strikeout26 - I just want the game to reflect a more life situation.  If a team needs another million to sign the final piece of the puzzle, they'll figure out a way to get it.  There are people, contrary to popular belief, who love this game but don't have the time to analyze and dissect over 100 prospects each off-season, much less the guy who's dropped during the arbitration period.

And where do you lose any "strategy" by setting you budgets AFTER you make your free agent and coach signings?  If you ever find someone who claims to have won the world series because of a great strategy they had setting budgets, then I'll shut-up.

The way I see it, there's two types of people who benefit from this (and no one who is punished):
1) The guy like me, who is trying to contend right now and needs some financial flexbility to get that last piece of the puzzle.
2) The guy who budgets for a few free agents, swings and misses and has an extra 25 million in player payroll going to waste.  Allow him to take those losses in free agency and turn them into wins with scouting and the draft.

But remember, I strongly support locking those budgets before spring training. 

I just feel that I, as well as everyone, could assemble better teams if their budgets were more flexible.

It just seems like it would make budget setting too easy in my opinion. Budget setting is part of the strategy of the game. If you plan on winning now, go with a higher payroll. If you don't plan on going after any expensive free agents budget accordingly. The difference here between RL and HBD is that in real life teams are not handed 185M to work with. They can scrape up that extra 1M because there is not a cap on how much they spend. You know going into the season whether or not you are going to sign some type A free agents. If you plan on doing this and losing your top picks in the draft adjust your scouting accordingly.

If you want to make scouting realistic, scouts are analyzing players for the well before spring training in real life. They do not start doing this right before spring training or in appollo's eample right before draft day.

 

Posted by deathinahole on 8/9/2010 10:26:00 AM (view original):
Yea, no.
You know you need X prior to budgetting (or should). You budget for X. You either get X in FA, or you minor league system, or through trade.

Disagree with this premise.

Posted by deathinahole on 8/9/2010 10:26:00 AM (view original):
Yea, no.
You know you need X prior to budgetting (or should). You budget for X. You either get X in FA, or you minor league system, or through trade.

Disagree with this premise.

I wouldn't really have a problem in principle with player/prospect/coaches portions of the budget being fluid and allowed to transfer back and forth freely until the end of FA - but the other ones should have to be set in advance.

We all have the same fixed amount of resources - budgeting is part of the strategy of the game, and if you screw it up, there should be a penalty - maybe it's a bit too harsh right now - but you're advocating no penalty at all.