Zev and I had a long, drawn out discussion covering many topics today. Others will pop up later. But the topic for today is methods for making your team work for you and not against you. We boiled it down to a few guidelines. I'd be eager to hear the impressions, critiques and different methods from others.
#1. Approach free agents cautiously. Don't sign someone who won't help you win within the next three seasons. Be extremely cautious with any free agent over 30 and wildly cautious with free agents over 35.
#2. Draft picks are valuable. They're your most likely source of cheap talent. Remember, for the first several years a draft pick reaching the majors will contribute almost nothing to your salary.
#3. Use your promotional dates to build your fan interest. A win on a promotional date gives your fan interest, and subsequently your attendance and merchandising revenue, a bump. Fan interest in also spurred by a winning season, a competitive race, and some other factors. But the one you can control is promotional dates. Schedule them, where you can, against weaker teams you expect to beat. You only have 25 promotional dates per year so don't waste them.
#4. If on the bubble about a players long term success deal him. The old saying 'Dealing a player a year early is better than a year late' is as true in OOTP as it is in MLB. Dealing early will get you more talent in return. Similarly, getting rid of a player with one more good year left is better than signing that player for three years and seeing him tank for years 2 and 3.
#5. They're just employees (or bits of software if you prefer). Don't get attached to a player emotionally. When it's time to send a player on his way, whether because of age or because of an up and comer, do it. You'll get value for him and won't be stuck with a non-contributor down the road.
#6. Pay attention to your minor leagues. Make sure your minor league managers can teach the game as best the can. This will make sure your prospects develop to the greatest advantage. Also, make sure to promote your talent as possible. Players respond to greater challenges. They do you no good hitting .350 in AA for several years.
Anyone else have any rules?
And more posts to come from the Zev/Nate discussion later. Including thoughts on drafting, expansion, and more!
Damn. Why are we giving away secrets that help other teams be more competitive? Oh well. I generally agree with all of the points made above, with some provisos. I think they apply differently at different points in a success cycle.
ReplyDeleteOne rule that I have lived by, that I recognize may not be held by others, is that in a world with a $10 million cash cap, there is absolutely no value to having more than $10 million combined between cash in the bank and profits at the end of the year. I will ALWAYS try to put any extra dollars to a productive use.
That's why I was willing to bid on Rawlins, even though I didn't have any obvious need for him. I have my team's payroll projected out through the expiration of all of my contracts and I expect to easily afford Rawlins' contract, plus all the expenditures I plan to make, plus have some extra money to use as necessary, for the next two years. It's also the reason I made the then unprecedent $20M offer to Hobert Hagerty. Having money disappear at the end of the year due to the cash cap is, to me, insane.
Damn. Why are we giving away secrets that help other teams be more competitive?
ReplyDeleteActually, Mack, one of the things that Nate and I discussed was increasing the competative balance in the league.
Zev
I hope it's clear that I don't have a problem sharing advice in the context of improving the competitive balance of the league. My initial comment was more of a joking one. The fact that I posted about the salary should be a clue I am more than willing to share my thoughts.
ReplyDeleteTo expand more on my comments on the points put out there by Nate...
1. I agree with the caution about older free agents, with the proviso that I'd rather spend money on a short deal with an older free agent than see it go to waste.
2. Agree about the importance of draft picks. I suspect I like middle rounds more than Nate based on discussions I have had with him. But, I've had some players from the third round turn out very well for me, so that's a big reason why.
3. Agree on the promotional dates. I'd advise people not only to pick games against teams that they think they can beat, but to also look for good starting pitching match-ups. Every little bit helps.
4. I agree. That's why I made the big deal with Michael this off-season where I got rid of some aging, but still very good players in exchange for younger ones.
(This is probably a good time to note that I think that if you have enough revenue, like Michael does, you can probably succeed on a consistent basis by picking up the aging players everyone else casts off.)
5. Agree on the sentimentality. Trading Klopp this offseason was kind of hard for sentimental reasons. He'd been an original Monarch and I wanted him to spend his career in Seattle. But, he had to go to make the deal I wanted to make. (Side note: That being said, it would take an awful, awful lot for me to ever give up Greg Mudge. As a homegrown superstar, I am probably going to try to keep him forever. After all, you are supposed to have fun in the game and I want to have the all-time home run champ, if only until someone younger passes whatever number he sets the mark at.)
6. Agree wholeheartedly on the importance of the minors. I think building young talent is a critical path to success, with the possible exception of the South Bay Bankers. (laugh)
Hey, one other thing about the game that I think is critical. Look at players both on the web and in the game. There's often two different sets of ratings and one is not necessarily more accurate than the other. I tend to look at both when evaluating trade proposals, figuring out starting line-ups and rotations, etc. If you just rely on one set of numbers (say, the web), you may not be seeing the entire picture.
ReplyDeleteNow I'm curious as to what others think about my bits of wisdom. I suspect they're wondering how an idiot like me lucked into a strong team.
You fools.
ReplyDeleteIt's all pitching. That's it.
It doesn't matter if you get them from trades, free agency, or the draft. Just get the best pitchers, and if you have anything resembling a lineup, you'll win.
That's why I didn't win last year, and why I expect to win this year. I made the deal with Mack to get Daye and Garcia because they were what my rotation needed to win in 2009.
And, spend all the money you can. It's not like you'll be taking any vacations in the Caribbean with money saved after the season.
For what it's worth, the correlation in SDMB history between scoring runs and winning is higher than the correlation between allowing runs and winning, although the difference is pretty much statistically insignificant.
