I'm running into a problem I have yet to see before. I am trying to propose a trade for a player with a sizable contract (15-20mil per year) and my team currently is dirt cheap at 24 million or so. However, I can't propose the trade because it would violate my payroll for NEXT season. Not the current season. I have never seen this before. I technically only have 1 player under contract next season for 4 million and the player payroll is listed as 20 million.

I do not how the game calculates budgets for future seasons. But I am puzzled as to why I can't propose a trade that does NOT violate payroll for the current season. Basically, I can't propose this trade without trading my current CF which I do not want to do.

How do you explain this? My team is in a great position with half my roster being rookies and we're over .500. I've got all the financial flexibility in the world, but yet I can't add a high priced player. I get that it's not common to trade for a player that makes the same amount of money as the other 24 players on my roster combined...but am I just out of luck here?

You're not allowed to trade for a player who makes next year's salary commitments go above 80% of your salary budget for this year. It's done to protect the other end of the salary spectrum; that is, to prevent owners from gathering a bunch of massive future contracts and walking away

The one thing you might be able to do is transfer money to payroll-- I'm pretty sure that if you raise your this year's payroll budget by $1M you will raise next year's by $800K, and so forth. So if you have prospect $$ left over (or coaching) you might be able to solve the problem.

That's what I would suggest. You have to transfer money into player payroll.

In the trade proposal page it calculates the amounts currently and for future seasons.

Thanks everyone. The proposed deal would put me under next years budget by 3,470,000.

I have 4.7 million remaining in my prospect budget and nothing left in the coaches budget. If every 1 million increase in player payroll would add 800,000 to next years payroll, it doesn't look like I have enough to get the deal done.

You could always trade your 4 million contract. Depends on what that 20 mill brings to the table. I have gotten into those situations before and ended up having to trade useful players performing at value for significantly less than worth. In my case it meant picking up a 26 year old Ace top five pitcher for years to come , when those guys become available you find a way I guess.

Be careful. If you clear next year's budget down to 80% of this year's payroll allotment, you still have to clear the following year's budget down to 70% (I don't remember the caps for years 3 and 4 after current) . If the contract you're picking up has more than a couple season on it you might make a bunch of moves and then still get in trouble.

I’m just going to revisit the trade discussions in the off-season. The pitcher would have been a nice addition for the stretch run and the remaining 3 years but it’s not worth making additional moves. The 4 million contract that would have to be moved is my starting centerfielder and I don’t have a replacement.

thanks for the help everyone