Ye are correct.

according to your recollection, how often do you hear of 2 or more hbd owners offering max deals to the same player? would you say it happens every season? less than that?

and how soon did sammy sign? first cycle after the 24 hour initial waiting period?

Since I'm in MWR worlds, it seems to happen pretty regularly.    I don't think it's every season because every FA class doesn't have a stud. 

SA signed before the last cycle but it wasn't immediate either.  I know of one other owner who said he offered max on him.

did i do it right? he said my offer wasn't enough: $10 mil bonus, $20 per x 5, ntc, player option

There's nothing else you can do.   If you don't have a coach maybe signing one will sway him your way.    If nothing else, leave it out there.  People with winning max bids will sometimes reduce it if they think the other have moved on.

I know about the "call up after game 21 to save an arb year rule", but is there a certain amount of big league AB's a player can have before the arb clock starts ticking?  I just picked up a guy who had one major league at-bat last season, then he was returned to AAA.  I cant remember dealing with this situation before. 

AB do not matter.  It's all about the time on the roster. 

Is this guy a starting CF in the bigs?

I don't like range at 82 but it won't kill you.   I'd play him at 2B or 3B.

Mike, as a commish, how would you handle an owner who has reserved a team but hasn't logged in to any of this teams for weeks? (fyi, he's the owner removed from Coop, so you know who..) If I wait till after rollover, I'm worried about two things: allowing a non-managed team to go through preseason, and that WIS will consider the log-in time reset to rollover and won't approve a replacement. Thoughts? (WS ended last night.)

If I valued him as a good, long-time owner, I'd want to give him until the last minute to show up.  But I'd protect myself by sending a ticket to WifS noting his status as missing since Day-X.   Then, if he doesn't show when the world is full, I'd ask WifS to send his credit to his account and replace him.    If I didn't value his participation all that much, I'd just ask WifS to credit his account and move on.

Mike, what are your thoughts on DUR with position players? I've got a loose formula on how much to rest players periodically throughout the season to keep them at 100% for most, if not all of the season. However, I was comparing two of my star players, Emilio Hernandez and Tsuyoshi Fukudome.

Hernandez has appeared in 130 games, all starting at 3B. He has 582 PA with a DUR of 84. He has been bouncing around from 98-99% for about a week now (we've got about 20 games left in the regular season) as I've rested him more regularly to keep him near 100% as the playoffs roll near.

Fukudome has been in 141, starting 139 of them (116 starts in RF, 19 in LF, and 4 at DH). He has 575 PA with a DUR of 86. Has yet to drop below 100% this season.

With pretty close DUR ratings, and games played/PA numbers being very close too, I would think they would both be wearing down or tiring at a pretty similar rate. Why do you think Hernandez is more worn down? Does 3B make that much more of a difference than COF?

I really expected you to say one was a MIF/CF.   I didn't think it was that much of a difference between 3B/COF but, defensively, EH has been involved in almost 4 times as many plays.  Maybe it does make that much of a difference.

I have 15 coll / 14 hs scouting for my upcoming draft ... how much weight would you put into projected ratings given the scouting?