Open letter to WiS:

You guys keep saying you are going to fix the issue of fringe major leaguer free agent demands and you still haven't. Look at these three:
Wascar Alcantara - asking 1 year, $3.4M
Al McDonald - asking 2 years, $2.9M/yr
Billy Ray Thompson - asking 3 years, $3.2M/yr
How can you possibly justify whatever logic in your software allows these three to ask for $3M a year in a multi-year contract? Ridiculous! How can you possibly justify these career minor leaguers asking for ten times major league minimum? In real life these players would be shopping around for minor league contracts with a spring training invite, at most a ML minimum contract.

No one will sign these players in HBD and they will be lost to the world rather than play a role on a ML or AAA roster like they should be. Please fix this problem.

I agree. I see guys each year that are not ML players asking for ridiculous amounts of money that is nowhere near realistic.

Yeah, real life players never ask for ridiculous amounts of money.

Sarcasm aside, I'm going to tell you why this is a good thing.

Players get old and decline/retire. If we're allowed to keep bringing back 29-31 year old career minor leaguers on the cheap, it will take roster spots from the younger guys. At some point, you'll run into issues with filling out rosters because you'll have no 24-26 year old fringe players. There will be no 8 year pros in the minors. There will be 14 year pros and 4 year pros.

Your world needs someone like the Yankees to sign fringe ML bench players for $3M/year.

And people say it's not realistic!

That doesn't make much sense-- if you have a choice between a 31 year old career minor leaguer and a 25 year old fringe guy with the same ratings, why wouldn't you take the younger guy? You'll get more use out of him before he declines and all things considered, there's no reason to take the older player.

They won't have the same ratings. One is developed. One is not.

If a guy's just minor league filler, it's such a marginal choice for most people it doesn't even matter. If a guy is 25 or 26 he may gain another couple of points and that's it, and for some it makes sense to just grab the younger guy anyway. The point is I hardly think there would be a mass genocide of young players and all the owners would make a mad dash for terrible 33-year old minor leaguers for any conceivable reason.

If a guy is just minor league filler, why do we have threads like this every week?

None of those three listed should be on BL rosters. So why does anyone care?

From Customer Service:
"I'm not sure why you're saying these are career minor league players. They are major league caliber players and should be asking for the contracts they are. Now if you don't feel that they are worth what they are asking for, you don't have to sign them. However, these players could still contribute to ML teams."

They are career minor leaguers because they have only ever played in the minors. They are not major league caliber based on their ratings and stats. Even if they could break onto a major league roster how much money would they command? The major league minimum, of course. THAT'S the issue here.

How good is it for a franchise to pay nine times market value for players? Only a stupid or desperate owner would make such a signing and it would harm their franchise and the world as a whole.

And that's the real issue here - what is best for the HBD game experience. You know full well that no intelligent owner will sign such players for that amount of money. So those players will be lost to that world. They will be unsigned, their ratings will deteriorate and they will retire by next season. As a world matures and each season each franchise has three or four such players fall into that no-man's land of unsignability, that means that each season a world loses a significant number of players.

This ends up leaving a paucity of mid-talent players between the very best players, who will always get picked up, and low-talent players who are just minor league roster filler. We end up with the minor leagues depleted and fewer fringe major league players available; and when owners try to fill holes in their rosters, there are few players to be found at all levels. The rich teams get richer, the poor teams can't compete and owners abandon their franchises. Abandoned franchises are a big enough problems for a variety of reasons, why continue a policy that contributes to that?

I can see the argument that such players would demand a spring training invite or a major league minimum contract and I support that. But that is not what is happening. Unless you try to argue that dumb owners who ruin their franchises with bad contracts or that not having enough minor league players available are good things, you can't continue to support the logic that minor leaguers should demand million dollar contracts.

Just change the engine logic so that such players ask for major league minimum contracts. It makes sense.

Aren't they at ML minimum contracts by the end of the signing period?

I would sign Billy Thompson for my ML squad, if that helps.

Latest response from Customer Support:
"Keep in mind that we classify any player who has an overall rating of 50 or higher to be ML caliber."

I see part of the mistake in their logic now. So any flunky with an Overall over 50 will demand a multi-million dollar contract. Even teams that lose 100+ games don't have any players on their ML roster with overall ratings in the 50s except for maybe a backup catcher. Average overall ratings for a 40-man roster is about 68-70 in any world. Except for maybe a DH, catcher, or mopup relievers, you don't want many if any players with core ratings below 60. This idea of spending millions on someone with core ratings in the 40s because he's "ML caliber" is absurd.

There still isn't an answer to my question of why not have these players demand ML minimum.

Jonas - they scale back their demands after spring training but usually not to the ML minimum and not until after they take a ratings hit. Last season I watched this guy drop his $2.9 M x 2 year demand to $1.5 for one year but he had lost two or three points off of all of his ratings. He went unsigned and by end of the season his overall had declined six points. He then retired. What could have been a useful AAA player and September callup at $327k just wasted away to nothing because of this stupid salary policy.

Nanu - please come to my world, sign Thompson,and pitch him against me. I love to face starters who'll walk 5+ per 9 inn. and give up a ton of hits.

Why do you care about those players?

If a guy is a 6-year FA, and has never played a game in the majors, I don't see why they would ask for more than 1 mil, even more than the ML minimum seems kinda foolish. It's not a big deal but there are always teams with a shortage of minor league SP. I usually bump up any in the draft after I've finished ranking guys with ML potential.