At the risk of opening a can of worms - I’m trying to understand the no cash in trades position but my thick skull is having a hard time with it. Please help me understand it better. (I’m not being facetious; I really do want to understand it since most vets seem to agree that it’s bad for leagues and many leagues have instituted some form of it) (Also, I tried making it through the 40 page thread but couldn't keep everyone's positions straight between the arguing, off topic, and cross talk)

Take the following situation which I believe is valid use of cash in trades:

Owners routinely offer up ML players available for cash in world chat. Players are typically arb1 or arb2 guys that will probably be released before arb2 or arb3. Examples could include good defensive position player with mediocre to bad bat, decent platoon bats, back end SP/LR innings eater types, etc. Guys you round out a roster with to fill a temporary hole but aren’t long-term solutions. Most are guys that, once they hit FA, fall somewhere between: signed for their asking price without a bidding war or end up getting signed once their demands are lowered.

Most of these players offered in world chat get passed over because they aren’t worth it. But occasionally one will fit a specific teams needs and the player is typically traded for $500k - $3M or so. Rarely up to $5M (usually an arb1 guy or in his last year at the ML minimum).

I'm talking strictly about trades that happen in the pre-season. Cash for garbage players are called out and vetoed. Same with prospect for cash.

Consensus seems to be that these are bad trades correct?

Assuming they are, I’ve got the following questions:

1. If owners are selling players for the difference between what the player is making and what the player would receive on the open market is that not fair compensation to the seller? Please read #2 and #3 before responding
2. Maybe it would be fair compensation except that the owner receiving cash gets a higher budget. This seems to be a main point of contention, along with how that player intends to use the money. But if every owner has the ability to sell players then every owner has the option to go above his/her budget if they have the assets to do so. The buyer is using funds that would be used in FA to acquire similar players. The seller is turning dead/inefficient funds (for his teams purposes at least) into FA or IFA funds. If used for FA then it's simply changing who spends money in FA (the buyer's funds that would have been used in FA, or even sat unused if, are traded to seller, who then uses the same funds in FA anyway). If used for IFA, then again, other owners can compete if they have been able to acquire and trade similar types of players.
3. Would these trades be okay except that the possibility of collusion makes it difficult to ensure truly fair value trades? Such as the highest bidder could be colluding.

Am I close to understanding the issue? I can understand the reasoning behind point #3 but I think I must be missing something obvious in point #2 or missing something else entirely.

These sorts of questions are often "confirmation" threads rather than real questions. IOW, you're seeking agreement to your position. If that's what this is, say it now before I answer.

I will be the first to admit I struggle in understanding the financial nuances (among others) of this game. Not looking for confirmation, only where I went off the tracks.

OK, I'll just give the logic not specific answers to 1-3.

First, if I invited you to my "unique" world where me and 7 other owners had 210m budgets, you and 15 owners had 185m budgets and 8 owners had 160m budgets, would you join?

Second, everyone has a limit. Even people who say "Not me" have a limit. So me and JoeSnow join your world. A couple of deals you mention are made. I'm not a fan. Joe has no issue with it. Joe and I are friendly. I'm not going to return, Joe is. I buy five 1m players from Joe for 5m each. I say "I'd pay 6m for that guy on the open market." Can you tell me I wouldn't? Joe has essentially a 215m budget now and gets the best IFA the world has ever seen. I make my run with these arb1 guys and leave. Collusion? Nope. I was leaving and trying to win right now. Joe was staying and wanted that IFA and he also doesn't have to arb4 five guys. Win for both of us. Not so much for the league. An open team probably has some payroll issues on the way while a returning team cleared his potential problem with cap space and landed a great IFA with the cash he received.

Third, and this was alluded to above, you have no idea what an owner would actually pay in the open market and owners are tied to a world for 1 season only. So you have no idea what the intentions are of the seller/buyer.

Finally, you do have the collusion issue. I joined S1 of Steinbrenner. Owners almost had to give ericwoody money in their deals. At least it seemed that way. Some of the repeat offenders left after 1 season. ericwoody was caught using aliases in S3 or S4. The world made a rule for S2 with cash in trade.

