PBL Changes under consideration
Feb 27, 2020 16:13:15 GMT -5
Sean_RedsGM, sansterre - Milwaukee Brewers, and 1 more like this
Post by Commish_Ron on Feb 27, 2020 16:13:15 GMT -5
Thank you everyone for the discussions about possible changes for next season. I am not commissioner because I am the smartest guy in the league, just the geek with enough free time to keep the sims rolling. Your feedback is invaluable. I love brainstorming and discussing wild ideas knowing that most of them will come to nothing. I enjoy the discussion and they sometimes lead to very good ideas that get traction. But I see no need to blow up the world with big significant changes.
PBL is about you guys. The primary goal is for it to be fun. A big part of the fun is having a competitive and challenging league. When we are talking about levelling the playing field I want it understood that I do not think there is a “problem” here that needs to be “fixed”. There are multiple examples of franchises that were once at the bottom of the heap that have clawed their way to the top. I also have no interest in creating a utopian socialist league where dynasties cannot be created and GMs are not rewarded for their hard work. That being said, I am not opposed to taking some measured steps, handled within the game engine, not manual adjustments, that could marginally reduce the gap between the top and the bottom teams.
I will have polls up in the next 24 hours. Here is a summary of my thoughts of what is on the table (subject to discussion and change before polls post).
1. Increase the size of the draft pool. This change I am strongly recommending and would actually appreciate hearing thoughts behind any “no” votes. Several seasons ago we reduced that setting. Since then we have witnessed a significant drop in the quality of the players in the draft. In sand box testing I have definitively confirmed that this change and the result are directly correlated. The proposal here is to return to what we were doing before. Changes would go into effect this season. While it might not be completely fair if people made moves with another bad draft in mind, if we wait a season we will end up with 50 comp picks rolling over.
2. Revenue Sharing. I am open to increasing this in the interest of marginally shrinking that gap in the budgets. I don’t think the teams on top should view this as anything more than some extra challenge and maybe it helps teams on the bottom turn things around quicker. Again, like I said above, I don’t think this is a problem that needs fixed, just an opportunity to make a great league a little better. There are a couple of choices on the table. We could increase the tax rate, this would be implemented incrementally over a few seasons. Or we could change from luxury tax to income sharing. My preference is the latter. Now that I have dug into how luxury tax works I do not like it. I do not like that teams can way under spend their budget and still get revenue sharing (which is applied to finances after max cash and owner adjustments are applied). I don’t like that teams can go cheap on payroll and directly impact the average that drives the rate of the tax. In short I think revenue sharing should be based on revenue, not payroll decisions. Revenue sharing for this season has already been calculated and applied. Any changes would be for next season and will be incrementally applied so GMs have time to project and adjust.
3. Increase visiting gate share. I am open to this as well. But I would prefer to do either revenue sharing or gate share, not both at once (I can talk a big game but when the chips are down I’ll proceed with caution). Changes to gate share would also be implemented incrementally over a few seasons.
4. Removing owner control from budgets. I am intrigued by this change but still need to sand box it to make sure it works like I think it does. How I read it is that one seasons revenue directly becomes the next seasons budget. That does come with some risk. GMs need to project out to the best of their ability what future revenues will be when making long term financial commitments (i.e. contract extensions or FA signings). There is a danger of a single season spike in revenue allowing the GM to over commit or a single season crash to limit options. Still, it seems better to me than arbitrary, sometimes unpredictable owner impact. This decision to me is closely tied to increasing max cash. If we go this route I think it would be better to use higher max cash and give a smart GM the ability to roll over more money and minimize the risk of revenue drops.
5. Increase max cash. See above. If we continue to have owners manage the budget I think we should leave max cash where it is. Otherwise this would benefit teams with better owners much more as cheap owners will continue to pocket profits anyway.
6. Increase the playoff field to 16. Personally not a fan and I will proxy votes to no. But it got some support in the discussions so I will include it and not complain if 24 GMs want to do it. If this does pass we also need to increase the length of the first series. It is bad enough we subject the 3 seed to the random chance of a 3 games series. I don’t want to expose the 1 seed to that as well.
Not up for polls but a couple other discussed changes I want to acknowledge:
I have heard the request to sim to one day after the world series before the off season starts and take a break there. I will begin doing that this season.
There was discussion of writing up a Welcome and Tips document for new GMs and maybe pairing them with a veteran GM. I certainly will not stand in anyone’s way and will accommodate any way I can if anyone wants to take the lead on that. But I am skeptical on the need and impact. Most GMs that join are familiar with OOTP and the smart ones get to know PBL and it’s intricacies before making major moves. I think Slack has been a pretty open Forum for people that want to ask questions. That seems to work well. While I do not think this is a bad idea at all I think I will focus my energies elsewhere.
