I made the financial changes, moved the Walla Walla team to Ohio, and uploaded a new league file for David (or anyone else who wants to download it) and sent him the password for the team. As per a previous suggestion, I have added a link to the Links section of the blog with the league file.
The next sim will be Wednesday evening.
I have a proposal that I'm working on for a more permenant parity solution, but I still need a few days to work it out. Once it's done, I'll throw it up on the blog for discussion.
Zev
Sunday, September 27, 2009
Sim last night?
It looks to me like Zev managed to get the budgets increased and fixed and uploaded a new league file last night. Do others see the same thing?
Update by Zev: I uploaded some files last night, but then my copy of the game crashed. I redid it this morning, including the team change from Walla Walla to Ohio.
I'm still working on getting a complete copy of the game to David. I hope to have that done at some point today. If not, then Monday night.
Zev
Update by Zev: I uploaded some files last night, but then my copy of the game crashed. I redid it this morning, including the team change from Walla Walla to Ohio.
I'm still working on getting a complete copy of the game to David. I hope to have that done at some point today. If not, then Monday night.
Zev
Friday, September 25, 2009
Hello to Everyone
Hello,
I am proud and happy to finally be owning my first baseball franchise -- a life long dream come true. Nate told me of this opportunity and here's hoping for some fun and good times.
As such are things in this world, Mayflower Van Lines is lining up at midnight tonite (Bob Irsey gave me their number) to move this franchise to the Great State of Ohio as the Ohio Buckeyes. Sorry if this requires additional travel time for those get away day day games.
Well anyway, I look forward to the coming season and quite frankly have a lot to learn about this game. Thanks for allowing me to join this league.
David Locke
I am proud and happy to finally be owning my first baseball franchise -- a life long dream come true. Nate told me of this opportunity and here's hoping for some fun and good times.
As such are things in this world, Mayflower Van Lines is lining up at midnight tonite (Bob Irsey gave me their number) to move this franchise to the Great State of Ohio as the Ohio Buckeyes. Sorry if this requires additional travel time for those get away day day games.
Well anyway, I look forward to the coming season and quite frankly have a lot to learn about this game. Thanks for allowing me to join this league.
David Locke
Moving On...
I'm sorry, but I didn't get a chance to run the sim last night as I intended to. We'll pick it up on Saturday night.
I also want to apologize for the way things went in the last post. I appreciate the fact that people responded both publicly and privately.
Barring any objections, I think we can proceed from here. I will add cash to each owner's balance corresponding to the increase in the media contract. I'm also inclined to let the Lutz signing stand -- other owners in the past have been the beneficiaries of game quirks/errors -- but if there are objections, I'm willing to listen to remedies (short of actually rolling back the date).
Zev
I also want to apologize for the way things went in the last post. I appreciate the fact that people responded both publicly and privately.
Barring any objections, I think we can proceed from here. I will add cash to each owner's balance corresponding to the increase in the media contract. I'm also inclined to let the Lutz signing stand -- other owners in the past have been the beneficiaries of game quirks/errors -- but if there are objections, I'm willing to listen to remedies (short of actually rolling back the date).
Zev
Thursday, September 24, 2009
New Walla Walla owner and middle relievers
If I understand right the new Walla Walla owner is on board. I'm sure he and Zev will introduce him shortly.
I was thinking about those enormously poor middle relief signings the computer manager made last week. $10MM, almost, per year for two middle relievers. I'm thinking it might be a nice gesture to maybe toss those two contracts back into the hopper. Without some communication issues David would have been on board prior to the signings and likely, though not certainly, withdrawn the offers.
Disclaimer: I am a personal friend of David's and feel like I should look out for him. It's a habit.
I was thinking about those enormously poor middle relief signings the computer manager made last week. $10MM, almost, per year for two middle relievers. I'm thinking it might be a nice gesture to maybe toss those two contracts back into the hopper. Without some communication issues David would have been on board prior to the signings and likely, though not certainly, withdrawn the offers.
Disclaimer: I am a personal friend of David's and feel like I should look out for him. It's a habit.
So, Here's The Story...
OK, everyone, here's the bottom line. I created a test league (with a 16 game season) and ran several seasons testing different financial scenarios.
What I discovered was this: changes in media contracts (as well as other financials) take effect the day after the playoffs end. Furthermore, the cash does not become available to teams to use for free agent signings until the *following* year.