ReplyDeleteR+ to W% - 0.905
ERA+ to W% - 0.894
RAA+ to W% - 0.890
And, I'd say that last season's Cecil Cup was an example of where superior hitting (River Cities) defeated superior pitching (Seattle).
A couple thoughts from the bottom of the league.
ReplyDelete1. There really isn't much choice. Between all the guys who don't like the organization, and the ones who demand a winning team, there is usually only a couple guys more than 1 star to talk to. Either have a 1 star player, or pay an old guy and hope.
3. I got screwed on this last year. my arbration estimates were way low, and Cabralles wanted like 3 million rookie sighing bonus. I just had negative cash all year and couldn't schedule them.
5. The local popluarity addition for players is big. When your stuggling for every fan interest point, letting a long time guy go can really hurt you.
Agreeing with most everything, and to expand on denver's point - sometimes even when a star FA will allow you to bid for him, he'll end up accepting a lower bid from someone else.... Rawlins was the case for me this offseason, I offered more years and dollars than Mack did. Don't get me wrong, I understand it's not totally arbritary, and that the program must have taken into account Seattle's (far) greater likelihood of winning when deciding for Rawlins which offer to take, but it's still a little frustrating.
ReplyDeleteI have about 25M in unused payroll right now. I'm not sure what I should have done with it - I paid FAR more for Calles than he was worth, perhaps I should have offered something obscene to Rawlins like 25M per for 2 years. If there had been a decent SP on the market, I would have offered him pretty much anything.
Unfortunately for me, there's noone in the league right now that's desparate to shed salary.
One additional thing that is probably a given but I'll throw it out there -- you don't want to let the game manage anything if you can help it. The game's an idiot. You'll have your best prospects sitting the bench, or a great SP prospect coming out of the pen. Even if you're not into micro-managing every detail of your teams, you'll at least want to make sure you know who's playing and who isn't at each level, and there's no guarantees if you don't do it yourself.
ReplyDeleteSeattle's point about the two sets of ratings is well taken. I was shocked by how much wiggle room is built into the ratings when I first picked up on this (which took a couple of seasons). Not only is it worth checking both ratings in order to get more precision in your own evaluations, it's important that you be able to see what everybody else is seeing. I can remember receiving inquiries about some of my minor leaguers and kind of wondering why in god's name anybody would be interested in those players, because in-game they were awful. Then I checked the online profiles and ratings of 44 were suddenly 65s, and it made a lot more sense (and those guys' prices went up).
As far as some of the other points, I'd echo what Denver said about financial constraints. Obviously, if you've got the resources and the options available to do it, you should be selective about free agents, you should maximize your use of promotions, you should always be willing to make moves, etc. But if you don't have that flexibility, it's very easy to get stuck in a downward spiral, especially when there are a bunch of teams ahead of you that have no such issues. No foundation of talent means no wins, which means no fan interest, which means no revenue, which means you're going to have a tough time keeping good players or signing or developing replacements, and a lot of times your hand is just going to be forced in a certain direction. Your cash flow will always be a concern, which in turn dictates your behavior with regard to just about every point on Nate's list.
All of which, admittedly, amounts to nothing more than a bunch of small-market bitching about the Yankees and Red Sox of the world and how I can't just go out and pay all the best coaches twenty million dollars and have the best prospects in the world. I'm really not saying this because I feel cheated, or think it's unfair, or want something done to "fix" it, or don't enjoy trying to build a franchise. I'm saying this because I think it's worth pointing out that there are still, at this point, two distinct spheres of competitiveness, and it's not a situation where if we had just managed our promotions better we'd all be bursting at the seams with 5-star talent like the teams at the top.
In other words, I got yer fatherly advice right here.
Now that some of the less talent-blessed clubs have chimed in, I'd have to agree with their basic point that it's difficult to break out of the cycle of no wins = no revenue = no talent = no wins. Depending on where you're starting from, it likely takes some luck, some good trades and drafts, and a lot of time. Nate rebuilt his team quickly, but I don't think he wasn't starting from as deep a hole as some teams in our league have.
ReplyDeleteI don't think Nate, Zev, Michael, or I meant to imply that if other teams just used their promotion dates better, they'd be contending for the Cup next year and if my comments were taken that way, then I apologize for the misunderstanding.
Sorry, I didn't mean to spit on the advice. I guess that came off more sour grapes than I intended, and I had less of a point than I thought.
ReplyDeleteI'm due for a fall, I know, and it might be as soon as 2010. I'm willing to suffer the slings and arrows of rebuilding, not just to see "how the other side lives," but to pay my dues for all of the success I've had.
ReplyDeleteHowever, at the same time, for all of my free-spending ways, I'm being smart about it. I may pay for free agents in their 30s, but I don't think I'll have too many albatross contracts as I've made that mistake before. My team nucleus (Jeon, Turek, Peppers, and Cuomo) is young and under contract for several years to come.
So, I ain't going anywhere.
Hey, I'm not trying to play some sort of dominance game here. Zev and I were discussing it and thought it would make a good topic to offset the Michael-Mack-Nate slapfests.
ReplyDeleteAnd there are different ways of moving one's team forward. Mack and I are similar in that we're apparently both math-geek seamhead sorts. Michael's capitalized on his revenue base to play the dollar game. Different approaches.
The biggest rebuilding process I faced was a huge financial hole I dug for myself building a competitive team early. I got to the upper 80s in wins and flamed out. I paid for that for a few years and saw my fan interest drop quite a bit. I'm glad I was able to move through it. Urk.
I wouldn't have any problem with that. I think you all know by now that I lose interest after the first couple of rounds. I wouldn't at all mind going to auto-draft following the second round, for all of me.
ReplyDelete