1	Cincinnati Red Stockings	nhatfield	$5.0M	Hong-Chih Yoon	Buddy Wall	-
1	Chicago Wind	ericwoody	$0	Miguel Maduro	Miguel Perez	Yorman DeLeon
1	Chicago Wind	ericwoody	$0	Archie Shelby	Jose Morales	-
1	Florida Wave	psoffl	$2.2M	L.J. Castellanos	-	-
1	Chicago Wind	ericwoody	$0	Zephyr Aardsma	-	-
1	Hartford Hitmen	tswayne11	$5.0M	Pat Shunick	-	-
1	Chicago Wind	ericwoody	$0	Dummy Munro	-	-
1	Boston Rum Runners	rsf507	$3.8M	Tomas Gonzales	-	-
1	Tampa Bay Tar Ball Evaders	mhulshult	$3.5M	Osvaldo Rodriguez	-	-
1	Chicago Wind	ericwoody	$0	Takahiro Masato	Joba Cline	-
1	Chicago Wind	ericwoody	$0	Footsie Nolan	Pepe Limon	Esteban Plata
1	Hartford Hitmen	tswayne11	$1.2M	Santo Pulido	-	-
1	Chicago Wind	ericwoody	$0	Brian Williams	Geoffery Benjamin	Andy Pierzynski
1	Jacksonville Badasses	beatinu2	$2.0M	Albert Mercedes	-	-
1	Chicago Wind	ericwoody	$0	Adrian Mailman	-	-
1	Hartford Hitmen	tswayne11	$1.0M	Sam Collins	-	-
1	Chicago Wind	ericwoody	$0	Derrick Bonham	-	-
1	Boston Rum Runners	rsf507	$0	Josh Maddox	-	-
1	Oakland Knights	obiewon777	$0.0M	Enrique Valverde	-	-
1	Chicago Wind	ericwoody	$0	Carter Plesac	Garland Clement	-
1	Chicago Wind	ericwoody	$0	Philip Coffman	-	-
1	Boston Rum Runners	rsf507	$5.0M	Lon Price	Ronald Bowles	-

Worlds that allow buying/selling tend to end up top/bottom heavy as experienced owners abuse n00bs with cash deals.

You answer your own question with #2 in the bottom list: "The owner receiving cash gets a higher budget." It's probably not necessary to go beyond that, but since you threw in the "except for" qualifier ...

The fact that all teams could do the same thing doesn't make it OK. All teams have the ability to tank; that does not make tanking harmless. All teams can, if they desire, trade-rape every newb who comes along; that does not make trade rape harmless. The problem with what seems to be a justification more than a question here is: "The buyer is using funds that would be used in FA to acquire similar players." The buyer, unless he is a moron, is using the funds to acquire a better player, not a similar player. If it were the latter, there'd be no reason to make the trade. Preseason, the buyer could use the cash to outbid everyone else for an FI. Pre-draft, he could use it to sign a first-round pick after spending all his money on an IFA. Those are competitive advantages.

I have no issue with cash in trades to offset some salary and help make a post-draft deal work, because that money isn't likely to have much impact on the IFA market, which is the only place it has value at that point. But as you note in your own post, cash in trades gives one team more money to spend than the other 31 teams (or however many teams don't do the same thing) have. By definition cash in trades throws off the competitive balance in a world, and that is a bad thing.

BTW, I've never been in a world where owners routinely offer up ML players for cash in world chat. The correct response, IMHO, to such a post would be ridicule. Owners often post players whose salaries they'd like to get rid of, but those deals do not give them more than the $185M to spend that everyone else has.

I'm going to come back to your post later and analyze it deeper (understanding all the financial implications takes me longer than it should to work through).

But at first glance, what you laid out makes sense. Especially your last line. In the real world, teams have front offices full of personnel with years of experience. In HBD that's simply not possible and certain rules and etiquette should be in place to prevent gross imbalances.

Appreciate you taking the time to respond Mike. Was missing a commissioner's perspective. I may come back for clarification on some of it but this certainly goes a long way.

One more point. I'm going to do more with 5m than some 2nd year owner. So getting him to throw me 5m makes the 190m vs 180m budget disparity even bigger. And, unlike a player who you can judge value on, you can't judge what I'm going to do with that 5m. And, if you can't do that, how do you know the trade was fair?

