Post by Derek _ Red Sox on Mar 2, 2011 0:43:49 GMT -5
A Commissioner’s Response
I would like to start this off by saying that I may reference teams as examples or in mention of their complaints and concerns. I may disagree with your opinions or comments but let it be known that I do not hold any hard feelings towards any of you. In fact, if we met in person I would definitely let all of you buy me a drink.
I also want to thank every single person in this league for making it so great. When devising a plan to adjust what I considered to be a major problem in the league, there were a handful of GMs who were willing to help out with this project and were willing to do so knowing that they could be in the minority when it comes to backing my final decision.
To the rest of the members of the league, I thank all of you for your dedication to the league. In fact, I think many of us are being a bit more than dedicated and its bordering on obsession (haha).
This off-season has been delayed quite a bit due to discussions, studies and the eventual changing of budgets. My biggest goal as I commission this league is to make sure everything runs in a timely manner and we keep moving. This is the first time that we had a delay in this process but I think it was for a worthwhile reason and I think it was a healthy discussion that led to where we are now…. Budgets!
As I stated in previous conversations, the budgets were set using what I considered to be the fairest possible way for all teams. The biggest comment I heard before determining budgets was that 2010 MLB payrolls should not be taken into consideration as we are in 2013 and play in the PBL. The cry was for the “committee” to consider factors from the PBL and its growth for each team. I took this advice and decided that in order to make this fair for everybody, I would need to use in-game objectives as a base for where teams should be.
I do not want to get too deep into the process of how the budgets were created as I feel I would be beating a dead horse. However, to summarize for those who might of missed it, we broke teams down by market size and did a % reduction. Then used a +/- modifier for other important game data like Owners mood, loyalty, etc. We then used the 2010 MLB Payroll as a measuring stick to make sure the budgets set in place were higher than that payroll and showed a significant growth, one that would represent 3-years of hard work by owners.
Agree with the formula or not but it was able to bring budgets down almost one billion dollars while showing a league growth of $300 million dollars. To be able to drop a billion dollars and still show a $400 million inflation in 3 years should be enough evidence as to why things needed to be changed immediately.
In my mind, the budgets were appropriate, as it still maintained the core integrity of the league that is to still resemble Major League Baseball. I hear the argument a lot that we are the PBL and not the MLB. That is correct, but the basis of this league was created by fictionally taking over baseball, as we know it in reality. New York and Boston should be large markets that are hated by others around the country. The Pirates, Marlins and Padres should be the teams on the other end of the spectrum.
When all this was done, my biggest concern was not those of small market teams. It was the mid-market teams that had me concerned because since the start of PBL they were able to act like their large market East coast brothers. I knew they would have to face issues that most teams did not have to and that is ending up over budget. This is where my buyout and lower contracts come into play.
To answer the biggest question at hand right now, the answer is Yes! I am going to allow teams to buy out one contract over $12M annually and one contract under $8M annually.
I am also going to allow a team to adjust a salary for ONE player as long as they remain the highest paid player on their team by $2M.
This is open for every team in the league and it’s a ONE-TIME OFFER! This will not be accepted after the deadline which is now SET FOR THURSDAY MARCH 2 @ 9 PM EST
I know some teams are strongly against this and I respect that but there was NO mention of a budget cut happening so in my opinion, I feel its very unfair to have owners playing under a budget and market inflation for 3-years then all of a sudden punish them for doing nothing wrong.
I know the argument is “I had the chance to do same thing and I withheld from doing so with my team”. Well I think every team is loaded with different circumstances and they do what they have to do in order to compete while playing within the rules.
I also think by allowing buyouts this one time, it will add a few more players to the F/A pool.
The biggest deciding factor though is its just not fair to have a team punished for playing with-in the budgets set forth by the game. There will be no penalty for doing this.
I hope this clears up some of the issues we were wondering about and tomorrow I am going to finish this but Unfortunately, I have to cut this as I am burning both ends of the candle way to much right now and am beyond exhausted. I will continue this tomorrow and hope to finalize this all.
I have gone over the first 3 ½ pages and decided to comment on things I found to be necessary. I will post them below and tomorrow I will find the time to do the same for the remaining 5 pages.
