Posted by Crump123 on 7/14/2010 9:29:00 AM (view original):

Posted by soxfan121 on 7/13/2010 9:06:00 PM (view original):

Posted by opie100 on 7/13/2010 6:12:00 PM (view original):
I'm just saying that IFAs getting $20-40MM in bonus money make this game more unrealistic.  Not that matching MLB's precedent is our primary goal here, but this becomes silly in my view.  One solution is to make those type of players much less of a sure thing.  Another would be to lower overall budgets or limit the amount one can apply towards IFAs (or both).

Wait for Yu Darvish to hit the market. 

Heck, Daisuke Matsuzaka went for $50M and KEI IGAWA got $25M. There's precedent for high fees (& more contracts) for IFAs. The Red Sox gave a Cuban SS $9M last season AND spent north of $20M to sign their amateur draft picks. The IFA costs offset an unnaturally low amateur draft cost. HBD allows teams to draft like big spenders, but most of those huge bonus guys refuse to sign, unlike in MLB, where Rick Porcello jumps at big $ to turn pro. 

I do think the IFA process is broken, but it's due mostly (IMO) to the budget transfer process and how it depresses spending on ML teams looking to make a big splash in IFA. If IFA were capped at $30M, and you had to set that at the beginning and couldn't transfer, most of your concerns would be addressed. 

Umm, theres nothing wrong with IFA at all, its called a market, supply is limited, therefore demand sets the price. If i consider that the opportunity cost of transfering 10M from payroll to prospects is worthwhile the 50% penalty then i should be able to do so. You should also be pleased when people transfer $, they pay a 50% cost to do, which has the net effect of them playing with a smaller budget, which should give you an advantage somewhere else.

If teams are being uncompetative to horde IFAs that is a world issue, not neccessarily a IFA issue.

The IFA system not only encourages, but it requires that IFA seeking teams waste 1/2 their money in transfers. It's a negative for the world and for the team. 

If you allowed teams to set a $30M budget, then there would not be wasted money. And ML payroll, because it can't be saved or rolled over, would increase, making the team (theoretically) better. 

IFA, as it's set up, is not a "market" - it's a penalty.     

Posted by soxfan121 on 7/14/2010 6:30:00 PM (view original):

Posted by opie100 on 7/14/2010 4:24:00 PM (view original):
$30 million over five years.  That's a contract, not a signing bonus.

No, they have him under contract for the next five years. In HBD, his bonus was $30M and his yearly salaries are the minimum; in MLB, his salary over those 5 years equals $30M. How is that different? It's just allocation, not a substantive difference.     

It's different because you aren't paying $30MM in a single season bonus.  It is substantive because more teams would compete for someone that they could spread the sum out over a number of seasons.

Posted by opie100 on 7/14/2010 9:25:00 AM (view original):

Posted by joshkvt on 7/14/2010 1:49:00 AM (view original):
Why wouldn't bid fees to Japanese teams be equivalent to IFA signing bonuses here? Some of the IFA WIS sends our way are not like the 18- 19-year-olds you list on Page 1 of this thread. There regularly are players available to us that are at least comparable to what Dice K was expected to be in MLB.

Because HBD signing bonuses are paid to the players and are not bid fees.  Each of those bidding-upon Japanese players ends up getting both a bonus and a wage, just like HBD IFAs do, and that is what HBD bonuses are intended to emulate (IMHO).

As long as the money is coming out of my pocket, what difference does it make whether it goes to the player, his agent, the Japanese team or the corner grocer? 

Quote post by opie100 on 7/14/2010 4:03:00 PM:
The game is intended, for the most part, to emulate MLB.  IFA's regularly going for $15MM-$40MM is unrealistic.  Think instead about why we don't see this type of activity in real life (Japanese bid fees excluded).  It is because even the most sought after IFAs don't have the same guarantee of future performance as they do in HBD.  How may owners would bid $40MM for a player if there was a good chance he'd never be good enough to get out of AA?

That's true for HS/Coll as well, the only reason they do not go for 20M+ is that you have a fixed demand of 1, since drafting gives you sole rights to negotiate. You're describing a problem with prospect performance in general, not with IFA. The market dictates price, it is doing an effective job in that if people were not willing to pay $20M for one player, then they wouldnt bid that high. You can't blame the efficiency of the market for the fundamental problem of guaranteed prospect performance. That confuses two issues.

Quote post by soxfan121 on 7/14/2010 6:33:00 PM:

"The IFA system not only encourages, but it requires that IFA seeking teams waste 1/2 their money in transfers. It's a negative for the world and for the team. 
If you allowed teams to set a $30M budget, then there would not be wasted money. And ML payroll, because it can't be saved or rolled over, would increase, making the team (theoretically) better. 
IFA, as it's set up, is not a "market" - it's a penalty."

