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Post by BlueJaysGM_Fin on Jan 12, 2016 12:58:18 GMT -5
I can weigh in here a bit. So, in fairness to transparency I assist with contract extensions when Derek reaches out to me. My role is to provide Derek an in-depth look at the player in question and I use methods to give Derek another set of eyes to make his decision. Also in fairness, my time during any given day is limited. I do not work anywhere near the hours Derek does, nor do I have multiple children to occupy my time when I get home. However, it is no less of an impact to me that I leave the house by 5:15 am and get home around 6pm My commute is 3 hours total for the day). Between 6 and 8 is dinner and time with my 7 year old. Finally, between 8 and 8:30 is kitchen cleanup (i'm the dishwasher/reclycler of the family) and getting my lunch ready for the next day. I generally have between 8:30 and 10 to download league files/export files, spend time with the wife, catch up on any sports etc. I obviously help Derek anytime he needs it, so i add that to my plate as well. All that to say i LOVE what Zevin has done for the league. Ron touched on some of the reasons why (FA) but Zevin is much more than that. I will challenge any online league out there with our player finances and realism we deal with as GMs. Zevin has brought a whole new concept to managing payrolls as a GM and I LOVE that about the idea Derek had. But also think about the decisions you, the GM, has to make when deciding who to extend and who to let walk. If you live and die with your team these are TRULY awesome components that Zevin has brought to the PBL. Completely open to whatever direction we go in but felt it would make sense and would be fair to acknowledge there is time delays in getting extensions back to you GMs and for that I apologize. I own some of that responsibility and I do not ever mean for it to take so long at all. My only hope is this has helped provide another look and feel to what Derek has brought to the league.
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Post by David_ExposGM on Jan 12, 2016 15:26:14 GMT -5
Both Zevin and now the manual budget adjustments are done outside the game. I am a big believer in letting the game handle things on it's own as the developers have put the time into 16 versions of OOTP to get it closer and closer to semi-perfect (OK, maybe to decent). Both of these things impact the in-game finances without a doubt. To what degree is certainly up for debate. And, before anybody calls me on it, yes I do realize that this league (and virtually every other) has "rules" outside the game that seem to be needed - at least in an online league. I do accept that some rules need to be in place as humans will ALWAYS outsmart the AI (at least for now)!
Examples (from this and other leagues): - requiring the X% buyout for a team option - disallowing the signing of a young stud to a 10-year, one-billionth his eventual market value annually - or my favourite, outlawing the "humongous player option following a gigantic team option on an otherwise under-market guaranteed contract portion, the options on which will NEVER see the light of day" contract
...also artificially affect the in-game finances. So really, you can't win either way!
If the issue is merely an immediate handling of an extension PM, then that's something toward which Zevin can work to make the process smoother. If we went without Zevin, adding more rules to PBL for extensions, then extra eyes would be needed on every one to make sure they both complied with the rules and did not find a new loophole to exploit (and humans WOULD do that). So it's almost a saw off to me. Sorry, but for the Zevin question specifically, I will be a fence-sitter! Maybe, just maybe, 17 will further refine the contract AI and completely surprise the online community (but I doubt it...I'm not convinced online is anywhere near the top of their priority list). Oh, and as for having a hard time recruiting people to PBL as a result of Zevin, I believe we just need to staff the Indians this off-season? So, that falls flat - at least for the time being. Maybe many of the new GM's have yet to encounter ZEVzilla!!!!!!
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Post by craigWhiteSox on Jan 12, 2016 17:51:47 GMT -5
Same as the Angels for me, i for one was a huge proponent of Zevin a few of the PBLs most successful teams were built on manipulation of the AI contract extensions. Seeing 24 and 25 year old "5 star" players signing 5 year 25 million dollar extensions was disgusting something major needed to be done and thus the creation of Zevin came about.
I agree with Tim on his points on Derek being extremely busy and making it difficult to negotiate back and forth and that was one of the main concerns with the inception of Zevin.
However, i sit firmly atop the fence i still think there is a major need for the well being of the league to have a Zevin type thing, however that is played out i will sit back and watch
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Post by Tim_GiantsGM on Jan 12, 2016 18:24:32 GMT -5
In general, regardless of the topic, I prefer use of in-game functionality vs. external workarounds. As David wrote, all leagues define rules. My preference is to use functions built into the game engine and augment them with guidelines, if necessary.
That said, in my experience with Zevin the negotiations have been pretty timely. On only one occasion did I experience a time delay that, given that the player upped his demands during the process, could have been problematic; however, we agreed to terms and I was able to enter the contract in-game followed by acceptance by the player. Zevin is easy to work with and the results are fair.
I agree with many of the points and observations that already have been expressed. I will sit atop the fence with GMs who would be happy either with the retention of the Zevin process or in-game negotiations coupled with defined contract parameters to use as a guide.
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Post by Luc_AZdbacks on Jan 12, 2016 21:27:37 GMT -5
I'm fine either way, but I would add that from what I can see, OOTP 16's contracts do seem a bit less exploitable than OOTP 15's.
Whenever I do an extension with Zevin, it seems to be similar in $ value to what the game thought it should be
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Post by Nick_BrewersGM on Jan 13, 2016 9:03:22 GMT -5
Sometimes i like Zevin sometimes i don't. i lean a lot on the like side but obviously it just gets hard because offers bottle neck so hell have no offers from april to june and then have 50 offers in novemeber its hard for one guy to get through...
now my real issue... Can we do anything with the retarded owners? My owner was "angry" with my performance this year after 8 years of being happy with my performance this year (my best year ever) he's furious because i didn't resign Will Taylor to a rediculous $330 million dollar deal. Thats the only goal i didn't accomplish and he's angry and i didn't get the budget increase i was suppose to get and I'm assuming the 2 go hand in hand but now i have some stupid goals...Resign Jeff Perkins (Great!) improve stolen bases (Why?) and increase income to $17 million a year (might have been achievable if i got the increase i was expecting) after winning 109 games my owner was angry. Its pretty dumb.
