Power Pros Forum

Any tips for resigning star players during contract negotiations? Do players like shorter contracts vs longer ones or is it strictly money related? Took me a while to figure out that the "suggested" salary is a load of shit and will rarely rehire start players... thank god for save/load.

I'm having a hell of a time resigning Ryan Howard after winning the home run record and getting him World Series MVP. But even my Nick Markakis back-up outfielder/DH (national league though) won't settle 5k up from 380, and Cole Hamels won't go for less than 6-7k. grr... experiences anyone?

My general experience has been that most young players want short contracts of 1-2 years while older players want longer contracts of 4-5 years. The suggested salary can get you quite a few players but at the same time it's quite frequently WAY off the mark.

Okay - can someone give us a layout of how exactly this process works? I'm actually entering the 2007 offseason for the first time, believe it or not (slow at playing this game). The season mode page on the Wiki (wiki/index.php?title=Season_Mode) is nowhere near complete on this topic...so help out please.

What I know is, during 2007 I traded away most of the guys that had an expiring contract, and got young, 1st-year players (Pedroia, Gabbard, etc) to augment the Pirates staff, who is still mostly under organization control. Some may be arbitration-eligible (years 3 thru 6 of MLB service), but most are in year 1 thru 3, so are not arbitration eligible. They really have no say in their contract or anything else.

After the season, first of all like 19 players retire - including guys who should keep on playing - Mussina, Rhodes - dudes who are playing this year. Seems odd that they wouldn't even test the market? Is this poor rating, or what?

After, the first place it brings me to is 'contract renewals'. It shows me like 24 (!?!) players, their current salary, and what they are looking for. Some of this doesn't make sense - a few guys are looking for lower salaries, some after breakout years. Others are looking for waaay, waaay too much; John Grabow has been like a mop-up lefty, and yet is asking for over $3k. By comparison, Zack Duke won the Cy Young, and is asking for $900. So immediate issues are
1) why is EVERYONE asking for a contract
2) why are the numbers way off? Are some players just greedy?

Now, I go down the list, and most of the demands are okay, so I leave them as-is. A few are way too high, and one FA (Wasdin) I don't want to renew. So I drop him and edit a few others, then hit OK. A week passes (?!), and the blonde chick tells me 24 players do not have contracts. I pull up the screen, and the same 24 guys are waiting for me. They all say 1-year deals, all the numbers are fine...what is it waiting on?

After 3 weeks of this, where guys apparently start to agree to terms, I end up with 7 guys that don't (including Pedroia, with like 60 games MLB experience). The blond chick tells me they are declaring free agency. Then I go on to free agency. My guys aren't there...there are maybe 20 FA's available, and no way to negotiate or sit down with them or their agents...I basically am used to (from other MLB GM sims) having a UI where you can tell
a) how the player would feel about playing for your team
b) a rough idea of salary being looked for (i think i have this, in suggested)
c) a rough idea of years (i think this is there as well)
d) other teams negotating/demand for player (see this too)
e) being able to see your current team, a-la depth chart, to address weaknesses? I mean, I know my team pretty well, but every good GM reviews his stats, right? Do I just need to store it all in the noggin? And have an idea what I want to sign ahead of time?

But interestingly, you can't get out of this screen, without cancelling the whole week. Is this just oversight or what? Being a GM means studying a lot of things...why suddenly restrict that?

anyway, if someone can give me some guidance - what happens to my players that didn't agree to the terms that they, themselves, suggested? Why can non-arbitration-eligible players dictate contract terms?

In this game everyone is arbitration eligable every year, we can't renew them for 390-450 like in real life. It sucks, because the really good young players that are going into their second season can make a ton of money without a long term extension. So, every player is arbitration eligable for all of the 6 years that they are under team control.

Edit: Also, if they dion't sign during the renewal time, they will become free agents. but will not show up in the FA negotiations and will show up in the free agent pool after the FA negotiations is done and you can sign them for what they were originally asking for.

That's...odd. And disappointing. I mean...they have a column, every time you sort your players, that says 'Years until Free Agency'. What, did no one actually tie that in to an algorithm in the game?

So you can make trades and try to get starting, cheap players, only to be at their mercy during the offseason anyway?

Man, this game is looking like less and less of a baseball sim, and more and more like a japanese anime adventure with some stats. I mean, most of the 'cartoonish' stuff I can sort of look past, given the depth of play and all...but this is a sticking point.

Well, usually the players ask for a LOT of money for one year. So what I do, is raise the contract JUST A LITTLE by maybe 1K or 2K points, but then I make the contract a 3 or 4 year contract and they accept, that way, I don't have to resign them for a long time.

My interpretation is that if a player is up for free agency (0 years left in their profile) then he is entitled to negotiating a contract with any team. If he's not up for free agency but his contract is up (0 years left) then he will negotiate for a new contract, but you have first dibs.

As far as the need to "research" your team's needs before you enter into free agent negotiations, the secretary tells you that the negotiations begin that week and you need to click on the button in order to begin. If you instead scroll down to your roster (in player stats) or compare your team's stats (in stats->team stats) to others, then you should have a pretty decent idea of what your needs are in the off-season.

As for expected salaries, that's a complicated phenomenon. Here are a few factors that I can think of:

-Most obviously, having a previous year correlates to a higher requested salary. But in many cases the comparison between the stats from that year and the previous year's stats (as you'll see when you pull up the screen to actually make your offer) can be more important.
-The player's relative role on your team seems to make a difference--if he doesn't play all that many games or bats for a much better average than in years past but many teammates do better then the demand may not be as high.
-Prior salary obviously has a huge impact. Unless a player misses pretty much the entire season, if he was making 5k/yr, he's unlikely to want to resign for 3k/yr.
-Special abilities (especially the rarer ones) can drastically increase expected salary (for example, Star, Luck, Slugger).
-Age, of course, also has an impact.

Personally, I use a bit of a cheap strategy to resign my elite players for cheap. If a young guy has a very high salary or has the talent/past stats to warrant a superstar's salary, I'll assign him to AAA for the entire year (as long as I have enough money and talent right then to pay for a great player that I won't be using--knowing that it'll pay off a lot in the future). Come negotiations, the star that I paid 8k/yr (who contributed nothing to my team over the previous year) will usually be likely to sign on for 1000-2000/yr for several years.

This works great for signing a good success-mode player mid-season. They often ask for 5k or more for a one-year contract (and most of your success-mode players ought to be as young as possible). So, register and sign your created player at the very end of July (the deadline for doing so), pay him for half-a-year of AAA training and then sign him to a cheap long-term contract.

Whenever I can't sign a guy and I want to, I end up getting him anyway because he shows up in F/A during spring training, but not during the actual F/A negotiations... Weird, but its good for me

sorry, i didnt realize duke said that already.

i made a season with the Mets (not a Mets fan, they're just good in the game), and I was trying to resign most of my team. One player, I forget the name, didn't agree to my lower offers, so I settled with what he wanted. The weird this is, he said no

that always happens. even when i offer a higher amount they say no...

Guys theres no need to respond to threads that haven't been posted on for a month, the player who asked this has long sinced moved on and doesn't need any help any more.

Or half a month.. Like you just did

Really? I didn't realize we were so late into October, you are right then haha, I am being a hypocrite.

its a slow board now that '08 is out... it was on the first page, so...