Here's a simple to program and play way to bring qualified offers into HBD FA.

The current MLB rule is before a player can be a Type A or B, their current team has to offer a 1-year contract of at least the average of the 125 top paid player from the previous season.  If the player rejects that, they go FA and the team that loses them gets a comp pick (draft protection rules are a little different, but it's the same idea.)

It would be easy to write the code to figure that out that amount and add it to the FA negotiation screen. Just like there's a way to indicate if a player will resign or go FA no matter what or if they're a Type A/B on the current screen.

Current GM would have the option of offering that amount or more in a 1 year deal.  Max of $30M like it is now.

What would be hard to code is a fair decision by the player to accept or reject. No matter how that's done, it's going to seem like the wrong decision half the time.

The way to avoid that is to have the other 31 GMs decide.

For a 24 hour period before open FA bidding starts, or the first day of open FA bidding, all qualified offers are presented to all GMs.  Any GM willing to match or beat the qualified offer indicates that.

If a player get's at least one matching offer, they reject the qualified offer and go FA.

The only thing different about that offer is if you check the Match Offer box, you can't withdraw that offer.  If no other GM beats you offer within a few days (just like FA works now), you get that player at that amount.

That will stop us from claiming we'd match every offer and force all players to reject the qualified offer and go FA.

Simple and fair system. Brings market value to at least this part of the FA process.

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This my B Suggestion.  A Suggestion remains to remove Type A/B FAs from HBD. That makes some sense in MLB, where team budgets are not even close to the same, so Type A/B tends to balance competition. In HBD, every team has the same budget. Type A/B only helps keep the better teams better, so it causes and maintains unbalance.  But if HBD is going to be an MLB simulation, there's a good chance Type A/B FAs will remain in the game.

Good point. I like the market price model better. But your idea is probably easier to get done.

Your "market value" suggestion makes the market for top-value FA's a "one locked-in bid" game.  Not sure if that's what we really want.

No. That's just a starting point. Normal process kicks in from there. I don't know how the system decides which is the top bid, but I know 3 yr $30M beats 1 yr $11M.