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Post by sansterre - Milwaukee Brewers on Jan 13, 2016 9:55:23 GMT -5
Could be worse. The Marlins' owner could be Jeffrey Loria . . .
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Post by Tim_KCRoyalsGM on Jan 20, 2016 17:23:10 GMT -5
This monster drop in budgets has been a pain. Are we SURE that we didn't create this mess ourselves by enacting Zevin?
I mean... think about it. Perhaps Zevin's pursuit of more player friendly contracts has boosted the amount of player salaries and INDIRECTLY COMMUNICATED to the AI that we clearly have more money to spend than the game engine thought, and the budget drops is essentially ootp way of countering that by dropping budgets.
We are blitzing thru the off season... I would really love to see us run this Zevin discussion through to a conclusion. Unless we are sure that Zevin is not altering the way the ootp game engine views our league finances, then I'd say we are playing with fire.
Are we continuing Zevin? Because if we're not, we need to start YESTERDAY on new rules for doing contracts.
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Post by Tim_KCRoyalsGM on Jan 20, 2016 17:51:27 GMT -5
Let me ask this another way. .. has anyone seen these massive budget drops in other leagues? I haven't. ... and thus I wonder if this is just a Zevin correction.
Really like to see the game in control again unless we are sure Zevin is not jacking with our league finances.
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Post by Tim_KCRoyalsGM on Jan 20, 2016 17:55:44 GMT -5
If we stick with Zevin. .. let's at least make it a deliberate choice rather than the path we walk for no other reason than we just didn't continue the discussion to its conclusion. The sun is about to rise in another season. ..
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Post by AstrosGM_Shane on Jan 20, 2016 18:10:01 GMT -5
I know Derrick loves the uniqueness of zevin and that's cool but I'm with the side that thinks we better off with the in game system.
We could use some similar rules as zevin. Like for example we can't sign extensions on players with arbitration until near the end like it is now with zevin.
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Post by MetDaMeats on Jan 20, 2016 18:38:23 GMT -5
Although at the end of the day I don't know what series of rules could actually solve the contract problems that really hurt leagues. Without Zevin teams are basically free to sign their young players to huge contracts on the cheap. It's a game breaking tactic, but I haven't seen any way to fairly work around it with a series of rules.
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Post by sansterre - Milwaukee Brewers on Jan 20, 2016 18:54:47 GMT -5
Simply restricting extensions to the final year of arbitration (or later) would do a world of good to avoid the super-cheap long contracts problem.
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Post by Derek _ Red Sox on Jan 20, 2016 21:22:16 GMT -5
I love the idea of Zevin and I think it does a great thing for the league. I know people get concerned with the manual adjusting of financials but I think it needs to be reminded that this isn't the first or even second time financials were adjusted and things were okay.
The problem with Zevin is universal and I agree 100% that time is the biggest problem. The problem is we got a unique thing in Zevin in which I really believe helps create fair value contracts. We also are unique in how quickly we run sims on a daily basis. The two unique things we do best are also two things most contradicting to one another.
Zevin would work even better if sims were consistently done on a M-W-Fr sim schedule like some leagues run. One of the most underrated parts of Zevin was not the top tier contracts that were negotiated but the contracts to the starting positional player, middle reliever, utility guy who serves a role on a team that is valuable and deserves better money but the AI allowed them to go extremely cheap.
Free Agency the last few seasons have been much more exciting. You never would of seen guys like Jimmy McIntos and Will Taylor hit the market before. This year there are 30 players 4 stars and above like Troy McLure (back to back sub 3 ERAs), Richard Crisci, Lorne Henderson, Jared Harris, Ed Crow, etc....
However, as much as I love Zevin, I am willing to run an experiment this season if league votes wants to do it. I'm open to the idea of putting a freeze on Zevin from now to the end of the World Series and allow teams to manually negotiate extensions under specific guidelines (restrictions on options, bonuses, etc. Plus things like no extensions unless a player has had 2 arbitration hearings amongst a few of them). I would also like the right for Zevin to intervene with any extension deemed unfair or harming the integrity of the process. Zevin could review the deal and propose why the extension is being under review.
I think this would be a fair compromise and one I'd be willing to put to league vote and then make an official decision at the end of the year whether or not to keep going without Zevin, bring back Zevin or continue one more season to study the transition.
PS. I will also say without Fin who is a "silent partner" to a degree, the process would not be anywhere near it is and it would be and overwhelming failure.
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Post by kendalld00(GM for hire) on Jan 20, 2016 22:47:08 GMT -5
It is great to have such big time players available for FA, but a lot of lower tier teams still can't afford them.. So us lower tier teams actually benefit from players that are willing to take less money to keep these team competitive.. The Zen turn around time is important, players contract demands change with their performance and their team morale. This is my first experience with Zen and I think doing the same thing in the game that he does is double work.. We ask the player about an extension, then have to forward that info to Zen and wait for a response. Where instead we make the offer and get a response the next sim.. Zen doesn't take care of the FA offers in the off season, so what is the difference about him ruling over contract extensions?? I am totally in favor of the rules that are in effect right now for contract extensions and feel Zen is not necessary...
And yes... This is my rant because I am one of the teams that only has $3M available for FA signing without totally dismantling my team!!!
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