I am doing this to allow teams to have some clarity but to me, the deadline is WED 3/2/11 @ 9 PM EST and then all this budget talk is over for now.
Its time to get back to playing the game and once I finish answering these 8 pages, I am putting all this behind me as its just time to move on. I will finish with my comments as I owe it to the league to do so.
Until tomorrow, I hope this helps and good night. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz I am much too tired to do anything else!! You guys are exhausting me! LOL
----------
I am going to go down the 8 pages of dialog on these budgets and talk about some of the comments that were made:
“I think that to retroactively punish teams for going over a budget that didn't exist when they bid on free agents last year would be a bad thing.” – Cincy
I agree 100% and this is why my proposed salary restructuring and buy out options are a viable solution to this.
“I was hoping we all would be taking somewhere around 10 percent hits, but that isn't the case.” Pittsburgh
If it was that easy, I would have been all for it. This would have been a much more popular decision as well but its not the right solution. When eliminating only 10% off the top of each team, your not doing anything to prevent mid-market teams from acting like large markets, small markets trying to be mid-markets, etc. Its really important that teams are separated by market sizes or in another couple of seasons $30M contracts will be the norm.
“As an auditor in real life, I would like to review the speadsheets used to view all aspects that went into coming to this decision so that I may properly review the arguments being made to reducing budgets.” – Mets
Never thought I would commission a game and have to worry about being audited for a decision that I made.
“I think it's fun. It forces a set of challenges upon me to try to work my way out of. Do I dump Webb and go into next year with a pitching staff with shaky ratings? Do I try to snip around with cosmetic changes? Am I forced to trade one of my superstar hitters? How am I going to resign Todd Helton?” – Rockies
I think this is the perfect attitude as the game did just get more challenging and with this group of owners, I think that is fantastic!!! I would also love to see the Rockies not be able to afford Helton so I can watch him finish his career as a backup 1B in St. Louis.
“you have to walk carefully in the world of baseball, one false step can set you back big time. These new changes will make this league a lot more competitive and will force GMs to think about their moves because there will be consequences.” – Marlins
Great point as right now with the former budgets in place or even with a 10% decrease across the board there still would be no consequences.
“But he didn't spend most of his spare time playing in the PBL!” – Rockies
That’s how you view this league? I look at it as I do PBL full time and in my spare time I run a business and play role of husband and father.
“I will use a new financial term called "market leverage." Market leverage is the percentage of budget a team is allotted in terms of the entire league. Formula for market leverage is Team Budget divided by PBL budget.” – Padres
Great breakdown to show the real impact but either I am not this smart or I am suffering from major budget overload and can’t comprehend anything with numbers in a cell block anymore!
“dont worry you can pick on me as much as I want, the market and budgets back then called for it” – Indians
Its all in good fun but Kubel is the perfect example of what this league would be becoming in the near future. Your exactly right, you did nothing wrong except do what the market said could be manageable.
“Honestly, it doesn't do it for me. My budget stayed the same from last year to this year. It hasn't gone that nuts for a video game. I believe the figures for the 2010 budgets are wrong. I don't know if that would change anything or not anyways. 3 years into the league and I feel like I've built a team in 2013 around a budget that is 2009” – Pirates
I say this with no disrespect but I don’t think any solution will satisfy the Pirates organization right now. I am not sure why you felt the budgets were wrong and in determining budgets you calculated players who are not on the team, etc. All those hypothetically would be paid off with the huge budget you had. Also in 2013 you have $19 million more payroll than you did in 2010, a considerable increase. There is no international free agents right now, no coaches, scouts etc. So this money can be used for signing drafted players and free agents.
“And why so much for the smaller market teams compared to the larger market teams?” –Pirates
Small market teams in the game are struggling and have small markets, little loyalty, losing records and angry owners while large market teams have won WS rings, division titles, high loyalty and happy owners. Talking about realistic, the Red Sox won 2 of 3 division titles and I took a budget decrease of $5M from my 2010 MLB payroll NOT considering your other factors like the Draft, international players, etc. NO way should Red Sox lose budget money but I took it for the good of the league. The biggest gripe should be coming from mid-market clubs who took the biggest hits of all, and none of them are complaining.
