Free Agent Bidding during Regular Season and Late Off-Season
Posted: Thu Aug 26, 2010 6:19 pm
I think free agency goes pretty smoothly in March/April when we have the big names on the block, however, since free agency stays on all year it seems that there are more problems with it during the down times around training camp and into the regular season where the way the tool is setup for March/April doesn't seem to work as well perhaps later in the year when less activity.
I think there's always been some frustration over first bidders perhaps bringing guys to attention and then other bidders following -- maybe not having to do as much research as the first bidders (although that's not always the case and probably some times when many GMs may have thought about bidding on a guy but maybe not a need currently or maybe waiting on other situations). One way we've tried to give first bidders an advantage is raising the price of countering offers but maybe we need to raise that more or have other advantages to first bidders during training camp or regular season bidding when there are less guys being bid on and more isolated cases being singled out. A down-side to that for the first bidders, though, is that if anybody else counters then their additional counter to that would have to be really high also and maybe too high for the value of guys available during down times to where the 2nd bidder has an advantage.
We have also wanted to make sure the league focuses on getting players their fair value (since no virtual agents to do that for them) above rewarding teams with sneaking great deals through, and in general believe in a free market bidding process to best determine demand/value.
One thing we can look at for either the down times (or maybe always) are making bidding anonymous. That way you don't know if the smartest GM in the league put in a bid on some no-name guy or someone else. Generally for the big names in the meat of free agency you know which teams are interested in which players and that can spark some competition between division foes and interesting part of the process, but maybe not as much known about smaller name free agents in the down times or need for us to recognize which teams put in bids then.
The 5 bids for 48 hours might also be something we should cut after the March/April heavy free agency period to just 2 bids per day during the downtimes to make those bids and counter offers for less players on the block more meaningful.
We could really give big advantages to teams doing their research and suggesting adding a player who isn't in the database. Maybe finders keepers where the first team to send a pm about a player not in the database would automatically sign them to a 1-year minimum deal or something. I typically can't add a player immediately upon getting a request but will send a response back alerting that GM when the player has been added. One potential problem with that (other than not market value in some cases) would be the multi-league setup but once added in one league I add across all.
Maybe other ideas too. I think we could probably change the tool functionality at the start of the regular season toward a very popular modification without it being a big "rule change" delayed for next year only, similarly to how I first had the waiver wire process tools list all teams putting in a bid publically and then made that anonymous after taking a poll on it and most wanting the tool to function that way. The way free agency process tool works doesn't really change the plans or strategy of team building too much as other big rule changes would that we hold off on until next year rule discussions before a new year's team building activity.
I think there's always been some frustration over first bidders perhaps bringing guys to attention and then other bidders following -- maybe not having to do as much research as the first bidders (although that's not always the case and probably some times when many GMs may have thought about bidding on a guy but maybe not a need currently or maybe waiting on other situations). One way we've tried to give first bidders an advantage is raising the price of countering offers but maybe we need to raise that more or have other advantages to first bidders during training camp or regular season bidding when there are less guys being bid on and more isolated cases being singled out. A down-side to that for the first bidders, though, is that if anybody else counters then their additional counter to that would have to be really high also and maybe too high for the value of guys available during down times to where the 2nd bidder has an advantage.
We have also wanted to make sure the league focuses on getting players their fair value (since no virtual agents to do that for them) above rewarding teams with sneaking great deals through, and in general believe in a free market bidding process to best determine demand/value.
One thing we can look at for either the down times (or maybe always) are making bidding anonymous. That way you don't know if the smartest GM in the league put in a bid on some no-name guy or someone else. Generally for the big names in the meat of free agency you know which teams are interested in which players and that can spark some competition between division foes and interesting part of the process, but maybe not as much known about smaller name free agents in the down times or need for us to recognize which teams put in bids then.
The 5 bids for 48 hours might also be something we should cut after the March/April heavy free agency period to just 2 bids per day during the downtimes to make those bids and counter offers for less players on the block more meaningful.
We could really give big advantages to teams doing their research and suggesting adding a player who isn't in the database. Maybe finders keepers where the first team to send a pm about a player not in the database would automatically sign them to a 1-year minimum deal or something. I typically can't add a player immediately upon getting a request but will send a response back alerting that GM when the player has been added. One potential problem with that (other than not market value in some cases) would be the multi-league setup but once added in one league I add across all.
Maybe other ideas too. I think we could probably change the tool functionality at the start of the regular season toward a very popular modification without it being a big "rule change" delayed for next year only, similarly to how I first had the waiver wire process tools list all teams putting in a bid publically and then made that anonymous after taking a poll on it and most wanting the tool to function that way. The way free agency process tool works doesn't really change the plans or strategy of team building too much as other big rule changes would that we hold off on until next year rule discussions before a new year's team building activity.