitting free agency hard). It is very rare that you can play interntionals and free agency the same season.

Another budget question---

My payroll is 32 million.  I've used 31,785,000.  Im trying to sign a IFA, which will cost 7,650 for the first year. 

My math isn't great, but Im sure I have enough money.  But, I get an error message saying I dont have enough money to cover the salaries.  I have 31 million in prospect budget, so I know that's not the issue.

What's the deal?

Looks like you have 15K to spend. Costs only 8K to put him on the RL team so you should have enough to put him there. If you tried to assign him to a higher level, you don't have enough money. You can always transfer from prospect to budget if you still have at least $2M prospect money left.

I had a problem like that once. I sent in a ticket and got the response below. You might want to try it out:

Hi Michael,

If you're having trouble making a new offer please try withdrawing your current offer and then making the new offer. You should have enough payroll as you currently have $441,348 available. Please note that IP contracts are not pro-rated, they get the whole amount.