Erm.. no it doesn't, i've bid on IFA in one world for the past 5 years and never transferred money. What you are clearly missing, is that, if that is the case in that world the competative advantage in that world is to NOT bid on IFAs, since if people are wasting so much $ transferring and splurging on IFAs (~which they do by CHOICE) then by definition you should see more value in trading/HS/Coll and FA. Each world is different, what works in one and represents good value may not be good value in another. Again someone else misunders the concept of a market, the market assigns resources (players), based upon a world's supply/demand for said resources, the interaction of which sets the price. high demand for a fixed number of resources (in this instance one player) results in a high price being set, the market is working fine in that, if you have a lot of owners with 20+M prospect budgets then by definition the market will adjust the price upwards because the realtive value of each prospect $ is less than in another world where you only had one prosect budget of 20M.

Adjusting budgetting to allow 30M prospect budgets will make things worse because you have to pay 0 penalty to get 30M, whereas they will now pay 40M with 50% tax on the 20M transfer. By allowing 30M budgets all you do is remove the transfer cost whcih will further inflate the value of IFA signing bonuses, since there i sno cost more people assign budgets>20M. An individuals budget value is irrelavant, all that matters is its relative value to other budgets within the world, 20M in a world where noone bids on IFA is worth much mroe than 20M in a world where everybody has 20M, by allowing 30M you decrease the relative value of the higher budgets, all that does is increase IFA prices further.

How about just keeping a hard-cap on prospect budget at $20m and eliminating budget transfers into prospect (but continue to allow transfers out?).  So you have to set your prospect budget on budget day adn be forced to live with that for the season?

That would certainly control the IFA market with the added benefit of preventing certain teams from monopolizing it at the cost of tanking.

I think there are two issues:
People wanting "realistic" signing bonuses, which you will never get with prospect development as it is. So they may aswell stop talking about it and wasting everyone's time.

The other is people worrying about people transferring to Prospect and not spending on ML teams, which i dont have a problem with, so long as those teams remain "competative", thats the issue if i can be competative and pay a 50% tax on whatever i transfer then good for me, if im transferring and putting out a sub-standard team that would seem to me to be a world/owner issue. If im intent on tanking, im going to find a way regardless of the prospect limit, maybe i just spend 20M in HS, Coll and int't+20M rather than moving one of the HS/C down to 0... Changing the prospect limit isnt going to stop people tanking if thats what they are intent on doing.

the problem with a hard cap on prospect budget is that it penalizes teams with higher draft picks, as they're required to spend more to sign their picks.

Posted by schedule1 on 7/15/2010 11:26:00 AM (view original):
the problem with a hard cap on prospect budget is that it penalizes teams with higher draft picks, as they're required to spend more to sign their picks.

That's true in theory, but never actually pans out.

In three seasons in Branch Rickey (with a self-imposed $20M cap) a better team never got an IFA because they had more money.

Posted by schedule1 on 7/15/2010 11:26:00 AM (view original):
the problem with a hard cap on prospect budget is that it penalizes teams with higher draft picks, as they're required to spend more to sign their picks.

You know where you're drafting when setting your budget.  Why do you think this is a problem?

I'm surprised that I've never seen either of these as requirements for staying in a league;

Minimum # of players per level.
Minimum # of wins per level.

Usually, dumping $28M on one player = I don't give a crap if my rookie team/low A team has 5 players on it.

If you do that and can't even squeeze, say, 20 wins out of your rookie team and you lose your franchise, I think you may think twice about doing it.

Posted by tecwrg on 7/15/2010 11:50:00 AM (view original):

Posted by schedule1 on 7/15/2010 11:26:00 AM (view original):
the problem with a hard cap on prospect budget is that it penalizes teams with higher draft picks, as they're required to spend more to sign their picks.

You know where you're drafting when setting your budget.  Why do you think this is a problem?

Damnit, 'tardwrg....

Fixed max prospects budget.

One team has a top 5 pick, the other drafts in the high 20s.

Who has more left for IFA?

Posted by deathinahole on 7/15/2010 12:03:00 PM (view original):
I'm surprised that I've never seen either of these as requirements for staying in a league;

Minimum # of players per level.
Minimum # of wins per level.

Usually, dumping $28M on one player = I don't give a crap if my rookie team/low A team has 5 players on it.

If you do that and can't even squeeze, say, 20 wins out of your rookie team and you lose your franchise, I think you may think twice about doing it.

I believe NABCL has minimum players at each level... CAPB probably does, too.

Wins would be hard(er) to mandate, as sometimes certain parks (+4) are death to pitching prospects, so you always have them skip HiA, and so your HiA team stinks.

So iaiaiaiaiaiaiaiaiain, are you implying that the "bad" teams, with the higher and more expensive draft picks, should also have an inherent right to have more money to bid on IFA's?

IFA's are an open market commodity, not a draft.