What is the maximum you can offer an IFA player? Can you go higher than 20 million or is that the cap? What about changing it to a big league contract. How does that change things? The player in question has already induced a bidding war. He may be one of the best SP to come along in my six seasons. He is already a 79 overall rating at age 22. He will be 100 on Health and his splits will be in the 80's from both sides and accuracy of 87. What do you guys suggest as a plan of attack. Thanks.

There are no limits beyond what can be converted out of a $185m payroll. I've seen pitchers like that go for $30m.

1) A ML contract will be for 3 seasons at $327K, and won't make a difference unless the top two bids are extrmely close. MiLB w/ invite costs you nothing and is better than regular MiLB. If you use a ML contract, you're going to burn all of his options (not a big problem for a star-quality player) and use a 40-man spot for his entire minor league career.

2) You can offer him as much bonus money as your prospect payroll will allow. If you check past years in a bunch of worlds you will find a few $30m+ bonuses. To see how high the bonus will go on this player, check the league's Budget page, and see who has how much prospect payroll . If no one has transfered any money into prospects, then the bonus can't go over $20m. Also, if it's later in the year, check to see who has spent what on other IFAs and the draft, to know what they have in prospects.

3) Don't go straight to your max bid. Sometimes you get lucky, and no one who sees the player has a ton of cash, so you can get him a bit cheaper. The exception to this is if I think my max bid will come up a bit short. Then I might go straight to it and hope to run off the competition.

I didn't want to hear that though I feared that was the case. I probably can't go past 20 mill so that likely won't get it done. The only promising thing is I know there is a second pitcher with similar numbers that is out there that teams are bidding on. My scouts missed that one but I heard from another team who was bidding on that pitcher. What are the odds of having to upper 80 overall rated pitchers out there at the same time. Both starters to boot. It is rare if one comes along a season or every other season at that. Thanks for the quick response.

Thanks gjello10. Good information. My 2nd bid was over 12 mill. My 3rd is over 15, so I likely have competition from teams with their full 20 million dollar budget. Plus a few teams have already added to their budget. With two pitchers of this quality I can see why. I will switch to a MILB with invite if it reaches 20 mill. We aren't even 20 games into the season so teams haven't spent much yet. I will keep my fingers crossed.

Be careful though, if you have a decent draft position you want to be able to pay to sign your picks. That comes out of your prospect budget as well and will be a ton cheaper than this IFA. I usually let early season internationals go and hope to pick one up after the draft with the money I have . Since it is early in the season people will end up overbidding for them and a player that should only get $12-$17 mil will go for $25-$30 just because people have the money to spend.

Good advice bigal888. The problem is a pitcher of this caliber rarely comes along. I have a real good chance at the playoffs for the first time this year. My offense is loaded but I only have a couple real good starters. The others are serviceable. This pitcher would probably put me over the top. My draft slot is the middle of the pack. I used your theory last year and waited. It ended up costing me in that I didn't have enough cash to land the last few good IFA players that came along. So I was stuck with a lot of prospect money with no way to use it. I signed a bunch of serviceable players just to spend the money so now my rookie team is nearly filled for this year. I probably will only sign the top couple of picks. I have a little wiggle room with my ML salary to move some over to the prospect salary to sign draft picks. I am now up to over 18 mill on the bid so this may be my last shot. I sure hope so more big guns come along. Usually only 4 or 5 real good ones a season and we already have had 3 20 games in.

I once landed a pretty good Intl pitcher DURING SPRING TRAINING. I spent my whole $20m prospect on him and got him. He actually pitched 2 games in spring training. I felt good about that because I didn't spend the whole season wondering if I was going to get a good Intl player. If you get later in the season and haven't signed a guy yet or continuously get outbid, you start to get nervous like you might waste the money. At least I get nervous, I'm sure others do too.

I guess it is all a crap shoot. Usually I don't go to crazy over one player. Typically I will try to land a couple ML talent level guys a year via the IFA. I never would overbid for one player. I lucked out a few seasons ago and got a fielder for 12 mill that is now a projected 89. He is at 77 at 21 and is projected at 100 contact with 79 power. Probably the best offensive player in my system. This current player is different because he is a starting pitcher. Usually we see a few middle infielders, an outfielder or two and a few good relief pitchers, but rarely a top notch starter each year. Likely why I have no chance. The good thing is this pitcher and the other one I didn't scout are going to take two teams out of the bidding for the rest of the season. Not that many teams with a full 20 mill budget so hopefully I will land a stud or two before its all over.