Greetings,

Curious how you approach what to offer in Arbitration. The game defaults to offering 70% of the asking price, but I usually offer about 90% yet still find it to be about 50/50 whether I win or lose. If it's 50/50 regardless, then I might as well offer just 70%, or even lower. Thoughts?

Agreed. I usually just offer 75-80%. I think it's about as random as anything else in this game.

I wish there was a little more science to this going forward. Even if it was as simple as ‘you have a better chance of winning Arb the closer you get to their asking’ but yeah. Seems like a total coin flip. So offer 70-80%. There is no harm.

I found an owner that was offer the league minimum most of the time. His thoughts were that he still won a decent amount even though it was lower than 50%, I think about 25-30% of the time; but that the amount he saved on a couple of players made a larger amount than if he had won all of arbitrations offering 80%.

I've never had the balls to try it, but I have been wanting to do it. And i think I would only do it with 1st year arbitration cases.

Haven't tracked too closely but seems I always win when the ones where the player had low AB/IP the prior season. I just assume it's based mostly/all? off that.

If it's someone I plan on keeping long term I always give them what they're asking for. It will help in that 3rd arb when you want to sign him long term.

Posted by jwynkoop2424 on 7/19/2021 12:55:00 PM (view original):
I found an owner that was offer the league minimum most of the time. His thoughts were that he still won a decent amount even though it was lower than 50%, I think about 25-30% of the time; but that the amount he saved on a couple of players made a larger amount than if he had won all of arbitrations offering 80%.

I've never had the balls to try it, but I have been wanting to do it. And i think I would only do it with 1st year arbitration cases.

Hmmm..... I'd be real tempted to try this one season.

Posted by jwynkoop2424 on 7/19/2021 12:55:00 PM (view original):
I found an owner that was offer the league minimum most of the time. His thoughts were that he still won a decent amount even though it was lower than 50%, I think about 25-30% of the time; but that the amount he saved on a couple of players made a larger amount than if he had won all of arbitrations offering 80%.

I've never had the balls to try it, but I have been wanting to do it. And i think I would only do it with 1st year arbitration cases.

I kinda feel bad that I didn't think of this.

And no, I don't think it makes any difference when you get to third arbitration, how much you lost by, nor how much the player asks for. You can always LT before third arb no matter what happened before. You can't **** an imaginary player off, no HBD player has an Aaron Rodgers Spite rating.

Does low balling in arbitration effect the player’s play during that season?

Game engine isn't advanced enough for that.

Posted by brianplath on 7/28/2021 6:36:00 PM (view original):
Game engine isn't advanced enough for that.

Agreed.

Thing I always ask myself, when people bring up next-level complexity like this, is:

Would it have made sense - structurally and financially - to program complexity like that into the game from the start?

Or in other words, don't imagine things that wouldn't make sense being there.

I offer 70%, based on that's what is offered as a default. I'm going to say I do pretty good also, at least 40% wins, maybe higher.

Just offered my 5 first year arbs $396,000 each, and won 3 out of 5. Saved just over $3M.

Me like.

I tried the really lowball approach with no luck. Four guys up for arbitration. The first three were asking beteeen $1.3M and $1.5M. I offered $600K for each, lost all. The third was seeking $5.6M, I offered $4.5M, lost as well. However, it's entirely possible it was bad luck and could have won the first three.

Again, I have seen no discernible pattern or trigger to win arbitration. My feeling is that the "program" such as it is, it's a complete 1-to-1, 50-50, absolutely random coin flip.