2015 RULES: Free Agency (Clock and First Bidders)

[Goodell]

There was some discussion last year about the time stamp for free agent signings, link to see signing soon list, last minute signings, and other related bidding frustrations some have voiced.

Some ideas were thrown out, and seeing which have the most support for possible consideration -- some of the discussions revolving around the free agent time stamp or others just waiting to jump on other people's bids during off-peak free agency.

I'd like to eventually work in more first bidder advantages into the system that would lessen some of the voiced frustrations and give advantages to those doing the initial targeting of the player (especially after peak free agency). Raising the counter-offer requirements in the bid score system is something I've looked into more. Also possibly treating the counter offer requirements for deals less than 1M differently than deals over 1M within that bid score system as sometimes difficult to find a formula that works ideally for a wide variety of price ranges. Some potential areas to add advantages to first bidders might also be to look at requiring all counter offers to come with at least some guaranteed money, giving first bidders lower counter-offer requirements than other counter bidders throughout a given bid war since they were in on it first, giving first bidders an extra bid, etc.

[JonC]

I think the last option is a dangerous one to implement. It gives GMs with the ability to be online at the moment free agency opens a HUGE advantage. If my first bid doesn't count against me, I'm throwing a low bid out to as many FA as possible as soon as bidding begins. Who cares if it gets topped, I'm in and my first bid didn't count against me. I think you'll see too many lowball signings because teams can't counter all the first offers thrown out there. In my opinion, this would heavily impact salaries in that second tier of FA.

[Ben C.]

I think the last option is a dangerous one to implement. It gives GMs with the ability to be online at the moment free agency opens a HUGE advantage. If my first bid doesn't count against me, I'm throwing a low bid out to as many FA as possible as soon as bidding begins. Who cares if it gets topped, I'm in and my first bid didn't count against me. I think you'll see too many lowball signings because teams can't counter all the first offers thrown out there. In my opinion, this would heavily impact salaries in that second tier of FA.

I think that's why it would be limited to one excluded first bid per day.

[Ben C.]

I don't think I'm in favor of any of these ideas at this time. I'm pretty happy with the bidding system the way it is.

That said, if someone convinces me otherwise I'll gladly throw support to an idea if it seems to have good merit.

[Goodell]

This was the thread after last year's free agency that triggered some interest in possible changes to the system regarding time stamps, signing soon list, and first bidder advantages: http://www.fangm.com/sportstalk/viewtop ... f=7&t=1074

[tkienast]

I'm not in favor of any of the changes. I'm good with how it is right now.

[Onyxgem]

One thing I wish that could be implemented to stop the last minute sniping is a random generator making certian FA's sign before 24 hours or after just to make it a surprise when they sign like IRL.

[Knighty Knight]

Is it possible to implement a system for private bids in which teams would submit there best offer privately and free agent would select team who offered best contract based on the score system we have in place now. In that scenario we would get rid of a lot of the issues we are debating now with free agency and get rid of the 5 bids. I think this is the ideal way to go just not sure if it can be automated or is easy to do so. I've been in leagues where we submitted contract offers to the commish like this so if we could automate it, free agency would have a more realistic feel than our current system of just upping the contract offer.

[Onyxgem]

Is it possible to implement a system for private bids in which teams would submit there best offer privately and free agent would select team who offered best contract based on the score system we have in place now. In that scenario we would get rid of a lot of the issues we are debating now with free agency and get rid of the 5 bids. I think this is the ideal way to go just not sure if it can be automated or is easy to do so. I've been in leagues where we submitted contract offers to the commish like this so if we could automate it, free agency would have a more realistic feel than our current system of just upping the contract offer.

I like this idea, you could even go as far as after day 1 bids are in the second day you could bid on one guy with a current high bid and a new guy without a bid. Then you can get into bidding war with the 2 highest bidders on the 2 days

[Goodell]

Thanks for the suggestions. Some of that sounds a lot like some of the multiple baseball sim leagues I'm in (and probably many others here) where offers are emailed in to the league and a group of people sort through with a ton of man hours devoted during that free agency period. I setup this league setting out to do something different, more automated, easier to run all season with the system managing that under the same automated tools without having to have a human manager for it all. I couldn't have this league running if I had to manage free agency manually.

Maybe that could be less manual than other leagues have to do it, but the other big problem I had with the baseball sim leagues i'm in (or the silent auction methodsending in "best offers") is the guessing game involved in that. I send in 1.5M but someone else sends in 1.51M and they win because they guessed better or added an extra .01 on it. I aimed for a less secretive, more open bidding system initially where people with similar opinions about a players worth could bid that out in an open market. Trying to replicate real situations and open negotiations between most interested teams more than setting up secret silent auctions. I disagree about private silent auctions being more realistic than capitalistic open market bidding.

So I'd initially not be inclined probably to recreate the problems I personally saw in those processes in other leagues I was in leading me to create a different way. I was more interested in setting up an open market place of bids managed by a system.

Welcome the different opinions and open to other suggestions and thoughts (although it would take quite a bit of work to not just tweak but rebuild our free agency tools from scratch again realistically), but that all was why things intentionally setup differently than other leagues I'm in. If I was just going to replicate everything all the other leagues I'm in do for the most part, I probably wouldn't have setup this league. Someone else could setup a football league like that with groups of people with more time doing lots of manual processes like that. For me, this league setup to create improved tools that didn't rely upon finding people with lots of time to run manual processes always.