In general, how much player payroll budget should one save for the draft or drafts?

Looking at free agent stage and wondering how much I can spend if I only have about $10m left after resignings and arb stages.

Thanks!

Rookie Owner

Rookie ball players only make $8k so you need ~$250k. I always budget $1M for promotions in case my ML team gets a bunch of injuries.

Posted by brianplath on 4/23/2021 12:05:00 PM (view original):
Rookie ball players only make $8k so you need ~$250k. I always budget $1M for promotions in case my ML team gets a bunch of injuries.

Mostly agree with the above. I like to have about 1.5 or more of a buffer.

Thanks! I appreciate the quick responses.

One more question...

So you should go ahead and spend all of your player payroll, except maybe $2m, through the Rule 5 draft period? Only saving that $2m buffer (at the most) for the amateur draft and promotions?

Depends.

Each RuleV pick you grab is also another $50k plus the cost of the player. So every RuleV guy you grab is at least another $380k. (be sure to look at RuleV players' salaries when ranking your board. Don't let someone dump their $6M/yr garbage contract on you just because his ratings look alirght)

If you're playing the IFA market (you probably shouldn't until you understand how to exploit it, it's an all or nothing situation in most leagues) you have to monitor your player payroll (and those of the other major IFA bidders) really closely.

You might also get into a bind with trades when salaries don't match up (vet advice: don't make trades, or least ones involving high impact players, until you understand how to value players).

I'd probably try to pick up some cheap FA contracts after RuleV. There's a certain number of days into spring training games when free agents start discounting their asking price significantly and you can oftentimes find solid role players this way.

The only other thing I can think of is if you didn't budget enough prospect payroll and you need to transfer money to that budget, especially if you draft a guy that demands more than slot.

Thank you!

you can figure out how much budget for prospects pretty accurately by taking your draft positions and looking up last year's bonuses paid for those slots. Sometimes look back at 2-3 drafts if something seems out of whack (like a lower pick getting more bonus than a higher one, which can happen). So, if you have pick Round 1 - Pick 17 (1/17), see what 1/17 got last year, and so on.

You can get in a pickle if you say "each year I budget $6mm for draft picks" when this year you have 3 comp picks at the end of Round 1, so be sure to account for the number of picks you're likely to have and their slots.

Then, if you're gonna take a flyer on a hard-to-sign guy in a later round like 2-5, that guy is still gonna want high-pick money, so you'll have to budget for it if taking such a flyer.

In-season budgets can be worked around, so I don't feel much need to save too much budget for in-season trades. You can work out the money as part of the trade to make it work for both teams...I don't often see budget constraints prohibiting a trade. A bigger problem - though not in the grand scheme of things - is when your budget is tight and you want to promote a guy or sign someone to your minors cuz of injury. If you sign a couple extra inactive pitchers and maybe a SS or two who can play anywhere then not much need to save budget to fix minors during the season.

Also, if you're planning to sign a bunch of IFAs, even just as DITR lottery tickets, each of these guys gets a salary too, so you'll need the payroll room for it. Rookie League earns about $8k, so allocating $80k is enough for 10 IFAs salary-wise. In total, it seems about $300k gets you through all the incidental payroll-related moves during a season. Exception would be going from AAA to ML, which each cost about $275k in salary bump to big-league minimum.

One last note which cost me about $3mm on accident and I'll never screw up again: if you bring up guys to the majors when rosters expand just for the experience, be sure to move them back down before the end of the WS, else they make the big-league minimum next year when you have them back at AAA!!!!