I would like to start this off by saying that I may reference teams as examples or in mention of their complaints and concerns. I may disagree with your opinions or comments but let it be known that I do not hold any hard feelings towards any of you. In fact, if we met in person I would definitely let all of you buy me a drink.
I also want to thank every single person in this league for making it so great. When devising a plan to adjust what I considered to be a major problem in the league, there were a handful of GMs who were willing to help out with this project and were willing to do so knowing that they could be in the minority when it comes to backing my final decision.
To the rest of the members of the league, I thank all of you for your dedication to the league. In fact, I think many of us are being a bit more than dedicated and its bordering on obsession (haha).
This off-season has been delayed quite a bit due to discussions, studies and the eventual changing of budgets. My biggest goal as I commission this league is to make sure everything runs in a timely manner and we keep moving. This is the first time that we had a delay in this process but I think it was for a worthwhile reason and I think it was a healthy discussion that led to where we are now…. Budgets!
As I stated in previous conversations, the budgets were set using what I considered to be the fairest possible way for all teams. The biggest comment I heard before determining budgets was that 2010 MLB payrolls should not be taken into consideration as we are in 2013 and play in the PBL. The cry was for the “committee” to consider factors from the PBL and its growth for each team. I took this advice and decided that in order to make this fair for everybody, I would need to use in-game objectives as a base for where teams should be.
I do not want to get too deep into the process of how the budgets were created as I feel I would be beating a dead horse. However, to summarize for those who might of missed it, we broke teams down by market size and did a % reduction. Then used a +/- modifier for other important game data like Owners mood, loyalty, etc. We then used the 2010 MLB Payroll as a measuring stick to make sure the budgets set in place were higher than that payroll and showed a significant growth, one that would represent 3-years of hard work by owners.
Agree with the formula or not but it was able to bring budgets down almost one billion dollars while showing a league growth of $300 million dollars. To be able to drop a billion dollars and still show a $400 million inflation in 3 years should be enough evidence as to why things needed to be changed immediately.
In my mind, the budgets were appropriate, as it still maintained the core integrity of the league that is to still resemble Major League Baseball. I hear the argument a lot that we are the PBL and not the MLB. That is correct, but the basis of this league was created by fictionally taking over baseball, as we know it in reality. New York and Boston should be large markets that are hated by others around the country. The Pirates, Marlins and Padres should be the teams on the other end of the spectrum.
When all this was done, my biggest concern was not those of small market teams. It was the mid-market teams that had me concerned because since the start of PBL they were able to act like their large market East coast brothers. I knew they would have to face issues that most teams did not have to and that is ending up over budget. This is where my buyout and lower contracts come into play.
To answer the biggest question at hand right now, the answer is Yes! I am going to allow teams to buy out one contract over $12M annually and one contract under $8M annually.
I am also going to allow a team to adjust a salary for ONE player as long as they remain the highest paid player on their team by $2M.
This is open for every team in the league and it’s a ONE-TIME OFFER! This will not be accepted after the deadline which is now SET FOR THURSDAY MARCH 2 @ 9 PM EST
I know some teams are strongly against this and I respect that but there was NO mention of a budget cut happening so in my opinion, I feel its very unfair to have owners playing under a budget and market inflation for 3-years then all of a sudden punish them for doing nothing wrong.
I know the argument is “I had the chance to do same thing and I withheld from doing so with my team”. Well I think every team is loaded with different circumstances and they do what they have to do in order to compete while playing within the rules.
I also think by allowing buyouts this one time, it will add a few more players to the F/A pool.
The biggest deciding factor though is its just not fair to have a team punished for playing with-in the budgets set forth by the game. There will be no penalty for doing this.
I hope this clears up some of the issues we were wondering about and tomorrow I am going to finish this but Unfortunately, I have to cut this as I am burning both ends of the candle way to much right now and am beyond exhausted. I will continue this tomorrow and hope to finalize this all.
I have gone over the first 3 ½ pages and decided to comment on things I found to be necessary. I will post them below and tomorrow I will find the time to do the same for the remaining 5 pages.
