I'm sure this has been addressed before, but why can't we bid more than we have available under the cap?

For example, if I have $10mil available in my player budget, I can only bid on one $10mil FA, which sucks, because if there are three good FA available and I have to pick only one, then if I don't sign him I lose out on the other two as well.

I know some people don't like the "real life" arguments, but I think it applies here.  If I have $10mil to spend, I should be able to send out 3 different $10mil offers.  Then as soon as one guy signs, I have my player and the other two are withdrawn.  It's stupid to have to pick only one guy that you can make an offer to.  

Because you're driving up the asking price for players you can't afford. 

Teams, in real life, aren't restricted by league imposed budgets. HBD teams are.

"Because you're driving up the asking price for players you can't afford."

Yes, but in HBD, you can go back and lower your offer with no real consequences. 

Of course there are consequences.  You can lower your bid to be below somebody else's bid and lose the FA.

I think it's pretty clear that I meant in the context of the bid being artificially driven up.  If someone still has a bid that high, then the bid wasn't being artificially driven up. 

If you make a $10M offer, someone else bids $11M to top it, then you withdraw your bid, you've driven up the cost to the other owner with money you don't have available to spend. That would be artificially driving up the price, no? Lowering your offer has no consequences to you, but it could mean another owner is spending more than he needed to. How would that other owner know that your bid was lowered? And what would your solution be to the possibility that two FA both accept your offers in the same cycle?

Posted by isack24 on 11/15/2010 4:49:00 PM (view original):
I think it's pretty clear that I meant in the context of the bid being artificially driven up.  If someone still has a bid that high, then the bid wasn't being artificially driven up. 

Why would I assume that is clear?  Why would one intentionally overbid unless the price was driven up by another party?

Shoot, sorry.  I didn't mean to report that post...I was trying to quote it.

If I have $10mil in cap space available, then I can make ten offers...and until one is accepted, I have the money available to pay each of those FA.  And once one does accept, all others are withdrawn.  It's not hard.

Plus...If I make bids to 5 FA, there's always a chance that the worst of the five accepts first, then I lose out on a chance to go after the other four, so there's still a gamble.  Or if I try to drive up the price on a guy I don't want and end up stuck with him.

Posted by Jtpsops on 11/15/2010 10:58:00 PM (view original):
Shoot, sorry.  I didn't mean to report that post...I was trying to quote it.

If I have $10mil in cap space available, then I can make ten offers...and until one is accepted, I have the money available to pay each of those FA.  And once one does accept, all others are withdrawn.  It's not hard.

Plus...If I make bids to 5 FA, there's always a chance that the worst of the five accepts first, then I lose out on a chance to go after the other four, so there's still a gamble.  Or if I try to drive up the price on a guy I don't want and end up stuck with him.

Let's say you are looking to sign two SP's.  You place bids on ten of them.  According to your proposal above, once one guy signs, the other nine offers are withdrawn.  But what about the second SP you want to sign?  How does that work?  Do you now have to re-place bids on the other nine again?

Not if you structure your bids so that you can afford the second guy as well.  I, too, wish we were able to exceed the cap on multiple offers, much like with coach hiring.  Once you fill up the cap, all your offers that exceed the cap are withdrawn.

Posted by tecwrg on 11/15/2010 10:49:00 PM (view original):

Posted by isack24 on 11/15/2010 4:49:00 PM (view original):
I think it's pretty clear that I meant in the context of the bid being artificially driven up.  If someone still has a bid that high, then the bid wasn't being artificially driven up. 

Why would I assume that is clear?  Why would one intentionally overbid unless the price was driven up by another party?

Because Mike's point was that the price goes up for a player based on offers that the player won't receive (which I think is a bad argument, anyway, because someone is clearly willing to pay that amount).  So my point is that you can then reduce your offer if you choose, with no adverse consequences.  If there was another offer preventing you from doing that, then his point is irrelevant regardless.

Nothing "prevents" you from lowering your offer.  If you lower, you won't immediately know that you've now underbid somebody else.  And you always run the risk that you've just underbid yourself out of the player if he chooses to sign on the next cycle with the guy you just leap-frogged behind.

I understand the point that folks are trying to make.  You're just all doing a ****-poor job in trying to make your argument.

I'll try to do this again.

jtpops has 10.5m in cap space.  jtpops bids 10m on the top 10 pitchers.  He can only sign one.  Other owners would also like these pitchers(after all, they are the 10 best).   They also have to bid 10m or more.    8 of these owners only have 9m.   They see they're outbid so they move on and sign two 4m pitchers.  Finally, jtpops gets his man.   Too bad for those other 8 owners because they've already spent their money because they weren't interested in getting shutout.  

A smart owner, with no restrictions and a lot of cap space, would bid a lot on every good player so his competitors would be forced to offer big $$$ and limit their options.    If you don't see how this is bad, I can't help you.

Why is coach hiring set up differently than free agency? The argument that's being made is basically asking for free agency to work the same way as coach hiring.

I do find the FA bidding process a little frustrating sometimes. Nothing worse than targeting one player and losing out and then no other FAs are available.  Maybe it can be limited to twice your available budget or something similar. It also would be nice to have some mechanism where lesser players need to wait until the elite players at their position sign. So a team loses out on a Carl Crawford type and then has time to sign a Magglio Ordonez because Ordonez has had to wait until the bidding on Crawford was sorted out.