...about FA.

It's seriously time to start letting us offer more than our available cap space, even if it's a pre-determined amount like $10mil.  In Puckett we recently had a solid FA class. I went after a pitcher who was probably the 5th or 6th most sought after FA.  I had other guys targeted, but a limited budget, so I put it all towards this guy. I was leading for him for the last 10-12 cycles, then some guy sneaks in at the end with a better offer, the FA snags it and I'm screwed. No other FA are left to sign. And the guy who beat me out likely lost out on one or two of the bigger name guys, and came to my guy, who I had been pursuing since the beginning, and snagged him. I didn't have that luxury.

There is nothing competitively fair about that setup.  It comes down to luck of the draw - who can sneak their offer in at the right moment.  I thought stuff like team, competitiveness, etc. were supposed to factor in, but he signed for a few million more dollars (which I could have matched) to go to a worse team.

Its all about the money...If you want a guy, dont let anyone else get close...

That's how FA works... Real life is no different.

Posted by Jtpsops on 8/29/2011 11:41:00 PM (view original):
...about FA.

It's seriously time to start letting us offer more than our available cap space, even if it's a pre-determined amount like $10mil.  In Puckett we recently had a solid FA class. I went after a pitcher who was probably the 5th or 6th most sought after FA.  I had other guys targeted, but a limited budget, so I put it all towards this guy. I was leading for him for the last 10-12 cycles, then some guy sneaks in at the end with a better offer, the FA snags it and I'm screwed. No other FA are left to sign. And the guy who beat me out likely lost out on one or two of the bigger name guys, and came to my guy, who I had been pursuing since the beginning, and snagged him. I didn't have that luxury.

There is nothing competitively fair about that setup.  It comes down to luck of the draw - who can sneak their offer in at the right moment.  I thought stuff like team, competitiveness, etc. were supposed to factor in, but he signed for a few million more dollars (which I could have matched) to go to a worse team.

Find out how much money each franchise has left and bid 1 dollar more OR you could just bid all prospect money you have left with a major league contract.

To dry your eyes:

I stopped right here "It's seriously time to start letting us offer more than our available cap space".

The answer is "No".

I would just overbid on every decent FA once I reached my cap limit.    Why you ask?   So I could drive up the price for my competition.   You're welcome for making you understand why your request is borderline retarded.

I'm really not even sure what being able to bid over your available cap space would have helped in this situation, since apparently you didn't even use everything you had.

He wants to make multiple offers.   IOW, if he has 10m, he wants to make 9.8m offers to every FA he wants(or something along that line) so he can get a player rather than get shut out. 

It's good the way it is.  I have had those free agency sessions where I went after multiple guys half azzed (with money I had) and got tarded up and out and then was left holding the bag with nothing.  You need to take a close look and pick the one or two guys you really need and do what it takes to get them.  If they sign early, all the better and you can then look at another guy.  But if you put all your eggs in different baskets, no single basket will have enough eggs.

The only real "issue" (and one without a solution IMO) is see buried in this rant is that an FA has to sign at some point. And he will take the highest offer he has at that point. So you can have best offer forever, and if someone sneaks in at the right time and outbids you, you don't get the chance to counter. And that sucks for you and you might have missed out on back-up options in the process.

But as I said, an FA has to sign at some point. If every new offer was required to wait for a counter, guys would never sign. Or people would complaing about the length of time for the counter ("it was only one cycle at 3AM my time, how could I have countered")

I didn't read that far but, yes, that's 100% correct.   The situation would worsen, and become a "who's up at 3 AM?" problem, if FA signed on the last cycle.   All but one owner would be shut out and the person who times the next cycle would get the best 2nd options. 

The only other quasi-solution I can think of is to reverse the way FA signings occur

Right now, the "best" FAs tend to not sign until the end of the signing period. I don't know if the engine is programmed that way (best guys wait the longest), or an indirect result (the engine waits longer if there are more offers, which tend to happen with the best guys). The less-than-perfect guys sign earlier, so if you miss the stud (and all but one will) you could be left out.

If they changed the logic so that the studs signed early, people would know where they stand and everybody could move on to the next-best-thing.

I'm sure this creates other issues I haven't thought about, but it does address some of the issues in the original rant

ctg

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