To illustrate, here's the scenario I had with my test league.
The test league has a 16 game season that starts on July 1 and ends about July 22, followed by a five game playoff series. The league has a $10m cash cap.
On 7/1/2025, the Brooklyn team had the following financial info:
Cash: $10m
Media contract: $40m
$ avail for free agents: $55m
At that point, I simmed to August 2025 -- at which point the playoffs were over and the new fiscal year kicked in. That was when I removed the cash cap and changed the media contract for
Brooklyn to $800m (I chose a ridiculous amount so that I can see the change). However, since the fiscal year was over, no change actually occured. At this point, the totals don't even show up in the "Current Financial Overview" section.
I then proceeded to the end of the 2026 season. At that point, the huge amounts showed up in the "Current Financial Overview" section. However, the huge amount of money was not yet available for free agents. It did not show up there until I simmed to the end of the 2027 playoffs.
So, what does this mean for us? Well, since I did not change the media contracts until after the 2014 playoffs were over, that means that the changes will not show up in the available cash until after the 2016 season. Obviously, we don't want to wait that long.
The good news is that direct changes to cash totals take effect immediately. So, I think the obvious solution would be to take the amounts that I added to the media contracts and add them to the cash values of the teams.
At this point, I've spent a few hours going through this and learning how this works. It's now 2AM here in New York -- I'm going to sleep in a few minutes. Barring any objections, I will make those changes tomorrow and upload them.
We will discuss what (if anything) is to be done about the Lutz signing tomorrow.
If I may, I would like to conclude this with one parting thought:
Even though I am the commissioner of the league, I don't have an encyclopedic knowledge of the game and its mechanics. Therefore, there are times that I may make mistakes in implementing a policy which may result in some adverse change in the game.
In addition, I try to accomodate owners on special requests whenever possible. For example, if an owner is away from their computer, I have always made myself available to making changes, offers, etc. manually. When owners ask to make sure that certain players start on certain games, I try to accomodate them as well. In short, I try to accomodate any reasonable request that an owner might have. Matt's not wanting to have to wait a sim before making an offer to Lutz (during which he might sign with another team) was, in my humble opinion, a reasonable request; and so I made the offer manually - as I would have for anyone else who had asked for any other free agent. I was not aware that doing so would provide an "exception" to the rules (and, frankly, I'm still not sure how that happened). Indeed, when the offer went through, I took that as a sign that the financial changes too place. However, considering that no one else knew that, I can understand why some people might have thought there were some shady dealings going on - but I can tell you that all that happened was that I tried to accomodate a reasonable request from an owner -- as I have done for the last seven years. I will apologize for my ignorance in not knowing the effect that this would cause.
Nonetheless, I would like to make the following request: If you suspect that an individual owner or commissioner (whether myself or Michael) have done things that are questionable vis-a-vis the league -- please bring it to our attention *privately* before lobbing statements such as "calling BS" or stating that "something smells rotten." If, after commenting the person involved you still feel that something improper has happened, then, by all means, bring a complaint up on the blog.
If you feel that I have done something wrong, please bring it to me *privately* first. If you don't feel comfortable bringing it to me privately, then bring it to Michael and he will discuss with me without revealing your identity.
Overall, I've had a ton of fun running this league -- and I look forward to many more years of doing the same. Yes, I have made mistakes as commissioner over the years -- there's no question about that -- but I believe that I have always tried my utmost to maintain fairness in the league to the best of my ability. All I ask, is that if you have a problem with something I (or Michael) do, at least give us the courtesy of asking us privately what happened and allowing us to explain before writing comments that can be taken as being suggestive of impropriety (whether the comments were meant that way or not).
As always, if you have any questions, feel free to ask. But it's 2:20 now. I'm going to bed and I'll pick this up tomorrow.
Zev
What I discovered was this: changes in media contracts (as well as other financials) take effect the day after the playoffs end. Furthermore, the cash does not become available to teams to use for free agent signings until the *following* year.
To illustrate, here's the scenario I had with my test league.
The test league has a 16 game season that starts on July 1 and ends about July 22, followed by a five game playoff series. The league has a $10m cash cap.