What ticks me off about cash in trades is, why is the team receiving the cash doing so? What's the third reason, outside of the players being exchanged? If the cash is to cover salary, I'd have to say that's fine because those trades are usually stacking teams, which generally means trading away prospects - unless there's collusion. But if it's to help move up in a bidding war for an IFA, or to help sign a draft choice when you've already blown your money elsewhere, why is another team supposed to help you do it? And why should the other 30 teams just go along and agree to let you do it?

In real life, teams don't have to say "we only have 185 mil to work with, we can't go over it." We do.

Two comments about my opposition to cash in trades:

1) If you want to trade for an $8m player, then make sure you have $8m available budget to accommodate the incoming salary. Or trade a player with a notable salary back.

2) A common "but . . . " to the above is the assertion that the $8m player isn't really worth $8m. Maybe the owner trading for him assesses him as only being worth $4m. My thought is: then don't trade for him.

I'll use my toaster example: I go to Walmart because I need a new toaster. I see one that will do the job, but it's priced at $30. I think "it's a nice toaster, but I think it's only worth $18". Walmart isn't going to barter with me, or give me a cash discount at the checkout. My two choices are to pay $30 for the toaster, or walk out without one. Maybe the Target down the road will have a nice $18 toaster. I'll look there.

Posted by tecwrg on 8/18/2016 8:35:00 PM (view original):
Two comments about my opposition to cash in trades:

1) If you want to trade for an $8m player, then make sure you have $8m available budget to accommodate the incoming salary. Or trade a player with a notable salary back.

2) A common "but . . . " to the above is the assertion that the $8m player isn't really worth $8m. Maybe the owner trading for him assesses him as only being worth $4m. My thought is: then don't trade for him.

I'll use my toaster example: I go to Walmart because I need a new toaster. I see one that will do the job, but it's priced at $30. I think "it's a nice toaster, but I think it's only worth $18". Walmart isn't going to barter with me, or give me a cash discount at the checkout. My two choices are to pay $30 for the toaster, or walk out without one. Maybe the Target down the road will have a nice $18 toaster. I'll look there.

Toasters are fungible. I would say ball players, (especially higher priced ones) are not. therefore, the market would be more similar to a house or a car. Both of which prices are haggled over. That said, my position is cash only to offset salary differences.

I've had a little more time to digest this. I've come around to the no cash trades side (not sure about offset yet, need to think on that aspect some more). Makes too much sense in order to keep a world competitive and healthy. Appreciate the clarification. I think my error was was focusing too much on the dollars and cents of an individual trade and not enough on the motivations of owners and of the eventual consequences the trades have on the league.

My thinking is that the cash trades are after budgets are set so they don't really help with things like training, coaches, scouting, etc. So they are really only for international free agents or I guess free agent signings at the beginning? If there is an international free agent cap should it matter that much? Also, if you're using that cash to sign prospects, you're forfeiting half of it. So if you get $6 million from a trade, you're really only able to use $3 million. Anyway, that's just my opinion, I can see how it can get shady but I don't see the harm in a few hundred thousand here or there.

I was going to somewhat echo kartchy - if the biggest concern is more cash to throw at an IFA, but there's a cap for prospects, wouldn't having a higher budget be null for prospects?

The money goes somewhere regardless of when it's acquired. I don't know how other worlds work but, in my three, we talk trade before budgets are set. There's no reason I can't say "I'll sell you this guy for 5m as soon as we can trade" and budget appropriately. Meaning I'll budget for 190m not 185m. I could do that with 2-4 other owners and budget for 200m or 210m.

And to say "6m is really only 3m if you transfer" if silly. We know that. But someone is 3m ahead of the game and 6m has been taken from somewhere.

You seem to have skirted anything kartchy or myself said.
If it's the end of ST when all good FAs are gone, and there's a prospect budget cap limit that everyone knows about and can budget 10 extra million in player payroll for, how is cash in a trade giving an advantage to the receiving team? I'm asking honestly because I don't see how, at that stage in the season, you'd think an extra 2-3 million in someone's player payroll will offer that winning edge.