Free Agent Bidding during Regular Season and Late Off-Season

[Goodell]

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.

[Jared A]

I like the idea of annonymous bidding. Some teams try to pick on other teams with their contract offers. That's silly, and not realistic.

When making offers, real life teams don't have all that information open to them.

[Goodell]

I think for the big names (if trying to emulate reality a bit) there is some general knowledge of who is interested in signing the player. Those guys take scheduled trips to teams and they are reported in the papers which teams they will visit, etc. But not so much with lesser free agents as you might see during the down-times in the late off-season and regular season with mostly backup types on the block.

It's probably also useful to the big free agency bidding period to have an idea of who your main bidding competition shapes up to be in terms of how much cap space they have and how desperate they are for a star player at a certain position, but less a part of the minor free agency period for backup-types making less money and less impact.

It might be an interesting experiment if at least half are for some kind of anonymous bidding to try it once the regular season starts, and then we could decide next February if we liked that and wanted to keep it anonymous always or make the bidders known during the heavy March/April free agency again and turn it back to anonymous after the draft.

I'm a little surprised that the NOs are leading the way mostly on these as seemed like there was more frustration about free agency during training camps being voiced. To me there is such a big difference between the main free agency period and the rest of the year that there maybe should be some tweak to the system. Less bids seemed like an obvious alternative to me with less guys on the market, but maybe anonymous bidding during those down times when finding and researching players is so important would solve some of the frustration of successful GMs doing a lot of research to put initial bids and having other guys react to those offers. Although once a guy is brought into the spotlight on the bidding block, many will still look into that player's individual situation no matter who did the first bidding, but at least we'd avoid the situation of successful GMs advertising their respected endorsement of a certain player by everyone knowing they are bidding on this lesser known guy.

[soonertf]

Perhaps there is a way to have bidder hidden until salary exceeds a certain level (ie above $2m or some agreed upon figure). That would solve the big FA discussion.

[Goodell]

Perhaps there is a way to have bidder hidden until salary exceeds a certain level (ie above $2m or some agreed upon figure). That would solve the big FA discussion.

Yeah, that might be a good way of having the system setup one way all year to where we'd still get the fun public competition over the big name guys in a way similar to the public nature of those big free agents going from city to city, and also allow the lesser-known lower-paid "secret" guys to get bids in a less publicized manner without advertisement of which GMs are believers and having that somewhat drive the responses.

If we also still list the number of bids left within 24 hours (which can be useful when in a bidding war to know about your competition) those "anonymous" bids might be less anonymous if there are only a couple of players being bidded on.

[tkienast]

I would think if we are going to make bids unseen we need to rethink the limit on bids. I know w/ only 5 bids every 24 hours I look to throw a bid towards a guy already bid on(if contract is still w/in the range I want) over the player who doesn't have any bid yet. If we are not going to know who is already bid on should be have more bids to counter that? I'm not sure if it myself yet, but thought it might need to be considered. Maybe I'm just thinking it will be bigger than it actually will, don't know.

Anyway, just thinking w/ my hands.

[Royce R]

I would think if we are going to make bids unseen we need to rethink the limit on bids. I know w/ only 5 bids every 24 hours I look to throw a bid towards a guy already bid on(if contract is still w/in the range I want) over the player who doesn't have any bid yet. If we are not going to know who is already bid on should be have more bids to counter that? I'm not sure if it myself yet, but thought it might need to be considered. Maybe I'm just thinking it will be bigger than it actually will, don't know.

Anyway, just thinking w/ my hands.

I think they are saying the bid will be shown, not the bidding team.

[RebelFan]

I'm glad you started this discussion Troy. Long overdue in my opinion. I voted for the finders / keepers rule. I also noticed that only 7 others voted for it as well. Not that it matters, but if I had to guess, you probably don't have many more GMs than 7 who are turning in names to be added to the database. But that's just like, my opinion, man.
There are without a doubt, GMs who cruise the 'signing soon' list to see what they are missing out on. And of course this makes it very frustrating for anyone digging players up from nowhere. And also takes the incentive out of the thing by running up the salary of the 'no-named player'.
Granted, there are times when I will leave a player in the pool without signing him, and just keep my eye on him until something else happens. As more glowing reports come out for the player, or as I see another team attempting to sign player, it becomes necessary to bid on the player.
This is not intended to be a stab at anyone, just my 2 cents. However the league decides to work it out is fine with me.

[RyanM]

I like the idea of anonymous bids - that's how it works in real life. Maybe there could be a "leaning towards" a certain team (or teams) without the financial terms being disclosed. That way you would know if you are in the lead.

[Dan R.]

I have submitted names before for addition, but I don't like the finders/keepers rule.

If two GMs read the same article about a player and submit the name, even though the second GM may counter the initial bid, he still did his homework. I don't think we should penalize people in those situations for the actions of others.