I am doing this to allow teams to have some clarity but to me, the deadline is WED 3/2/11 @ 9 PM EST and then all this budget talk is over for now.
Its time to get back to playing the game and once I finish answering these 8 pages, I am putting all this behind me as its just time to move on. I will finish with my comments as I owe it to the league to do so.
Until tomorrow, I hope this helps and good night. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz I am much too tired to do anything else!! You guys are exhausting me! LOL
----------
I am going to go down the 8 pages of dialog on these budgets and talk about some of the comments that were made:
“I think that to retroactively punish teams for going over a budget that didn't exist when they bid on free agents last year would be a bad thing.” – Cincy
I agree 100% and this is why my proposed salary restructuring and buy out options are a viable solution to this.
“I was hoping we all would be taking somewhere around 10 percent hits, but that isn't the case.” Pittsburgh
If it was that easy, I would have been all for it. This would have been a much more popular decision as well but its not the right solution. When eliminating only 10% off the top of each team, your not doing anything to prevent mid-market teams from acting like large markets, small markets trying to be mid-markets, etc. Its really important that teams are separated by market sizes or in another couple of seasons $30M contracts will be the norm.
“As an auditor in real life, I would like to review the speadsheets used to view all aspects that went into coming to this decision so that I may properly review the arguments being made to reducing budgets.” – Mets
Never thought I would commission a game and have to worry about being audited for a decision that I made.
“I think it's fun. It forces a set of challenges upon me to try to work my way out of. Do I dump Webb and go into next year with a pitching staff with shaky ratings? Do I try to snip around with cosmetic changes? Am I forced to trade one of my superstar hitters? How am I going to resign Todd Helton?” – Rockies
I think this is the perfect attitude as the game did just get more challenging and with this group of owners, I think that is fantastic!!! I would also love to see the Rockies not be able to afford Helton so I can watch him finish his career as a backup 1B in St. Louis.
“you have to walk carefully in the world of baseball, one false step can set you back big time. These new changes will make this league a lot more competitive and will force GMs to think about their moves because there will be consequences.” – Marlins
Great point as right now with the former budgets in place or even with a 10% decrease across the board there still would be no consequences.
“But he didn't spend most of his spare time playing in the PBL!” – Rockies
That’s how you view this league? I look at it as I do PBL full time and in my spare time I run a business and play role of husband and father.
“I will use a new financial term called "market leverage." Market leverage is the percentage of budget a team is allotted in terms of the entire league. Formula for market leverage is Team Budget divided by PBL budget.” – Padres
Great breakdown to show the real impact but either I am not this smart or I am suffering from major budget overload and can’t comprehend anything with numbers in a cell block anymore!
“dont worry you can pick on me as much as I want, the market and budgets back then called for it” – Indians
Its all in good fun but Kubel is the perfect example of what this league would be becoming in the near future. Your exactly right, you did nothing wrong except do what the market said could be manageable.
“Honestly, it doesn't do it for me. My budget stayed the same from last year to this year. It hasn't gone that nuts for a video game. I believe the figures for the 2010 budgets are wrong. I don't know if that would change anything or not anyways. 3 years into the league and I feel like I've built a team in 2013 around a budget that is 2009” – Pirates
I say this with no disrespect but I don’t think any solution will satisfy the Pirates organization right now. I am not sure why you felt the budgets were wrong and in determining budgets you calculated players who are not on the team, etc. All those hypothetically would be paid off with the huge budget you had. Also in 2013 you have $19 million more payroll than you did in 2010, a considerable increase. There is no international free agents right now, no coaches, scouts etc. So this money can be used for signing drafted players and free agents.
“And why so much for the smaller market teams compared to the larger market teams?” –Pirates
Small market teams in the game are struggling and have small markets, little loyalty, losing records and angry owners while large market teams have won WS rings, division titles, high loyalty and happy owners. Talking about realistic, the Red Sox won 2 of 3 division titles and I took a budget decrease of $5M from my 2010 MLB payroll NOT considering your other factors like the Draft, international players, etc. NO way should Red Sox lose budget money but I took it for the good of the league. The biggest gripe should be coming from mid-market clubs who took the biggest hits of all, and none of them are complaining.