Not back filling GMs and eventually contracting is still in the back of my mind but at the moment we are full so…
Sorry for the long post. Thanks all that had the patience to get through it. Let me know if I misrepresented or omitted anything. Thanks and long live the PBL!
PBL is about you guys. The primary goal is for it to be fun. A big part of the fun is having a competitive and challenging league. When we are talking about levelling the playing field I want it understood that I do not think there is a “problem” here that needs to be “fixed”. There are multiple examples of franchises that were once at the bottom of the heap that have clawed their way to the top. I also have no interest in creating a utopian socialist league where dynasties cannot be created and GMs are not rewarded for their hard work. That being said, I am not opposed to taking some measured steps, handled within the game engine, not manual adjustments, that could marginally reduce the gap between the top and the bottom teams.
I will have polls up in the next 24 hours. Here is a summary of my thoughts of what is on the table (subject to discussion and change before polls post).
1. Increase the size of the draft pool. This change I am strongly recommending and would actually appreciate hearing thoughts behind any “no” votes. Several seasons ago we reduced that setting. Since then we have witnessed a significant drop in the quality of the players in the draft. In sand box testing I have definitively confirmed that this change and the result are directly correlated. The proposal here is to return to what we were doing before. Changes would go into effect this season. While it might not be completely fair if people made moves with another bad draft in mind, if we wait a season we will end up with 50 comp picks rolling over.
2. Revenue Sharing. I am open to increasing this in the interest of marginally shrinking that gap in the budgets. I don’t think the teams on top should view this as anything more than some extra challenge and maybe it helps teams on the bottom turn things around quicker. Again, like I said above, I don’t think this is a problem that needs fixed, just an opportunity to make a great league a little better. There are a couple of choices on the table. We could increase the tax rate, this would be implemented incrementally over a few seasons. Or we could change from luxury tax to income sharing. My preference is the latter. Now that I have dug into how luxury tax works I do not like it. I do not like that teams can way under spend their budget and still get revenue sharing (which is applied to finances after max cash and owner adjustments are applied). I don’t like that teams can go cheap on payroll and directly impact the average that drives the rate of the tax. In short I think revenue sharing should be based on revenue, not payroll decisions. Revenue sharing for this season has already been calculated and applied. Any changes would be for next season and will be incrementally applied so GMs have time to project and adjust.
3. Increase visiting gate share. I am open to this as well. But I would prefer to do either revenue sharing or gate share, not both at once (I can talk a big game but when the chips are down I’ll proceed with caution). Changes to gate share would also be implemented incrementally over a few seasons.
4. Removing owner control from budgets. I am intrigued by this change but still need to sand box it to make sure it works like I think it does. How I read it is that one seasons revenue directly becomes the next seasons budget. That does come with some risk. GMs need to project out to the best of their ability what future revenues will be when making long term financial commitments (i.e. contract extensions or FA signings). There is a danger of a single season spike in revenue allowing the GM to over commit or a single season crash to limit options. Still, it seems better to me than arbitrary, sometimes unpredictable owner impact. This decision to me is closely tied to increasing max cash. If we go this route I think it would be better to use higher max cash and give a smart GM the ability to roll over more money and minimize the risk of revenue drops.
5. Increase max cash. See above. If we continue to have owners manage the budget I think we should leave max cash where it is. Otherwise this would benefit teams with better owners much more as cheap owners will continue to pocket profits anyway.
6. Increase the playoff field to 16. Personally not a fan and I will proxy votes to no. But it got some support in the discussions so I will include it and not complain if 24 GMs want to do it. If this does pass we also need to increase the length of the first series. It is bad enough we subject the 3 seed to the random chance of a 3 games series. I don’t want to expose the 1 seed to that as well.
Not up for polls but a couple other discussed changes I want to acknowledge:
I have heard the request to sim to one day after the world series before the off season starts and take a break there. I will begin doing that this season.
There was discussion of writing up a Welcome and Tips document for new GMs and maybe pairing them with a veteran GM. I certainly will not stand in anyone’s way and will accommodate any way I can if anyone wants to take the lead on that. But I am skeptical on the need and impact. Most GMs that join are familiar with OOTP and the smart ones get to know PBL and it’s intricacies before making major moves. I think Slack has been a pretty open Forum for people that want to ask questions. That seems to work well. While I do not think this is a bad idea at all I think I will focus my energies elsewhere.
Not back filling GMs and eventually contracting is still in the back of my mind but at the moment we are full so…
Sorry for the long post. Thanks all that had the patience to get through it. Let me know if I misrepresented or omitted anything. Thanks and long live the PBL!