On 7/1/2025, the Brooklyn team had the following financial info:
Cash: $10m
Media contract: $40m
$ avail for free agents: $55m
At that point, I simmed to August 2025 -- at which point the playoffs were over and the new fiscal year kicked in. That was when I removed the cash cap and changed the media contract for
Brooklyn to $800m (I chose a ridiculous amount so that I can see the change). However, since the fiscal year was over, no change actually occured. At this point, the totals don't even show up in the "Current Financial Overview" section.
I then proceeded to the end of the 2026 season. At that point, the huge amounts showed up in the "Current Financial Overview" section. However, the huge amount of money was not yet available for free agents. It did not show up there until I simmed to the end of the 2027 playoffs.
So, what does this mean for us? Well, since I did not change the media contracts until after the 2014 playoffs were over, that means that the changes will not show up in the available cash until after the 2016 season. Obviously, we don't want to wait that long.
The good news is that direct changes to cash totals take effect immediately. So, I think the obvious solution would be to take the amounts that I added to the media contracts and add them to the cash values of the teams.
At this point, I've spent a few hours going through this and learning how this works. It's now 2AM here in New York -- I'm going to sleep in a few minutes. Barring any objections, I will make those changes tomorrow and upload them.
We will discuss what (if anything) is to be done about the Lutz signing tomorrow.
If I may, I would like to conclude this with one parting thought:
Even though I am the commissioner of the league, I don't have an encyclopedic knowledge of the game and its mechanics. Therefore, there are times that I may make mistakes in implementing a policy which may result in some adverse change in the game.
In addition, I try to accomodate owners on special requests whenever possible. For example, if an owner is away from their computer, I have always made myself available to making changes, offers, etc. manually. When owners ask to make sure that certain players start on certain games, I try to accomodate them as well. In short, I try to accomodate any reasonable request that an owner might have. Matt's not wanting to have to wait a sim before making an offer to Lutz (during which he might sign with another team) was, in my humble opinion, a reasonable request; and so I made the offer manually - as I would have for anyone else who had asked for any other free agent. I was not aware that doing so would provide an "exception" to the rules (and, frankly, I'm still not sure how that happened). Indeed, when the offer went through, I took that as a sign that the financial changes too place. However, considering that no one else knew that, I can understand why some people might have thought there were some shady dealings going on - but I can tell you that all that happened was that I tried to accomodate a reasonable request from an owner -- as I have done for the last seven years. I will apologize for my ignorance in not knowing the effect that this would cause.
Nonetheless, I would like to make the following request: If you suspect that an individual owner or commissioner (whether myself or Michael) have done things that are questionable vis-a-vis the league -- please bring it to our attention *privately* before lobbing statements such as "calling BS" or stating that "something smells rotten." If, after commenting the person involved you still feel that something improper has happened, then, by all means, bring a complaint up on the blog.
If you feel that I have done something wrong, please bring it to me *privately* first. If you don't feel comfortable bringing it to me privately, then bring it to Michael and he will discuss with me without revealing your identity.
Overall, I've had a ton of fun running this league -- and I look forward to many more years of doing the same. Yes, I have made mistakes as commissioner over the years -- there's no question about that -- but I believe that I have always tried my utmost to maintain fairness in the league to the best of my ability. All I ask, is that if you have a problem with something I (or Michael) do, at least give us the courtesy of asking us privately what happened and allowing us to explain before writing comments that can be taken as being suggestive of impropriety (whether the comments were meant that way or not).
As always, if you have any questions, feel free to ask. But it's 2:20 now. I'm going to bed and I'll pick this up tomorrow.
Zev
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Financial Help?????
So it was decided that there would be change to the Media contracts 2-3 sims ago (over a month of game time) and we have yet to see that money. I know that a number of us had changed our off season strategy because of this information (if we thought it was a good idea or not), and I know that some of us were planning on using that money to go after some high priced FAs in the market (some of which have started to sign - i.e. Lutz). Personally, I think this delay on the extra money has made the situation go from bad to worse, promising 'help' (and I use that phrase loosely), and then not coming through with that 'help', is not a good way to move forward in this league. I am wondering if there is a plan for when the media contracts are going to change, and if we possibly could HALT all sims until this is done. If we say we are going to do something let's do it so that we are all on the same level playing field and have our strategies aligned with reality. Sorry to be so blunt, but this needs to be taken care of ASAP if we want to have the illusion of parody in this league.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)